A Confederacy Of Online Pissbabies Are Calling For Robert Pattinson To Get Replaced As Batman
It's high time to retire this element of the fanbase.
These days, in our world of online petitions and Twitter hives working overtime, it’s easy to think that repeated the calls for creatives to get sacked from movie projects is something new.
After all, it certainly seems like we’re getting inundated with more of them. A petition calling for HBO to remake the final season of Game of Thrones — no, seriously — has ratcheted up almost a million signatures, and thousands of internet pissbabies are already banding together to demand that Robert Pattinson be fired from his newly-announced role as Batman in Matt Reeves’ forthcoming caped crusader picture.
Robert Pattinson is super hot but he's also a full-on weirdo which is ESSENTIAL for a good batman. I see it. pic.twitter.com/v1cyPM8P0h
— Dana Schwartz (@DanaSchwartzzz) May 19, 2019
But, though distinctly annoying, such outraged calls for creative switch-ups are far from new.
After all, anyone who was born after 1995 and had access to the world wide web will remember how quickly the internet burst into flames when news was announced that Heath Ledger was set to play the Joker in that little flick Christopher Nolan made called The Dark Knight. According to angry fans, Ledger hadn’t yet proved himself — he was still best known for rom-coms and his austere turn in Brokeback Mountain. Needless to say, those tunes changed when the film was actually released.
I don’t understand all the hate on Robert Pattinson. I’m excited to see his rendition of Batman. Remember everyone shit on the Heath Ledger casting at first. (We also shit on the Jared Leto casting but we don’t talk about that)
— Drunk [insert Bear here] SZN (@professorTNC) May 17, 2019
But it’s possible to go even further back to see how much fan culture has always involved a sub-sect of grumpy, narrow-minded consumers who will not settle for their beloved franchises taking any direction that they themselves haven’t foreseen.
Way back in 1989, when a young auteur named Tim Burton, then best known for helming a movie about a manchild, cast Michael Keaton as his Batman, fan cultures erupted. Upwards of 50,000 Batman obsessives sent letters to Warner Bros. to complain, which means there were 50,000 human beings who sat down with a pen, a piece of paper, and decided to spend minutes of their actual lives getting angry at a movie studio for casting the wrong actor to play a vigilante who dresses up like a bat.
So no, these toxic elements to the fanbase — a vocal minority, it should be stressed — don’t even have modernity on their side.