Batman Returns: The Redemption
06/17/2006 23:59 Filed in: Movies and Television
A Guest Retrospective Review by Andrew Wells
I spent a week recently at a beach house that had HBO, which showed Batman Begins one night. (I stand by my original review, although now I think the whole movie is over-edited, not just the action scenes.) The next day they showed the 1989 Batman, and that got me thinking about the whole series.
If Star Wars and Jaws were the beginning of the summer blockbuster, Batman was the perfection—everything we know about hype, tie-ins, media coverage, quick video turnover, etc. starts there. As much as I remember the movie, I remember the hysteria surrounding it even more. I’d seen movies before, but it was the first time I really started to become interested in them.
As a film, it holds up well, even with Jack Nicholson doing his umpteenth variation on Jack Nicholson. (Has he really done any real acting since The Shining?) Michael Keaton still proves to be a good casting call; the film is still a benchmark in production and design. Still, you can tell everybody was trying to figure out how to make a new type of comic book movie, something really different then before.
I've dissected Batman Begins elsewhere. Batman Forever should only be noted for helping to boost Jim Carrey’s career. The less said about Batman and Robin, the better.
Which leaves Batman Returns. It came out after people had grown accustomed to comic book movies, but before the glut set in and everybody became familiar with the types (origin stories, etc.). The brief synopsis: Batman (Keaton again) must save Gotham City from the diabolical plans of The Penguin (Danny DeVito) and his new partner Max Shreck (Christopher Walken). The wild card is Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer) who wants revenge and Batman, but not necessarily in that order.
I believe only about twenty people in America like Batman Returns, which confounds me. Not only is it a good movie in its own right, it’s an important cinematic forefather to all the comic book movies we have now.
With Returns, I think director Tim Burton took his dark cinematic visions about as far as he has ever been able to go--with the exception of his Claymation productions, he hasn’t done anything like Returns since then, not even Mars Attacks!, which is more juvenile than subversive. As much as it is inspired by comic books, Returns is inspired by past films (especially early German and Art Deco films, like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Robert Weine’s The Cabinet of Dr. Calagari) and nightmares. Circus people, trains, rubber ducks, cats, penguins and even snow: Burton puts so much menace and dread into childlike and innocent objects in this film, it’s amazing he got away with it.
More amazing still is that everyone working with him seems to get it too, and rises to the challenge. The movie has a totally different look from the first one, but is probably more in line with what Burton imagined originally. It’s probably one of the visually darkest movies ever, as if they shot it with a dust-covered lens. It has some dumb, probably studio required humor--do we need Batman to be a DJ?--but most of the movie heads straight into darkness.
And the actors seem to be letting their inner freaks lose. Keaton seems more comfortable with the role, and adds shades of grey to the character that weren’t there before. Devito overplays his part some, but that’s probably due more to the writing and makeup. Devito can be a good actor when he wants to, and he has some great scenes, especially when he pays respect at the graves of his human family. Pfeiffer, however, is playing Catwoman on a whole other level. She manages to show all the sides of the character, from Catwoman’s before and after transformation to the zeal with which she terrorizes Schrek to her struggle with loving Bruce Wayne/Batman. I’d argue it’s one of the best acted parts for a comic book character ever, and, it’s a standard most actors in comic book movies have been unable to achieve.
As a sort of comic book Rosetta Stone, Batman Returns has even more significance. By the time it came out, people were starting to become familiar with the new “darker” tone that Frank Miller, Alan Moore, and others had established with comic books in the 1980s. Batman started the trend that continues to this day, even as comic book movies have gone from fantastical to more “real-world” settings, like the worlds of Spiderman and the X-men. Returns, in fact, hinges on an interesting point in American cultural history, between a happy we-beat-the-bad guys ending in our fight against Communism and the darker physical, social, political and emotional reality that started with Tianammen Square and has continued ever sense.
This new reality really comes out in the characters. Batman beats the bad guys and saves Gotham, but he isn’t very happy about it, because the personal price is high. The reality of his need to fight evil conflicts with his love of Catwoman. The Penguin and Catwoman are villains of the piece, but are also to some degree sympathetic, which is routine now, but was very new then. We are supposed to be amused at Nicholson’s Joker, but we are never suppose to feel sorry for him the way we are for the Penguin and (especially) Catwoman. Even Schreck can now be seen as a prototype for future comic-book villains, such as the Kingpin. All the characters are multi-sided and complex, given the capacity to do good or evil, usually for some kind of personal gain rather than “because it’s the evil thing to do.” This trend has spread to other types of movies, such as the later James Bond films.
So there is my case: Batman Returns is a good movie and an important one. Go rediscover it. In the meantime, let’s hope they can get an actor who can bring real menace as the Joker, and an editor with a steadier hand, for the inevitable Batman Continues.
