Reanimating the Dark Knight: Superheroes,Animation and the Critical Reception of The Lego Batman Movie

The Batman matrix: Understanding a multimedia hero

Since the first appearance of Batman in Detective Comics issue 27, in 1939, the character has been the subject of a huge number of adaptations, reinterpretations and reinventions. So varied and numerous are these Batman narratives that some scholars have proposed viewing the character not as an individual figure, but as a ‘complex dialogic network’, or ‘a Batman matrix’ (Pearson et al., 2015: 6). Batman has certainly long since outgrown the notion that he is primarily a comic book character, instead existing in the popular cultural consciousness as the centrepiece of films, television series and videogames. According to Justin Mack (2014: 137), the sustained mainstream success of characters like Batman depends on their ability to ‘exist across multiple media platforms’.

The media saturation of the character of Batman is not to be underestimated. The year 2016, for example, was a key moment for media narratives and licensed properties featuring the character. The most high-profile of these, certainly, was Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, a profitable (if critically derided) blockbuster that functioned as an intertext for the burgeoning DC Comics cinematic ‘shared universe’ by serving as a sequel to Man of Steel (Zack Snyder, 2013), a reboot of Batman (replacing the narrative world established in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy, 2005–2012) and as a prelude to the planned Justice League film (Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon, 2017). While Batman v Superman thus gained considerable attention, it was only one of many media releases featuring the character that year.

The year 2016 also saw the release of four animated Batman films: Batman: Bad Blood (Jay Olivia, 2016), like most of the direct-to-home-media releases in the ‘DC Universe Animated Movie’ series, was aimed primarily at adult fans of the character; Batman: The Killing Joke (Sam Liu, 2016) adapted an infamous graphic novel and was granted a one-day theatrical release in North America in addition to its DVD and digital releases; Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders (Rick Morales, 2016), a nostalgic revival of the 1960s television series, likewise experienced a brief theatrical release in North America, as well as a wide release in Australia and New Zealand (at a combined 197 cinemas); finally, Batman Unlimited: Mechs vs. Mutants (Curt Geda, 2016) was another direct-to-DVD release aimed squarely at children, designed to support the Batman Unlimited line of action figures and toys.

In addition to all of these, the Batman prequel police procedural series Gotham was broadcasting its second and third seasons in 2016, and two separate mobile phone game applications were launched (Batman: The Telltale Series and Batman: Arkham Underworld). Meanwhile, in comics publishing – the character’s original mainstay – in March 2016 (the month Batman v Superman was released) no fewer than 16 Batman-focused or Batman-related titles were published (most on an ongoing monthly basis), including the high-profile The Dark Knight III: The Master Race by Frank Miller, a sequel to the hugely influential 1986 miniseries Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.

Pearson et al. (2015: 1) have noted earlier patterns in this vast array of available media, suggesting that ‘multiple Batmen, in multiple timelines, universes and media, compete for attention.’ The numerous 2016 Batman products are largely distinct and dissimilar: none of the five feature-length releases share continuity with each other. However, it might not be accurate to see these media as ‘competing’ for attention: rather, these versions of Batman exist as part of a carefully designed network of complementary channels, broken down into deftly-targeted demographics; Matthew Freeman’s (2014: 47) notion of ‘commodity braiding’ as ‘the commercially designed interlocking of a range of commodities’ is another way to view this production process. Catering for diverse audiences, both hardcore fans and casual consumers, marks the ‘transition from continuity to multiplicity’ (Uricchio and Pearson, 2015: 231) of the Batman meta-narrative.

The flexibility of Batman is an intrinsic part of his longevity, enabling the character to capture the gestalt through different tones and depictions (Levitz, 2015: 13). The television series created by William Dozier in 1966 marked a watershed moment for the character, as Batman entered the mass consciousness of American popular culture, while capitalizing on the vogue for ‘camp’ and pop art (Yockey, 2014: 10). Beyond uses of the character to exploit trends in mainstream entertainment, the history of Batman media displays a repeated, cyclical process of course corrections, with each new iteration rectifying the supposed flaws of the previous version. Thus Tim Burton’s Batman (1989) was emphatically ‘dark’ in order to eliminate the childish and comedic associations of the ‘60s series. Following the relative financial disappointment of Burton’s Batman Returns (1992), director Joel Schumacher restored to the franchise a bright and colourful sense of fun in his duology of Batman Forever (1995) and Batman and Robin (1997). When audiences appeared to tire of the camp silliness of Schumacher’s films, the series was put on hiatus and eventually completely ‘rebooted’ in Batman Begins (Christopher Nolan, 2005). Nolan’s operatic trilogy of films reinvested the character with a brooding, serious tone. Although the currently ongoing ‘DC Extended Universe’ of films required yet another Batman continuity reboot, the series largely retains Nolan’s focus on the innate darkness and psychologically conflicted nature of the character, as epitomized by the depiction of the obsessive and oddly merciless protagonist of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

