Watch What ‘The Batman’ Would Look Like Starring Adam West
Batman has only endured as a character for so long because he is malleable to his times. These days, he tends to be a gritty avenger, a brutal dark knight avenger of crime. But back in the 1960s, the Batman was a friendly guy; a chipper bloke who occasionally danced in between battles with the Joker or the Riddler. It can be a little mind-warping to consider that the Batman played by Adam West is the same character as the guy Robert Pattinson plays in The Batman. But they are. (Or they’re supposed to be, anyway.)
And that’s why this video is so fun. It inserts Adam West’s jovial, groovy Batman into The Batman, Matt Reeves new film about a young, slightly goth Caped Crusader who is trying to clean up a morally corrupt and endlessly gloomy Gotham City while battling a serial killer who keeps leaving mysterious riddles at all his crime scenes. (This Riddler ain’t Frank Gorshin, that’s for sure.)
The combination isn’t seamless, but it is a lot of fun. Watch it below:
In the video below, you can see a little of how they combined vintage (and lower resolution) footage of Adam West and Burgess Meredith with the stuff (the 4K stuff, no less) that Matt Reeves shot:
Pretty impressive. But why stop there? How about putting Robert Pattinson’s Batman into the Batman TV series of the 1960s? How about making George Clooney the star of the 1940s Batman serial? I mean if we’re just mixing stuff up, why not just go full Into the Bat-Verse over here?
The Batman (with Robert Pattinson, not Adam West) is now streaming on HBO Max.