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Comment RSSJoe Dante’s Batman Movie, And Why He Walked Away
17.07.08 # 17:32 # News # 4 CommentsWith the immenient release of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, it’s sometimes interesting to look at the alternative film universe and consider the route a movie franchise might have gone down.
Did you know that Joe Dante was the original director for Batman, before Tim Burton? Yep, Batman was almost Joe Dante’s franchise, until he quit.
What was it going to be like? Why did he walk out? Who had he cast as The Joker (and no, it wasn’t Nicholson…)?
We called the man himself to get the full story:
[audio:http://www.movie-moron.com/wp-content/uploads/joedante/batman.mp3]
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If you look at John Lithgow’s segment in Twilight Zone: The Movie around that time (playing a paranoid airline passenger battling a gremlin), you can see what an intense, compelling performance he was capable of.
For Lithgow, he went off to do Bigfoot And The Hendersons instead, getting sucked into years of successful, but dreadful, TV sitcoms.
Do you think Lithgow would have made a good Joker? How would he have compared to Jack Nicholson? Would you have rather seen Dante’s vision over Tim Burton’s, or Joel Schumacher’s?
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That, was, FASCINATING.
Dude, I’mso glad he walked away. Complete artistic integrity … it sounds like that franchise was doomed the first time round anyway, I’m glad he got out. Still, it would have been cool to see John Lithgow as the Joker, what an interesting choice.
A bond-style Batman is kinda what we’ve ended up with. batman begins had some real globetrotting in it, and in that sense was quite like the old Bond movies. I’m happy with Burton’s version, but i think lithgow would have been a better Joker. Jack was just Jack.
I agree that the Christopher Nolan films are closer in terms of making Batman a mythic figure. The Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher films spent too much time with colorful villians.
Do not wonder what that film might have been. I do not want to acknowledge how this film might have been. Especially if you read the screenplay that is online, I did a few years ago and it wasn’t quite dark but was a mix of campy 60s. You can’t say that this was because it was pre-Frank Miller, Dennis O’Neill had been undoing the damage and making it darker in the 70s and early 1980s. It went like first Superman movie, his rise from boy to man. He’s a james bond type playboy with Joker and the Penguin as villians. Joker tells jokes about Toledo. Henchmen wear jetpacks. Birds kill Robin’s parents. Giant prop items. But Batman does break his ONE rule. It’s not too good.