Batman is pretty cool. I like Batman well enough. I didn’t like him when I was a kid, but when the Animated Series came around I changed my tune. This I am not ashamed to say. So, I thought that Batman Begins was a great movie. It’s coming out on DVD this week and I will likely own it at some point.

But also coming out on DVD are brand new releases for the other Batman movies. Do I really want these? I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. I don’t really like them. Any of them. I mean, everyone knows that Batman and Robin is just god-awful and I really don’t want to talk about why because I’ll just keep going and get all riled up. But even the first one I don’t really like that much. I mean, it’s pretty good for what it is and what it was at the time, but it didn’t really do all that much for me. Even watching it in recent years after developing more of an appreciation for both Tim Burton’s cinema and the character of Batman, I still don’t like that movie very much. I was never fond of the idea of The Joker being the killer of the Waynes, so I can’t get past that and the movie didn’t excite me otherwise. Batman Returns is a bit more interesting to me, but only because it has this weird quirky style to it. But it still didn’t grab me. Batman Forever is just a bizarre mess. Batman and Robin is truly terrible, but at least it had some potential to be a somewhat decent film if more people had cared about making it into one (which is the major reason why I hate the movie so). Batman Forever is just a neon train wreck, and I find very little potential there and very little to like about it. I just can’t believe that some of the decisions made in that film were made while thinking that people would find them exciting.

So, even though I like Batman, the choice of not buying these new DVDs should be obvious, right? Well, it’s not, because these DVDs look like they are going to be incredible. They’re just loaded with special features relating to the several aspects of the films and the character, and I think I’d really like to watch those. Plus, they each have director’s commentary, which I bet will be absolutely fascinating to listen to. I am not comfortable with the idea of owning a DVD copy of Batman and Robin, the film that I probably hate more than any other film in the world. But listening to Joel Schumacher attempt to explain what the hell he was thinking when he made that piece of junk? That seems very entertaining.

So, I don’t know. I’m certainly not going to rush out and spend money on this DVD set on my own. Or at least not right away. But, if someone were to make the mistake of thinking that I liked these movies and buy them for me, I’d probably keep them. My standards for what I’d put on my shelves are pretty low. I own lots of crap on DVD.

Besides, it doesn’t really matter. I’ve already got the best Batman movie on DVD. This one.

Sayonara.