Batman fans got not one, but TWO big trailers this weekend.
If you haven't seen them yet, you're going to want to watch both.
But before Robert Pattinson, Ben Affleck, or Christian Bale ever put on the cape and cowl, one actor helped redefine the Dark Knight from his campy and colourful Adam West days into the gritty and endlessly stylish superhero that we now know him to be. These were the days when Prince was writing music for superhero movies - when Tim Burton was putting Danny Devito in a soggy pillow suit - when Joel Schumacher thought putting nipples on Batman's costume was a good idea. There are wonderful highs and outrageous lows for this chapter of Batman's history - and I had to relive them all.
Batman (****)
In which Batman forgets about his grappling hook and walks up fifty flights of stairs
Grungy, gothic, and unapologetically wild, Batman 1989 propelled the Dark Knight into a much grittier Gotham city than we’d ever seen before onscreen.
This was the Batman that I knew as a child. Looking back, I’m not exactly sure why my father let me watch it – we’ve got characters swearing and smoking all over the place, along with an intimidating (albeit iconic) performance from Jack Nicholson as the Joker. I distinctly remember having nightmares about him. But nevertheless, this was the version of Batman that I grew up knowing, at least until Batman Begins came out. I had no idea of the campy television past that Batman had been a part of. As far as I knew, Michael Keaton was all there was. Slick, dark, and filled with style – that was the Batman that I knew.
Looking back on this film all these years later, I now see that there’s so much more tongue-in-cheek and over-the-top storytelling inside that I never picked up on as a kid. I think of Sam Raimi’s Green Goblin yelling “We’ll meet again, Spider-Man!” as a classic example of comic book cheese in a theatrical film. Here, Batman really leans into the theatricality of his own character – extending his cape for no reason, flying the Batplane straight up to make a silhouette in the moon, and so on. They’re all awesome moments, but they’re the kind of obvious stylistic decisions that would disappear for the most part in Nolan’s trilogy. Then there’s the Joker, who chews on every line of dialogue and every action he’s given. My absolute favourite line from this movie is when the Joker’s balloons get chopped by Batman’s plane, and the Joker screams into the sky,
“Why didn’t somebody tell me that he had one of those…things?!”
It’s hysterically self-referential. The Joker really is one of the greatest villains of all time. And apart from the fact that this movie still feels cool over thirty years later, what I really liked from a narrative standpoint was the way Tim Burton portrayed Batman and Joker as two sides of the same coin. It’s a comparison that’s been done many times before – in many ways it’s the crux of Joker’s character that he’s the polar opposite of Batman. But when you look at Joker and Batman from Nolan’s trilogy, the key difference between the two is a focus on order versus a focus on chaos. That’s not the fight that Keaton and Nicholson are having. As far as Tim Burton is concerned, they’re both insane. Bruce Wayne acts weird for most of the film and struggles with his own duality, and the Joker says the same words as Wayne does when entering Vicky Vale’s apartment: “Nice place you’ve got here. Lots of space.” They’re both in love with the same woman. The similarity of the characters makes me think that Burton is drawing from the comic book “The Killing Joke” which also highlights how both characters are kind of off their rockers. The final fight in the cathedral tower is really then just two crazy guys who don’t have enough space in their world for the other.
I didn’t understand how the Joker figured out so quickly who Batman’s parents were, though. Check out this dialogue from that scene.
Batman: You killed my parents.
Joker: What? What’re you talking about?
Batman: I made you. You made me first.
Joker: Hey, bat-brain, I mean, I was a kid when I killed your parents. When I say, “I made you,” you gotta say “You made me”. How childish can you get?
The Joker seems to know right away what Batman is talking about, because he identifies how old he was when the act took place. If that’s the case, then he now knows that Batman is Bruce Wayne. Is this because the Joker has only killed one married couple in his life, so the list of kills to look through in his mind was short enough to narrow it down? I would’ve thought he’d have a harder time putting two and two together. Even so, the idea that each character made the other is an interesting one.
Michael Keaton’s Batman isn’t necessarily ‘my Batman’ in the way that Tobey Maguire is ‘my Spider-Man’, but he’s the one who taught me who Batman is. Cool cars, black suits, and a dirty city to beat up bad guys in. I’ll never forget this film.
Although, why is Batman killing everyone in this movie? He literally pulls the trigger to blast Joker to smithereens with his Batplane and just happens to miss, but there’s plenty of other bad guys that got killed because of Batman’s shenanigans here. I thought this guy had rules!
Batman Returns (**1/2)
In which a cat, a bat, and a penguin really mess up Christmas in the city
Cranking the bizarre dial up to “???”, this sequel has nuggets of gold in it but they’re hard to see amidst all the penguin droppings and hairballs.
