In An Era Of Legacy Sequels, ‘The Batman’ Is A Blockbuster Reboot

The Batman has earned another $8.465 million domestically on Wednesday, bringing its six-day cume to $164.071 million and its global cume to around $318 million. It’s still legging out, in terms of weekend-to-day six multipliers, on par with Captain Marvel and Man of Steel. A post-debut run like Man of Steel (2.27 x its $128 million debut) would get The Batman to around $305 million, which would be good enough on a $185 million budget. Yes, there is a certain irony in potentially identical earnings for The Batman and Man of Steel ($291 million domestic/$668 million worldwide) being seen as a success for the 2022 flick but a slight disappointment for the 2013 flick. To be fair, Man of Steel cost around $225 million and isn’t responsible for an entire cinematic universe. The Batman may become, by default, one of the few outright successful franchise reboots.

Prior to Tom Holland’s Spider-Man: Homecoming ($334 million domestic and $881 million in 2017), which had the luxury of being part of the ongoing MCU and had Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man in a co-starring role, Henry Cavill’s Man of Steel was essentially the biggest-grossing straight-up reboot ever in North America. Thanks to the success of Batman Begins in 2005, and especially the $1 billion-plus triumph of The Dark Knight in 2008, Sony rebooted their already-successful Toby Maguire-led Spider-Man franchise with what would become Andrew Garfield’s The Amazing Spider-Man in summer 2012. However, while that development opened the floodgates for every studio to arbitrarily reboot every vaguely popular or previously successful IP, most reboots haven’t been terribly successful. Even the ones that succeeded only did so for a brief period of time. The notion of a successful franchise reboot has mostly been a mirage.

The Amazing Spider-Man had one decently-performing installment ($264 million domestic and $765 million worldwide on a too-expensive $235 million budget) before crashing to earth with The Amazing Spider-Man 2 ($202 million/$709 million on a $255 million budget). Chris Nolan’s Christian Bale-starring origin story earned just $205 million domestic and $371 million worldwide on a $150 million budget. We only got The Dark Knight because Batman Begins had rave reviews, strong legs and a healthy post-theatrical (DVD, cable, etc.) afterlife. Paramount thought they had a winner with J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek, and the reboot did earn $256 million domestic in summer 2009. But the $150 million movie “only” earned $385 million worldwide and Star Trek Into Darkness only earned $229 million domestic and $487 million worldwide in 2013 on a $190 million budget. Star Trek Beyond bombed in 2016 with $338 million on a $185 million budget.

Sony’s attempts to reboot Ghostbusters (with the $144 million-budgeted Answer the Call) earned just $229 million worldwide, while reboots disguised as sequels like Men in Black International, Girl in the Spider’s Web and Charlie’s Angels stumbled and outright remakes like Robocop and Total Recall failed to spawn franchises. Even the deluge of 2000’s-era horror remakes didn’t quite work out as franchise-builders. Even if they worked once (The Hills Have Eyes, Halloween, Friday the 13th, Nightmare On Elm Street, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, etc.), the sequels either didn’t materialize or underwhelmed. None of them made it to “part three.” Ditto recent remakes of Child’s Play, Poltergeist, Point Break and Flatliners. Russell Crowe’s Robin Hood and Taron Egerton’s Robin Hood both stumbled in 2010 and 2018, and Universal killed an entire Dark Universe with a mediocre reboot of The Mummy. Even Tom Cruise couldn’t make that mediocre reboot fly.

Complicated discourse notwithstanding, Snyder, Nolan and David Goyer’s Man of Steel did not launch a successful Superman series and only kinda-sorta launched what we now know as the DC Films universe. If the Superman story is a Moses parable (Snyder’s film is even a skewed version of Exodus where “Moses” sides with the Egyptians against “God”), then perhaps Superman died prematurely before he could see his DC brethren (Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Shazam, and now Batman) reach the promised land. There are exceptions, of course. Sony’s Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle was a reboot disguised as a sequel which earned $962 million and turned a decades-old B-level hit into an A-level franchise. The one unmitigated reboot success remains the 007 series, which notched five massively successful ($3.965 billion worldwide) Daniel Craig-starring installments. It’s a rare reboot that left it franchise in better shape then it found it.

There is a great irony in Hollywood’s reboot obsession being predicated on Chris Nolan’s acclaimed Dark Knight films (which only went into hyper drive after the sequel and intentionally existed as a stand-alone trilogy) and Marc Webb’s Amazing Spider-Man films (which absolutely failed to replicate the success of Sam Raimi’s groundbreaking/trendsetting $2.5 billion-grossing trilogy or become the next Dark Knight/Avengers-type breakout). The real success story has been found in legacy sequels like (among others) Creed, The Force Awakens, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. These are loose remakes of the first films which combined franchise vets with younger, more inclusive/diverse protagonists which straddled the line between appealing to new viewers and not pissing off the older, nostalgia-driven fan bases. Sure, Terminator: Dark Fate and Independence Day: Resurgence fumbled the ball, but Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Halloween rejuvenated seemingly dead IP.

That’s what makes The Batman pretty damn unique. The Batman is a total clean slate restart, sans even the kind of loose connective tissue offered to the likes of Deadpool (which contains the same actor who played the role in X-Men Origins Wolverine and exists within that franchise’s loose continuity) and Star Trek (which used time-travel hijinks to create a new continuity without invalidating the previous one). It didn’t even exist within the DC Films continuity, although oddly that may have been as much of a selling point to certain demographics as was Homecoming’s inclusion in the MCU. It’s just “another Batman movie,” complete with villains we’ve seen before, story beats we’ve seen before and frankly a general tone/sensibility not far off from Nolan’s groundbreaking trilogy. It again makes me wonder out loud if Amazing Spider-Man might have worked if it were cheaper and less continuity-obsessed.

Batman is among the more popular marquee characters on the planet, and we can debate to what extent viewer dissatisfaction with Batman v Superman and Justice League did anywhere near the damage done by Batman & Robin seven years prior to Batman Begins. Just as Casino Royale rebooted the James Bond films after Die Another Day set franchise-specific records ($160 million domestic and $437 million worldwide in 2002) and Amazing Spider-Man came about after Spider-Man 3 earned $890 million in 2007. Maybe a solo Batman movie was always going to be a relative mega-hit no matter the circumstances. We’ll see where The Batman ends up in comparison (inflation aside for now) to Casino Royale, Spider-Man: Homecoming and Man of Steel. Whether it ends up closer worldwide to Man of Steel or Spider-Man: Homecoming, The Batman is an all-too rare example of a successful franchise reboot.