There is a little city in the wonderful country of Turkey called Batman. Serious. No joking there. Batman.
Well this tiny city with a coincidentally cool name has fallen on dark times, and their wonderful idea to rejuvinate its coffers by suing Christopher Nolan.
Yeah, you read that right. Nolan.
io9.com reports:
“The royalty of the name ‘Batman’ belongs to us … There is only one Batman in the world. The American producers used the name of our city without informing us,” [Mayor of Batman city, Hüseyin] Kalkan told the Doğan news agency… Mayor Kalkan, speaking to the Hürriyet Daily News and the Economic Review, said last year foreign media picked up on Batman and the city’s increasing suicide rates among women. He said a columnist asked why Batman’s mayor did not sue the movie Batman for royalties while struggling with economic problems. “We found this criticism right and started to look for legal possibilities of a case like that,” he said.
And so, Kalkan plans to sue not DC Comics, who own the character, nor Warner Bros., who own DC Comics, but Christopher Nolan, director of The Dark Knight.
Aside from pointing the gun at the wrong man, this is utterly rediculous.
Batman (the franchise) has been enjoying a success financially for decades. Invented by artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger in 1939 (enjoying its 70th anniversary next year) you would think that the connection between the unauthorized use of their name would be challenged before this.
Oh I know, it has hit its hieght of phenomenal succesess, and you should pluck the fruit when its ripe. But honestly Nolan is the last person to be considered at fault for the use of the name.
I laugh deliberately and bluntly in the face of this legal action. And I use “legal” loosely. Even if this farce of an accusation was aimed at the proper violators of the term, this desperate attempt to snatch up a pile of cash is weaker than my own claims to virginity.
That and with such casual acceptance of blatant copyright violations, like Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam known more commonly as “Turkish Star Wars” because it actually uses clips stolen right out of Star Wars and other films with a completely unoriginal and stolen soundtrack lifted from various popular North American Films.
So with their own loose copyright laws, do they really have any moral ground to assume that the similarities with a small Turkish city and a man who dresses like a bat calling himself Batman gaining popularity over just shy of 70 years would have any grounds?
Laughable.
If anything their efforts give me a little giggle at their own desperate expense.
