Let's cast the Batman Beyond movie

I think someone like Jordan Hinson or Maddie Hasson would be a good choice for Ten.

edited 27th Jul '13 11:56:19 AM by resetlocksley

This is probably me being silly, but should the casting really be for Bruce Wayne? Not Damian Wayne? I know its not DCAU canon, but still... this isn't the DCAU...

An aged Bruce Wayne acts as Terry's Mission Control for the whole series.

Yes, I know. I watched that series religiously.
And that's true...
Except in the comics set in the future after Damian's introduction...
I dunno...
I just think Batman Beyond needs an extra generation between it and regular DC stuff at the very least.

edited 27th Jul '13 3:44:29 PM by Zeromaeus

I see no reason to complicate matters further. Or acknowledge Damian Wayne's existence.

Why do people hate him so much? I really don't get it.

edited 27th Jul '13 4:57:31 PM by Zeromaeus

I watched all 3 seasons of Batman Beyond and have absolutely no clue who Damian Wayne is supposed to be.

Anyway, if he's some guy from the Batman Beyond comics, this movie should adapt the TV show, not the obscure comics. When people here "Batman Beyond" they think of the show, and Old Brucey is one of the most important characters and elements of that show.

edited 27th Jul '13 5:22:04 PM by somerandomdude

Damian Wayne is Bruce Wayne's son. It just serves to make Beyond happen later. You know, making the technological leap a little easier to believe.

I think they should bother to introduce and establish Young Damian before jumping into Old Damian. And that only should be done AFTER the next series of Batman movies establishes at least one previous Robin (we know they'll always start with Dick) AND after they introduce another twist on Talia, one more believable as the mother of Bruce's child than Nolan's version.

So yeah, jumping to Old Damian would be too bothersome and bound to confuse non-geek audiences.

The fact is though that Old!Bruce is one of the most important characters of the show. You know, like what everyone thinks of when they hear Batman Beyond. You could just set the series later and leave that unchanged and avoid the whole fiasco with Damian.

At any rate, aside from a few gimmicky things like Flying Cars, most of the tech in Beyond is actually pretty feasible, especially since the real crazy futuristic stuff is said to be cutting-edge and developmental In-Universe.

On the other hand, the one thing that made me happy that DC was making a Batman Beyond comic (back when I was under the impression they were setting the future in stone, which with Damien's death is unlikely), is that Mission Control was Damien instead of Bruce.

Bruce doesn't really fit "obsessed with the mission and detached from his loved ones so much that he ends up bitter and alone, with nothing " as well as people seem to think he does, and in the comics it would require a lot of people being pushed to a point where they would act intensely out of character in order for it to happen. It makes more sense for it to be Damien, since in his brief time as Robin he showed that kind of sentiment quite a bit.

Even as a kid I remember being annoyed that Old Bruce was based off of the exaggerated Bats from The New Batman Adventures as apposed to his more three dimensional characterization from Batman The Animated Series, though at least Beyond treated his character with a lot more depth (and Justice League later saved his character altogether).

Granted, the Beyond movie seems to make a good point of having Tim Drake's misfortune as one of the things that further broke Bruce into an embittered loner, and before that, it had been Dick Grayson leaving, so the shift was justified in-universe.

Casual gene splicing.

Anyway, the change would just be a name and a time jump, really. They wouldn't even need to call him Damian. Just Mr Wayne. It doesn't need any extra explaining. You'd still have the gruff, cynical, former Batman from him. Terry wouldn't have to change at all and neither would his relationship with his mentor.

I don't see whats so confusing about it.

And frankly, I can see Damian acting like Old!Wayne moreso than even Bruce. It fits incredibly well.

edited 27th Jul '13 7:48:06 PM by Zeromaeus

Who would want Damian over the genuine article?

I do think that Beyond justified it a lot better than TNBA did (in TNBA, Dick left because of the changes in Bruce's character, without the series actually explaining why those changes took place).

It's why I really like Beyond, even if it annoyed me as a kid - and the movie especially shows Bruce as a person who was broken by events but couldn't completely deal with it emotionally. But using TNBA as a base still hurt it a bit, I think.

edited 27th Jul '13 7:51:22 PM by KnownUnknown

If you aren't even calling him Damian or making clear he's Damian, why to make him Damian at all? The general audiences won't get it anyway and you'll only be incensing the fanbase over the rather pointless change. At least the comics had a purpose for it, but they had the luxury of a lot of previously set backstory.

That might be a problem with a Batman Beyond movie in general. You need to introduce the concept of Batman first, and let us get to know the man under the mask enough for us to care that he's an old man. At least one previous movie, maybe two.

Hey, if they were doing it in the Nolanverse, it could be Blake. Wouldn't that be funny?

edited 27th Jul '13 7:54:33 PM by KnownUnknown

I made an exception for gimmicky things. That's pretty gimmicky.