Let’s talk about the stuff I did like first. Michael Keaton is back and firing on all cylinders as Batman, and Michelle Pfeiffer gives a show-stealing performance as Catwoman. She’s insane – like pretty much everyone in this franchise – but she makes the insanity work for her instead of against her. I loved the complexity of the relationship between Batman and Catwoman – it felt very reminiscent of Batman’s relationship with the Joker, albeit with a romantic twist. In the last film, Batman hated the Joker despite all of their similarities. Here, Batman loves Catwoman precisely because of those similarities. They’re both struggling with living two lives, and the scene where they discover each other’s identity really worked for me. I also thought the parallels between Penguin and the biblical Moses were interesting – although I’m not sure if there was a point behind them. Penguin gets sent away from his parents via a cradle that flows down a river, where he’s found by penguins who presumably raise him themselves. He later is set on killing the firstborn of each rich family in Gotham city, similar to the tenth plague in the book of Exodus. Is there any substance to this? I couldn’t figure out if there was an underlying message to make of this, but I had to write it down all the same.
Rotten Tomatoes gives this film a score of 80%, saying “Tim Burton’s dark, brooding atmosphere, Michael Keaton’s work as the tormented hero, and the flawless casting of Danny DeVito as The Penguin and Christopher Walken as, well, Christopher Walken make the sequel better than the first.” This is one of those times where I find myself in stark opposition to the critic’s consensus. First of all, I have nothing whatsoever to say about Christopher Walken – his contribution to the film wasn’t remarkable at all as far as I’m concerned. And when it comes to the Penguin, he’s my least favourite part of the whole film – which stinks because he’s such an integral player. Firstly, he’s positively grotesque. He looks like a soggy blood-spattered pillow for 90% of the movie. That’s not something my childhood self would have wanted to see in a Batman movie (and thankfully he didn’t – I never got the chance to see this one as a kid), and it’s certainly not something I feel like I need now. The bit at the end of the film where he’s spewing blood with every word just isn’t the kind of superhero stuff I’m looking for. Secondly, his sexual appetite is horrid to have to watch. He’s already been designed to look monstrous (with no offense to DeVito – it’s the costuming here that I’m talking about), and the open lust towards virtually any woman he comes across makes him positively revolting. I’m not sure if these moments are meant to induce laughter or disgust, but it was the latter for me. Thirdly, he doesn’t have nearly the emotional relevance as Catwoman or Joker have had in this series. Here, he’s nothing more than a bad guy. That’s not always a bad thing, but I don’t get why we spent so much time on his character when his only goal is to gain power and maybe kill Batman.
Batman 1989 was a little over-the-top at points, and that was part of the fun of it. That concept is taken to the next level at this film. So many characters are caricatures, like Penguin’s parents, the Christmas tree model, even Christopher Walken’s character to be honest. The bit where Penguin and Batman are chatting on a sidewalk when suddenly Catwoman comes over in literally no less than six backflips (I counted) and says “Meow” is probably the weirdest part of the whole film – but I think Penguin’s character kept me from accepting the more bizarre elements of the narrative. Then again, I didn’t understand how Christopher Walken thought he murdered Catwoman only to have her show up to work the next day pretending to have forgotten it (or did she really forget it? I don’t know) – and he just ROLLED with it. If you killed someone and they showed up the next day pretending not to have noticed, would you just carry on like it was no big deal? As Viceroy Nute Gunray would say, “Shoot her! Or something!”
Batman’s my favourite superhero, but this film was just too out there for me. Maybe it’s the bias of having Nolan’s trilogy in the back of my mind, but the over-the-top nature of Tim Burton’s storytelling didn’t mesh with the version of Batman that I believe in.
Batman Forever (**)
In which a black actor is recast with a white actor and we’re expected to not notice
Joel Schumacher’s flick fails as a threequel and as a standalone film by abandoning so much of the established franchise and giving new meaning to the term ‘over-the-top’.
I was surprised to learn that Tim Burton was asked to step down from directing the third Batman flick in the series – as we’ve seen in Shrek, Jurassic Park, and the Star Wars sequel trilogy, it’s never a good idea to switch captains for the third flick. Sure, I wasn’t crazy about Tim Burton’s vision for Batman Returns, but I’m clearly in the minority as far as the critics are concerned. But to lose Michael Keaton was the bigger tragedy, I think. Recasting a minor character happens all the time, but Keaton was Batman. Imagine if they had recast Captain America or Iron Man partway through.
“Yeah, but they recast Hulk and everyone liked that.”
