Batman, Batman, Batman? or: Would I follow Richard Armitage to another comic book role?

I’d collected some of the links to other bloggers’ comments on Batman for Legenda — check them out:

• Visual proof that Armitage has the stuff!
• Armitage as Batman, Uch!
• Armitage, Batman and Roman virtue
• Obsessive Behavior still prefers Matthew Clairmont.
• ItsJSforMe remembers Lucas North’s typo problems.
• Grati’s got a signature for Batman Rises Again.
• The Arkenstone points us to a poll.

And I am sure there are more … so don’t hesitate to put your favorite ones in the comments. Or your own blog’s post — it’s been a chaotic week and I’m sure I’ve inadvertently deleted stuff.

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John Standring (Richard Armitage) helps Carol Boulton (Sarah Smart) clean up the mess in her father’s house, in episode 2 of Sparkhouse. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com

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I wasn’t going to comment myself on this particular moment of hype — and so far, it really seems to be only or mostly hype from my perspective — but in a way, I think you can probably guess what I’d say if you’ve been reading this blog very long. For almost every position I can mention, I’ve already written a post.

In a way, what I feel about Batman offers the natural conclusion to what I’d wanted to say about my reaction to Star Trek: Into Darkness before the discussion got so heated. (It also applies to my reaction to Armitage playing Matthew Clairmont, if that should happen, despite my lack of interest in that role for him, and to the possibility that he would play Richard III, which I would love to see him do.) I’ve been on record since the Fall of 2010 as agnostic with regard to roles — Armitage should do what Armitage wants. (So please don’t comment that I’m prescribing; I’m not. I never have. Any conditions on my Armitage love are not inherently or necessarily dependent on roles he takes.) I don’t really believe that any role is inherently better than any other based on the cultural importance of the role. If he does get Batman, of course, we’ll all have been part of the hype, something that used to drive me crazy but to which I’ve learned to turn a blind eye or occasionally be amused by in the meantime. (There’ll be more stuff to buy, of course.) There are still all the problems for Armitage of any franchise as the source of potentially disappointing scripts, of course.

Which isn’t to say I don’t have fears … but they’re not about the popular nature of Batman or the question of how the role would shape Richard Armitage’s career.

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Before Armitagemania, if you’d said I’d have something to learn from a shoot ’em up about a washed up SAS operative, I’d have told you you were crazy. Or from a manipulative spy … or a fantasy dwarf … or socially challenged Yorkshire farmer wannabe … or a nineteenth-century manufacturer … or a leather-clad pantomime villain from an anachronistic medieval castle …

But that’s been the case, nonetheless. Every single time.

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This is the issue for me: I’m an Armitage fan because when Armitagemania smacked me across the face, it happened because of how the role of Mr. Thornton intersected with my concrete problems and the way that Armitage’s acting in that role first attracted me, and then made me think about my own life. Because that work made me write again, woke me up. Gave me things back that I had forgotten about. Kept me writing, kept me thinking, got my life going again.

And I stuck with Armitage because that kept happening. Against the odds, again and again and again, as I watched a tv show I’d never have considered spending time on before then, I found something in those roles that taught me something about my own life.

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Again and again and again I find those things. Sometimes after watching a piece of his work for the n-dozenth time. Sometimes when I see the right moment of his oeuvre at the right moment of my life.

I experience crazy synchronicities with Armitage’s work and what I learn about Armitage the person.

So if I have any fears about Batman, they’re only about the possibility that nothing in that story has further resonances or life lessons for me.

But I don’t know the Batman story beyond extreme superficiality. I know much less about Batman than I did about Thorin, and look how that worked out.

At the same time, see above. It’s not about the role.

It is something about the actor who’s choosing the roles, his tendency to pick up on archetypes and his emotional visualizations.

And it’s about me. About my needs and their intersection with the way that Armitage’s artistry looks at and mediates the world in light of the questions I’m asking.

I clearly can’t tell that in advance. It’s part of why it’s hard for me to get too excited about future projects before I see much of them (and why I’ve been quiet about Black Sky).

But I know that Armitagemania will be done only when the man and his work stop speaking to me. Even then, I suspect, he’ll always remain in my heart and my interests as someone who helped me understand so much about the world, as my “technician of the human condition” (to mention something UK Expat’s quoted a few times).

And none of the questions about Batman are ones I can answer purely with reference to my own preferences about roles. I’ve already learned that I don’t know where the lessons are coming from. Batman could be another instance of that. If Armitage’s work in that role is as good as I am sure it will be, if that role syncs with what’s going on in my life — and most of all, if I am ready to go there with him.

So, Batman — sure. Why not?

Teach me something more, Mr. Armitage. Please.

~ by Servetus on August 7, 2013.