85) Batman Returns

Batman Returns (1992)


Director: Tim Burton

Starring: Michael Keaton, Danny DeVito, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christopher Walken, Michael Gough

We got back from our holidays this afternoon. I hadn't watched a movie for a while so was keen to watch one tonight, and inspired by the exhibition at ACMI Kate was keen to see one of the Tim Burton's that she hadn't, so she picked Batman Returns.

Corrupt tycoon Max Shreck (Walken) wants to build a power plant for Gotham City as his legacy, but can't get the mayor to approve it. What everyone doesn't know though, is that Shreck has designed his power plant to actually drain power from Gotham rather than supply it. After accidentally uncovering his scheme, Shreck's secretary Selina Kyle (Pfeiffer) is thrown from the top of the Shreck tower. However she is miraculously licked back to life by stray cats. She sews herself a fetishistic costume and ventures out into the night as the Catwoman, hell bent on revenge. Meanwhile, a grotesquely deformed man called the Penguin (DeVito), who has lived his entire life in the sewers of Gotham hatches a plan to make his ascent. He stages a kidnapping of the Mayor's baby, pretends to rescue him and is then applauded as a hero. Shreck sees an opportunity in the Penguin's new found popularity and convinces him to run for Mayor of Gotham. Bruce Wayne (Keaton) is convinced that there is something sinister about the Penguin's intentions so sets about investigating him.

Despite it being a favourite from my childhood I haven't watched Batman Returns for a number of years. I was quite surprised to see just how different it was to Burton's original, Batman. It was something I don't recall noticing before. Batman Returns is a much more noticeably Tim Burton film. The film has a completely different look. Anton Furst's film noir inspired Gotham City sets from the first film were not reused, but rather replaced by a more Gothic style depiction of the city (more gargoyles). The Penguin and Catwoman look much more like Tim Burton drawings than the Joker did. You really get the impression that after the young Tim Burton had turned Batman into one of the highest grossing films of all time, either Warner Brothers were willing to give him a bit more slack second time round or he tried to push things a bit further second time round.

One problem which has always seemed to plague film versions of Batman is the fact that the character of Batman/Bruce Wayne tends to get overshadowed by the villainous characters. It makes sense to an extent. In a series of movies revolving around the same hero it is the different villains which give the movies their flavour. But this seems to be a problem which has arisen more in Batman films than in James Bond or Indiana Jones or even Superman films. In Burton's original Batman it was Jack Nicholson who really stole the show as the Joker. Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins did slightly better at keeping the focus on the hero but was only really able to do so because it told an origins story and chose not to include any of the really iconic Batman villains. Even though Batman was a strong character again in The Dark Knight, he was once again overshadowed by Heath Ledger's brilliant performance as the Joker. Watching Batman Returns I really got the sense that the film was much more about the Penguin and Catwoman than it was about Batman. DeVito and Pfeiffer's characters have personal story lines in a way that Keaton's does not.. The fact that Bruce Wayne does not even appear until the 35 minute mark gives an indication as to just how much Burton was struggling to keep him central.

When Batman Begins came out there was a lot of publicity around the fact that Nolan was doing a dark Batman and this was treated as a real novelty. This really bugged me because after Joel Schumacher's franchise destroying, gay, laser-light spectaculars; Batman Forever and Batman and Robin (seriously, why have nipples on the bat suit?), people seemed to have forgotten that Burton's two Batman films were quite dark affairs. If anything, Warner Brothers decision to hand the reins over to Schumacher was as a result of Burton's films being considered a bit too dark. However, having watched Burton's films more recently, and seeing them in the light of Nolan's films, I've realised it is a very different type of darkness. Nolan's films have a darkness which comes out of a sense of menace and terror. His is an evil darkness. Burton's on the other hand is a sad darkness. In Batman Returns we feel sorry for the Penguin as much as, possibly even more than, we fear him and the character of Batman/Bruce Wayne, rather than being someone we think it would be cool to be, comes across as a rather lonely, reclusive, neurotic man.

Christopher Nolan has set the bar for Batman adaptations with his rebooted series. You can't really argue that fact. His films, particularly The Dark Knight, are brilliant. But lost in all the hype surrounding Nolan's films is the fact that Burton's reboot of Batman, in which he was trying to distance Batman from the campy 1960s television show the way Nolan was trying to distance Batman from the disasters that were Batman Forever and Batman and Robin, was a very admirable indeed. You have to look at Burton's films as completely different films from Nolan's, rather than as a part of an ongoing series, because they are trying to do and say different things, but they are still very much worth watching.