Every Batmobile From Movies & TV Explained | WIRED

his evolution is not a linear one he changes from light to dark and back again and the Batmobile changes in shape and character and power and design again and again to reflect that stop hi I'm Glen Weldon from NPR's pop culture happy hour I'm also the author of the Caped Crusader Batman on the rise of nerd culture today I'm going to be walking you through every Batmobile from film and television in this the Batmobile is basically just a 1939 Cadillac series 75 convertible it's just a car now to put that in some context the Batmobile was introduced very early in Detective Comics 27 and it was also just a car as started out it was a red roadster it was Bruce Wayne's car as a matter of fact and if you go back and read those early issues they spent a tremendous amount of time just having him figure out a place to park it before he goes and fights crime he hadn't mastered the whole secret identity thing yet and the Batman of the serial same thing hadn't really figured out the whole secret identity thing yet while in the comics the Batmobile by this point was a beast of a car which highly stylized with a lot of the stuff that you're gonna see in other Batmobile is going forward it has a big hood ornament kind of battering ram bat head it's got a giant single batwing tail fin and they could get away with that in the comics because comics have an unlimited special effects budget movie serials were made on the cheap the way they differentiated it is that when the top was down it was Bruce Wayne's car and when the top was up it was Batman's and criminals recognized it as such an interesting point is that Alfred the butler chauffeured both Batman and Bruce around in that fat now but drive into that alley and with the problem doesn't make any sense but comics don't make any sense I mean Superman wears eyeglasses nobody recognizes him Batman puts the top up nobody recognizes him now at this point comic book heroes didn't really have personalities they were just cops and capes and in this case in the movie serial Batman is just a detective just a cop in a Batman costume never mind you'll find out and if you go back and watch these serials there are products at their time they were made during the war they're incredibly racist toward Japanese people pretty good zakir your makeup is perfect it's anti-japanese sentiment is right there on the surface next up the 1949 Batman and Robin movie serial it's in 1949 mercury again just a car the same deal as before when the top is up it's the Batmobile and the top is down it's Bruce Wayne's whip we look under that explosion it's Batman and Robin in the comics at this point the design of the bat move it was constantly evolving can you throw in a mobile crime lab you throw in a big bubble canopy you throw in bat wings tail fins that kind of grew and shrank over and over again it would take another 17 years before we got another live-action Batmobile and by that time the Batman of television had learned about branding from the Batman of the comics [Music] all right here it is the 1966 Batman television series Batmobile now I grew up watching this series in reruns in reruns and that's why two members of my generation and those older this is the iconic the quintessential the seminal Batmobile the TV show had two things going for it the serials didn't one a budget and to style for days this show arrived at the height of the pop art movement of pop art movement value of things that were slick and commercial and colorful and disposable which is why they reacted to comic books and comic book heroes in such a big way this show became a phenomenon a fad and everything about it its iconography the show's sensibility which is to take very silly things very seriously doesn't seem to make sense and especially this Batmobile invaded the cultural consciousness that became cause celebs the Batmobiles design here is based on the Ford concept car of the future which never went into production you'll see echoes of this Batmobile and just about every battement bill that comes after it you'll see twin bubble canopies again you'll see at this color scheme red and black it won't come back again until Batman Beyond but it's gonna come back both of those things make this car seem sporty which is odd because it is a barge it is a long low rectangle of heavy steel with no clearance pray that there's no potholes or speed bumps in Gotham City it looks great and it is great going forward in a straight line but zero maneuverability I mean the turning radius that on this thing is a literal joke on the show whenever Batman needs to make a u-turn he deploys a couple of parachutes to turn the car when a van comes the Batmobile parachute pickup and service to pick them up which just shows you how much Bruce Wayne is propping up the economic infrastructure of Gotham City now one thing this show did was to take the comics of the time and play them very straight that's where the humor came from Batman and all comic book heroes were for kids people didn't really know the character that well because he was relegated to the comic books which were read by a few thousand kids by the time this show ends you'll see a different kind of readership teens and adults start reading comics superheroes get personalities and personality disorders to distinguish them one from the other something besides their costume differentiates them in terms of their personalities this Batmobile isn't about performance it's about looking great it's about looking powerful and branding alright