Robin Gets no Respect

You know, it's a shame that so many people hate cinematic portrayals of Robin, since the guy is his freaking sidekick and has been for something like 60-70 years. There is no Batman without Robin, so why is it so anathema to tell the Batman story on the big screen with him? The fact that Batman has only been without Robin episodically over these years suggests readers expect him to have a ward to mentor, and based on the Tim Drake version of Robin, who also takes care of him. Tim Drake's argument to Bruce Wayne, after cleverly deducing who Batman really was, was that since Jason Todd's death, Batman had begun to act erratically and dangerously - something that Alfred, the Butler, definitely witnessed and was worried about. Drake's theory was that without a sidekick to guard, Batman acted foolishly, even self-destructively, and that he actually needed the be a father-figure in order, somehow, to address the tragedy of his father's own death.

Probably, the reason why movies have rarely explored this ground is because movie versions of Batman have been largely influenced by the 1980s Frank Miller version of Batman. Both Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan credit the darker, distrustful, psychologically scarred character that Frank Miller created as a model for their own interpretations. Frank Miller's key contributions to Batman canon were The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One, with the former being the more significant. Year One documents Bruce Wayne's first year as Batman, and thus there is no Robin at all. And The Dark Knight Returns hints at serious problems that Batman had with Robin, which ultimately resulted in Dick Grayson resigning. Interestingly, Miller also hints at Jason Todd dying, which had not yet happened in the DC continuity, but appears to have planted the seeds to kill Todd off later. In All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder, Miller explores this troubled relationship in detail (which is troubled primarily in the Frank Miller continuity of Batman - the DC continuity shows the two having a strained relationship, but not nearly like the one in the Miller continuity).

Point being, the movies have tended to stick to the Frank Miller characterization, and Miller tended to write Robin out of Batman's life. I don't know if he originally did this because he hated Robin or if he just wanted to tell a specific kind of Batman story that hadn't be told before, but which required a more solitary Batman figure. Nevertheless, while like many people I love the Miller Batman, which was part of a larger rewriting of the character that tried to undo some of the campier stuff done to Batman from the 1960s, I don't think we have to draw the conclusion that the reason for the franchise's failure towards the end was the introduction of Chris O'Donnell as Robin. The Joel Schuelmacher movies were horrible for a lot of reasons, but not because of Robin's appearance. They were horrible because he thought he could remake the 1960s television show.

So I don't have a well-defined argument for why Robin should be in a future movie. But I think one can and should be made, even if not by me. Truth is, Robin is an important part of the man's story. Without Robin, Batman's a hopeless, pathetic, sad man. Robin is the only person in Batman's life who understands what he does, why he does it, why he has to do it and cannot stop, but who is unwilling to be pushed outside away from him. The challenge, I think, is that filmmakers have to somehow to convey meaningful male-male relationships that are not sexualized. After all, Dick Grayson is always a young boy living with a much older Bruce Wayne, and it's very easy to sexualize that relationship. So the challenge is to explore that friendship and the father-son relationship, and make that relevant to Batman's own psychological development and the development of his vocation as vigilante. I personally want to see Robin eventually move into the story on the Big Screen, but that's just me. I love the boy wonder.