Don’t you dare make another Batman movie without Robin
You wouldn’t know this from about 70 percent of the movies about him, but for the majority of his existence, Batman has never been a loner. Bill Finger and Bob Kane created Batman in 1939’s Detective Comics #27, and in the 80-plus years we’ve gotten Batman stories, he was only truly alone for one; by 1940’s Detective Comics #38, Robin was born. Eleven comic books: That’s how many were published before Batman’s creators decided to give him a sidekick.
While there have been many comic books that featured the Dark Knight flying solo, every one of them did so with a rapidly growing cast of caped heroes joining Batman’s crusade in the background, either in comics or Saturday morning cartoons. After a certain point, it feels like these movies are less Bruce Wayne and more Drake, hiding a child. The child is Robin. All of them.
If there’s a major flaw to The Batman, it’s that it’s largely a remix of the familiar. It’s an incredibly stylish and very good reconsideration of what came before, but it’s a rehash nonetheless. The reason for this is simple: Most of the ideas about Batman still unexplored on-screen only come into play when you surround him with other characters: A Robin (any Robin), Batgirl (any Batgirl), Batwoman, Batwing, Nightwing, the Huntress, the Signal, Red Hood, Azrael, and in one very good Detective Comics run written by James Tynion IV, Clayface. It is frankly bizarre that a major movie studio, in a Hollywood environment best described as “the tulip craze, but for IP,” is leaving so much franchise gold on the table due to the strange, ahistorical assertion that Batman is a solo act.
Part of this is a holdover from a more insecure era where comics evangelists felt the need to relentlessly advocate that the
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