The Batman: How Robin Could Be Essential To This Version Of The Dark Knight

gamerant.com:

Sidekicks have fallen out of fashion as superheroes evolve from their original home on comic book pages and into their role as all-consuming pop-cultural empires. Despite their absence from the big screen, many heroes are better with their time-honored allies in tow, or even incomplete without their young ward.

Robin was introduced to the original Batman comics about a year after the Caped Crusader's debut, and he's been a central feature of his narrative ever since. There have been at least five teens to take up the mask and cape, each of which have become full-fledged characters in their own right while serving as Batman's sidekick. There hasn't been a live-action Batman film that featured Robin since 1997.

Without A Boy Wonder: Why Does Hollywood Hate Robin?

If there can be any consistency amongst Batman film universes, though they are from different creators and continuities, it's the ongoing march towards a point of maximum dark grittiness. With the exception of a brief period in the 90s, the character has been exposed to one new level of edgy «realism» after another. Tim Burton's fanciful gothic styling gave way to a brief affair with camp, only to be shut down by Nolan's military aesthetics and metaphors about the war on terror. Zack Snyder did what he does to every franchise and brought Superman down with him.

After Zack Snyder filled the franchise with gloomy hyper-masculine shouting and murder, Matt Reeves had a fairly high bar to clear. He succeeded by turning Riddler into the Zodiac killer and Bruce Wayne into a depressed insomniac. This is not to say the films are bad, or that an edgy film is worse than one with some light to it, some of them are excellent. But, this singular focus of tone has been slightly