The critical reception of Zack Snyder’s reintroduction of Batman was intensely controversial, with largely damning reviews at odds with an impressive domestic gross of $330 million. Of particular interest to many was the ‘bleak Rotten Tomatoes percentage’ (Cavassuto, 2016) which reflected, by aggregating a vast number of newspaper and website reviews, a negative consensus. The Chicago Tribune’s Michael Phillips, for example, described the film as ‘pretty joyless’, while Vulture’s David Edelstein said ‘most people will leave feeling drained and depressed’ (Cavassuto, 2016). Scott Mendelson of Forbes concluded the film was ‘an utter mess of thinly sketched characters, haphazard plotting, surprisingly jumbled action, and “cut your nose to spite your face” world building’, reacting against the near-parodic expression of a ‘grimdark’ style which amounted to ‘a deeply disappointing experience’ (Mendelson, 2016). The reception of Batman v Superman signalled a familiar moment in the Batman style cycle: the need for a lighter take on the character and a move away from torment and hyperviolence to a more accessible and enjoyable narrative.

The Lego Batman Movie was therefore in a fortuitous position to take advantage of the current state of Batman cinema. Its relative innocence, playful comedy and childlike sensibilities (precisely those qualities typically associated with American mainstream animation) served, just as Dozier’s and Schumacher’s Batman media had done, to offer the audience an alternative interpretation. ¹

Batman’s true identity: The nostalgic reinvention of a children’s icon

The Lego Batman Movie exhibits an aggressively ‘toyetic’ aesthetic, with a faux stop-motion style of computer-generated animation that emphasizes the scale and plastic texture of its minifigure characters. This style stands in notable contrast to the ongoing series of direct-to-home-media Lego DC Comics Super Heroes children’s films (2018’s Aquaman: Rage of Atlantis, directed by Matt Peters, is the eighth in the series), which, like the popular Lego videogame series, feature a much less realistic, more obviously ‘cartoony’ aesthetic. The Lego Batman Movie, on the other hand, creates the illusion of practical lighting and literal Lego-brick sets with its more authentic, if brazenly toyetic, visual style.

The Lego Batman Movie offers a depiction of its central character that is both playfully irreverent and warmly nostalgic, combining a desire to offer a ‘new’ interpretation of Batman with the need to appease long-time fans. ² While technically an adaptation of pre-existing narratives, it would be fruitless to assess the film on the grounds of ‘fidelity’, given the vastly varied and multifaceted, overwhelmingly expansive 80-year history of Batman comics. Any Batman film that could claim to be faithful to a particular ur-text would invariably violate the spirit of a dozen others. There is no single, definitive Batman in any media. Will Brooker’s (2012: 47) notion of the ‘Batman matrix’ is again relevant here, as he argues that each cinematic incarnation of Batman is a work of ‘reaccentuation’ that adapts all previous versions; the character is closer to a figure of folklore, like Robin Hood, than the protagonist of a single text (p. 64).

The Lego Batman Movie exhibits a bold, postmodern metatextuality by directly acknowledging this vast history through fourth-wall-breaking humour. In one scene, loyal butler Alfred worries that Batman is experiencing a difficult ‘phase’ similar to those in ‘2016 and 2012 and 2008 and 2005 and 1997 and 1995 and 1992 and 1989 and that weird one in 1966’, providing a near-complete list of the years of release of previous Batman films, accompanied by fleeting Lego-figure recreations of iconic scenes from each. ³ Likewise, when new Police Commissioner Barbara Gordon gives a public speech about Batman’s ‘very, very, very’ long history of crime-fighting, her slideshow presentation acknowledges the multiplicity of Batman media by including images recreating moments from the 1940s movie serial, Batman: The Animated Series, and the 1986 comic book Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, to name a few.

Characters appearing in the film reflect the combination of different and largely incompatible continuities. When Batman visits Superman’s Fortress of Solitude and stumbles upon a Justice League party (to which he was deliberately not invited), he encounters iconic members of the team from the current comic book continuity, but also obscure heroes from the 1977–1978 cartoon The All-New Super Friends Hour. The film’s antagonists draw from the best-known villains from Batman’s long history (with a focus primarily on The Joker), but also include fleeting glimpses of parodic characters such as Condiment King and, in the case of Mime, a villain who had made precisely one significant appearance in the entire history of Batman publishing. The inclusion of such a vast cast of super-powered heroes and villains is something accomplished much more easily in animation than live-action, where the addition of numerous striking characters in fleeting cameo appearances may not be practical or possible.

