"Gentlemen! Let's broaden our minds... Lawrence!"
Here's a snippet from the New York Times talking about Tim Burton's Batman when
it was first released:
As I've said before in my Avengers review, I'm not a big fan of superhero
films, but when one comes along that I believe is a true cinematic achievement
some people have a hard time taking it seriously, as the comments to that video
(and this Times quote) show. In some ways Tim Burton's Batman should be an easier
film to defend. For one thing, it's an older film, so in some ways it's stood the
test of time. It might not be classic to everyone, but it's certainly a classic in
its own genre, and the big names attached to the film also help its legacy
considerably. But in other ways, this version of Batman is difficult to defend.
Ever since Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, people have gotten used to a dark, gritty,
serious Batman. They want the story to be more practical,
realistic, and believable. To some fans of the Nolan version, Burton's Batman is
goofier, more outlandish, and therefore inferior. And while I agree that The Dark
Knight is inarguably the best Batman film, I'd like to argue for this film as
a close second, because seriousness and quality aren't the same thing, and in
fact, it's Batman's ability to take itself less seriously that makes it a
more enjoyable entertaining movie. So let's dive in and examine this movie's
place in pop culture history, its meticulously crafted filmmaking, and
why these things make it an essential film. Batman was made at a time before
superhero films became as ubiquitous as they are today, when the only superhero
film which had gotten any major mainstream attention was Richard
Donner's Superman, and while Superman was an adequate tribute to its iconic hero, I
don't feel it deserves the same level of recognition that this film does. For one
thing, it hasn't aged well. Yes, Batman has its cheesy moments, but it maintains a
balance between the story's campier elements and its
more human elements, and creates an environment where everything that
happens seems natural. Superman, meanwhile, makes the audience
work much harder to maintain suspension of disbelief, and furthermore presents us
with a character to perfect, quiet, and alien to be relatable, and an
oversimplified black-and-white morality that further strains the audience's
investment. It's still a decent film, of course, but it has nowhere near the
amount of sleek artistic coherence that Burton puts into Batman. Moreover, while
Superman is morally simple, Batman presents us with a world which is not
only darker visually, but more morally complicated. Much of this has to do with
the characters themselves: while Superman's responsibilities are thrust
upon him, Batman fights crime because of a personal wound. He's a vigilante
working outside the boundaries of a legal system which is shown to be
corrupt. He may be fighting for justice and doing good, but it's implied throughout
the Batman mythos that he's doing these things for the wrong reasons and that
he's got some psychological baggage that he hasn't properly dealt with yet.
Burton's film was the first to explore this side to the Batman character, as at
the time, the incarnation of the character most people were familiar with
was the goofy Adam West version.
"Oh, you can say that over the phone, Batman, but if I had you here I'd pound you to a pulp!"
"Start pounding, Joker!" *joker screm*
Of course, as Zach Snyder's version has shown us, darker and gloomier isn't always better, but at the time of
this film's release this was something no one had seen before. Today, though
successive Batman films have been much darker, the film is still pretty dark, but
as with most Burton films, its darkness is balanced out by its fun and its
active imagination. The first thing that you notice about Batman is its
distinctive aesthetic. In other Batman films, Gotham could be any city, but here
it's unlike any city in any other film. It's a unique urban hellscape, a creative
distortion of metropolises like New York.
An essay in ugliness, perhaps, but there's a bizarre beauty to it. Its
exaggerated buildings and its use of low lighting and intense shadows are a
callback to German Expressionism, a movement from film's early years which
has always had a visible influence on Burton's work. Here Burton displays that
influence more proudly than anywhere else. The ending to the film is a direct
echo of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, where a madman kidnaps the leading lady of the
film and takes her to the top of a tall church, while the hero pursues to do
battle with him and rescue the damsel in distress.
I consider this kind of intertextuality as more than simply an homage.
it's Tim Burton citing his sources, and in doing so, he's building artistic
credibility. This isn't simply a mindless blockbuster action flick: this is a work
of art produced by people drawing from a rich stylistic tradition of filmmaking.