this one's from the Batman Superman adventure hour in 1968 an animated series this is the first animated Batmobile and it has echoes of the 1966 live-action Batmobile of course but it's much sporty-er and it is actually if you look it's more influenced by racing cars and sports cars of the time it's got a very simplified design to make it easy to animate one flourish which are those oversized bat wings which are so big that in the real world they wouldn't be so much aerodynamic as arrow lethargic in comics and animation of the time the technology was such that black objects lost any sense of texture they look like black blobs which is why this design comes with those white highlights it's that ideal especially if you are having any scenes taking place at night about four years later they came up with a solution Super Friends 1973 notice the kind of blue are looking at here it's a very light blue a friendly blue because this Batman is still the bright friendly careful gym but history and safety Batman who works by de Bowser on with other heroes over the course of his career in and out of the comics Batman has cycled through three phases again and again he's a dark lone Devender of the night he becomes a compassionate father figure to Robin and then eventually becomes a patriarch of an extended bat family every time he does that goes through that cycle he lightens up a bit but eventually he will go back to being a dark Avenger of the night in popular culture up this time in 1973 the 66 Batman and the 66 Batmobile just hung around because the show was such a cultural phenomenon in the comics of course something much different was going on the hardcore fans of Batman who read the comics hated everything about that 1966 show and as soon it was over the makers of Batman took him back to his roots that kicked Robin out sent him off to college and turned Batman into an obsessed brooding loner back to his original roots all of the trappings of the 1966 Batman television series were rejected there was no more Batcave there was no more Batmobile the Batman of the comics at the time as this Batmobile was on television it was driving a sports car Riddler must be losing his marbles everythings he can outdrive me this is the challenge of the Superfriends from 1978 this is an evolution of the Superfriends show and here again you see how big an impact the 66 Batmobile had it's gonna take something huge something unprecedented and something that could make a cultural impact as big or larger as the Batman television series to get out from under the shadow of this in particular design and here it is the Batman movie 1989 directed by Tim Berkeley 23 years after the 1966 series we got the thing that made as big a cultural impression if not larger Tim Burton's Batman was an event summer of 1989 you couldn't escape it the bat logo was everywhere promotional clips of the movie played over and over again on television and many of them featured this film's radical this is back to being a show of force a power dark heavy if the 1966 Batmobile had a sullen teenage goth son this would be it it is again about design over functionality this Batmobile was designed by Julian caldo and Keith Short caldo to the illustrations and short did the final body sculpt looks great on the page looks great on the screen with those swooping fenders but again no turning radius to speak of if it needs to do a quick turn it deploys a grappling hook instead of parachutes I do have one quibble and it's a big one it comes with retractable front mounted machine guns pretty much the antithesis of everything the character is about but then so is Alfred letting Vicky Vale into the Batcave so is the Joker killing Bruce Wayne's parents I mean that's Hollywood now there were fans of the comics of course who were now teenagers and adults who were taking a character very seriously but this was a complete surprise to normals people who just went to see the movie had no idea that Batman was this dark and brooding now because the last time they had seen the character he was a joke some days you just can't get rid of a bomb and that's what they went in expecting and that's not quite what they got as the film was being made hardcore fans hated everything they heard about it they hated the armored bat suit they hated Jack Nicholson as the Joker they hated a lot of aspects of what they were seeing when the film came out it was widely praised even by hardcore bat fans especially by hardcore Batman's because suddenly they could share this thing they loved with people who didn't read comics or didn't watch animated series suddenly Batman was the lingua franca was all over the place he was sports now and that was a brand new experience all right this is Batman the Animated Series 1992 if you take the Tim Burton Batmobile and you flatten it into the shape of the 66 Batman television show Batmobile and you swap out all those swoopy goth elements that Burton put in and you you go for something a little bit more elegant more refined more restrained take Art Deco elements and there you have it you've got the animated series Batmobile it basically looks like if you took the Chrysler Building toppled it over and put some wheels on it to tool around Gotham City now two people who grew up with this show this Batmobile is iconic to them as the 66 Batmobile is to me I think that has something to do with its placement its prominent placement in the opening credits this Batmobile comes into your home every day always in the same way at the exact same time every episode of the 