As stories go through infinite rewrites, creators find the elements of the narrative that stand out, change the tone, and become fan-favorites. When it comes to adaptation, the same lesson can only be learned so many times before it becomes common knowledge and starts affecting what comes out.
The Batmanis a certified hit, and by all accounts, an excellent entry in the character’s long history. People seem to love Matt Reeves' take on Gotham City and its Caped Crusader, so it’s only natural that fans would be awaiting more. But the first piece ofThe Batmanspin-off content just underwent a huge change.
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Matt Reeves recently revealed that the series which was originally meant to focus on theGotham City Police Department has shifted dramatically. Rather than centering in on the cops that patrol the street or Commissioner Gordon, the new series is set to focus on Arkham Asylum. The iconic location has been home to one of the best-loved video games in superhero media history, but its presence in the movies has been very limited. The most focus it’s received on the big screen probably came inBatman Begins, where Scarecrow used the facility to carry out his experiments. It’s appeared in several films, but typically just for a moment or two. It entered the comics in 1974, but it was originallycreated by H. P. Lovecraft. The locale was renamed inThe Batman,now referred to as Arkham State Hospital, but it’s the same old Arkham.
The first obvious guess as to why the GCPD spin-off has changed is that the idea has been done before.Gothamran for five seasons, spanning from a ground-level perspective on police corruption to large-scale invasions by supervillains. While it got distracted and wandered off throughout most of the later seasons,Gothamwas a series about the GCPD, set in a new take on the city unrelated to any other film universe. Of course, Matt Reeves' take would vary in a number of large ways.Every take on Gotham Cityhas been radically different, so it wouldn’t likely feel like a retread. The idea has been done before, but originality isn’t the only reason to move the focus of the series.
The real reason to focus on Arkham State Hospital is to build the central narrative around the most beloved and well-received aspect of the Batman mythos;his rogues gallery. The villains are always the draw of Batman stories. When a new narrative in the franchise is brought up, the first question on everyone’s mind is “who will Batman be facing off against this time?”. The hero of the tale has a little wiggle room to change, but the villains are completely untethered from any form of continuity. There are three Jokers running around officially licensed DC films these days, each only tied to each other by similar tastes in clothing and face paint. Crafting an entire series around Arkham is a genius method of showing off Matt Reeves' new takes on fan-favorite villains and creating a new tone.
The upcoming Arkham series is slated to be a horror show, far removed from the stirring superhero action ofThe Batmanor the absurdist police procedural ofGotham. The idea of a full horror series surrounding some of the best-known villains in fictional history is a clever way of fixing a problem that almost always surrounds the series. Batman villains can be whimsical, funny, likable, hateable, and even occasionally morally justifiable, but they’ve had a fair amount of trouble being scary.
On their own, Heath Ledger’s Jokeror Paul Dano’s Riddleris an immensely menacing nightmare while still remaining unnervingly human, but all that fear drains the moment Batman shows up. At the end of the day, Batman villains exist primarily to provide a challenge for the Caped Crusader to be tested against, and he will always win in the end. There can be no better way to resolve that problem than to simply remove Batman, and build a series around regular people pitted against the darkest beings the human race has to offer.
While any spin-off from Matt Reeves' hit film will likely be a big deal, focusing on the beloved villains and making the tone even darker is a clever way of ensuring that it’s original and exciting. It’s a natural shift for a film that centered its marketing so heavily on its villains. The other big spin-off of the film is set to focus entirelyon Colin Farrell’s Penguin, making both of the proposed follow-ups bad guy stories. Arkham State Hospital is a brilliant setting for a series designed to show viewers the darkest parts of Reeves' already pitch-black take on Gotham. Cleverly centering in on the most popular, and often the best-executed, part of Batman’s mythos is a good way to move this hit franchise further.