The manner in which The Lego Batman Movie mixes disparate elements of Batman lore evokes comparison to Anthony Smith’s (2015) notion of ‘implied continuity’ in Batman media, a process by which ‘writers appease a core following of dedicated readers’ through subtle references to continuity ‘as opposed to explicitly flagging it up’, and therefore ‘not confusing and/or irritating a broader audience unfamiliar with the minutiae of Batman’s biography’ (p. 54). The Lego Batman Movie embodies this to an even greater degree, exhibiting an implied meta-continuity, offering hidden pleasures to those fans who have supported the franchise through various style cycles. This mode of meta-continuity runs parallel to a strategy adopted by Marvel Comics, dubbed ‘quantum seriality’ by William Proctor (2017), who notes Marvel’s desire to legitimize ‘disparate and alternative narrative texts’ in order to satisfy both ‘fannish demand for storyworld cohesion and the market-oriented need for a transmedia tactic’ (p. 338) – a necessity given the conflicting continuities of Marvel’s astonishingly successful cinematic universe and its longstanding comics publications.

Nostalgia and (Batman) history are thus vital components of The Lego Batman Movie, pervading all aspects of its production. Many of the key creative personnel involved in the film express this notion to describe its appeal: the virtual cinematography of Stereoscopic Supervisor Fabian Muller was intended to evoke ‘the memory of when you were a kid’ while the design of Gotham City had a self-conscious 1970s ‘retro vibe’ (Miller-Zarneke, 2017: 13). Of particular relevance for the filmmakers was Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman, the film that provided the direct inspiration for the design of the Lego Batman costume (which is near-identical). The design of the character Two-Face, too, evokes a nostalgic (if potentially obscure) connection to Burton’s film through the voice-casting of Billy Dee Williams. The 1989 Batman had included the character Harvey Dent, played by Williams, with the intention of foreshadowing the transformation of Dent into the villainous Two-Face in a later sequel, yet the role was recast with Tommy Lee Jones for Schumacher’s eventual depiction of the character. The Lego Batman Movie thus offers an incarnation of the Two-Face villain in direct continuity with the 1989 Batman (and, incidentally, the first African-American version, in answer to the Caucasian actors who played the role in Batman Forever and The Dark Knight). This small detail was an act of nostalgic wish-fulfillment for director Chris McKay, who admitted that the Williams version of the character was ‘the thing that I didn’t get to see when I was a kid . . . I’m lucky that I’m a fan who gets to do this stuff, and play out these fantasies that all the fans of Batman hoped for’ (Brackett, 2017). Again, this is a gesture possible only in an animated film: the re-casting of Williams as Two-Face in live-action would presumably be precluded by the actor’s advanced age. Also worth noting is McKay’s language here, which directly recalls Susan Stewart’s (1993: 23) oft-cited description of nostalgia as a longing for a past that never existed, a desire for objects never possessed.

The nostalgic appeal of The Lego Batman Movie draws, in fact, on both title nouns: just as Batman evokes a long history of childhood play, so does the ubiquitous Lego brand, a mainstay of children’s toys since the mid-1960s. Lincoln Geraghty’s (2014) work on Lego and nostalgia notes the brand’s self-conscious targeting of a growing demographic of adult collectors termed ‘boy-men’ or ‘rejuveniles’ who Hollywood has likewise sought to entice (p. 162). The Lego Company thus capitalizes on a moment in the toy and film industries when the ‘convergence of popular fandom, new media, nostalgia and contemporary toy culture suggests that the lines between past and present, technology and culture, childhood and adulthood are increasingly porous’ (p. 163). The Lego Batman Movie repurposes a unique fusion of toy and character to simultaneously court all-age audiences – fans old and new – in keeping with the trend for nostalgia to ‘enhance the original potentials of those remediated texts and commodities (such as Lego) and transforms their very nature as childhood objects for future use’ (p. 164).

