Why Batman is so Overused
I tend to complain
a lot about the fact that Batman is such an overused hero. I complain almost
every few weeks or even months for that matter. The guy has so many movies
whether animated or live action and has lots of video games and while I find it
annoying many other people don't seem to get tired of him at all. I am here to
examine, "why?" The common reason that is said is that Batman is the
"best" DC hero and the best superhero in general and to some the only
"good" superhero. In reality, that isn't really true at all it's
actually due to 4 reasons I am going to state here:
1) He is the easiest hero to do. I mean when you think about it. Batman isn't a
very hard hero to pull off when compared to other DC heroes like Superman,
Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern. All you need is a guy wearing a Batman
costume, a gruff voice, some makeshift gadgets and some martial arts lessons
and he himself can make a pretty convincing Batman. Where with Superman, it's a
lot harder to pull him off. That doesn't make him a bad character by any means,
it's just that it requires way more effort for example you need lots of special
effects just to show off his powers and practical effects ain't going to cut
it. I mean first of all, you need to fly which is well, impossible, then there
is heat vision which is also impossible, invulnerability to conventional human
weapons which is well impossible and now you get it. With Green Lantern you
need special effects just to do flight and to do the lantern constructs. Wonder
Woman might somewhat be easier than both considering you need a lasso and some
bracelets but even she has overworldly elements to her. Like moving so fast
that she can block bullets or super strength. With games this also presents
another issue because well, you could say making a game with other DC heroes is
"impossible due to how overpowered they are" the fact of the matter
is superhero games will never have a high skill ceiling because they need to
appeal to fans of the comics and the movies, I mean Batman is pretty
overpowered in the Arkham games in his own right especially stealth wise. But
with the other characters there's a lot more that goes into them design wise,
with Batman you just need gadgets, and a fancy martial arts fighting system
where with the above mentioned characters, you need to have more powers to
accommodate for and enemy designs to make combat engaging. You can make a good
game with them but the problem is, it's not as easy when making a game for
Batman due to him being a rich human who fights thugs and deranged psychos.
With comics all you have to do is draw and everything will come to together for
your creation but with games and movies they require way more money to do
everything.
2) He has the most consistent and acclaimed on screen portrayals. I mean really
Batman is probably the most one of the few if not only superheroes especially
in DC where he has been done well on screen many, many times and has lots of
acclaim. There's animated works like Batman TAS and Beyond to animated movies
like Under the Red Hood and Mask of the Phantasm, to acclaimed Arkham series,
all the way down to the Burton movies, the Nolan movies and even the Ben
Affleck version having it's own cult following now. I mean really, when it
comes to comic book characters in general, it generally isn't about the comics
that make or break a character's reception in public eye, it's the on screen
versions. Spider-Man is almost on Batman's level of dick riding but his comics
by Dan Slott are universally hated but the thing is most people in the public
don't care about the comics. MCU Spidey, Into the Spider-Verse, and the
Insomniac Spidey games and he is one of the most celebrated characters in
recent memory especially after how low character reception was back in 2014
with Amazing Spider-Man 2 and the weak games and the terrible Ultimate
Spider-Man cartoon. Compare this to say Superman, okay, it's well known that
the guy gets lots of hate for being overpowered and "hard to write"
but the thing is those people tend to take out of context comic images and use
it proof as to why he sucks but the real reason why he isn't well liked in
public eye now is due to the fact that his on screen portrayals compared Spidey
and Bats isn't nearly as consistent. He had the first 2 Donner movies, TAS,
some animated movies here and there, and arguably Man of Steel but outside of
those, he tends not have any on screen portrayals loved by everyone or the
majority and guess what out of all that stuff I mentioned, the Donner movies
are the most popular, go figure and they base every version of Superman off
that. And unless if the guy gets his own Nolan trilogy or Arkham games
equivalent, it's going to be that way for a long long time.
3) This is probably one of the most important because I feel this is where
Batman really tends to work and gets milked. It's the iconic villains. Yeah
sure, one could argue the Joker overrules most of Batman's villains but at the
same time, compared to almost every comic book hero ever, Batman's rogues are
extremely easy to pull off and make endless live movies out of. You can easily
do a guy with a scared face and have him be Two Face, you can get a big
muscular man and have him be Bane, you can have a guy with weird facial hair
and be Ra's Al Ghul, you can have a guy with a scarecrow mask throwing gas at
people and be Scarecrow and of course you can have a guy wear clown make up and
act crazy and be the Joker. Christopher Nolan made a trilogy out of that.
Punisher, Green Arrow and the Question you could make a gritty grounded trilogy
of movies out of but none of these before mentioned characters have any iconic
villain on the level of the characters I mentioned. Punisher doesn't really
have much of full on rogues gallery due to his killing nature. Yeah sure he has
Baracuda and Jigsaw but are any of them really going to compel audiences as
much as Ra's Al Ghul let alone the Joker? Then this leads to my second point
and this is a really important one, a lot of comic villains tend to be over the
top and outlandish in nature to the point where having a guy in a suit and
using practical effects might not be convincing enough. I mean why does every
Fantastic 4 movie feature Dr. Doom? Why does every Superman movie feature Lex
Luthor or Zod? Why does every X-Men movie tend to have Magneto or even William
Stryker? It's because these villains I mentioned are the easiest for movie
studios to pull off. You can have a guy in a mask and a green cloak and have
him be Doom even if it's far from accurate. You can have a bald guy who looks
rich be Lex Luthor, and it's super easy to have a middle aged man have the same
powers as Superman. Braniac, Parasite, Metallo, Cyborg Superman, Bizarro,
Darkseid, Manchester Black might require a lot more effort but a middle aged
man who is a foil to Superman? That is easy for movie studios to do. It's easy
to reuse assets. Magento all you need is a guy in a helmet and a cape, and
William Stryker you just need an actor who is old. I mean you could do Super
Skrull, Impossible Man, Puppet Master, and Galactus but they aren't as easy as
Doom. You can use Mr. Sinister or even go all cosmic with Shi'ar but at the
same time, it's not as easy. This where Batman works because he is semi
grounded where a lot of other heroes are as much so. Easy to draw and make
convincing in a comic not so much with a live movie which is what most
audiences gravitate towards.
4) Batman has a plethora of standalone stories to recommend people who don't
read comics. I mean really a lot of comic book heroes have super long runs by
authors and illustrators which tell mini arcs within the run and you can read
them alone but at the sametime, you might miss out on details, context or added
emotion. Batman has this too but he lots of standalone stories for random
people to read like Killing Joke, Year One, Long Halloween, Hush and the Arkham
Asylum storyline. These are are standalone stories that you don't need to read
an entire run to understand appreciate. They tend to get recommended over and
over but that is besides the point. Superman has a few himself like Red Son and
Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow but they aren't as numerous or as
iconic as Batman. And Spider-Man doesn't have a whole lot genuine standalone
stories at all compared to Batman.
So yeah, it really has nothing to do with him being the "best"
character. He's just easy to do and super iconic.
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