Unpopular Opinion: Val Kilmer Was the Best Batman

I wrote most of this months before his recent passing. And I've known it for 30 years.

Me as a kid, more than likely playing chopsticks, but we can pretend it's Kiss from a Rose, right?

Hi, Friday people! Thanks for sticking out the week with me here at Another Jane Pratt Thing. It's so much fun to see new names/faces on here whenever I come to check in (which is pretty much incessantly, let's be honest). But there's nothing like seeing those loyal familiar recurring names, some of whom have been part of the AJPT community for now SIX damn months - or those of you who have just been here a week, but have already become such strong presences through your regular comments everywhere and overall great vibes. I love and appreciate you all so so much.

The other thing I have to thank you all for this week is the incredible (in volume and quality) submissions you’ve been sending in to me (jane@anotherjaneprattthing.com) for“Unpopular Opinion”, “It Happened To Me”, and other sometimes uncategorizable story pitches and manuscripts. This story below is the product of a submission I got yesterday from Lyndsey, who is being published here for the first time. (So be nice.) Her story made me think about my own very brief interaction with Val Kilmer and how when someone passes away whom I've just barely met, I (and clearly so many other people we see posting on Instagram, et al, when this happens) want to share every photo and detail of that brief but meaningful to us encounter, as I did over here. But when I've lost people who were actually very close to me, it has felt impossible to sum them up in an image or text, so I usually don't write anything about them. And surely not quickly.

Which seems backwards, but I think partly - and less egregiously - explains why all of us are so quick (like a full on sprint to be first) to post that one personal picture or memory of that famous person who just passed away. To help fill in the picture of what this person was like even with people they did not know well. Or maybe it's just to win the race and brag.

Speaking of which, do you think people have those images and statements ready to post for whenever the person passes away, like the New York Times does with obituaries? I dated a guy who worked with that department at the New York Times and tried so hard to get him to show me my obituary, but he wouldn't do it.

Anyhoo (as I never say), onto Lyndsey’s Unpopular Opinion. Thanks for sticking around through all of that, too, if you did! And if you skimmed or skipped, that's totally fine. Please enjoy her piece, agree or disagree with it, and I will be so happy to talk to you about this and everything else in the comments.

Love love love, Jane

By Lyndsey C. Fox

I got a news alert around 3 a.m. on Wednesday that Val Kilmer had died.

I’ve been waking up between 3 and 4 a.m. every night lately, which some believe is the hour when the veil between life and death is thinnest. Nothing has ever felt more poetic, or more on brand, than getting a message from my favorite Batman in a space between worlds.

Kilmer died at 65, far too soon, and with him he took a perspective that was uniquely his own, and often deeply misunderstood (I think, how could I possibly know what’s inside the mind of a genius?). But we have this habit of rewriting history when people leave us. And though his death is not about me, I’m going to make it about me, as is my birthright as a millennial eldest daughter. You’re going to start seeing a lot of think pieces in the next few weeks about how wrong everyone was about Kilmer’s Batman. To this, I say, I told you so.

Welcome, I’ve been here for 30 years. Through the nipple jokes. Through the Schumacher slander. Through years of watching grown men argue in bars about Keaton vs. Bale while I sit quietly, sipping my drink, knowing deep in my soul that they were all wrong.

So I’m going to say it one more time: Val Kilmer was the best Batman.

Yes, I’m serious.

When I say this out loud, people laugh. It’s happened at work, at dinner parties, and, most significantly, as an answer to a dating app prompt, the app that led me to my now-husband. Each time, the reaction is the same: a groan, an incredulous eye-roll, maybe even a Sinead O’Rebellion reference (IYKYK).

But I’ll say it again, with no irony, no satire, and in full defiance of whatever pop culture consensus has deemed acceptable: Val Kilmer is the best Batman.

I, a woman who apologizes when someone steps on my foot on the subway, will not cower on this. This isn’t a cheeky ’90s nostalgia play. Though I happen to be one, it’s not a contrarian take crafted for the perimenopausal millennial women of the internet. I write this with the sincerity of a note scrawled in a Lip Smacker-stained diary (do kids even have journals anymore, or have we lost the plot entirely?). Kilmer may not have reached the stratospheric fame of some of his peers, but he was undeniably the best Batman.

He had the bee-stung lips and sea-swept hair of a Kennedy, the jawline of a young Elvis Presley, and the haunted eyes of Paul Newman. A Juilliard-trained LA native, Kilmer was Hollywood through and through. He was iconic as Iceman in “Top Gun,” mesmerizing as Jim Morrison in one of the greatest Oscar snubs of all time and, vastly underrated in his strangely perfect portrayal of porn star John Holmes. But to me, he is, and always will be, Batman first and Forever.