In spite of the considerable variety evident in depictions of Batman in multiple media over the character’s lifespan, Uricchio and Pearson (2015) argue that ‘five key components constitute the core character’ of Batman (p. 209) and that, without the presence of all five components, Batman ceases to be Batman (p. 210). These components include the character’s wealth, prowess, obsessive connection to his past, the nature of his origin, the specific setting of Gotham City, his iconic costume and key members of the supporting cast. The Lego Batman Movie faithfully fulfills each of these apparent requirements, deviating less from the foundational iconography of the character than many other adaptations. Glen Weldon (2016: 36), for instance, insists that Batman’s relationship with his ward and sidekick Robin, and his role as a father figure, is an ‘essential element’ of the character, yet is also ‘the first aspect to be jettisoned’ by writers and filmmakers eager to explore the dynamics of Batman as a ‘brooding loner’. Indeed, the character of Robin is entirely absent from Tim Burton’s and Zack Snyder’s interpretations of Batman, and is featured only obliquely in Christopher Nolan’s final Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises (2012). The Lego Batman Movie, however, centralizes Robin/Dick Grayson and presents his relationship with Batman as the major thematic and narrative purpose of the film. Unlike the version of the character introduced in Detective Comics #38 in 1940, or the Robin featured in Joel Schumacher’s two films, this Lego Robin is one purified of all darkness: driven not by a desire to avenge the murder of his parents, but instead by a simple desire to bond with his new adoptive father, whom he frequently and significantly addresses as ‘Bat-Dad’.

The central running joke of The Lego Batman Movie concerns both the necessity and impossibility of Batman assuming the role of responsible father, given how selfish and brazenly childish he is. Batman v Superman had added an unexpected element of adversarial tension to the typically affectionate relationship between Batman and Alfred, with the concerned butler repeatedly objecting to the unjustified aggression of the unbalanced superhero. The Lego Batman Movie likewise establishes Alfred and Batman as frequently at odds, yet the tone of their interactions here is that of a strict parent and a petulant, spoiled child. This version of Batman is both hypermasculine and outlandishly immature: a superhero who spends all his time helping others but is motivated by a narcissistic and selfish desire to be adored by the public. While the 1966 Batman television series is often defined primarily as ‘camp’, The Lego Batman Movie is at least as deserving of that designation, with its protagonist embodying Susan Sontag’s (1999: 60) influential notion that ‘camp’ narratives feature a character in ‘a state of continual incandescence . . . a person being one, very intense thing’.

The invocation of camp is not the only factor linking The Lego Batman Movie and its 1966 television counterpart, as both adaptations attempt to court both children and adults, with a sense of childish comedy skewing the demographic away from the more mature tone of Snyder’s and Nolan’s Batman films. Lorenzo Semple Jr, who served on the 1966 series as writer and story editor, wrote in the show’s ‘Bat-Bible’ (writers’ guide) that ‘we must appeal on two levels, to kids and grown-ups. On a sophisticated level the appeal comes from inherent juvenility’ (Yockey, 2014: 99). In other words, the popularity of the show with adults was based on ‘a nostalgic vision of childhood remediated via the mass culture parody of a signifier of that childhood’ (p. 5). For children, the show was earnest and exciting; for adults, it was comedic and parodic. The Lego Batman Movie accomplishes something similar, and its desire to reimagine Batman in a more child-friendly manner was crucial to its acclaim among all demographics. The film’s key villains, The Joker and Harley Quinn, were redesigned to tone down their ‘scariness and darkness’ and ‘racy’ sexuality, respectively (Miller-Zarneke, 2017: 112). The film’s targeting of children extended to marketing activities, too, with the official website offering games and activities for kids, including downloadable colouring sheets.

The need for an all-ages Batman was pressing, given the reaction against the darkness and violence of Batman v Superman; indeed, the fact that Ben Affleck, who played Batman, refused to let his then 4-year-old son watch that film (Associated Press, 2016) became a significant and emblematic talking point in opposition to the brooding intensity of the DC Extended Universe (Weldon, 2016: 292). Chris McKay directly acknowledged his film as an ‘antidote’ to Snyder’s Batman, noting that

we made a movie that some little kid could go see with their older brothers and sisters or their parents and both . . . groups could get something out of it. Some kids can’t see Batman v Superman or Suicide Squad but want to experience a big adult action movie. Ours is just kid-friendly, with a lot of jokes. Some people are also tired of self-serious super-hero movies and they can see our movie as an antidote to that. (Freligh, 2017)

The dual appeal of the film – explicitly courting both adults and children – also ran along another binary, as The Lego Batman Movie sought the approval of both casual viewers, as well as long-time, hardcore fans. The film’s nostalgic meta-commentary on Batman’s media history, as discussed above, reflected this impulse, and director Chris McKay also emphasized in interviews his status as a ‘serious’ fan, often citing various Batman stories across multiple media as inspirations, and drawing attention to the ‘giant Catwoman tattoo’ on his arm as evidence of his deep fandom (Brackett, 2017). The deliberate appeal to fans, far from a casual anecdote, is a vital strategy for filmmakers of superhero cinema. Indeed, John Caldwell (2009: 172) has argued that interviews of this type, in which McKay emphasizes the ‘kid-friendly’ nature of the film or his own status as mega-fan, are studio-sanctioned ‘forms of commercial marketing’ and thus these comments can be seen as explicitly designed to emphasize strategic points of appeal for the desired demographics.

