"If you look at what Tim Burton did, it's very specific world created with a Gothic vision that's consistent with Batman," Nolan once said. "But, what I felt I hadn't seen was in the comics which was Gotham as an ordinary world a place in which we could live. And so, when Gotham sees Batman he's as extraordinary as he would be in our world." That's the rationale under which Nolan set his Batman in a realistic world, and you can totally see that as a direct line from the sixties show. Comic writer Grant Morrison has a theory that puts all of the varied iterations of Batman together, suggesting they can all exist beside each other. Campy Batman, grim and realistic Nolan Batman: they're one and the same. Adam West was around in the swinging sixties, which is why everything was psychedelic and colourful and stuff that's what the world was like back then. It was our own world. Christian Bale is in the modern day, so it's grittier. Now all you need is some out take where the Dark Knight is doing the Bat-Usi with Tom Hardy's Bane, and you've got a full house of influences that cannot be denied...
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
