IN 1989, THREE YEARS before I was born, my parents went to a theater and saw a new kind of movie. A superhero movie that was meant to be more than just a campy children's adventure. It was Tim Burton's "BATMAN". After watching they decided that if they were going to have kids, they didn't want them to be exposed to such violence and frightening images. When I was growing up as a child I wasn't allowed to watch Power Rangers, or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or Pokemon. They thought the mystics, and the cartoon action were strange and a bad influence.
But then one day, I couldn't have been older than five, my dad brought home one of the Batman movies from the video store, and I talked them into letting me watch it with them. I fell in love. The stories, the bizarre costumes and sets; the good guy using the dark against the darkness in the world. They knew they couldn't keep it from me. I still wasn't allowed to watch all the other things, but I was allowed Batman. I watched all of the movies, the cartoons, I had more Batman action figures than I can possibly remember. The first costume my parents ever bought me was a batman cowl and cape. It was a part of me.
There was a lull as a grew into my teens. I gave away the action figures, and I realized how corny the live action Batman movies that had been made were, and I sort of forgot about all of it for awhile. And then I saw a trailer for a new Batman movie. Batman Begins. I didn't get to see it in theaters, but when I finally saw it at home I fell in love all over again. It was so well made, it was so much exactly what I wanted Batman to be at the time. It started all over. I bought an action-model of the tumbler, I bought a Batman mask, I watched it over and over. When it was released that Nolan would be making a sequel I was absolutely ecstatic. And then the news hit: Heath Ledger, the man who be playing the role of Joker in a new Batman movie, had died. I didn't know who Heath Ledger was, and I thought it was weird that the person they were depicting (a young, attractive looking man) would play the twisted, Clown Prince of Crime. I wasn't sure what to expect at that point. Was the movie even finished? Then trailers released. The Joker's laugh gave me goosebumps. That was the longest wait I have ever experienced for the release of a movie. I remember finally standing in line for the midnight showing (the last real midnight showing I ever went to - movies start showing at 8pm even on the "premier night" these days) looking at a giant cardboard standee of Batman soaring overhead on the Batpod. The Dark Knight. The first Batman film to not have the word Batman in it. It was the first of a lot of things, really. I remember one of my friends saying "I don't think it's going to be good. Have you seen all of the trailers? They have to contain all of the action sequences already. I'm afraid we've already seen everything that's good about the movie."
Thirty minutes into the film he leaned over and whimpered "I was so wrong."
And that was the real moment, at the end of that movie, and throughout it, when I really, truly realized how much of an absolute fanboy I am when it comes to Batman. There is no beating it. There isn't possibly a better superhero that's ever been made.
As weird as it sounds, Batman has been a literal part of almost my entire life.
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