Amph Does anyone else love Tim Burton's BATMAN?

Yeah, sheesh, that hasn't happened to me since...

Oh wait, Captain America.

I won't disagree that Elfman's score is really good, perhaps because it sounds nothing like Elfman, but I will not stand this blatant disregard for a good Alan Silvestri work!

 

Why wouldn't they? He's appealing to their avarice. And that's the key to understanding his character. He doesn't work in society; he subverts it to cohere to his twisted vision.


Firstly, society's sense of avarice is not so strong that they'd just grab at money if Osama Bin Laden was throwing it into the street from a float. I mean, c'mon: that's not a fair depiction of human nature and makes his work more shallow as a result, if you want to take it as seriously as the Nolan films. If you want to treat it as mindless entertainment, ok: but as a serious work of art, it's sort of an immature turn.

Also, even subverting society, in this fashion, is working within society. He is using his resources to get something from society: attention. A human need, and a selfish one that's in line with many Burton films. Burton heroes are outsiders and are content to be so: the role of the outsider is to be noble, in Burton's world. The two are largely very much the same thing. To want something from society, to be 'popular' or to seek popularity, as his Joker does, as his Penguin does, is evil.

Nolan's Joker is not like that: not only does he not seek popularity, he doesn't even really seek power, at least not on a permanent basis. He only seeks power for the purposes of then being in a position to destroy that power base.

Here's a key difference: clinically, it would be fair to say that Burton's Joker is a NARCISSIST. But Nolan's Joker is ANTI-SOCIAL... the more proper definition of a sociopath. The anti-social and narcissist personalities are quite similar, being both devoid of empathy, but the narcissist has a small, easily bruised ego whereas the anti-social has no ego at all. The narcissist seeks adulation, revenge, all these basic human needs. He is, in other words, a spoiled child. The anti-social seeks merely immediate entertainment, and feels no need for attention or even revenge.



Yes, he sleeps with the boss's woman, and then proceeds to deform her and delight in her suicide.

Similar to a narcissist. He no longer needs her and now devalues her. But the point was that he at one point sought her for a basic human need. Nolan's Joker would have deformed her from the get-go.


Yes, he tries to take over the city, insofar as murdering every man, woman and child via Smilex.

Point is that he tried to take over first, and that he sought attention from them before they died. Nolan's Joker has no need for attention. That stunt on the ferries? Nolan's Joker gives his message by remote, just his voice sounding through the loudspeakers. Nicholson's Joker would never have been able to tolerate that. He would have had to have his face seen, bask in the attention before killing them. Sure, he's going to kill them in the end. But until that point, he's very much about human interaction and extracting narcissistic supply from his victims.

Yes, he pursues the attractive Vicki Vale, and then aims his acid-spraying flower at her visage.

Yes, but why pursue her to begin with? Again, he's looking for attention: that he's going to immediately devalue the source of that attention does not mean he's not 'working within society'. That Joker is very much a social creature. He's just a horribly malignant version.


Nicholson's Joker is very much a freak. The difference is that rather than feeling alienated by his maladies, he revels in them and uses the moral weaknesses of others to pervert and destroy. The enema is Gotham's, but the pleasure is his alone.

But the point is that Gotham can actually HURT this Joker by simply not paying attention to him. He's a freak, but a freak that reflects the society from which he comes, in Burton's view. You see this by how outraged he gets at Batman for 'stealing his press' and his attitude towards press headlines. His use of moral weaknesses is not something he wants to make clear to his audience. His message is: "Pay attention to me! Be like me, be evil! Ok, die now." It's the 'pay attention to me' part which, in Burton's world, is a signature of a villain. It's the

 

I go back and forth with Batman. At this moment though I actually kind of think it doesn't hold up very well at all. Visually it's a beautiful film and Elfman's score is iconic but it's a very weak script. Bruce Wayne and Batman have next to nothing resembling character development and Nicholson is as loud as anything in the Schumacher films but we forgive him simply because he's Jack Nicholson.

 

I've enjoyed Tim Burton's excellent Batman film ever since I first saw this in the theatre way back in the day. Great story, soundtrack, acting, action, and incredible gothic sets. Nicholson's Joker is one of his all time best roles. I also liked how the script stuck with the original origin of the Joker, i.e. he was a criminal who fell in a vat of acid & whose skin/hair changed color as as result. The very well choreographed fight scenes with Batman & the various bad guys also really resonated. The Batplane & Batmobile were also amazing.

It should also be noted that the film truly changed the way the mainstream public (i.e., non comic book or Batman fans) perceived the Batman character; though comic fans had been aware of the original 1940's dark Batman, before the film was released in '89 when most people thought of Batman they probably pictured the campy/cheesy '60's TV version. Tim Burton's film really brought the character back to his gothic roots.

