BATMAN [Hardcover]

It's strange. You'd never guess that a book based on a screenplay could be any good, but you'd be wrong in this case.

Craig Shaw Gardner, my favorite movie-tie-in author, wrote this book, taking a good screenplay and turning it into a truly masterful, exciting, and touching book!

To start off with, the book has whole sections that were cut from the film, giving it more depth and character development. Hmmm.... character development.... there's a whole lot of it. The book truly gets inside the head of everyone, Batman, The Joker, Alexander Knox, Commisioner Gordon, and even Vicki Vale, and all have varied outlooks on the book's events. The Joker sees everything as hilarious, and twisted, Vicki's stressful situations are more developed, Knox is detailed as a hard-boiled reporter (Moreso then the film), Commisioner Gordon is very interesting, in the fact that he likes Batman, but is sworn to his duty to arrest the vigilante, and he's very dedicated and tough, and Batman/Bruce is incredibly written. The writing for Batman's mind is at it's best toward the end, when Batman tries to get up into the Cathedral, while trying not to faint from the wounds he got by crashing the Batwing, and he fades in and out of reality as he remembers the night he lost his parents.

I mean, the film is excellent, but the book is not to be missed. It's deep, profound, moving, and truly exciting in the way Gardner writes fight scenes. Fast and furious, but also surprisingly detailed. I've read this thing so many times that the pages are starting to fall out, and I am continually surprised at the quality of the book. A truly enjoyable read from start to finish.

If you're a fan in the least, you'll pick up this wonderful book!

Batman: The Novelization has found its merry way to the top of next semester's required reading. Mr. Shaw Gardner has slapped the pretentious out of me. The movie novelization has arrived.

Superior to the film in every which way but loose. Especially the ending. And to be honest Batman is a little more charming in prose than in rubbery long johns. And The Riddler or The Joker is quite the fiend. If I say so myself. I found my Halloween costume.

I can't wait to have my students write their beginning of term essays on Commissioner Gordon's spiritual insecurities.

Atomic Batteries to Kudos!

I'm someone who would rather re-read a book than re-watch a movie but this one just has some flaws that will likely make you sick of it by the time you get to the end.

PROS:
-The first half is pretty good, it holds your interest and it's not hard to get on board with the author (but when you get to the second half...).
-It reads at a really fast pace more often than not, which is probably its greatest strength. It can be fun to read a "fast" book and this is so readable that it will likely even appeal to people who usually don't read much, and to juveniles, and so on.
-There are a small handful of plot details that the book elaborates on that help answer some of the minor questions people may have had about the movie's storyline.

CONS:
-Things fall apart in the second half of the book because that's where the plot gets less believable and also where there are some CLEAR DIFFERENCES FROM THE MOVIE.
^^^Two new scenes stand out - one where a ski-mask wearing Bruce Wayne tries to chase down bad guys on a horse, and another where it is revealed the Joker has defaced a public statue while also contaminating all the coffee that the cops have been drinking. Yep. If it sounds like awkward stuff - guess what? It is.
-There are a lot of other things that ARE DIFFERENT TOO. Mainly, small stuff like dialogue. But it adds up, and usually in a negative way.
^^^You can tell that this book was sort of a rough draft for what they were very careful to fine-tune in the actual movie. Thus, most scenes play out smoother in the film with more realistic character exchanges and so forth.
-The author writes in a such a style that scenes are usually told from a skewed perspective of the character in them. This is fine at first but get old later.
^^^To demonstrate, let's say there is a Joker scene - the writing may have something like this in it: "The Joker punched the man in the face and began to giggle. But no one else seemed to get the punchline. What was a clown to do? The Joker just loved himself a good laugh." Yeah, I mean, as you can see, it just comes off as corny or weird...especially the more it continues throughout the novel.
-Also, the writing's simplistic nature works against it in the end. You may find it refreshing at first because it helps speed the work along. However, by the end - it just comes off as bland.
^^^You start to feel like you are just reading someone's brief scene-by-scene descriptions of what's happening on a TV in front of them; rather than really providing a book that packs in real drama.

In the end, you can tell that this was a story meant for the screen and not the page. It's an imperfect story that was meant for actors, costume designers, and art directors to greatly improve on. I mean, the book will have one line like "The Joker really chuckled to himself about that one" while the movie actually shows Jack Nicholson choking out hysterical laughter in three different ways. Thus, it becomes hard to justify tracking this title down (for all the reasons mentioned, etc.).