It's no secret that Batman is kind of the unofficial mascot of this blog. It was described to me today by a friend as "Shakespeare surrounded by Batman". And yet I've never actually done a post exclusively about everyone's favourite winged vigilante. I'm seeing The Dark Knight Rises tomorrow, so there'll be plenty to come on that but before we plunge into - let's face it - the end of a Batman epoch (because seriously, who is going to touch it for the next ten years after Nolan?) I want to address the "original" Batman film franchise and what went so badly, badly wrong.
I say "original" because, as any good nerd knows, Batman has been around in various guises since 1939. (Mostly bat-shaped guises, though there was that one comic where he was a pirate. No seriously, google it.) Pretty much all of my Batman knowledge comes from screen adaptations. Despite my penchant for all things geek-shaped, I've never picked up/illegally downloaded a comic from the D.C. universe, nor will I because a) too much continuity and b) I hear they recently rebooted the D.C. universe for the seventeen billionth time and apparently it - to borrow a vulgarism - sucks ass. Also, beyond Batman, the characters of the D.C. universe/Justice League have never really appealed to me as much as Marvel for whatever reason. Maybe because Marvel keeps being so obliging with the abundance of cheekbones in their films.
Tons has been written about Batman in various cultural studies journals, so I'm not going to pretend that I can add anything new to the pot here but I know why I like him: he's mortal. Batman is the most direct descendent of the heroic archetype that we have today. Beowulf, Odysseus, Spring-Heeled Jack - all of them went into making this guy who doesn't have any superhuman powers, just a gym membership and a large disposable income. He's also hugely adaptable. As far as I can discern, Batman has three main modes: gothy, campy and gritty. All of them have their pros and cons but the character is always unfailingly Batman. Not just in essentials (Batmobile, Batbelt, Batarangs, Batsignal, any other noun you can add 'Bat' to) but in motivation: "you fucked with my parents and now I'm going to dress up like a large rodent instead of visiting a psychiatrist like I probably should." For great justice.
So let's take a look at Batman B.N. (Before Nolan).
Batman (1989)
This is a classic for so many reasons, but it has some flaws. The main reason to watch it is Jack Nicholson's Joker. We credit Heath Ledger with turning in an Oscar-worthy performance as a comic book villain, and rightly so, but let's not forget that this guy did it first. Nicholson's Joker is more affable than Ledger's and (often literally for those onscreen) rib-crackingly funny. He has the volatility of the character down perfectly post-chemical dip and even before 'Jack Napier' becomes the Clown Prince of Crime, Nicholson pulls no punches letting you know that this guy is a psycho with a nasty sense of humour. Also, I defy anyone not to enjoy the sequence where the Joker and his goons burst into the art gallery to deface famous works of art accompanied by a huge 80s style boom box playing Prince's 'Partyman', written specifically for the film (oh yeah, loads of the songs are by Prince because that's not at all bizarre).
It's maybe not surprising that the Joker is the main draw of this film, given that it was directed by permanent-outsider-teen Tim Burton. I unapologetically love Tim Burton, up to about 2007 when the formula started to wear thin (but it took some people much less time, so no-one can say I'm not faithful). But in 1989 Burton was at the beginning of his glory days. His only major film before that was Beetlejuice, which ranks as my favourite Burton film of his oeuvre, and being such a comparative rookie has its good points and bad points. On the one hand, Burton is gloriously unafraid to break the mould, which is what his Batman does in the same way that Batman Begins did sixteen years later. Like Nolan, he wanted to make something that would open up the potential of this universe to more than just comic book fans. The focus is on the Joker because what Burton does best is freakish outsiders, and it's hugely successful here. Also remember when Burton was a great satirist, and not just someone who made things look cool by adding spirals? That's hugely in evidence here, with Gotham's middle-class elite taking a battering for their narrow-minded concerns, picking up from the 80s yuppies in Beetlejuice and paving the way for the candy-coloured houses of Edward Scissorhands.
On the other hand, he doesn't really know what to do with the man himself. Michael Keaton is great, and remains a lot of people's favourite Batman, but his Bruce Wayne - nervy, awkward, bespectacled and, now I think about it, oddly reminiscent of Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner in The Avengers - is more successful than his Batman. There's no origin story here (well, it sort of comes into the plot later but in quite a half-arsed way), no explanation of why he does what he does. The nearest we get is "Because I'm the only one who can", which is profoundly unsatisfying. You get the feeling that Burton already had his hands full with one costumed weirdo and didn't really know how to balance the two against each other. There's a nice thematic parallel between the two throughout, as it is gradually revealed that each are responsible for the other's transformation, but really there could be a lot more angst is all I'm saying. Never thought I'd say that about a Tim Burton film. As a whole, the film feels vaguely unformed: it's not quite a blockbuster, not quite a Burton film.