There's gotta be a hula princess villian/love interest somewhere in the Batman universe, right? Me around age 10.

Directed by Joel Schumacher, “Batman Forever” never stood a chance with critics. You might recall Nicole Kidman as a sex-positive psychologist named Dr. Chase Meridian. Jim Carrey, at peak “Ace Ventura” mania, bouncing around in lime-green spandex as The Riddler. Drew Barrymore and Debi Mazar as literal angel-and-devil sidekicks to Two-Face, played by a perpetually baffled Tommy Lee Jones. And the movie’s anthem — the inescapable “Kiss From a Rose” by Seal — haunted the summer of ’95 like a perfume sample on a magazine page (may they rest).

“Batman Forever” is pure camp chaos. And yet, at the center of that Day-Glo tornado stood Kilmer: brooding, unbothered, strangely serene. I was nine years old, but I knew a few things to be true. He was tormented. He was yearning. He was hot. He had great hair. I was, as they say, listening.

Maybe I’m a little nostalgic. Maybe I do miss Blockbuster nights and terrestrial radio and a time when Batman was still a viable love interest before adulthood reminded me that vigilantes make terrible partners. But I maintain that Kilmer was the only actor who has ever fully convinced me he was both Batman and Bruce Wayne.

I love Tim Burton’s macabre fairytale Gotham, but Michael Keaton’s Batman always felt a little too squirrelly. He worked in the suit, but in a tux? He had the energy of Tom Hanks eating baby corn in “Big.” Not exactly “brooding billionaire bachelor” material.

Christian Bale gave us a passable Bruce Wayne, if you believe his defining trait is a trust fund that could’ve inspired Billy Joel’s “I’ve Loved These Days.” Clooney? A fever dream we’ve collectively agreed to forget. If I’m honest, I didn’t bother with Pattinson. And while I’ve never felt about anything the way I feel about sad Ben Affleck smoking a cigarette and drinking Dunkin’, I would’ve preferred his Batman be a Chuckie-centric sequel to “Good Will Hunting.” Chuckie, now masked, fighting crime in Southie? How do you like them apples?

Kilmer brought something more elusive. I both believed the grief in his eyes AND the perfectly organized closet of monochromatic Armani. His Batman was stoic, steely, and, crucially, not annoying. He didn’t ignore Alfred’s wisdom out of arrogance, he had his reasons (haven’t we all brushed off a sandwich at home in favor of takeout?). He wasn’t punchy like Keaton. He was pensive. What was behind that stare? The weight of Gotham? A long-lost love? A college poetry reading that emotionally ruined him? Who knows? Who cares? What mattered was how quietly he held it all.

In a movie stuffed with neon explosions and unhinged performances, Kilmer didn’t shout. He didn’t growl. He didn’t monologue about identity. He simply was. The batsuit, iconic nipples and all, fit like a second skin. No “what have I become?” soliloquies. He’d already become it.

My sister and me, 1995ish, in front of our Dad’s batmobile (aka red sports car with a SIX CD changer)

And when temptation came, notably in the form of a lingerie-clad psychologist seemingly styled by the “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” music video, he resisted(ish). Coolly. Calmly. With unforgettable, absolutely unhinged dialogue:

Dr. Chase Meridian: I wish I could say my interest in you was… purely professional.
Batman: You trying to get under my cape, doctor?
Dr. Chase Meridian: A girl can’t live by psychoses alone.
Batman: It’s the car, right? Chicks love the car.
Dr. Chase Meridian: What is it about the wrong kind of man? In grade school, boys with earrings. High school, motorcycles. College, leather jackets. Now… black rubber.
Batman: Try firemen. Less to take off.

He had work to do. Gotham needed him. America needed him. Honestly, we still do.

Kilmer himself was an eccentric. He was a devout Christian Scientist, who once credited his obsession with Mark Twain (and prep to play him) with helping him manage his weight. His career never reached the heights it seemed destined for, but his documentary “Val” is a masterclass in vulnerability. Early in the pandemic, I printed a feature from The Times, annotated it, and slipped it into a friend’s mailbox. He kept me connected when the world wasn’t. His strangeness felt safe.

Kilmer gave us a Batman who balanced tenderness and strength under the most incredibly lusty stare. A Batman whose defining feature was restraint, which, in a Joel Schumacher film, is a feat in and of itself. You keep your gravel-voiced vigilantes and emo eyeliner rebrands. My Batman wore ‘90s Armani and probably quoted Rilke at dinner.

My Batman is Val Kilmer. And I will never apologize for it.