At any rate, changing one of the most important characters in the show, who everyone recognizes, into an obscure guy from a spinoff, is a...questionable decision at best.

What's the point of setting it in the future if you aren't going to use what is supposed to be the future of the DC world?
Comics aren't static.
What was the future of DC when Batman Beyond started wasn't the same future when Damian showed up.
Batman doesn't end with Bruce now and sticking to the DCAU's story would actually be limiting what they can do with the Batman properties.
Tim Drake has no future in the DCAU. There is no Red Robin.
Nightwing did not become Batman.
Why restrict it that way?

Of course, I argue this knowing that, currently, Damian is dead. I still can't fathom why they decided to do that and I genuinely believe it wont stick.

He's not an obscure character form a spin-off. He's Bruce's son. He was Robin for a while. He was a headline character.
Why do people seem to ignore any Robin that isn't Dick Grayson or Tim Drake?
Jason Todd wasn't even acknowledged for the most part until he came back as the Red Hood...

edited 27th Jul '13 8:02:13 PM by Zeromaeus

He's not an obscure character form a spin-off.

For the average Joe Public movie-watcher? Yes, yes, he is. That audience doesn't have the slightest idea of who is Damian Wayne. He definitely needs a proper introduction to the big audiences before anything can be done with his future self. One step at a time or you'll stumble.

edited 27th Jul '13 8:38:26 PM by NapoleonDeCheese

"Spin-off" is still highly inaccurate, though.

I'd assume introducing Damian would be kind of like introducing Blake, except it'd probably take a few more movies to work the movie universe enough to introduce him in the first place.

edited 27th Jul '13 8:51:03 PM by KnownUnknown

Well, I did specify "For the average Joe Public movie-watcher" and their perceptions.

A big problem with introducing Damian is he needs being younger than the other Robins. Dick, Jason and Tim can be aged up to more convenient ages for a public scowling of child endangerment, but you can't have a much older Damian without making Bruce himself much older too.

edited 27th Jul '13 8:54:55 PM by NapoleonDeCheese

Or you can introduce his future self first and go backwards. Its not that big of a deal...
Its a direction that actually never requires Damian to be seen as Batman or Robin, so if they never get to that point it doesn't matter. There is the implication, however, that time continued and things kept going even after what we explicitly saw.

Really, introducing him is no greater challenge than introducing any character. Its easier, actually. If you go into the details, you just have to state that he's the son of Bruce Wayne. Boom. Connection made. Timeframe set. Audience stops asking questions. Its in the future, so being a generation down would be accepted pretty easily.

Bruce would probably be dead in this scenario...

edited 27th Jul '13 9:00:15 PM by Zeromaeus

... Nope, too complicated when, from a business viewpoint, it's far more logical and less risky to just go with the much more profitable bigger name the whole franchise is modeled after, just to favor a much more obscure character instead, and with such a vague setup to boot. Don't kid yourself. I see your favoritism for the character is showing up, but your approach is too impractical for something as big and gambling as a major motion picture. You're still thinking from the comics viewpoint.

The Birds Of Prey TV show, on a much smaller and less risky level, tried the same thing with Huntress and Bruce and Selina's daughter, and it bombed big-time. Granted, the lack of quality of the show itself played a big part too, but still.

edited 27th Jul '13 9:08:34 PM by NapoleonDeCheese

Its less favoritism and more of a "go big or go home" mentality. If you have the pieces, use them, or don't even try. I don't think a Batman Beyond movie is even a particularly good idea, really. It'd be hard to capture what you would need to even in a long running time. If they want to do it, though, they should go all out. Give people a taste of what Gotham, what DC, is like in the future. Why stop at, what, forty or fifty years in the future? Double that. Make it the FUTURE. Not just five minutes into it. You can do all of that, all of it, without sacrificing the core aspects of the original series.

I know, from a business standpoint, its a risk. Too big of a risk. especially for DC. If it were a Marvel movie? Why the hell not? Warner Brothers haven't proven themselves to be able to print money like Marvel Studios has. Which, again, makes me question the choice to adapt Batman beyond in the first place.

Actually... if we're talking about favoritism, then the movie being considered would be a live action adaptation of Under the Red Hood. Also, Beware the Batman would be about Nightwing and would be called something along the lines of Nightwing: Streets of Bludhaven (or something else somebody that's better at naming things would come up with). Dick Grayson and Jason Todd are my favorite members of the Bat-family by a pretty wide margin. I'd then go Bruce, Barbara (as Oracle), Cassandra, Damian, Tim, Ace, the rest of 'em. The list really drops off after Tim.

edited 27th Jul '13 9:37:20 PM by Zeromaeus