FA+
Shop
325
Views
Views
6
Favorites
Favorites
Category
All / All
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 1000 x 719
File Size 371.2 kB
Report this content
More from Saara
At present these are the only large scale die-cast models of the various Batmobiles. From left to right are the Tim Burton Batmobile -- the best of all, in my opinion. It was dark, it was sleek, it was sinister. And it managed to stay just this side of believability. (It was never given the ability to fire a grapell and haul itself up the side of a building at high speed. It took Joel Schumacher, and a Batmobile that looked like a Nike running shoe to think up that atrocity.)
Second is the TV series Batmobile, from the 60's. A close second for styling, but with special effects that were downright laughable. The little gold X-shaped areal just in front of the bubble windshields, for instance. It rose up about a foot and supposedly aimed a laser beam. Clearly it was just a doo-dad that had this function assigned to it because nothing else on the car looked remotely like a laser. Another of its more foolish gimmacks was the three organ pipes behind the bubble windscreens. Apparentl nobody could think of anything for them too do, so for one episode they were shown shooting fireworks as a sort of over-ramunctious theft alarm! But you have to give it marks for style!
Batmobile number three is the pseudo-military vehicle from the recent films. It's ugly and looks like a flint-axe head, but we live in an era where nothing is taken seriously unless it has been field tested in Iraq. This Batmobile is clearly a super-Hummer painted black. Nevertheless, it has is silly side as much as the other two... For one thing, it's jet assisted, so it can leap minor obstacles such as fifty foot gaps between Gotham City skyscrapers... and possibly the Straits of Hormuz. Worse, to fire the canon mounted somewhere in the nose of the vehicle, your seat folds down and thrusts you into the thin projection between the front wheels, where there is a tiny window. Apparently it was thought to be a better position to aim from. And one hopes an automatic pilot kicks in while both hands are four feet from the wheel. But even that pales besides the emergency escape. It seems the driver's seat is also the seat of a motorcycle somehow tucked inside the car, which also shares one of the front two tires. Really? I can see how that would be useful after taking a round from a T-72, assuming such a procedure could be done safely at high speed in desert sand.
But I guess Batmobiles aren't about practicallity. They're about style and make-believe. They're an extention of the Batman himself, that can cope with any situation and come up Simonized. On the other hand... Batmobiles have shown a disturbing habit of getting destroyed of late. The Schumaker Batman carelessly lost two, and now Christian Bales has lost his. Is it all part of the gradual deterioration of Batman into an anti-hero? Probably.
The final Batmobile is 1/24 rather than 1/18. It's a generic model that dates from after the 1966 TV series and appeared in DC comics. Every artist drew it just a little differently, so there is no definitive model. There are two or three others in this scale, by different model companies, all more or less the same but for detail. There are a number of 1/43 and 1/64 Batmobiles as well, not photographed.
And that's only from the last ten years. There were quite a few others way back when...
Second is the TV series Batmobile, from the 60's. A close second for styling, but with special effects that were downright laughable. The little gold X-shaped areal just in front of the bubble windshields, for instance. It rose up about a foot and supposedly aimed a laser beam. Clearly it was just a doo-dad that had this function assigned to it because nothing else on the car looked remotely like a laser. Another of its more foolish gimmacks was the three organ pipes behind the bubble windscreens. Apparentl nobody could think of anything for them too do, so for one episode they were shown shooting fireworks as a sort of over-ramunctious theft alarm! But you have to give it marks for style!
Batmobile number three is the pseudo-military vehicle from the recent films. It's ugly and looks like a flint-axe head, but we live in an era where nothing is taken seriously unless it has been field tested in Iraq. This Batmobile is clearly a super-Hummer painted black. Nevertheless, it has is silly side as much as the other two... For one thing, it's jet assisted, so it can leap minor obstacles such as fifty foot gaps between Gotham City skyscrapers... and possibly the Straits of Hormuz. Worse, to fire the canon mounted somewhere in the nose of the vehicle, your seat folds down and thrusts you into the thin projection between the front wheels, where there is a tiny window. Apparently it was thought to be a better position to aim from. And one hopes an automatic pilot kicks in while both hands are four feet from the wheel. But even that pales besides the emergency escape. It seems the driver's seat is also the seat of a motorcycle somehow tucked inside the car, which also shares one of the front two tires. Really? I can see how that would be useful after taking a round from a T-72, assuming such a procedure could be done safely at high speed in desert sand.
