That’s Gollum.” Everything I ever saw in my head was there. Because when he came on screen, I was like, “That’s it. I do wonder how many of them had the same reaction I did, though. I’m not saying anything profound here, thousands of people did. From about the age of six or seven, I’d had an image of what he’d look like. I’d felt like this one time before, watching the second Lord of the Rings movie, the first time I got a good look at Gollum. And anyway, by this point Tim Burton had already jumped on and off another Superman movie, and this was the direction they were going in with the costume for that. I mean, yes, the Christopher Reeve Superman movies had a fabric suit, but I first saw those after Batman, so the damage had already been done. But from Batman onward, I’d realized that was never what I was going to get.
It was a movie costume, and that was it.ĭeep down, I wanted fabric. You couldn’t look at it and suspend your disbelief. None of that stopped it from looking like a massive, impractical lump of molded rubber. That Batman suit is iconic, and proved that a man running around in giant bat ears didn’t have to look as silly in real life as you probably thought it would. From the very first time I watched Tim Burton’s Batman, actually. The main reason I didn’t say anything at the time, though, was because I think I’d been desensitized to what I didn’t like about it a long time ago.