While hardcore fans and long-time comic book collectors are a small fraction of the overall movie-going public, this demographic has a vocal and influential presence online, and McKay’s courtship of this niche as a ‘fellow fan’ and an insider is essential to winning their approval. The Lego Batman Movie thus enticed adult fans, casual audiences and children as part of a carefully-planned strategy of maximum commercial appeal. However, the film achieved perhaps its most significant success in another arena: its reception from professional film critics.

Batman’s cultural battleground: Rhetoric and reception

Long-running superheroes like Batman have a cherished position in American popular culture. Rather than being casually dismissed as simple mainstream escapism, Batman has frequently inspired complex critical debates, serving as a central figure in discussions over popular entertainment’s relationship to commerce, camp and art. The broadcast of the 1966 Batman TV series triggered one such moment, engendering a ‘contradictory reception’ full of ‘critical disputes’ over the status of the show as either an ‘embarrassing blight’ on ‘good taste’ or an example of ‘television art’ (Spigel and Jenkins, 2015: 174). Indeed, the most intriguing conclusions to be drawn from the reception of the televised Batman reveal more about the way critics use reviews to comment on ‘the status of popular texts’ than the superhero himself, as the ‘anxieties these critics displayed over the series . . . belie their desire to control cultural change’ (p. 193).

The timing of The Lego Batman Movie’s release, as noted, invited close comparison to the then-recent Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Since the earlier film had attracted a largely negative response, the release of a tonally oppositional Batman film gave critics an opportunity to repeat their previous gripes as a way of praising this latest incarnation. Scott Tobias’s (2017) comments for NPR were largely typical, as he argued that ‘Batman has been in need of a great unburdening . . . after the drudgery of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice’, while Adam Graham (2017) in The Detroit News’ judged Lego Batman to be ‘preferable company’ to ‘Ben Affleck’s hulking sourpuss in Zack Snyder’s doomsday vision’ of the hero. Comments in The Atlantic echoed these sentiments, with David Sims (2017) suggesting that the film ‘works precisely because it knows audiences are sick of its hero. It’s a reassessment, an intervention.’ The notion that The Lego Batman Movie was a self-conscious attempt to rehabilitate Batman’s tarnished public image was also suggested in the New Republic, as Will Leitch (2017) dismissed the ‘lunatic murderbot of Zach Snyder’s awful films’ and argued that ‘the movie functions not only as a cute exploration of the Batman story, but as a cleanup of a damaged corporate asset.’

Although the emphatically grim Snyder version of Batman attracted the greatest derision, The Lego Batman Movie was even compared favourably to Nolan’s widely-celebrated trilogy, a version of the character ‘so heavy with existential doom-and-gloom, even some of his admirers couldn’t help but wonder when the fun was going to start’, according to the LA Times’ Justin Chang (2017), who saw the film as a ‘cure’ for ‘our collective superhero fatigue’ more generally. The word ‘fun’ was core to the discourse around The Lego Batman Movie, with critics frequently praising the child-friendly nature of the film, acknowledging that its target market, while diverse, centralized younger audiences. The backlash against previous versions of Batman implies a shifting sense of collective critical taste, with Snyder’s interpretation the unwelcome zenith of a grim/dark style, suggesting the need for a critical celebration of a lighter, friendlier Batman. Also implicit in these comments is an expression of the importance of Batman’s status as a role model for children, and the demand for the character to embody positive values and decent morals. The ruthless murderer of Batman v Superman was a cause for alarm; the kind and heroic patriarch of The Lego Batman Movie was a source of reassurance, re-establishing Batman as an aspirational icon for children’s morality.