1966 series started the same way and when that happens it imprints on your brain on your very soul Eadie's it's an almost ritualistic experience somebody else that has in common with the 1966 series is that it is stylized so heavily stylized that it ceases to be of a specific time it is out of time this show is taking elements from many different time periods and mashing them together so it doesn't look dated it looks stylish iconic and the elements that it has the Art Deco elements are timeless in the 1993 episode the mechanic we learned the origin of the Batmobile looks a little bit different here this design is one of the show's many many many homage is to Golden Age comics when the Batmobile sported an enormous bat head battering ram like this one Joel Schumacher took over the Batman films from Tim Burton and when he did he was tasked by the studio with two objectives one lighten up Burton's kind of dark SNM tinged universe and to sell some toys he replaced the somber heavy goth excess of Tim Burton with a different kind of excess his very own neon lasers fluorescent paint he threw in more bat costumes and more bat vehicles what do you suggest Alfred term toy attic comes into play here toy etic means easily licensed for toys games and merch I would argue that this Batmobile is not just toy attic it is sex toy attic it is undeniably phallic it is lit from within it is ribbed for their pleasure if Vegas was a marital aid it looks something like this one of the things about Batman is that he's open to a lot of different interpretations there's not one single kind of Batman there's different Batman's because again he cycles through various stages Schumacher is a visual stylist first and foremost a storyteller second if you're gonna ding this Batmobile you would say style over substance but after all the line between stylish and garish is a very personal one you can see all the familiar elements underneath that glamour I think of this as the Batmobile in drag and I don't hate it but again in terms of functionality it's got none it's got a grappling hook that can allow it to climb vertical walls what's the exit strategy there exactly what do you do when you're in the middle of a wall it's wheels can pivot to allow for perpendicular movement and when I check the wiki there's always a wiki it said that's explainable by virtue of hyperboloid wheels on axles I don't know what that means but it looks cool Burton's Batman return was so dark that it was hard to license materials it was hard to get a deal with McDonald's because it was such a weird film so tinged with SNM elements and they wanted to target more directly to kids so they turned to Joel Schumacher who made it very bright and very colorful and very gay here it's a much lighter version of Batman because after all he is mentoring Robin he's a different fit kind of figure than the lone grim Avenger of the Burton films now he's got a kid to take care of so that brings into it a more kid-friendly approach Batman and Robin 1997 we're sticking with Schumacher again he comes back to direct this and even more can't be a more direct homage to the 1966 series you see the Cyclones turn now this one's based on a roadster it's a single seater because by this point Robins got his own cycle and look how far we've come when you couldn't even see inside Burton's battery it was all black mat here the drivers open to the air just like the Adam West Batmobile once again the cycle is turning the batwing tail fins here are larger than they'll ever be because this approach show Walker's approach is about live excess bigger swoopy err campy ER he's famous for telling his cast and crew in this film that they're called comic books not tragic books which fundamentally misunderstands the whole what comic and comic books mean but let that go because that's his approach he is all about go big or go home and no one goes home so once again the cycle is about to turn this very popular very fun but much disliked by the hardcore fans version of Batman has kind of salted the earth and said well nobody's can make another Batman film just like the 1966 Batman series it cast a long shadow people wanted to get out from under it and it would take a long time for anybody to try it again and when they did they had to radically revised how they approached him [Music] the new Batman adventures 1997 after the Schumacher Batmobiles any Batmobile would look like a scaling back anything will look more grounded this is a very simplified design but one that will become part of the DC Animated universe for a while it's one that Batman used in the cartoon justice beyond 1999 this is set in the future time period what Batman has retired he takes under his wing Terry McGinnis a young punk kid who becomes the Batman of this future may be used to dealing with freaks and monsters but I'm in the future the Batmobile is gonna fly because of course it will and what else do you need there it is very visually reminiscent of the flying cars from Blade Runner which is make sense because a lot of the design aesthetic of this particular show owes a lot to Blade Runner it's time people wondered why this version of Batman the Terry McGinnis Batman needed a flying car because he can fly himself that suit allows him to fly to that I would say you can walk you also have a car not all crime happens next door the Batman from 2004 okay you already noticed the pendulum is swinging back we had very light we had fluorescent and glowing and big wings to something a lot more compact a lot more powerful lot less flashy more