I also liked '92's Batman Returns, which was very well-done. Unfortunately, I was very dissapointed with the next two Batman movies, and wished that Burton had also directed those.

The only issue I had with these films was that, IMHO, Keaton was mis-cast as Bruce Wayne/Batman; don't get me wrong - I think Keaton's a great actor, but he didn't look anything like Bruce Wayne did from the comics (unlike C. Bale in the new films, who is spot-on as BW).

 

Really you thought the fight scenes were well choreographed? I didn't. In fact that is a glaring problem with all the Burton/Schumacher films( and in some ways in the Nolan films as well but not as bad) These Bat suits don't allow for much movement.

 

Didn't like the first one much; the second one was much better. Keaton wasn't wooden, exactly; more like withdrawn and having low effect. I guess that's Hollywood's version of grief. I suspect Burton had more control over the second, given the success of the first.

 

Haha. That guy who played penguin in the old show is the trainer in the Rocky movies, Mickey. WEH, WEH, WEH! I prefer 89 to Returns although it has its moments, notably the unmasking scene. Now lets discuss the women. I was most attracted to Catwoman (in Returns) and Poison Ivy. That love spray intrigued me and would've considered dating her back then if I had that death kiss repellent.

 

Burton's Batman was good, it was a welcome retreat from the 60s show. And it was way better than Schumaker's take. Its just that Nolan's take is that much better. Even though Nolan's version is more realistic than the comics, the Nolan style is seen as most true to the comics IN GENERAL if Im not mistaken. I remember how ticked I was that Burton wasnt beeing allowed to direct the third Batman in 1995 because the previous Batmans were seen as "too dark". Wow! Talk about the vocal minority upstaging the silent majority! Burton's Batman films had a very distinct style that was consistent in the first two movies. It would have been great to get that in a third movie. It would have been a nice trilogy. What I like about the Nolan films is that it really feels like Warner Bros. is redeeming themselves for the debacle that they allowed to happen in the 90s.

 

I love Burton's Batman Returns for sure. But the first film is an incoherent jumble, a Frankenstein monster cobbled together to create something that is perhaps only just watchable 20 years later.

 

I don't find the 1989 film to be incoherent or cobbled together at all. It's not perfect, but it hangs together as a complete work and is wholly intelligible and internally consistent.

 

My favorite superhero movies tend to be the ones where the makers are less concerned with getting the characters "right" and more with finding what they personally find interesting about the character/franchise and then playing with those toys as hard as they can to make a movie out of it all.

I appreciate both Hulk movies for this reason. Leterrier and Norton are clearly bigger fans of the TV show than of the comics, so they played to that and made what I think was a great movie about Banner on the run. Ang Lee found his interest in the psychological underpinnings - though I think he had a more difficult time meshing that side of the story with the action scenes (gorgeous to watch though they are).

Likewise, Burton is drawing much more on the 60s TV show than anything from the comics, though he does a great job of molding them to his own dark sensibilities. The elderly Gordon becomes an obese bureaucrat (though well-intentioned). The Rogues' gimmicks remain as cartoonish as anything from the 60s, but with an added legitimately deadly vibe (poison balloons, rocket-launching penguins, killer electric hand-buzzer, exploding giant Christmas presents).

The major thing Burton imports from the West show is the concession that, yes, this is an insane concept. Instead of giving us a Bruce Wayne who is a believable street vigilante, he gives us a Bruce Wayne who would believably dress up like a bat.

To put it another way, Nolan is focused on the crimefighter (named Batman), while Burton is interested in the Batman (who fights crime). Not that one focus is necessarily better than the other, of course.

Burton's first film also contains my all-time favorite Bruce Wayne scene (driving around saving Coleman Reese in TDK is a close second), when he attempts to confess his secret to Vicki in her apartment.

I can also buy Keaton developing his gadgets and doing detective work on his own, whereas Bale is not someone I buy as the World's Greatest detective. Only because he's got Lucius doing the heavy mental lifting do I remotely believe that part of the character in Nolan's films.

 

Although I think Nolan is more interested in continuing his usual themes in his Batman films than getting the character "right" and turning him into a realistic street vigilante, I also think he provides a believable pretext for Bruce Wayne's natural impulse being to dress up as a bat. Whereas Keaton is bat**** and on another planet in many ways, Bale is so wracked by self-loathing and guilt that he hates being Bruce Wayne - the real Bruce. He's more at ease as the fake Bruce or, funnily enough, Batman. Nolan understands the ridiculousness of the premise, but he's not trying to make it realistic, he's just built a universe with internal verisimilitude, which I don't think Burton really did until Batman Returns.