But I guess Batmobiles aren't about practicallity. They're about style and make-believe. They're an extention of the Batman himself, that can cope with any situation and come up Simonized. On the other hand... Batmobiles have shown a disturbing habit of getting destroyed of late. The Schumaker Batman carelessly lost two, and now Christian Bales has lost his. Is it all part of the gradual deterioration of Batman into an anti-hero? Probably.
The final Batmobile is 1/24 rather than 1/18. It's a generic model that dates from after the 1966 TV series and appeared in DC comics. Every artist drew it just a little differently, so there is no definitive model. There are two or three others in this scale, by different model companies, all more or less the same but for detail. There are a number of 1/43 and 1/64 Batmobiles as well, not photographed.
And that's only from the last ten years. There were quite a few others way back when...
Category All / All
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 1000 x 719px
File Size 371.2 kB
Oh, I'm so glad to hear that! My memory has grown a bit dim I guess. But I do recall he had the outer sponsons separate so that the inner frame became the "Bat Torpedo" or something like that. It could work... but its still a bit of a stretcher.
Think I'll tinker with the text with the photo, though, and correc that.
Think I'll tinker with the text with the photo, though, and correc that.
Thank you, I hate it when people associate that TRASH with Tim's brilliant work. As for the "Bat Pod" as I called it, it made a BIT of sense, though it was only used once and totally screwed over the Batmobile. That's why he uses the Hydrofoil in the end of the movie. I personally think they should let the Batman movies end, they started to suck HARD when they did Batman Forever. Though, Jim Carrey as the Riddler, pure genius.
I have a theory about why they let the Batman movies go on, and stink up the theater. Doubltess a lot of people went to see number three because the first two were good. Those people were horribly disappointed, but the box office numbers were high and mislead the studio to think they had another hit. So they made number four, and found out that people had actually hated number three.
Anyway, I agree that Carey made a fascinating Riddler. Not as good, I think, as the one in the animated series of the 90's, who had dignity and a certain ambivalence (most villains in that serties did, and it was all to the good).
I thoroughly enjoyed Schwartzenegger hamming up Mr. Freeze in the final film, though he should never have had the part, and the director shot for even thinking of it. Amusing though Arnie was, Mr. Freeze wasn't supposed to be a commedian. In fact, for somone who supposedly had no feelings, he certainl chewed the rug, and enjoyed a good joke. Where that Mr. Freeze belonged was in a Leslie Nielson comedy, where he would have played against some comic superhero beuatifully.
I'm not a big fan of the new, Christian Bales Batman. He's bland and an angry asshole at the same time. In the first movie he was a copy-cat ninja fighter, which was worse. Bad as that film was, if you cut out the entire first 45 minutes, it would be muchly improved. Now Batman is second fiddle to The Joker, and the whole film little more than a costume-episode of Die Hard, or some other urban violence movie. Yes... the franchise probably should have died with B2.
Anyway, I agree that Carey made a fascinating Riddler. Not as good, I think, as the one in the animated series of the 90's, who had dignity and a certain ambivalence (most villains in that serties did, and it was all to the good).
I thoroughly enjoyed Schwartzenegger hamming up Mr. Freeze in the final film, though he should never have had the part, and the director shot for even thinking of it. Amusing though Arnie was, Mr. Freeze wasn't supposed to be a commedian. In fact, for somone who supposedly had no feelings, he certainl chewed the rug, and enjoyed a good joke. Where that Mr. Freeze belonged was in a Leslie Nielson comedy, where he would have played against some comic superhero beuatifully.
I'm not a big fan of the new, Christian Bales Batman. He's bland and an angry asshole at the same time. In the first movie he was a copy-cat ninja fighter, which was worse. Bad as that film was, if you cut out the entire first 45 minutes, it would be muchly improved. Now Batman is second fiddle to The Joker, and the whole film little more than a costume-episode of Die Hard, or some other urban violence movie. Yes... the franchise probably should have died with B2.
Comments