about sportiness and performance it's a lot more butch than the Schumacher bat just that I take it for a spin and in 2005 they redesigned the Batmobile for the Batman animated series the original Batmobile in that series got totaled so they introduced this version and here we are again we're going back out of the sense of fun and lightness to something much darker much heavier much more macho black so again going from light to dark and now we're back to dark firmly back to dark and grim and gritty and purely functional nothing extraneous no design for designs sake here this is serious this is manly this is butch this is no fun at all this is Christopher Nolan the design of this one I was gonna call it the Batmobile but that'd be silly because this is Nolan's stated goal in making this film was to disavow anything fun or campy about Batman to dispel the ghost of Jill Schumacher so it's not called the Batmobile it's called the tumblr tumblr was the first thing designed for this film everything about it in terms of production design flowed from it Nolan took a lump of clay shaped it into this vaguely tank-like shape and gave it to his production designer to go to town this is all about practicality and how we shall force not style armor plating instead of batwing nothing sleek or swooping or stylish here this is a workhorse of pure functionality and again not to put too fine a point on it it's not red it's not black it's not blue it's grey the influence of this film would be seen for a long time because public loved it the geeks loved it everybody came together and said yes this this is the version of Batman that I like the thing is though that this approach works great for Batman if you try to apply this same approach to say I don't know let me pick a name out of the Hat Superman who is about hope and light the tones don't mesh the the tone of a dark gritty Batman makes sense and it's one that has been in the comics since 1970 so it lines up with the comic book reader sensibility and it also makes for a good superhero film for the normals and again this is why comic book readers really gravitated to these films in a big way they said finally this is the version of Batman we won't Batman Gotham Knight 2008 this is an anthology film basically a bunch of different stories now take a look at this Batmobile we are reaching a different kind of extreme instead of glitzy sleek and glamorous we are now mashing up a literal fighter jet with a tank this is Batman as manly this is Batman as bro Batman the brave in the bowl 2008 this series mission statement was to pay loving homage to every era of Batman so you get every era of the Batmobile you get a golden age back to ring RAM you get the fenders the single tail fin but the details and the highlights come from the classic 1966 Batmobile everything about this seems more open to me more playful less defensive less militarized this is going away from the Christopher Nolan approaches less insistent that we take everything about that men very seriously Batman The Brave and the bold at 2009 redesigned we're getting even farther away from the militaristic here we're leaning harder into the 1940s specifically the 1940s comic book version of Batman in every detail this could have left straight off the book page of a 1940's Batman Batman under the Red Hood we don't see a lot of the Batmobile in this particular animated film but what we do see is a cross between the Burton Batmobile and the sharper curvier lines of some of the Batmobiles that came after it but of course it's it's post Nolan's we need that armor plating everything is about armor plating experience the world of Batman like never before Batman Live 2011 now not many people actually got a chance to see this particular Batmobile because it was featured in a live stage stunt show that toured the u.s. in the UK instead of stylized bat wings you get a pretty standard spoiler the shape is more reminiscent of formula racing cars it's like a broody reversion of speed racer's Mach 5 by the way in terms of iconic fictional cars it goes number 5 Chitty Chitty Bang Bang before Herbie the lovebug number 3 KITT number 2 speed racer's about 5 number 1 Batmobile beware the batman animated series from 2013 this is very low and sporty it's got the curvy fenders of a Formula One racecar it looks kind of what would happen if you stuck wheels on the flying Batmobile from Batman Beyond Teen Titans go 2013 again we are now seeing the light to dark to light to dark psychic speeding up here is an animated version of Tim Burton's Batmobile just down to the turbine engine on where I'm in cloud cuckoo-land will raise an army of master-builders gotta check out these new subwoofers I installed in the back the lego movie 2014 we are now fully back into the light into the sense of fun to keep up with the film's very fun fast approach very fun fast tone yeah it looks like the tumblr yes it does tank like but again you got those bat wings straight out of Joel Schumacher which make sense it's it's a Lego it's you can put things together from a lot of different eras it's a stylistic mashup really and it makes a lot of sense no I know how no son of Batman 2014 this animated film has a darker tone so it took the familiar brave of the bold design and literally dark Batman V Superman dawn of Justice well we're swinging back to the grey militaristic armored but this doesn't quite have the ruthless functionality of the tumbler there is a half-hearted attempt at stylisation here at some familiar bat-like and ography there's something vaguely