In the 1980s, comic writer and celebrated maker of frowny faces at hippies Frank Miller decided that Bruce Wayne needed to be a sociopathic, militant genius, who'd made it his mission to recruit multiple children in a suicidal run toward a lower crime rate. Since then, the idea of a dark and gritty Batman has been shoved down our throats at every opportunity. It's had its high points, like Batman: The Animated Series and The Dark Knight, but it's also had numerous downsides, like ceaseless jokes about nipples on the Batman costume.
Warner Bros.
Like this one. *Play for full effect*
Batman & Robin is a terrible movie and should be ashamed of itself. But, if we weren't so fixated on having Batman be as depressingly cynical as possible, we wouldn't have to hear the same joke about rubber tits every time someone says, "You won't put me in the cooler!" with the accent of a drunk Austrian man doing an Arnold Schwarzenegger impression. Batman & Robin could've silently died, and we all could've been spared hundreds of reminders of just how hilarious and goofy it is that someone saw Batman's chest and decided, "Hey. That should look more like a chest."
Because of our preconceived Bat-notions, people watch a clip of '60s Batman and assume that it's some television experiment gone horribly wrong. It was nominated for an Emmy for best comedy in 1966, but history has revised it as people with the best intentions of creating a serious Batman show slipping up somehow and producing the exact opposite thing. God, people in 1966 were idiots! Didn't they know that making everything colorful isn't the way to go about delivering a moody billionaire's fight against evil? How widespread was fetal alcohol syndrome among the writers of '60s superhero television?
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