Greetings and salutations Hivers. Today I thought we'd do another You Should Laugh More post.

Research has shown that laughter is good for us. It has all kinds of health benefits. Despite most of us knowing this, none of us laugh enough. Yeah, I know, being an adult is tough, and furthermore there is a lot of grim stuff happening in the world. These things may be true, but that just is all the more reason for trying to get a little laughter into our lives.

This week, I thought we'd look at some clips that make fun of the iconic "I'm Batman" line.

As many of you know, Michael Keaton and Tim Burton took Batman in a darker direction in 1989. They wanted to distance the character from the campy Adam West version of the 1960s and they succeeded. Michael Keaton adopted a deeper, rougher voice when he was Batman.

"I'm Batman" became a catch phrase of the movie and was repeated endlessly.

Everyone who has played Batman since has done their own copy of the Keaton voice and the line "I'm Batman", some to greater success than others. No one has really matched Keaton in that line, but they all try. Perhaps the worst was Christian Bale. His Batman may have otherwise been the best one, but his gravely Batman voice was so bad that it was hard to understand him at times. It was like he had a mouth full of marbles.

Well, it started ok:

That's still a little rough, but understandable. It seems to have gotten worse as the movie series continued.

Since Keaton created the voice and gave us the line, people have been using it for comedy. After Bale's incomprehensible version, this comedy has just increased even more. Let's look at some of them.

Football Batman

This is short, but it shows how iconic the line had become in just a few years.

As short and silly as that was, it had a pretty big effect. I remember at by high school, all the kids would mimic that commercial. From there the line just worked more and more into pop culture until today where it is an instant gag. Like in...

Deadpool Batman

or...

Big Bang Theory Batman

Michael Keaton himself even made fun of the line when he returned to the part recently.

Some people have even taken the line and run with it for years.

Because I'm Batman

The YouTube channel "How It Should Have Ended" have been making clips for at least 12 years showing a comedy version of how popular films should have ended. These scenes are often bookended by Batman and Superman sitting in a cafe talking and drinking coffee. During these scenes, Batman usually manages to say the line "I'm Batman". They do a good job and the clips are usually pretty funny. Not only do they mock the "I'm Batman" line, but they also make fun of various other aspects of the movie Batman, such as how he seems to reveal his secret identity to every single attractive woman he meets.

Anyway, a few years ago someone edited a lot of the Superman & Batman bookend clips together. Enjoy!

There have been several years of clips since someone edited this, so if you enjoyed that, check out the "How It Should Have Ended" channel, linked above.

Dark Knight Batman

Ok, just one more from that channel. This is the one they made for The Dark Knight. This one is great. In addition to the other stuff, it also mocks Christian Bale for the terrible Batman voice.

Moving away from that line, SNL did a great skit making fun of how he randomly appears and disappears. They pushed the joke a bit too far, as SNL tends to do, but it is still good for a smile.

Let's end with a funny video from CollegeHumor. Usually people make fun of the Superman stories for being silly that no one can figure out Clark Kent is Superman when all he wears is glasses. I think Christopher Reeves showed us how it might be done, when he would hunch over when playing Clark, or stand up straighter then straighter and gain confidence by the second when he became Superman.

But be that as it may, most actors are not nearly as good as Reeves was and they make the idea look incredibly silly. Anyway, CollegeHumor looked at the same thing only with Batman, about how easy he sometimes makes it in his movies to guess who he is.

Well let's end this somewhat chaotic collection of clips there. Hope you enjoyed some of them. Let me know any thoughts in the comments.

❦

David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku.

Posted using CineTV