gothic about it but again machine guns it's not the worst thing about the movie but it is an ill-considered choice it doesn't make a lot of sense for Batman it's a violation of the character but instead feeling like a synthesis of a lot of different approaches this thing feels caught between two different aesthetics is it a tank is it a race car is it a bracing tank it doesn't make a lot of sense to me this film was directed by Zack Snyder who is a devotee of Iran and you can tell the dude does not believe in the whole notion of heroism it's a rough fit really and that leeches into the to the design aesthetic of the film into the grayness of these films then into every aspect of design including the Batmobile it feels hopeless it feels like there's no point there's no reason to try to save others because nobody's trying to save you it doesn't feel like the nolan films but the nolan films which at least were about the hero's journey this feels like what's the point critics didn't care for this film the public liked it the first weekend and then not so much a second this doesn't have a good reputation and I think it's deservedly so but that's only one approach to Batman after all cuz in the Lego Batman movie you're once again right back into the light right back into the fund we're getting tonal whiplash right now this is a long Roadster not to put too fine a point on it but the bat mobility we see in this film is a lot like the Schumacher film Batman it's a long Roadster with a single seat a great honking batwing design and again he begins the film as a dark grim loner which is why this Batmobile has a single-seat cockpit second 2017 gallego Batman movie by the end of the film he's back to being the leader of an extended bat family so everything about this is bright and light here and in fact the design of this entire Batmobile is just a vehicle for robbing a vehicle for Alfred a vehicle for Batgirl all smashed together Justice League 2017 almost an instantaneous reversion to the light side no more silliness now we're gonna take this guy who dresses up as a bat so he can punch crime in the face we're gonna take it very seriously say this much about this version of the Batmobile in the Justice League film it's a more effective synthesis of all the pre-existing Batmobiles the live-action film Batmobiles it's about 25% Burton 10% Schumacher 65% Nolan and while the design of the Batmobile is an effective synthesis the film itself is kind of a mash-up it feels like it's all over the place it doesn't feel like the tone of the Superman matches the tone of bat it feels like it they're trying to mash these things together in a way that's not entirely effective the eights 5 litre 460 horsepower engine Gotham in 2018 now this is not an official Batmobile I won't call it that because it comes from a show about Batman before he was Batman so let's call this the master Bruce mobile it's a black Ford Mustang that's all it is what is interesting here is that this is the Batmobile as a muscle car which it hasn't been before it's an interesting concept that's about to get fleshed out a lot more but not before Titans 2018 the DC Universe show introduced this version of the Batmobile and it's six episode and there's nothing new here that's kind of the point you want it to be instantly recognizable as the Batmobile this is not a radical reinvention basically you're just doubling down on previous designs the Batman live Batmobile the brave the bold Batmobile the under the Red Hood Batmobile you got the twin bubble canopies I told you they'd come back and they did because again the influence of the 66 Batmobile just isn't going away the Batman 2021 we've only gotten a glimpse of this so far it's the one that will appear in the Matt Reeves film but what we've seen looks interesting it's basically a souped up muscle car looks a lot like a Plymouth Barracuda nothing so prosaic or militaristic is a tank it's built for speed and performance and again branding instant recognizability you see this and you think Batman we find ourselves a weird point in the cycle because again while this looks like a very serious grounded take on Batman it's got some really big stylistic flourishes so if the Batmobile is representative of how this Matri swim is going to be then we're gonna find ourselves kind of at a crossroads instead of turning a cycle from light to dark we're kind of bringing in both the light in the dark at the same time now we don't have a lot to go on yet but but just by looking at the design of the Batmobile it is looks like it's going to be a very grounded approach a very practical approach to Batman he's got a muscle car but there's a lot of design flourishes which suggests something a little bit lighter so instead of the cyclo going round and round as always has this might represent a synthesis of light and dark bringing him together the light fun elements and the dark brooding elements so looking at all these Batmobiles over the year I hope it's clear that it's not just his car it's not just a gadget it's part about his character it reflects how he changes everything again his evolution is not a linear one he changes from light to dark and back again and the Batmobile changes in shape and character and power and design again and again to reflect that it's a part of who he is an extension of who he is it's also looks pretty cool

Channel: WIRED

Views: 123,252

Rating: 4.8229585 out of 5

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Id: y-Kgsk4TZgU

Length: 28min 13sec (1693 seconds)

Published: Wed May 27 2020