Theatricality is a big theme in Nolan's films (and unfortunately, he couldn't avoid mentioning it by name in Batman Begins), moreso than Burton, who casts the freaks as outsiders living in their own world, operating on a separate plane of existence almost (which is Burton's thing of course). Batman and the Joker fight a private war driven by personal revenge in Batman - in The Dark Knight it is a grander battle, with Batman, Gordon, and Dent pitched against the Joker for Gotham's soul. In Batman Begins, it's yet again a battle for Gotham's soul, albeit one more of redemption rather than preservation. In Batman Returns, it's revenge, revenge, revenge. Or profit, in Schreck's case, but the action is contained, and the real world (or Burton's approximation) is just collateral damage.

Both are (sorta) legitimate ways to adapt Batman (in fact, so is Schumacher's, it's just that the storytelling and acting and writing is so damn inept), but the '89 film suffers heavily from a strong central aesthetic. There's the gothic stuff, proto-Burton stuff mixed in with 30s gangsters, replete with Lame Robert Wuhl accompaniment, which gives way to a strong focus on the media, and then we've got Prince songs coming in and Batman doing some kung fu bizzo to boot. With Harvey Dent on the side and the mayor doing absolutely bugger all. And Jack Napier killing the Waynes just bugs me - part of the power of Batman is that while his whole drive is vengeful to some degree, it's never personal. That is the power of it, that he does this selflessly, without being bound to anything other than his own ethical code. What's more, it adds absolutely nothing to the film thematically, but then the film doesn't really feel like it has all that much to say by the end of it. "Those driven by revenge will protect the innocent" or some such. Batman triumphant because he essentially murdered the guy who killed his parents.

On the other hand, Batman Returns has Batman becoming personally entangled with the goings on, sure, but it's because there's a genuine reflection of him in the other characters. A vigilante who is a law unto her own and an outcast - another outcast who was once to the manor born but had his parents, one way or another, taken away from him and was raised unconventionally, and a rival power broker in Gotham city whose intentions are anything but pure. The gears of the story are in constant motion because Bruce is at war on all fronts, the film is full of commentary on things like lionization and demonization, the driving forces of anger and greed, petulance and power and whatnot. And the aesthetic is Burton's from go to woe. It's certainly one of his best films ever, and I would say that it may well be the best "superhero" film that Nolan had nothing to do with. But not the first one. There's too much in it that is ultimately meaningless, and is purely product. And I can be mean to something so meaningless.

 

One of the things I love about Burton's first film is the way it takes on this operatic, "This is THE story of this character and world," tone, while still maintaining a sense of the character's episodic existence. It's the exact opposite of most other superhero movies.

Nearly every other franchise wastes their entire first movie on the origin story, and all too many make it clear that the few adventures we see in the several films amount to the whole of the hero's career. There's no sense of the heroic persona existing in their world before or after the screen is lit.

Burton gives us a Batman who has been on the job for some time, and who promises to continue on for a long time to come. His origin certainly plays an integral role in the film, but it's made clear that the Wayne murder, not Bruce's pursuit of the killer, is the drive behind his crime-fighting career. He's Batman going after crooks with no relation to Napier before Napier shows up, he's still Batman when he thinks Napier's dead, and he's still in action as Batman after the Joker hit's the pavement. He's personally motivated in his dealings with Napier/Joker, but his overall drive to be Batman is bigger than that. It's the same generally vengeful pursuit as in other versions.

The movie is not the story of how Jack Napier created Batman and how Batman got his revenge; it's the story of Batman confronting the demons of his past. Kind of like if TAS did an episode where Joe Chill showed up as the villain.

Burton's Batman is more like a James Bond or Indiana Jones (or a typical superhero of comics past), in that we're not seeing his life's story. We're seeing one of the many adventures he has had and will continue to have, but this one is the (insert superlative here) one yet! as the pulps might say.

 

It doesn't really explore that, though. You've got Batman beating up thugs who were terrorizing innocent folks like his parents, and then much later Bruce being mesmerized by Jack/The Joker a few times until the penny drops and caps off the second act - the realization is more of a plot device than anything, which leads to Bruce getting "nuts" for one scene, after which it's just business as usual. It doesn't provide any palpable sense of closure for Batman, or any real sense of change, so the entire conceit is essentially pointless.