Yet, critics frequently emphasized that the film’s status as animated children’s entertainment was not an indicator of shallow content. Variety’s Owen Gleiberman (2017) characterized The Lego Batman Movie as ‘a kiddie flick that’s been made in a sophisticated spirit’ and praised the ‘dizzying depth to its satirical observations’ as well as the film’s intelligent postmodernism. One point that was particularly appreciated by critics was the film’s exploration of Batman’s psychology and his destructively codependent relationship with The Joker. Justin Chang (LA Times, 2017) claimed the film as ‘the first Batman movie I can recall that really grasps the character’s all-consuming narcissism’. Rene Rodriguez (2017), writing for the Miami Herald, noted that the film, though both comedic and childish, ‘takes its subject matter seriously’, and that ‘no previous Batman movie has done such a deep dive into the psyche of billionaire Bruce Wayne’. Richard Roeper (2017), in the Chicago Sun-Times, likewise argued that ‘the superhero/supervillain dynamic explored in this film is more involving and insightful than many a comic-book movie plot of the past several years’, elevating The Lego Batman Movie to a prestigious position in the crowded field of superhero cinema, an unusual privilege for an animated film.

The nature of the critical appreciation of The Lego Batman Movie is deeply revealing of the way critics display their cultural capital and express their sense of ‘good taste’ and ‘distinction’ in precisely the manner Pierre Bourdieu (2010[1984]) identified in his influential 1979 study. Numerous critics, in these reviews and in many other contexts, have predicted an apparently inevitable ‘superhero fatigue’ in response to the proliferation (and box-office dominance) of comic book adaptations. Indeed, while Batman-related and other DC Comics movies have achieved a high profile, the sprawling Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise additionally produced 20 films in its first 10 years (2008–2018), alongside numerous television series and streaming media. With few notable exceptions, the majority of these films are what Bourdieu would term ‘spectacular’ rather than ‘ambitious’ works (p. 267), and are typically regarded by critics as well-crafted but thematically hollow. Likewise, with mainstream American animation still frequently assumed to correlate to childish, commercial fare, the same critics who wish to praise The Lego Batman Movie must therefore emphasize the film’s thematic weight and artistic achievements in order to demonstrate its merit in an overcrowded superhero movie market.

The diverse and multivalent elements of The Lego Batman Movie – its appeal to children, its use of comedy, its metatextual commentary – are seen as its prime artistic strengths, and yet critics also frequently grapple with the film’s undeniable commercialism. The discourse around the film’s status as a cynical commercial product is often contradictory, as in the case of Chris Nashawaty’s (2017) review for Entertainment Weekly, which praises the film as ‘a comic-book movie for kids who are too young to see comic-book movies’ (recalling precisely the complaint against Batman v Superman levelled by many) yet also expresses concern at the film’s status as ‘a stealth recruitment video for the hearts and minds of future consumers of DC product, a diabolical gateway drug posing as a harmless kiddie flick’. Other critics make similar observations. Manohla Dargis (2017) of The New York Times characterizes the film as ‘a superhero starter kit’ for ‘the PG audience’ and notes that, consequently, an animated, ‘child-friendly’ version of The Joker ‘can’t have the scariness or anarchic threat that distinguishes this character’s better iterations’. The nature of the medium of animation – its supposedly perennial ‘Parental Guidance’ rating – is here seen as limiting the creative potential to fully realize Batman’s most iconic villain. Ultimately, Dargis expresses disappointment with the film (in opposition to an overall positive consensus) and sees its primary functions as ‘making bank’ and extending two brands (Lego and Batman); not a work of art, but a toy commercial.

Indeed, the film’s ‘toyetic’ nature was a topic that troubled many critics. While previous Batman films have often been conceived with the sale of merchandise in mind – Joel Schumacher admitted that pre-production on Batman and Robin (1997) emphasized ‘toyetics’ over story (Brooks, 2000) – the entire aesthetic of The Lego Batman Movie is literally a showcase for purchasable plastic. The convergence here of visual media and children’s toys was as intricate and detailed as it was obvious and unavoidable. Every vehicle Batman uses in The Lego Batman Movie, and virtually every character that appears, was made available in actual Lego-toy format. More than 18 Lego sets of different sizes and prices, along with numerous promotional and ancillary merchandise, were produced in concert with the release of the film. Even as minor and inconsequential a character as Mime (as discussed above) was available to purchase as part of the first wave of ‘blind-bag’ collectible minifigures. There is a gleeful sense of postmodern irony in the way The Lego Batman Movie acknowledges and celebrates its own toyetic design. In the film, one of Batman’s regular philanthropic activities is to visit a local orphanage with his unique ‘merch gun’ – a hand-cannon that shoots Batman-branded merchandise at penniless children. The ‘merch gun’ is the toyetic ideal given literal form, spitting out branded product to grateful children who are coded as devoted consumers of the Batman identity. In a later scene, when police commissioner Barbara Gordon resolves to join Batman’s family of vigilante crime fighters, Batman supplies her with a suitable costume by repeatedly ‘shooting’ her with the merch gun. Several outlandish costume designs produced by the gun are rejected until Barbara settles on her favoured Batgirl design. It’s a moment of chaotic comedy in an action-packed film; a rapid-fire visual gag. Yet all of these blink-and-you’ll-miss-it costume variations of Batgirl were actually manufactured by Lego and made available to consumers. A collector of Batman Lego would thus own not only the ‘default’ Batgirl costume, but a host of variants, including ‘Disco Batgirl’, ‘Surfer Batgirl’, and several more. The film’s joke about the excessive ‘merchandisation’ of Batman therefore itself fuelled additional merchandise.