Furst and his set decorator Peter Young eventually won the Academy Award for
Best Art Direction, cementing Batman's place in film history. And of course,
I can't ignore the grand operatic music of Danny Elfman, who has here created one
of the most memorable soundtracks of all time. Film is an artistic medium that
combines so many other artistic mediums: art, music, storytelling, and so on, and as
in many of my other reviews, I have to spend time talking about each part of
the film's production, because the truly genius and essential films are those
films where every single one of those parts succeeds in a brilliant and
remarkable way while blending seamlessly with all of the other parts of the film,
and I believe that this film is a great example of that. Now before I continue, I
have a confession to make. Sadly, because I'm not big into the geek
culture from which Batman and similar superhero films emerged, I haven't read
any of the major comic books, and I really wish that I had, because even
though it's not necessary to read them to appreciate the film, they are an
important part of how the film came to be what it is. It is a testament to the
film's merits that it paid attention to how the character was being shaped by
the comic books of the day, and how it incorporated various aspects from those
different Batman stories into one single clean crisp narrative. And
despite how much I would love to talk about all of the Batman lore that this film
borrowed from in creating its screenplay, I simply don't have the authority to do
so. All I can say is that by hiring Sam Hamm, someone who was well versed enough
in the mythology of the character to pay proper respect to it, they not only
were able to use some of the best elements from what came before, but they
were able to establish a solid influence on what came after. Ever noticed how most
Batman films nowadays don't have Robin in them? This movie started that. Notice
how Batman wears armor instead of tights? This movie started that, too. And
so on, and so forth. The most remarkable part of this film's handling of the
Batman narrative, though, is its treatment of both the Batman and the Joker's
respective origin stories. The film doesn't confuse newcomers to the
franchise by requiring them to rely on any pre-existing knowledge of the hero,
but at the same time, it doesn't bore fans by devoting too much time to
explaining Batman's origins. Instead it plunges you into the city of Gotham
around the time of Batman's first crime-fighting endeavors, and chooses to
make his origins and motivations a mystery. You don't find out about his
parents' death until you're a third of the way into the film, and you aren't
given so much as a flashback until two-thirds of the way into the film. Then there's
the matter of the Joker. Most films leave the Joker's origins a mystery or don't
even address them, but this film has Batman's actions indirectly cause
gangster Jack Napier to fall into a vat of chemicals and go insane, leading him
to become the Joker. And moreover, it makes the risky but respectable decision
to insert the Joker into Batman's origin story making Jack Napier the thug who
shot Batman's parents. In other Batman stories, this wouldn't work, but here it
makes excellent sense to make these changes to create not only a more
streamlined plot, but also a more symbiotic relationship between the hero
and the villain. "You killed my parents." "What? What are you talking about?"
"I made you, you made me first." "Hey Bat-brain, I mean, I was a kid when I killed your parents."
"I mean, I say I made you, you gotta say you made me, how childish can you get?" This kind of special
connection between them adds an extra layer of psychological subtlety and
complexity beneath all of the explosive violence that defines their conflict on
the surface, as if each is a shadow or reflection of the other. Tim Burton's
fascination with eccentric outcasts plays a significant role in this duality,
I believe, as both Batman and the Joker are presented as people too
extraordinary to conform to the rules, yet one is good and one is evil. This is
often directly addressed in the film: "Listen, we mustn't compare ourselves to
regular people. We're artists!" "You know how a normal
person gets up and.. goes downstairs and... eats breakfast and... kisses somebody goodbye and...
goes to a job and, you know..." "No." "No." And, if that's not enough, there's
Tim Burton's own comments on this:
So even though Batman is often overlooked, it cannot be denied that it's
earned a solid place both within the Batman franchise, and also in film
history. Think what you will of Heath Ledger's Joker, but I think there's
definitely something to be said for Nicholson's distinctive take on the
character as well, and he remains my personal favorite Joker. To have the
legendary Hollywood actor most famous for portraying insane unhinged
characters take on the role of pop culture's ultimate madman was, like the
rest of the film, a dream come true for comic book fans, who before they saw it
were concerned that comedic actor Keaton and comedy director Burton would make
the film too campy and light. What fans got in the end was a pleasant surprise,
and if anyone needed convincing, the guidance that Batman's original creator
Bob Kane gave to the project and the approval he gave to the final product
make this film perhaps the most definitive self-contained version of the
famous story which is still being retold again and again to this day.
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