The first live-action Batman adaptation was pure political propaganda
If you’ve been on social media or YouTube over the last decade, chances are that you’ve seen people complaining about the political plotlines and messages in modern superhero stories. “I just want to enjoy superhero stories without politics!” is a fairly common gripe — mostly from a subset of the audience that disagrees with whatever the perceived message might be.
But superhero stories have always been political, right back to the dawn of the genre. From Captain America punching Hitler in 1941 to Homelander symbolizing American arrogance and power on The Boys to Robert Pattinson learning how to be a responsible progressive billionaire in The Batman, superheroes have been entrenched in the biggest political debates of their eras. And that goes all the way back to the first terrible theatrical Batman adaptation.
In 1943, Columbia Pictures released Batman, a serial shown in theaters across the United States. It stands as the first live-action depiction of the Caped Crusader and Boy Wonder, starring Lewis Wilson and Douglas Croft, the youngest actors to play Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson.
Today, the 1943 Batman looks like a low-budget serial, but Columbia Pictures put a great deal of focus and effort into its marketing back in its day, periodically re-releasing it and the 1949 follow-up, Batman and Robin, as “An Evening With Batman and Robin.” These successful re-airings kept Batman in the public eye, right until Adam West took up the cowl in the 1960s.
The 1943 serial introduced some key elements of Batman lore to film audiences for the first time, including the Bat Cave (sometimes called the “Bat’s Cave”) and Alfred’s redesign. (Prior to the serial, Alfred was portly — a far cry from his elegant, thin iteration in
Read more on polygon.com
