The Dynamic Duo Robin Movie Means DC Is Ready to Take on Batman’s Biggest Problem
With the new movie Dynamic Duo, DC is finally ready to reteam Batman and Robin. Here's why this is a very good thing.
For his past few cinematic adventures, Batman has been a creature of the night, a solitary force against crime and corruption in Gotham City. In the new DCU movie universe, that is going to change.
According to an announcement from DC Studios co-president Robins: the original Dick Grayson and his first successor Jason Todd.
For years, Robin’s absence from recent Batman film entries has been a point of contention among fans. From Batman Begins onward, filmmakers have tended to present Batman as either grounded in reality or too dark and brooding to make space for a happy-go-lucky adolescent in bright red togs. In Batman v Superman, Zack Snyder even made a point to let the audience know that the Robin of the DCEU was dead, killed by Jared Leto’s Joker. And yet, Robin has been one of the most consistent parts of Batman lore, established even before Alfred and the Batcave.
Robin debuted in 1940’s Detective Comics #38, a creation for which Bob Kane takes credit, but more properly belongs to Jerry Robinson and Bill Finger. Kane wanted to give younger readers a surrogate character, and Robinson took the name and design from the Robin Hood stories he loved as a child. Finger built on the idea of Robin Hood’s merry men to make Batman’s sidekick a good-natured acrobat who becomes Bruce Wayne’s ward after the death of his own parents.
The plan worked. Robin helped boost Batman’s popularity and launched a wave of teen sidekicks. Teen Titans.
As enduring as it the idea was, many still thought teen sidekicks were a bridge too far. Psychiatrist Fredric Wertham famously saw something unseemly in the close bond between Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson. The Boys.
Still, Batman has never been long without his Robin, at least in the comics. The movies have been another story. Sure, Douglas Croft and Johnny Duncan portrayed the character in 1940s serials, Burt Ward brought his small-screen version to theaters in 1966’s Batman, and Chris O’Donnell tried to do a bad boy rebel sidekick in Joseph Gordon Levitt‘s cop John Robin Blake.
It’s not too hard to see the reluctance to give a proper Robin to Batmen played by Colin Farrell‘s Penguin looked a little odd in their respective films.
The announcement for Dynamic Duo seems to have found a surprising solution. The movie will be directed by Arthur Mintz who, along with his wife Theresa Andersson, operate Swaybox Animation. “Swaybox uses a technology known as “Momo animation,” which is a cross between CGI animation, practical elements of stop-motion, and live-action real-time performance,” Deadline reports. “The result is long-form storytelling billed as visually breathtaking, dynamically expressive and more human.”
Instead of running from the goofier aspects of Robin, Dynamic Duo seems to be embracing them, using them to tell a very different type of Batman story from those we’ve seen so far. James Gunn and Peter Safran have been very upfront about the fact that everything from their DC Studios tenure will be interconnected, even across media. So even if Batman isn’t a major part of Dynamic Duo, it will relate to the new era’s first proper Batman picture, The Brave and the Bold, directed by Andy Muschietti and featuring the Damien Wayne Robin.
Through animation and puppetry, Dynamic Duo will finally give Batman his partner, ignoring the weirdness and embracing one of the most important team-ups in comics history.
DC Studios has not yet set a release date for Dynamic Duo.
Written by
Joe George’s writing has appeared at Slate, Polygon, Tor.com, and elsewhere!