batman

Welcome to ScreenCrush 360! Each Wednesday, the staff of ScreenCrush will bring you a great new ranking from the world of movies (or television, we contain multitudes) in video form. It’s all the fun of a list without all the pain of having to actually read it. Think of Top Five, but longer!

If I learned anything about Abu Dhabi from watching the entirety of Sex and the City 2 while sitting in a tattoo parlor waiting room (which actually happened and is not a joke), it’s that the United Arab Emirates city is a mecca of wealth. The oil-rich nation has concentrated much of its affluence in its capital, and accordingly, the area has exploded with development in recent years. Skyscrapers have cropped up like so many dandelions, massive tourist resorts now dot the coastline, and high-end boutique shopping caters to such fashionable visitors as Carrie Bradshaw and her pals. And while Abu Dhabi’s latest attraction won’t invite as many Dolce & Gabbana puns as one might like, it will delight comic book fans worldwide.

If you saw Tim Burton’s original Batman, you remember Billy Dee Williams playing the role of Gotham City District Attorney Harvey Dent. Williams never got to play Dent’s evil alter ego, though; when Dent became Two-Face in Batman Forever, the role was recast with Tommy Lee Jones. That all changed with The LEGO Batman Movie though, when Williams got to play Two-Face by providing the voice for the role in the new animated film. That’s just one of the LEGO facts featured in the latest installment of You Think You Know Movies!

Nowadays, actors are often straight-up forbidden from doing their own stunts so that they don’t suffer from any lasting injuries. Some, like Tom Cruise, have the star-power needed to convince a director he wants to be strapped to the side of a jetliner while it takes off, but most of the time it’s the stunt-doubles doing all the work. Not so for Burt Ward, who played sidekick Robin in the original 1960’s Batman TV show. He recounts a time during production during which he had to perform a stunt so dangerous he was sent to the emergency room.

Like any job, writing about the latest news in the world of entertainment can wear on you after long enough, so you gotta appreciate the little pearls of amusement where you can get them. Personally, watching the latest solo Batman project fall apart in slow motion has been a perverse thrill over the past couple of months: star Ben Affleck was gonna direct (maybe) the film titled The Batman, then he was definitely gonna direct it, then he backpedaled a little bit, then he requested that people stop asking him about it, then he face-planted onto the sidewalk with the costly flop Live By Night, and then look at that, he wasn’t taking the director’s chair after all. The indignities kept coming, as Warner Bros. ordered sweeping rewrites to this floundering project before landing Planet of the Apes remake maestro Matt Reeves to fill the directorial vacuum.

Since announcing that Ben Affleck would no longer be directing the upcoming standalone The Batman film, Warner Bros. has been in a full-blown crisis mode, working overtime to find a talented new director and prove all those “Is the DC Cinematic Universe doomed?” articles wrong. Back in January, Forbes reported that the Warner Bros. shortlist featured several interesting names, including George Miller, Denis Villeneuve, and Matt Reeves. And now, less than two weeks after The Batman lost its director, it appears that Warner Bros. has settled on its replacement.

The LEGO Batman Movie, now playing in theaters (and Palace Cinema LEGO sets) everywhere, works perfectly well for any audience, regardless of their familiarity with Batman, LEGO or otherwise. For viewers who do know the nearly 80-year history of its title character, however, the film is a treasure trove of references. Following his debut in the pages of 1939’s Detective Comics #27, Batman quickly became one of the most famous heroes in all of comics, and eventually spawned television shows, movies, toys, video games, and countless pieces of merchandise, almost all of which get referenced in Chris McKay’s LEGO Batman Movie in some way, shape, or form.

These are dark days for the Dark Knight.

We ranked 75 years of Batman movies in one list.

Batman made his first comic book appearance in 1939, but it wasn’t until 1972 that the Mego Corporation got the bright idea to mass-produce a line of toys featuring the superhero and all his gadgets, vehicles, sidekicks, and adversaries. Ever since then, the character has been a staple of the toy aisle, even during the years when his comics weren’t selling so well.