In honour of the Batmobile being revealed in Vegas at the Licensing Expo; I thought I’d share the top three things I want to see from Ben Affleck’s Batman.

#1 More Wonder!

You have to applaud what Christopher Nolan did to (and for) Batman. He took the spectacle and scale of Gotham’s Caped Crusader and filtered it through a sieve of realism. The resulting product was a dark, gritty, no muss, no fuss kind of hero. Which worked really well but Zack Snyder and Ben Affleck can’t look to replicate Nolan’s interpretation of Batman – they need to go their own way. I think a great way to do this is to insert some of the wonder of the comic books back into the hero. Everytime someone sees Batman in The Dark Knight Trilogy, they immediately know he’s a man in a batsuit; whereas, in the comic books, anytime someone sees Batman they think he’s some sort of supernatural being, a creature with razor sharp claws and wings. This is because he doesn’t move like a normal man and he seems to be able to disappear at will like a shadow. We’ve had a Batman completely grounded in reality, now let’s have one who’s a little bit more wondrous.

#2 A new fighting style!

There is no greater need for wonder than in Batman’s fighting style. If I had to pick two huge weaknesses The Dark Knight Trilogy had, they would be 1. how boring it was watching Batman fight and 2. the poor quality in the editing of fight scenes. I was watching a behind-the-scenes special where Nolan described what he wanted Batman’s fighting style to be and how he choose to film in. He wanted the fighting style to be as pragmatic as possible and not overly choreographed – he didn’t want to see Batman doing a double backflip into a kick when a punch would do. He also chose to edit the fight scenes in a very quick-choppy kind of way to suggest the speed of Batman. I understand his vision but it just didn’t work. The only fight scene that I truly enjoyed watching was in The Dark Knight Rises when Bane breaks Batman and that was mostly due to Bane taunting Batman rather than the actual fighting. So I want to see a Batman with a more elaborate fighting style. Throw in a flip, a spinning kick, the man is a ninja, show us that.

#3 GADGETS!!!

I don’t know whether Batman and James Bond had a meeting and decided that they’re not going to use gadgets anymore in their films or whether some court passed a law banning gadgets in films but either way, they’ve been severely lacking. I mean, you can count the number of times Batman throws a batarang in The Dark Knight Trilogy on one hand!  I think this worked because Nolan’s Batman was more of a detective than a superhero; but the world that Zack Snyder is creating and the villains that Batman is going to be fighting are going to need him to be kitted up with the very best technology. Even just to fight Superman, he’s going to need a robotic suit; what about when Doomsday, Sinestro and Darkseid come into the picture? I love Batman but a EMP gun and a bunch of computers that turn people’s phones into microphones isn’t going to cut it.

Well that’s what I want to see in the new Batman. Is there anything I missed? Anything you disagree with? Leave a comment below.