No More Batman Movies Until Nightwing Gets His Own Film

Don’t get me wrong, Batman is great, but there’s a reason I named my son Grayson and not Bruce. If you think that Batman is the only masked vigilante with a cool symbol on his chest running around the DC universe, then you don’t know Dick(Grayson).

Once a young circus performer-turned-child soldier, Dick didn’t come into his own until DC decided in the ’80s that it was time for him to hang up the Robin costume and embrace his own solo identity.

That’s when Grayson left Batman and became Nightwing—the coolest DC character nobody ever talks about.

I know that, at first glance, Nightwing might look like nothing more than Batman Jr., An athletic crimefighter dressed in dark colors with no powers who uses his wits and clever gadgets to overcome more powerful foes. Sounds like Batman to me.

Dig a little deeper, though, as Batman and Nightwing are completely different characters. For one thing, Nightwing is more acrobatic when cruising around on rooftops in search of crimes to stop.

As a former Circus performer, Nightwing employs more flips and other moves I used to watch the Gymnastics kids pull off with ease during P.E. Not to say that he’s necessarily more athletic than Batman, but he’s more showy with his high-flying abilities than the Dark Knight.

Dick’s flair for theatrics is part of his overall lighthearted demeanor. Where Batman uses the death of his parents to fuel his brutal vengeance, Nightwing has gotten over his childhood trauma and doesn’t need it for inspiration.

Nightwing is much closer to Spider-Man in that regard. Where Batman wouldn’t be caught dead spewing Peter Parker-like quips in the middle of battle, Nightwing is much more apt to throw out one-liners while he’s throwing punches.

“So what, you just want the DC equivalent of Spider-Man?” I mean, yeah, kind of. DC has done Batman to death; Superman, if done right, shouldn’t even begin to enter vigilante territory, so why not do Nightwing as a Spider-Man-esque hero?

No offense to Batman, but he’s often the most boring character in each Batman movie. Nightwing, on the other hand, has a much more interesting personal life.

Dick Grayson, much like his web-slinging peer, has a messy love life. Sure, Batman has a thing for Catwoman, but Nightwing has hooked up with Batgirl, Huntress, Starfire from the Teen Titans, and even the daughter of the guy who killed his parents, just to name a few.

Where Bruce Wayne can’t let distractions like love distract him from his mission Dick Grayson makes plenty of time for romance—often of the doomed variety. Unlike the Batman movies, a Nightwing film would feature a main character who’s interesting in and out of costume.

Perhaps the biggest difference between a Batman movie and a Nightwing movie is that, unlike Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson has a day job. As a cop, no less.

Given the dual nature of his identity—upholding the law during the day and breaking it at night—a Nightwing movie has the potential to tell a much more complicated and narratively rich story than most Batman films.

A movie where Dick Grayson has to struggle internally with the modern-day perception of police half the time while also maintaining a technically criminal existence the other half? Take my money, please!

James Gunn already announced that the upcoming Brave and the Bold film will feature not only Batman but the Damien Wayne version of Robin.

Provided that it sticks to the usual Batman canon, with Damien being the third or fourth Robin, then conceivably, Nightwing already exists in the DCU. All I’m asking is for Gunn and the other powers-that-be to give Nightwing his own movie. He’s earned it.