3/28/2023 0 Comments Batman tv seriesSuddenly, you couldn’t escape it: it didn’t so much move to the forefront of popular culture as devour it whole. Add to it a rotating series of “guest villains” in on the fun, and the show arrived with the force of a hurricane. He got some help from trusty sidekick Burt Ward, hired less for his acting skills than his almost supernatural ability to portray Pollyanna enthusiasm credibly. He never wavered, not once, and with that, the show’s chemistry became electric. His winks at the camera were almost imperceptibly clever, and the timing of his delivery sometimes hinged on a razor’s edge. “He’s overwhelmed by the death of his parents and he’s devoted every day of his life to making a difference.” That’s no different than Bale’s take it just takes place in a much sillier universe, and there, too, West had what it took. “He lives every day in pain,” West explained. Yet he could take it all seriously the way the character did indeed, the Blu-ray extras reveal a remarkably accurate assessment of who Bruce Wayne really was. He was staggeringly handsome – an ideal Bruce Wayne – and yet he had a knack for comedy that could make the material fly. There was no dressing the heroes in black leather or muted colors to make them more “realistic.” Everything was bright, everything was larger than life, and the embrace of those sensibilities became a magic bullet to vanquish the turgid morass ensnaring the character.Ĭasting played an equally important role, and with West in the lead, the tone came almost second nature. At the same time, it stayed true to the origins, with the colorful sets and locations pulled straight out of the comics’ page. Within their scripts, Gotham City’s hapless residents took it all deathly seriously, no matter how over-the-top it became, which elevated the material to a grand in-joke. had the perfect sense of humor to make the absurdity work. Producer William Dozier and head writer Lorenzo Semple, Jr. Suddenly, lame storylines involving outlandish crimes and ridiculous crises became a full-bore send up on pop culture. It started with the show’s attitude, taking the excesses of the 50s comics and throwing a knowing wink into the mix. That’s how bad things were.Īnd then a little bit of magic happened. ABC bought the rights to the character for the princely sum of $7,000. Sales tanked in the face of newer, fresher superheroes like Green Lantern and The Flash, and by the time the mid-60s rolled around, it looked like Bats was going to hang up his utility belt for good. A decade earlier, the Comics Code Authority yanked the dark out of the Dark Knight, transforming Bill Finger and Bob Kane’s grim, brooding vigilante into a wacky, gelded father figure. It’s hard to believe in these days of post- Christopher Nolan bad-assery, but the Caped Crusader was really on the ropes back in the 1960s. The story of why the Batman TV series took so long to reach us could constitute a movie all its own, as could the show’s vital but undervalued place in the character’s history.
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