For some critics, however, this brazen synergy was seen in highly positive terms, with the LA Times’ Justin Chang (2017) citing The Lego Batman Movie as proof that ‘a popular toy line could serve as the building blocks of a wickedly sophisticated popular entertainment, and that the causes of good moviemaking and effective merchandising need not always be at cross-purposes’. Yet while many assume the target of said merchandise was children, The Lego Batman Movie’s sprawling merchandise campaign also undoubtedly targeted adult collectors. The toys associated with the film, just like the film itself, therefore appealed to a hardcore niche of Bat-fanatics, too. Indeed, the multivalent nature of The Lego Batman Movie, with its dizzyingly intricate references to superhero history and its metatextual commentary on Batman media, was also noted by critics. Jody Mitori (2017) of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch suggested that one of the film’s chief charms was the way it ‘rewards longtime comic book lovers with a stream of references to previous Batmans’ while Rene Rodriguez (2017) of the Miami Herald praised the film as ‘pure fanboy wish-fulfillment’ and claimed ‘the more familiar you are with the comics, the more you will appreciate [it].’ Other critics, however, found the frequency and depth of these inside jokes alienating. Michael O’Sullivan (2017) of The Washington Post was struck by a reference to a scene in Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman that, he believes, only ‘Batman nerds’ would recall (an odd assertion, given the massive success and enduring visibility of Burton’s film). Likewise, Brian Lowry (2017), writing for CNN, warned that ‘the way-inside Batman jokes . . . will fly over the heads of kids, while the visual barrage risks becoming tedious for adults, or at least, those who aren’t extremely well versed in DC Comics minutia.’ The film’s desire to please long-time adult fans alongside a casual family audience is seen by some critics as potentially problematic, while for other critics the combination of tones is more satisfactory.

Overall, the critical response was overwhelmingly positive. Tony Hicks (2017) of the Mercury News titled his review ‘Did LEGO just give us the best Batman movie ever?’ and concluded that its version of the titular character, as voiced by Will Arnett, was superior to any other cinematic Batman. While not all reviewers went to such extremes of praise, there was absolute consensus on one matter: the critical preference for The Lego Batman Movie over Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Indeed, the collective subtext of these reviews suggested that Batman stories are ultimately better suited for animation than live-action. Richard Roeper (2017) succinctly concluded that he would prefer ‘Lively Plastic Animation over Wooden Live Action any day’.

The practice of praising one version of Batman as a way to rhetorically reject another has been a fan strategy for years. Tim Burton’s Batman was seen as the salvation of the character, investing darkness and danger into a character supposedly marred by the parodic 1960s television show. Likewise, Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins was welcomed by fans for rebooting the continuity of Joel Schumacher’s outlandish, childish films. The case of The Lego Batman Movie cleanly reverses this pattern, of course, and was welcomed precisely because it reinjected Batman with a sense of family-friendly fun and warm humour. The other major difference between this moment in Batman fandom and the previous ones is related to timing: when audiences responded favourably to reincarnations of Batman, there had been a significant chronological gap since the version of the character being rhetorically rejected. A span of more than 20 years separated the Batman TV series and Burton’s film; Batman Begins introduced a new continuity eight years after Batman and Robin had ended the previous one. The Lego Batman Movie and Batman v Superman, however, were completely contemporaneous, with less than 11 months separating the theatrical releases of the two films. In fact, the continuity established in Snyder’s much-derided film was still ongoing at the time of The Lego Batman Movie’s release, and the overarching narrative would be continued in Justice League, released in late 2017 to dismal box office and largely indifferent reviews. This is not a case of an historically distant Batman being displaced by a modern reinterpretation, but of two divergent yet simultaneous incarnations of the character experiencing vastly different levels of critical endorsement. For the numerous critics disappointed with Snyder’s version of Batman, the animated counterpart was an urgently needed alternative. Rene Rodriguez (2017) identified this point exactly in her review, noting that The Lego Batman Movie benefited from ‘perfect timing’, arriving at a moment when the ‘drudgery’ of Batman v Superman and other derided superhero movies ‘left behind a toxic fog’.