Andrew Wells can be reached at arwell012002@yahoo.com.
I spent a week recently at a beach house that had HBO, which showed Batman Begins one night. (I stand by my original review, although now I think the whole movie is over-edited, not just the action scenes.) The next day they showed the 1989 Batman, and that got me thinking about the whole series.
If Star Wars and Jaws were the beginning of the summer blockbuster, Batman was the perfection—everything we know about hype, tie-ins, media coverage, quick video turnover, etc. starts there. As much as I remember the movie, I remember the hysteria surrounding it even more. I’d seen movies before, but it was the first time I really started to become interested in them.
As a film, it holds up well, even with Jack Nicholson doing his umpteenth variation on Jack Nicholson. (Has he really done any real acting since The Shining?) Michael Keaton still proves to be a good casting call; the film is still a benchmark in production and design. Still, you can tell everybody was trying to figure out how to make a new type of comic book movie, something really different then before.
Which leaves Batman Returns. It came out after people had grown accustomed to comic book movies, but before the glut set in and everybody became familiar with the types (origin stories, etc.). The brief synopsis: Batman (Keaton again) must save Gotham City from the diabolical plans of The Penguin (Danny DeVito) and his new partner Max Shreck (Christopher Walken). The wild card is Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer) who wants revenge and Batman, but not necessarily in that order.
I believe only about twenty people in America like Batman Returns, which confounds me. Not only is it a good movie in its own right, it’s an important cinematic forefather to all the comic book movies we have now.
With Returns, I think director Tim Burton took his dark cinematic visions about as far as he has ever been able to go--with the exception of his Claymation productions, he hasn’t done anything like Returns since then, not even Mars Attacks!, which is more juvenile than subversive. As much as it is inspired by comic books, Returns is inspired by past films (especially early German and Art Deco films, like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Robert Weine’s The Cabinet of Dr. Calagari) and nightmares. Circus people, trains, rubber ducks, cats, penguins and even snow: Burton puts so much menace and dread into childlike and innocent objects in this film, it’s amazing he got away with it.
More amazing still is that everyone working with him seems to get it too, and rises to the challenge. The movie has a totally different look from the first one, but is probably more in line with what Burton imagined originally. It’s probably one of the visually darkest movies ever, as if they shot it with a dust-covered lens. It has some dumb, probably studio required humor--do we need Batman to be a DJ?--but most of the movie heads straight into darkness.
And the actors seem to be letting their inner freaks lose. Keaton seems more comfortable with the role, and adds shades of grey to the character that weren’t there before. Devito overplays his part some, but that’s probably due more to the writing and makeup. Devito can be a good actor when he wants to, and he has some great scenes, especially when he pays respect at the graves of his human family. Pfeiffer, however, is playing Catwoman on a whole other level. She manages to show all the sides of the character, from Catwoman’s before and after transformation to the zeal with which she terrorizes Schrek to her struggle with loving Bruce Wayne/Batman. I’d argue it’s one of the best acted parts for a comic book character ever, and, it’s a standard most actors in comic book movies have been unable to achieve.
As a sort of comic book Rosetta Stone, Batman Returns has even more significance. By the time it came out, people were starting to become familiar with the new “darker” tone that Frank Miller, Alan Moore, and others had established with comic books in the 1980s. Batman started the trend that continues to this day, even as comic book movies have gone from fantastical to more “real-world” settings, like the worlds of Spiderman and the X-men. Returns, in fact, hinges on an interesting point in American cultural history, between a happy we-beat-the-bad guys ending in our fight against Communism and the darker physical, social, political and emotional reality that started with Tianammen Square and has continued ever sense.
This new reality really comes out in the characters. Batman beats the bad guys and saves Gotham, but he isn’t very happy about it, because the personal price is high. The reality of his need to fight evil conflicts with his love of Catwoman. The Penguin and Catwoman are villains of the piece, but are also to some degree sympathetic, which is routine now, but was very new then. We are supposed to be amused at Nicholson’s Joker, but we are never suppose to feel sorry for him the way we are for the Penguin and (especially) Catwoman. Even Schreck can now be seen as a prototype for future comic-book villains, such as the Kingpin. All the characters are multi-sided and complex, given the capacity to do good or evil, usually for some kind of personal gain rather than “because it’s the evil thing to do.” This trend has spread to other types of movies, such as the later James Bond films.
So there is my case: Batman Returns is a good movie and an important one. Go rediscover it. In the meantime, let’s hope they can get an actor who can bring real menace as the Joker, and an editor with a steadier hand, for the inevitable Batman Continues.
Andrew Wells can be reached at arwell012002@yahoo.com.