You can have a fun, serialized adventure Batman film, but Batman '89 isn't it. Schmuacher's efforts are much closer to delivering that kind of pulpy, giddy adventure, although he and Goldsman couldn't help but put in IMPORTANT PERSONAL ISSUES which are total crap. Burton, like Nolan, withholds Batman from the audience for protracted periods of time, in addition to the fact that the tonality of the piece is much too serious, and he spends far more time building (in vain) characters like Vicki Vale and Eckhardt and having subplots with the Joker's girlfriend and, yeah, flashbacks that do invariably turn the third act into a revenge story for it to be that Bond-style adventure driven by stock-standard tropes and cliches. The only thing that really contributes to that idea of the pulpy adventure is that much of the action is perfunctory, whereas the bulk of Nolan's action is metaphorical. WB was big on selling toys, I guess - and then when Burton got more control for the sequel, you have things like Chris Walken in a crazy wig and suit in a major role and the extremely unappealing Penguin, and a film that works as a Batman tale but is perhaps more resonant (at least in my humble opinion) as a grotesque reversal of Edward Scissorhands.

What Bruce Timm and friends did for the animated series that worked so well was that they kept it lean and mean. Like Burton, the only characters that exist are the relevant ones, and Gotham feels almost abandoned, but the television format demands economy, and that the gears of plot drive are in constant motion. There is a great sense of forward momentum in each of those episodes, since they've got to tell an enthralling Batman yarn in 22 minutes, so they had to let Batman and Bruce Wayne's character come through purely in action. In the Burton film, however, there is no clear objective from the outset (one of the big storytelling problems - Batman is doing random peacekeeping roles up until the Joker reveals himself in public. And even then the objective is just a vague "stop the Joker", which robs the film of narrative thrust for much of the runtime), and the focus is unclear thanks to the numerous unnecessary characters. And the Prince songs.

 

And the Prince songs*

A little footnote, FWIW, the producers and the studio forced the Prince songs on Burton.
It wasn't his idea and at that time, he had enough going for him in Hollywood to get the
gig to direct Batman (PeeWee and Beetlejuice were both very profitable hits),
but not to completely control the project.

 

Hold on, what was wrong with the two Prince segments! Surely I can't be the only man delighted by the Joker murdering elites and defacing paintings to the accompaniment of pop.

He's a cracked modern artist, no?

 

Burton's films are important, without them I don't think we would have Nolan's movies.

Batman as a live action character prior to Burton was a camp somewhat parody figure who no-one took that seriously. Burton made him dark and gritty and someone to be feared by both people and criminals. Black-suited Batman was different to the grey Batman of the comics and that has been retained by Nolan in his versions. Burton made Batman cool again, Schumacher tried to drag it back into stupidity of Adam West and Nolan brought it back toward Burton's vision and altered it his own way.

Both have things good and bad. I admire Nolan's attempts at realism but I think it can be a problem (Why don't Batman's vehicles have a Bat shape? Why is Bane just a muscled guy in a scuba mask and not a chemical powered mini-hulk in a luchador mask?) while I think Burton's craziness can undermine his work (Joker was not that threatening because he was too crazy and silly and therefore wasn't taken seriously).
I think the main difference is Bale's Batman doesn't kill while Burton's does.

 

I've said it before and I stand by it. I think it makes total sense for the Joker to listen to Prince. The man wears a purple suit, for God's sake. He's not a Jackson Browne fan.

 

Frankly, I'd be miffed at a vigilante who kept refusing to kill a psychotic mass-murderer. Once the body count reaches 100, it's time to stuff all the self-righteous codas and take care of business.

I can just imagine thousands of Gothamites, hoisting up signs that read, "Hey Batman! Just kill the ----ing Joker already!"

 

I'm with you right up until this last bit. Nolan's Batman is very much the comics character of the 70s and 80s, the serious detective with a dark side. The Adam West version was a satire of comics of the 50s and early 60s. Burton's version is kind of like a mish-mash of the serious 70s-80s character with the silly, circus-like frenzy of the 60s TV show.

Yes, that's a fair summation, but in assessing Nolan's alterations be careful not to discount their adherence to, and origins in, the best of the comics from the 70s-onward. The Nolan Batverse is reasonably intelligent, serious and action-movie-realistic, which is a fair summation of the comics of the period as well. Neither Burton's versions nor Schumacher's owe much to the comics, with the obvious exception of the character, and a few plot points and images.

This is a can of worms I'll leave to others to slither around in.

 

I agree, but the principle of many heroes is that killing people makes them as bad as those who kill.

It can be a weakness though. I recall in the Arkham Asylum game when Joker was standing high up above a very long drop and taunted Batman to knock him off. Batman easily could have and would have ended Joker right there, but he chose not to. This is a weakness many heroes hagve that is often exploited by the villains.


Then again, Nolan's Batman did kill Harvey Dent, Just as Schumacher's Batman did.

 

They did die pretty similarly, right? Falling? Been years since I saw Batman Forever.

 

It seems your request has been heard.

 

Yeah, but I get the impression Kilmer's Batman deliberately intended for Dent to fall and die whereas Bale's Batman was just trying to protect Gordon's family and Dent ended up dying.

 

That seems to be what I remember as well.