Okay, fair. Maybe I just liked Keaton more than Kilmer. But the fact remains that there isn’t much to make this film an official threequel. In many ways, it’s a major departure from the Batman of the Burton films. A new lead, a new director, and a major visual shift from darkness to neon light make this feel very much like its own thing instead of the third film in a franchise. And I don’t mean that in a good way. First off, what happened to Harvey Dent? He was in the first Batman movie, played by Billy Dee Williams – and now he’s being played by Tommy Lee Jones? You can’t just make a black character inexplicably white and expect me to be okay with that. Secondly, the franchise once again has discarded Batman’s previous love interests with nothing more than a throwaway line. First Vicky Vale, then Selina Kyle – both of these women were portrayed in their films as ‘the one’. Personally I think Kyle was the better of the two, but that’s not the point. The point is we walk into this film, and now Bruce Wayne’s got his heart set on new girl Chase Meridian, played by Nicole Kidman. It’s not that any of the love interests Batman meets are bad – it’s that they keep changing. Batman deserves a steady girlfriend, and to be honest, his girlfriends deserve to stick around. This isn’t a problem exclusive to this franchise, by the way. I’ve written in other franchises like Jurassic World about how there’s this stupid tendency to break up movie couples off-screen to either keep the tension going or to introduce a new love interest entirely. I’m over it. Find someone good and keep them. Is that too much to ask?
Jim Carrey’s Riddler definitely fits the zany comic book world that Schumacher was painting, though like everything else in the film, it just felt too over-the-top for me. That’s not to say that Carrey did a bad job – indeed, he did exactly what he does best. I’m just saying this wasn’t the kind of Batman film I’m looking for. Similarly, Two-Face’s girls Sugar and Spice made me groan both because of how on-the-nose it was to give Two Face two girlfriends of opposing characteristics and because of how demeaning it was to reduce Drew Barrymore to this role that’s nothing more than an eye candy joke. The one new cast addition that I was able to totally get on board with was Chris O’Donnell. I thought he was great. He was a character that wasn’t forced to make a quip every two seconds (although his “holy rusted metal, Batman” bit almost made me shut down the screen), and his relationship with Batman was the most authentic one of the film. And maybe I’m out to lunch here, but I totally loved Batman and Robin’s costumes. Sure, they looked like action figures, but I loved it. So this movie isn’t without its high points.
Even so, I don’t think I’ll ever need to watch this again. There’s too much inconsistency, too many jokes that fell flat, and way too much neon.
Batman and Robin (*)
In which Arnold Schwarzenegger makes no less than 15 ice puns
Is it so bad it’s good? Or is it even worse?
Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin is on many people’s lists of worst films ever made. But in its defense, there’s a lot this film had going for it. You’ve got big names like George Clooney, Uma Thurman, and the iconic Arnold Schwarzenegger on your team. You’ve got a big budget that allows for spectacle and high-octane thrill. And you’ve got a surprisingly heartfelt performance from Michael Gough as Alfred who is suffering from a rare disease. Honestly, Alfred was the heart and soul of this movie. When everything else was failing spectacularly, it was his role that kept me from giving up completely. Part of that is definitely because he’s one of the only actors who’s actually stuck around for all four of these films – and it’s like that fact alone is what’s killing his character.
But my compliments pretty much end there, because this film is unquestionably a nightmare. It’s clear that Schumacher wanted this flick to be zanier and wilder than anything that had come before it – but then why aren’t I laughing at any of the jokes? Is that my fault? I mean, for Pete’s sake, Mr. Freeze has an assistant named Ms. B. Haven. We have crossed a threshold and there’s no way back. There’s a million and one jokes in this flick and I didn’t laugh at a single one. I’m willing to hear an argument that I was a bad audience member – many of the jokes in this movie likely would have made me laugh if they had been in The Lego Batman Movie. Is that unfair of me? I’m not sure. All I know is that I couldn’t believe how many puns Schwarzenegger was dishing out per second.
We’ve got yet another love interest for Batman. Vicky Vale, Selina Kyle, and Chase Meridian have all been left in the dust – now we have to contend with Julie Madison (who’s barely in it at all) and Poison Ivy (who is the first character in this lineup deliberately not meant to stick around due to her evil-ness). Ivy’s role as a lust-charged wedge between Batman and Robin felt way too infantile to me. It’s the kind of plot you’d expect from a Hannah Montana or Tom & Jerry episode, not from a multimillion dollar fourquel. Ivy’s right-hand man Bane is almost totally irrelevant in this flick and seems to be here primarily to sell more action figures. Batgirl was fine, I guess – or at the very least I can’t remember any biting criticism I had towards her character. I actually think Chris O’Donnell does a better job performing than George Clooney – Clooney says every line of dialogue with the exact same intonation. We all know Clooney’s a competent leading man, so what went wrong here?
This movie just felt stupid from beginning to end. They weren’t taking themselves seriously – which felt like a slap to the Burton films. Even though there was a hefty amount of ridiculousness back then, it never got to the point where characters were winking into the screen. Here, it seems like every other line should have had a laugh track and a few seconds for the actors to stand around, soaking in their own hilarity. Unless I lose a bet, I’d never watch this again. Thank God for Christopher Nolan.
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