Conclusion

December 2018 saw the release of another film in the Sony Pictures/Marvel Comics Spider-Man franchise. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (co-directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman) was distinct from its predecessors by virtue of being the first animated feature in the series. It was also, perhaps, the best-reviewed. Described by many critics as the best film yet to feature the web-slinger (Peter Travers, 2018, of Rolling Stone called it ‘The Greatest Spidey Movie of Them All’), Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has won numerous awards and generated remarkably positive responses. Again, critical reviews and fan discourse suggested that animation is possibly the ideal medium for this superhero, and that subsequent Spider-Man movies would benefit from avoiding live-action entirely.

Responses to Spider-Verse offer an uncanny echo of the reception of The Lego Batman Movie. Enthusiastically received by reviewers, immediately hailed as a superior interpretation in an ideal medium, this version of Batman was well timed and distinct from its predecessors in favourable ways. The film is notably the combination of two franchises: the Batman series and the burgeoning Lego Movie films. Yet, while the first film in the latter series, The Lego Movie, was widely admired – Gersh Kuntzman (2017) of the New York Daily News described it as the ‘best film since Citizen Kane’ – the third entry in the series (following The Lego Batman Movie), The Lego Ninjago Movie (Charlie Bean, Paul Fisher and Bob Logan, 2017) was a significant disappointment, both critically and commercially. There was apparent alchemy in the combination of the character of Batman, with the weight of a vast multimedia narrative history and the universal charm of Lego construction toys.

The qualities that make Batman so well suited to parody and comedy, as well as a chaotic mode of action only possible in animation, stem from his malleability. It has been argued that Batman has a ‘chameleon-like nature’ and that he has retained his ‘cultural significance’ precisely because he is ‘open to reinterpretation by different generations’ (Spigel and Jenkins, 2015: 193). Yet while Batman is often acknowledged in these terms, the reception of The Lego Batman Movie demonstrates that critics nonetheless have a preferred version of the hero; specific interpretations can be accepted or rejected on the grounds of whether or not they fulfill the desired criteria. Glen Weldon’s (2016) impressive history of Batman, for instance, acknowledges the character as a ‘cultural idea’ that ‘contains multitudes’ (p. 268), and as a zeitgeist that is fractured and personalized by each new filmmaker, artist or writer (p. 284); yet he also insists that the version of the character in Batman v Superman is ‘wildly wrong’ (p. 289), demonstrating the limits of his own acceptable notion of Batman. The Lego Batman Movie served not just to provide an interpretation of the character that audiences and critics could consume with satisfaction, but – through the complex critical discourse surrounding the film’s reception – to emphasize the perceived flaws of the previous (concurrent) cinematic incarnation.

There is a parallel here with wider trends in fandom. A small subset of Star Wars fans, exhibiting what is often described as ‘toxic masculinity’, have vehemently rejected the complexly unheroic portrayal of Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi (Rian Johnson, 2017). These anti-fans feel a sense of ownership, of entitlement; they decry a version of the protagonist of the original trilogy at odds with their expectations and reject the latest saga film on those grounds (Holland, 2018). Like Batman, Luke Skywalker is the lynchpin of a sprawling multimedia narrative, fuelled by novels, videogames, comic books and audio dramas in near-constant production since 1977. Yet the heroic Jedi of the Star Wars series was, until the recent film, a fixed figure, with very little deviance due to individual artistic licence. Batman’s status in this context is largely unique: a commercial property and subject of cinema whose identity, while fixed in many ways, has offered vast freedom to various creatives to reimagine him as they wish.

Indeed, animation continues to be the medium of choice for creative reinterpretations of Batman. The year 2018 saw the international release of Batman Ninja (directed by Junpei Mizusaki), a Japanese animated film that transplants Batman, along with numerous allies and villains, to medieval Japan. Released theatrically in Japan and on home media formats in other territories, the film once again explores a radically different version of the Dark Knight that could be achieved only in animation. Although its cultural footprint was smaller than The Lego Batman Movie, productions like Batman Ninja demonstrate the creative possibilities of the medium and the growing significance of animated superhero feature films. The celebratory tone of the reception of The Lego Batman Movie is an effective demonstration of how, and why, the character is so cherished in contemporary popular culture. That an animated version of Batman could be seen as definitive, while a live-action film is rhetorically rejected, suggests the growing desire for new superhero stories, told with originality and creativity, in diverse media.