Look! Up in the Sky!

There's a big fuss going on over the next actor slated to play Batman in a movie. Seems like the public doesn't think much of tapping Ben Affleck for the part of the "Caped Crusader."

I don't much care. My beef has to do with the genre. Why are we watching comic books on the silver screen? Yes, I watched George Reeves as "Superman" back in the 50's. And that was certainly a show based on a comic book. I also watched Dick Tracy. Neither of these were high drama. They were TV shows in the early days of television and no one thought of anything other than Playhouse 90 as serious entertainment from that medium... even Playhouse 90 struggled to get the recognition it deserved.

But movies? I am sure stage actors thought cinema was a "step down" from the great drama and comedy of the stage at one time. Some might still feel that way. But American cinema desired to be like Broadway and so it put out great drama and great musicals as well as rolling out trash. It also put out serials using comic strip heroes like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers but these were "shorts" and not serious films. Comic book genre is more than a "step down", it's a leap off a cliff onto the rocks below. I also feel this way about video game movies.

In the 60's TV dragged  Batman and Robin out of the comics and camped it up a bit more than the old comic book version. It was a big hit. Personally, I thought it was stupid and silly. Comic books were my reading primers and I loved Batman, Superman, The Flash, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman. They appealed to me... after all, I was aged 5 to 10 during my comic book years.

I grew up. I put those things away and have no desire to recapture the alleged innocence of those days. However, apparently there is a significant number of people who revel in this stuff.

Batman was not some dark and brooding, haunted, character to me. But that is what he is portrayed as on the Big Screen. That seems to be the underlying theme these days. I suppose it is the evolution of the genre to now delve into a comic book character's secret needs and desires.

It is turning my childhood upside down.