robert pattinson

In 1984, two broke young illustrators named Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird were trying to break into comics. Eastman randomly doodled a turtle in ninja attire and the pair decided that it was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, essentially a madlib of everything that was popular in comics at the time (except for turtles).

They then wrote a silly little issue parodying Frank Miller’s Daredevil run and that, of course, was that.

This one weird joke concept riffing on an incredibly specific moment in comic book history in a black and white indie vanished without a trace, the very definition of a flash in the pan.

Wait, no. *checks notes*

It went on to conquer the goddamn world. To this day, TMNT is quite possibly the most lucrative Western comic book property not published by either DC or Marvel. Third most successful toyline of all time. Seven TV series, seven films, multiple videogames, hundreds and hundreds of comic issues and a metric shit-ton of merch. Which, on the one hand, is crazy.

How did a concept so ridiculous, and so seemingly instantly dated become one of the most successful and enduring pop culture phenomena of the past half century? Well, success has many fathers. Firstly, I think the franchise’s longevity was sealed with this:

A theme tune that catchy only comes around once in a blue moon. Play it over NINE SEASONS and it’s practically brainwashing.

Then there’s the fact that TMNT relies on a template that has proven to be amazingly durable over the last 180 years.

Hothead. Stoic Leader. Smart Guy. Big fun doofus.

The Musketeer Archetypes are like the Four Chords of character writing. They’re bloody everywhere, but they’re there for a reason. They work, dammit. And these character traits (Leads, Does Machines, Cool but Rude, Party Dude) hold true across virtually all interpretations of the characters which gives continuity across the franchise. But, and this is crucial, with that stability and continuity there also comes incredible plasticity. The Turtles fandom is fantastically diverse in terms of its age range and that’s because TMNT can be this:

Or it can be THIS:

Once you get past the initially (very, very, very) silly premise, the Brothers Turtle can grow with their audience. There’s stuff for kids and there’s also stuff for adults. So, class, where have we heard that before? A character that has a rock solid core that’s also surprisingly adaptable and can tell stories for any and all ages?

So before we go any further, I owe you all an apology. I know I said I’d be reviewing Turtles Forever but you need to know three things:

My DVD of Turtles Forever didn’t arrive in time (that’ll teach me to support physical media).
There’s a Turtles movie with Batman in it, how am I NOT going to review that?
It is SHOCKINGLY good.

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While I know it isn’t true, I like to imagine there’s one guy in Warner Bros who was put in charge of the Batman films in 1989 despite knowing nothing about comics in general or Batman in particular and who spends every day banging his head against a desk and screaming “what the FUCK do you people even WANT?!”

Because to a casual observer, there really is no rhyme or reason to which Batman movies succeed and which fail. Why was Batman Forever a massive hit and Batman and Robin a franchise-killer? Why did audiences love Batman and largely steer clear of Batman Returns? Why is a grim and gritty Batman great with Christopher Nolan but not with Zach Snyder?

And there’s no one answer, really. Audience expectations. The marketing. The directing. The acting. The writing. The music. There are hundreds of factors that decide whether a Batman movie will succeed, same as any other movie. And added to that there is a very specific problem with adapting this character to screen: nailing the tone.

Getting the tone of a Batman story right is a damnably tricky thing, and it’s something that writers have struggled with ever since the character was introduced 85 years ago. Let’s take a moment, firstly, to acknowledge that Batman has often been campy and fun and played for laughs. And often, as in the sixties Adam West series, or Batman: The Brave and the Bold, it’s been done to great effect. But, fundamentally, this is a character rooted in a mashup of crime fiction and the horror genre. Batman stories, from their very beginning, deal with murder, corruption and violence. A child witnesses his parents’ brutal slaying and devotes his life to waging violent nocturnal war against the criminal element. It ain’t baby-town frolics. And I think what trips up a lot of Batman writers is that they succumb to the temptation to wallow in miserabilism. They lean into the violence and the horror and the awfulness of the setting to a degree that it stops being in any way enjoyable.

The best Batman stories have stakes and drama and darkness, but it’s a certain kind of darkness. A darkness that takes itself seriously, but not too seriously. There is a dusting of pulpy camp that stops the darkness becoming overwhelming. It’s a very, very tricky tone to capture and, if I’m perfectly honest, no single live action director has ever managed to capture it perfectly.

That is, until Matt Reeves knocked it out of the fucking park in 2022.