Who Do You Think Batman Is?: An Investigation of What Adaptation Has Done to the Dark Knight

Batman has been regurgitated through the public’s consciousness in a way few characters ever have. This thesis investigates the adaptative nature of the Batman franchise. I argue that this adaptive nature has intrinsically changed the characters of Gotham due to the public’s understanding of the characters being changed by their movie adaptations, Batman’s character in a constant flux of being interpreted and those interpretations being cannibalized by wider audiences until the cycle begins again.