Caffeinated Clint
Several of you have emailed over the past 24 hours asking why I haven’t ran the news about Robin (The Boy Wonder, as opposed to The Bee Gee) featuring in “The Dark Knight Rises” (Chris Nolan’s next “Batman” movie, due 2012) ? And the answer is : Quite frankly, I don’t believe it’s news – I believe it’s more a Chinese whisper gone wrong that’s hitched a ride with a speculative guestimate. And it ain’t gonna happen.
To save you the trouble of opening another window, here’s what station WILX (run mostly by college kids and interns) reported a couple of days back. They wrote that location scouts had been checking out some possible filming locations at Grand Ledge – most notably, a cave.
“They looked at the Ledges as well as a water treatment plant located inside the park. Sources say the area is being considered as a hideout for Batman sidekick Robin.”
Yes, “Dark Knight Rises” is filming in the Michigan area, but what of this ‘Robin’ talk?
“Totally unfounded” a very reliable contact tells me (over MySpace; remember that place!?), “[Robin] won’t be a part of the movie”.
Not surprised.
Firstly, location scouts slipping info to any-and-all about a big film like this? Ha! That just doesn’t happen. The actors themselves have to read the script for these things with guards surrounding them – there’s no taking the scripts home and more so, not even a hint as to what’s in them before that first read. No scout is going to drop a bombshell like ‘Oh yeah, and this is where we think Robin might live’ – it’s information that nobody but the studio, the producers and Nolan need to know. The lid is shut tight… believe me. Some know I run a PR firm; without naming names one of my client may have tested for this film – and he/she may have had to sign documents legally binding him/her to an agreement not to divulge anything about the film. More so, this person – despite reading – may not have even been informed what character they were testing for. Powers that be were afraid it would go out. Which it probably would. So again, nothing gets out.
Secondly, what is it that Nolan, writer David Goyer and Christian Bale have been saying since day one?
If Robin’s in, We’re out.
Christian Bale, for one, swears black and blue that he’d quit the series if Robin was introduced.
“If Robin crops up in one of the new Batman films, I’ll be chaining myself up somewhere and refusing to go to work.”
I know Robin/Dick Grayson has got his fans, and that’s fair enough, but I can also see where Bale, Nolan and company are coming from. Fact of the matter is Robin wasn’t an original part of the Batman story ; he was a teenage sidekick that was introduced later, to not only attract the kids but give them the impression that they too – if Mum was handy with a sewing machine – could be a crimefighter like young Dick.
Further on, when both Nolan and Bale have left, I’m sure the character will turn up… but not on the Brit filmmakers watch (Nolan says this is his last “Batman” film so whoever helms the next one is free to include the character).
More so, by adding Robin to “The Dark Knight Rises” Nolan’s cast of characters is expanded greatly.. And we all know how too many characters can ruin the broth. With Bane, Selina Kyle, Hugo Strange and the returning characters, there’s going to be more than enough peeps in the film as it is – last thing Nolan wants is for the concluding chapter of his superhero trilogy to resemble the concluding chapter of Sam Raimi’s.
So, sorry to disappoint the few of you that did an excited backflip when hearing the Robin news, but according to our contact Batman’s got a no Boy policy for the moment.
So tell me, should this rumour have been on the money, who wouldn’t have been opposed to seeing Robin in the film?
