We’ve lost one of comic and TV culture’s most enduring favorites, as original Batman star Adam West has passed away. The smooth-voiced star became iconic for his portrayal of the ‘60s Caped Crusader, earning a place in the pop culture pantheon over the decades.
It’ll be a cold day in hell when Batman joins the ranks of Arrow, Flash, Supergirl or Legends of Tomorrow on The CW, but LEGO has a way of bringing everyone together. See for yourself, as a new promo features the CW stars voicing their LEGO counterparts opposite Will Arnett’s LEGO Batman as part of a weeklong promotion.
Listen. I love Batman as much as the next guy. Like many high school nerds with a chip on their shoulder, I argued passionately that the darkest Batman stories were his true self, not the goofy camp of the 1960s Adam West series. That being said, is anyone in worse need of a little levity than the Dark Knight? Batman’s gloomy personality finally reached a tipping point with Zack Snyder’s gun-happy take on the character in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. As Jack Nicholson’s Joker said in the 1989 film, this town needs an enema.
The self-aware superhero thing seems to be becoming a trend. Last year, Deadpool charmed audiences with his irreverent, R-rated take on the origin story, cursing up a storm and breaking the fourth wall every five minutes. LEGO Batman, possibly the best part of The LEGO Movie, was similar, throwing in jabs now and again to his dark, broody characterization in The Dark Knight Trilogy. The LEGO Batman Movie promises more of the same in this new “Gotham Cribs” clip, which shows LEGO Batman trying really hard not to let everyone know he and LEGO Bruce Wayne are the same person. If he were any more aware of himself, he’d ascend to nirvana.
If you like your toys to be as meta as possible, then you’re definitely going to want to make a little room in your budget for The LEGO Batman Movie LEGO sets. Yes, the LEGO version of the iconic superhero is getting his very own LEGO sets, featuring LEGO Bat-vehicles, LEGO Bat-villains and much more. As we’ve noted before, it’s kind of amazing to see toy sets based on a movie that’s based on a toy that’s based on a superhero.
Will Arnett’s Batman was by far the hilarious standout of The LEGO Movie, and we’re a little less than a month away from seeing his solo movie take off. But it seems another character might be stealing the show from Batman this time: Barbara Gordon, aka Batgirl, is featured in a new TV spot for The LEGO Batman Movie that shows the Dark Knight might have met his match.
A few weeks ago, I attended a holiday party where Nick Offerman’s ‘Yule Log’ played in the background for the entire evening. As people milled about the living room, passing appetizers and making polite introductions, the wise face of Nick Offerman beamed forth from the television, taking occasional sips from a glass of whisky and listening to the crackling fire. And despite years spent listening to Mannheim Steamroller and Frank Sinatra around the holidays, it was the silence of Nick Offerman’s fake living room that now sounds the most like Christmas to me.
If you talk to comic book readers the majority of them are Batman fans, and if you come up with a dream match with any superhero versus Batman, it seems like they will always have the Dark Knight as the victor. When you ask "why" the answer is always "because he's Batman".
When Ben Affleck took the stage at Comic-Con last year to promote Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, it was a mere matter of minutes before rumors began circulating that Warner Bros. was planning a new solo Batman film with Affleck set to star — and possibly direct. DC’s Geoff Johns confirmed that he was working on a script with Affleck, and since then the news has basically been repeatedly confirmed via interviews with Zack Snyder, Johns and Affleck. And now WB has gone and made it officially official by announcing that a standalone Batman film is in development with Affleck. But we already knew that.