In the latest installment of “Will’s War” on Youtube he suggests that the next Batman movie should be based on the Batman Beyond comic and animation series. His reason is that directors are compelled to retell Bruce Waynes’s origin story over and over again…and everybody already knows it by heart, even lost tribes that haven’t even been discovered by civilization yet. Millionaires take young son to the movies, can’t get cab, get lost trying to find way home, get shot in dark alley, son vows revenge on villains that we all know by heart yadda yadda etc.
On the other hand, if we venture into the “Batman Beyond” universe there is still Bruce Wayne, but he trains a protégé with his own new(to most moviegoers, at least) backstory who fights new villains in a new Gotham City.
I think it could breath new life into the franchise and, with the proper casting, could be great.
edited to add: I already contacted the mods to fix the title.
Here’s the problem: Batman Beyond was popular at the time, but frankly it has not aged that well. Terry is an unusually bland character, the setting has little beyond “vaguely dystopian future tech”, the villains are flat, and the overall picture grim. Not to say it lacks any kind of redeeming value, but it’s completely unnecessary and unlikely to appeal to anyone (period) who wasn’t a fan of the animated series, which was never that popular to begin with.
And then they tried to retcon turn it into a Father/Son thing/Justice League tie-in, which just sucked.
None of the problems you mention are an inherent problem with the concept, just with that particular version. There’s no reason the setting can’t be better, nor Terry and his villains become more engaging characters.
The bigger problem is just that I don’t think the concept is as interesting to the general public as it was to fans of the series. Plus this will not fit into DC’s obvious plans to have a shared universe in their movies, leading up to a Justice League movie (aka ripping off Marvel). Batman is going to have to be in the same universe as the Man of Steel.
I am the only one who really just wants to see a live-action Dark Knight Returns? Hey, if they pulled it off with Watchmen, then it’s doable, right? And yeah, I know there’s an animated version, but it’s not the same. It would have to be dark as heck though, and I would insist on keeping the '80s setting and the cold war subplot.
I think the next series of Batman films just needs to skip the origin (everyone who cares already knows) and get right into it. Rich guy, Alfred, Bat-Cave… go.
The idea of a Batman movie that significantly alters the stock mythos doesn’t appeal to me at all as an average guy. Heck, I found the last movie to be tedious largely because I didn’t know who Bane was, didn’t care and he was about as intimidating a villain as a sack of mice. As a member of the rank and file movie goers who just want to see a Batman movie, anything that mixes it up too much strays into “This isn’t what I paid to see” territory.
I’m sure the Batman Beyond comics and cartoons are fine works in their own right. I doubt they’d attract a big audience outside their current fan base.
I’ll go further: any Superhero whose origin story has been portrayed on film should never have it shown again.
Hell, you could even leave it out with a new superhero. If you must tell it, do it as a two-minute flashback in the middle of the film. Origin stories are not inherently that interesting.
Not familiar with the comic but watched the cartoon series. It was OK, but it’s probably a bad sign when the most interesting part involved the Joker magically coming back from the dead and them showing a flashback to him dying in the Batman: TAS era.
I’d think people might view a live action Batman Beyond as an Iron Man ripoff.