For all that, it's so worth watching if you haven't seen it. All due respect to Nolan, but he wasn't the first to make Batman mainstream acceptable. And also Billy Dee Williams is Harvey Dent in an aborted sequel hook that never quite enters Two-Face territory. For shame.
Batman Returns (1992)
This is hands down my favourite Batman film, Nolan trilogy included. With one film under the belt, Burton is much more sure-footed here and it's an out-and-out gothic Burton-gold-standard freak-fest. Once again, the focus is on the villains and once again they're classics: Danny DeVito's genuinely disturbing Penguin and Michelle Pfeiffer's iconic Catwoman. The Penguin is a villain straight out of Burton's own imagination - in fact, there's even a character in Burton's 'The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy', a strange and excellent little book of poems and drawings concerning various deformed children, called That Hideous Penguin Boy. And hideous he is too. On my 153rd rewatch, I still find it distressingly hard to look at the Penguin full on so I guess bravo to the make-up department there, and also kindly go fuck yourselves for igniting a metric fuckton of Nightmare Fuel in my tender developing imagination. Christopher Walken is also on good eerie form as Max Schrek, the shady industrialist who pulls the strings and, despite lack of animal-themed costume/deformity, is implied to be the real monster in Gotham.
Also remember what I was saying about Burton being a great satirist? Pfeiffer's Catwoman is my favourite part of the whole film because of the way she gloriously deconstructs the idea of the sexy whip-toting dominatrix who just needs the love of a good man. Don't get me wrong, she's still guilty of launching an entire generation of boyish masturbatory fantasies and I'd be lying if I said she wasn't objectified even a little bit (vinyl catsuit) but Burton and Pfeiffer make it gloriously clear that Selina Kyle is, y'know, brain-damaged. In close up, she twitches, smears her lipstick across her face, her eyes lose focus and she occasionally tries to eat live birds. She should probably be in a hospital ward but, like Bruce, she's decided to work out her problems by dressing as a furry mammal and capering across some rooftops. Accordingly, the Batman/Catwoman/Bruce Wayne/Selina Kyle romance is done brilliantly and is actually integral to the plot too, unlike poor Kim Basinger's tacked-on romance in the first film. The sequence where they turn up to a masquerade ball (as Wayne and Kyle) and are the only two not wearing masks is a great touch, as is Pfeiffer's deadpan delivery upon their mutual realisation of each other's alter-ego in the middle of the crowded dance floor: "Do we have to start fighting now?" Just two damaged, combative, highly secretive individuals taking turns to kick the shit out of each other and make out. Move along now, nothing to see here. In conclusion, Catwoman manages to be empowered and deconstruct the idea of empowerment-through-male-gaze at the same time. And that was in 1992. What happened?
Batman Returns is much tighter than its predecessor, and darker too - something which led to Burton's polite removal from the director's chair for the next one. The design is superb, Gotham City re-imagined as an art deco nightmare with shades of film noir. At the time, a reviewer called the film "the first blockbuster art film" (that's some great citation there), a trick which Nolan again repeated with The Dark Knight, and I think that's the perfect description for it. The action is a little meagre and there's no fine delineation of heroes and villains, but that's not the point - it's a murky, gruesome, beautiful world in which it isn't hard to believe that deformed children are cast into the river to grow up in sewers beneath your feet and secretaries are pushed out of top-floor windows. Not our own world by a long shot, but with enough resonances to make it uncomfortable viewing.
Batman Forever (1995)
And here's where the rot starts to set it. Making good on their pledge that no bad decision go unmade, Hollywood decided that Batman Returns was a just a little too controversial and there was a whole audience of families whose wallets were going unemptied. Enter stage right: Joel Schumaker and a sudden cold wind blowing through everyone's hearts. Burton stayed on to produce, which is apparent in the final mix of the film: the universe is cartoonish and silly, but the tone is weirdly gloomy. It's like the opposite of one of those kids who dresses in stripy tights and black eyeliner but then smiles all the time and says things like "I'm kooky!" It's like Eeyore in drag. (You're welcome.) It's also famous for being the film in which Schumaker decided that subtlety was for pussies and rubber nipples were for men.
