Recently I’ve been watching a lot of videos on the YouTube channel ‘Fact Fiend with Karl Smallwood’, a channel that sees Mr. Smallwood deep-dive into fascinating facts and trivia about whatever topic interests him, with a good portion of the videos being based on articles he wrote earlier in his career. It really is an awesome YouTube channel, and I personally will load it up when I’m doing off-stream gaming, and while there were many videos of Fact Fiend with Karl Smallwood that I found really fucking cool, the one that caught my attention was the one titled “Batman Really Does Carry Shark Repellent Spray’ which was posted in 2019 and based on article Mr. Smallwood wrote in 2015. The video was of course a deep-dive into the 1966 Batman film starring Adam West and the often-mocked scene of Batman using Shark repellent and actually having it at the ready in the Bat-chopper, but what got my attention was Mr. Smallwood’s comment about that version of Batman being the most accurate live-action portrayal of the character.And you know what, Mr. Smallwood is actually more right than anyone would actually believe here in 2020, after all most people view the likes of either the Tim Burton or Christopher Nolan films of being what a ‘live action’ Batman would be like. And if you’re talking about the actual tone of the film, I’d agree with you in the case of the Tim Burton films (as the Nolan films can fuck the right off), but when you think about the common trope of Batman being prepared for anything because he’s always several moves ahead, then the only live action version of the character that does that is the Adam West version.
So now of course comes the time for me to ‘prove my work’, well it’s easy, with the Batman 1966 film being a continuation of the television series that debuted that same year (how crazy is that fact), one must take note that television series didn’t open with an origin story. No the first episode “Hi Diddle Riddle’ shows that Batman has been operating for quite some time, already has a working relationship with the police and that he’s crossed paths with the Riddler before, but there is a scene in it towards the cliffhanger ending, where The Riddler tries to steal the Batmobile, but activates an anti-theft device. Now think about how the Batmobile looks in the 1966 TV series, it doesn’t have a roof and anyone would have easy access to try and steal it, then realize that the suped-up Batmobile in Batman Returns basically was hacked and sabotaged by the Penguin's clown brigade in Batman Returns. Add on to that, in that same scene, The Riddler tries to destroy the Batmobile, and activates an anti-fire device that puts out the flames. So Batman was prepared to make sure that his car was basically impossible to mess with.
And this is just the top of the iceberg as it relates to how prepared this version of Batman was. He had a translation device to translate ancient Egyptian into English, the Bat-chopper for obviously flying around the city, the Bat-boat for anything that required him to go out into open water, an unfold-able bulletproof Batshield… hell the 1966 series version of Batman is so-prepared that he even has a voice-modulator that enables Alfred to sound like him in case the butler has to done the Bat-suit for a brief period of time. Other items included a portable lab-kit, homing transmitters, lie-detectors, brain-wave analyzers, ear plugs, magnifying lens…. But the real sign of how prepared Batman in the 1966 series was a three-dimensional restorer.
Seen in the season three episode “The Entrancing Dr. Cassandra”, this device restores Batman, Robin and Batgirl back to the normal selves after they were flatten when blasted by a ray gun that converts three-dimensional objects into two-dimensional variants. Think about how over the top-prepared Batman had to be to have such a device on stand-by. Now you could say Batman thought of this based on the fact in the 1966 films he had a device to restore the United Nations ambassadors to normal and anticipated that maybe someone someday could make him into a literal cardboard cutout , still there’s being prepared… and there’s thinking up every possible problem imaginable to where you have a device at the ready to counteract it. Hell at this point I'm thinking it's this version of Batman that could pretty much prepare to deal with Superman and if you consider that Frank Miller 'Dark Knight Returns' is often credited for erasing the 'campy nature' of Batman popularized by the 1966 series, then one would have to make note that level of preparedness Batman showed in that comic was basically taken from the television series and its film.
Side note: One could argue that maybe the Batman seen in the 1997 Joel Schumacher directed ‘Batman and Robin’ film is probably a close second in terms of being as prepared as the 1966 version, but a lot of the gadgets seen in that movie come across more as they were created as a reaction to dealing with Mr. Freeze (as it’s established early in the movie he’s been an on-going menace). This version of Batman had ice-skates built into the boots and a portable heat laser to defrost Robin when he was frozen… and these seems like things Batman would have made after the first run-ins with the chilliest of villains. The only device I recall in that film that seems like Batman had the fore-site to plan for was a remote kill-switch to shut down the engine of Robin’s motorcycle because of how reckless his partner was being. And of course there is the Bat Credit Card, which makes sense that maybe Batman needed to get something he didn’t have already on hand (or wanted to buy a woman at an auction).
So let’s bring this rather long rant to a close, that in my opinion, the 1966 TV Series / Film version of Batman is the most-prepared live action representation of the character ever seen.
