Yesterday I caught a commercial for “Batman Live”, a traveling stage show. I was overcome with hysterical loathing and laughed. Official commercial:

So, it’s like a roller skating show without roller skating. Batman looks inflated, can fly, has a velvet cape he flicks about inefficiently, and has acquired Robin as a gay pet. Not judging, hope they’re happy if Robin is of age, but I prefer Robin/Batman with a platonic relationship.

I understand the urge to veer Batman away from the attempts of big sociological points like the Christopher Nolan films. Who wants to see a stage show full of plot and dialogue complexities where you can’t rewind it after one of many “Huh? That doesn’t make a lot of sense. Am I missing something?” The end of The Dark Knight is an example. “he’s the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So, we’ll hunt him, because he can take it. Because he’s not our hero.”

I wish the boy in this clip would say: “Shane!” If you bravely “can take it” like the not-heroic hero Dark Knight here’s a longer clip of the stage show that makes it look hammy and corny and sorely in need of songs. No question those songs would be HORRIBLE, but there’s a palpable anguish to these scenes where the characters WANT to break into song, any song, yet cannot:

In the 1970s at an Atlanta shopping mall I saw a live Batman show with Adam West and Burt Ward. They were bumping and moving around each other, reacting to audio tracks of the Joker and I think Riddler. It was scrappy. Did West and Ward have the rights to do that even after their show had been cancelled? Don’t know. But with that cheap, grungy show in memory among the things I would yell at “Batman Live”, which I would only attend if interdimensionally stoned out of my gourd, would be “SELLOUT!”

(Okay, just between us, I did raise an interested eyebrow during the commercial when Catwoman flicks her whip and then is shown from below in haughty one-quarter profile. At the 0:36 mark. You’re welcome.)