I won't lie, it's been a while since I watched it. I do know, however, that as great as Tommy Lee Jones generally is (and he's an okay-ish Two Face here), I feel robbed of not seeing Billy Dee Williams in the role. Robbed. Val Kilmer is also an okay-ish sort of Batman but to me he will never ever not be the gay detective from Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which is a) awesome and you should see it it now, b) not in any way an insult because Kilmer is great in it and c) this is the film where we get Robin for the first time so the homoeroticism is already dialled up to eleven. Speaking of: ugh, Robin. Chris O'Donnell is the kind of charmless charisma-vacuum that studios loved casting in the mid-nineties because for a very short space of time, that is apparently what women wanted. On that note, let's bear in mind that they also apparently wanted Mel Gibson at that point too, so let's just write the whole decade off as a loss for relations between the sexes. I would actually have loved to see Nolan's attempt at a gritty reboot of Robin, given that this is something that has actually been attempted in the comics, with the second (?) Robin, Jason Todd, becoming Nightwing when he was fired from being Robin on reaching adulthood (also I think he died or something). Let's not dwell on the fact that Batman stops employing his sidekicks when they reach the age of consent. I still have a secret hope that Joseph Gordon Levitt's role in The Dark Knight Rises actually is Robin in some way, given that my theory is that he's there to take over when Christian Bale breaks his spine or dies or generally stops being able to go Batmanning of an evening.
Shamefully, there is one thing that I like about this film a lot, which is Jim Carey as The Riddler. That makes no sense to me even as I type it, but there it is. He fits with the timbre of the new universe, being kind of a walking cartoon as he is, and The Riddler is a pretty classic villain (again, I was hoping he would make an appearance in the Nolan-verse but I can well imagine the Internet's ringing cries of "Joker knock-off!", only with more swearing and casual misogyny). That is it though. It's maybe worth watching because it's so bizarre, but on the whole you should just pretend the franchise died with Burton's directorial involvement.
Batman and Robin (1997)
There's little I can say about how bad this film is that you won't have heard before but do you want the truth? You'll probably quite enjoy it. It reaches levels of so-bad-it's-good so quickly that you almost suspect Schumaker of trying to make a cult film. And then Arnie turns up with another ice pun and you realise that if anyone willingly put themselves through the making of this for art, then that person is a hero. It's scraping the barrel so hard on the villain front, it's practically through to the floor. As well as the inventively named Mr Freeze (he freezes things), we get an unnervingly dead-eyed Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy and some other bloke as her henchman Bane (man, I am so looking forward to The Dark Knight Rises). In the first three films, we had a psychotic clown, a hideous deformed penguin-man, and a man with half his face burned away by acid. The weapons threatening Gotham this time are frozen water, and plants. Also Bane, who is supposed to be one of the smartest and strongest of the Batman Rogue's Gallery - he actually broke Batman's spine leaving him paraplegic in one story arc (oh my god, is it time for Dark Knight Rises yet?) - is reduced to an inarticulate luchador. Also Alicia Silverstone is Batgirl and loads of people called her fat, which is really uncalled for when her performance is so horrible, you could just focus on that. (Also, she's not fat.)
So yeah, I could go through all the puns, all the nonsensical plot points, all the bizarre unintentional homoeroticism, all the torturous adolescent flirting, all the fucking BAT CREDIT CARDS, but I won't because you should just watch it with some strong drink and then a) you can say you've watched it and survived and b) you might even enjoy it a little bit. Or just look at George Clooney's calming, symmetrical face. Don't you feel better now?
But in the end, it's not enough to say that's it's a bad film, you have to ask why it's bad - because no-one sets out to make a bad film. The answer is quite simple: money, dear boy. Batman and Robin is a purely cynical money-spinning exercise from beginning to end. It could have taken Burton's quasi-cartoon universe and pushed it into something more trippy and disturbing but no - Batman and Robin is the way it is because the producers wanted to sell more Happy Meal toys. That's right, McDonald's did what the Joker never could. It killed Batman.
And then along came Nolan in 2005 to resurrect our Bat-shaped hopes and dreams with a trilogy that has not only redefined Batman (again) but redefined what we're allowed to do with blockbusters. It's the film that everyone will see this summer - they might not have seen The Avengers, they might not see The Amazing Spider-man, but they'll sure as hell see The Dark Knight Rises, and they'll enjoy it. Unless, as I predict, Christian Bale ends the film shattered into a million tiny pieces and even then, it'll happen in an awesome way. Just please, please, please, Christopher Nolan - don't fuck up Catwoman.
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