Batman, Then And Now - Part 1

I promised a blog about the film franchise revolving around my favorite hero/superhero, Batman, and here it is... in two parts!  This part will be about the older Batman films and why I think they're so important.  The next one will deal with the recently-concluded Dark Knight Trilogy from Chris Nolan.  The point of all this is that I'm torn between joining the rest of the fan world in celebrating the greatness of the Nolan films as they come to a close and wanting to shout about how so many seem to have forgotten exactly how important Tim Burton's first two Batman movies were 20 years ago and still are today.

Simply entitled BATMAN, Tim Burton's movie opened in 1989 when I was 10 years old and not yet a Batman fan.  I wanted to see the Ghostbusters sequel again, but my father insisted that we see BATMAN - and for reasons that, as I recall them, still don't make any sense.  At first, I was confused.  I knew who Batman was from a visual standpoint and that he was a superhero, but I'd never read a comic, didn't know the actors except by name and didn't even know who played who.  Accustomed to superheroes being light and colorful and to most of the movies I see being comedies and kids films, I was totally in the dark - literally and figuratively.  I couldn't even tell when Batman was onscreen half the time because I was in a dark theater watching a Batman clad all-in-black and roaming around a city at night that had a lot of black elements to it.  It was originally a frustrating experience, but as it did others, it eventually drew me in and from that movie, alone, I became a Batman fan, expanding my knowledge to the comics and other iterations - including the 60's TV show, which took a long time to reconcile with the feature as something totally
different.

In hindsight, I see the flaws.  In hindsight, Nicholson was perfect for that role... in 1974.  The only thing that makes sense about why that movie ever worked at all besides the late Anton Furst's great production design is the one thing that apparently made most fans the angriest, and that was the casting of Michael Keaton in the lead role.  Even when he's playing good guys, he doesn't strike someone as the hero type, let alone the superhero type, but learning later how that was precisely Tim Burton's point, it all clicked.  Keaton makes up for his physical inappropriateness (barely 5'9" and a bit stocky) in the movie with a believable characterization of someone compelled to do something he's not otherwise cut-out to do and, thus, adopting extreme measures in order to at least convince himself that he's being at all successful.  Interestingly enough, I think Keaton inhabited the suit more effectively in the sequel BATMAN RETURNS, but that might be because he's contrasted in that film with a borderline-petite woman and an already chubby actor standing just under 5 feet, buried not only in make-up and prosthetics, but also what was probably the most hideous fat-suit ever in existence. Batman fans like myself are now sober when it comes to both of Burton's films and divided about which is the best, many either eschewing BATMAN RETURNS completely for abandoning so many of the characters' comic book traits or putting it on a pedestal for being (in my opinion) the most creatively-made Batman or superhero movie ever made... for better or worse.  The debt that fans of any of the Batman films (and, arguably, any superhero movies thereafter) owes to Burton, however, can neither be ignored nor denied, nor can it be justifiably understimated.  Burton wasn't the one that got that first movie's ball rolling in 1979 (the year I was born, ironically), but I doubt it would have made the impact that it did without him.  Moreover, whether good or bad, neither Joel Schumacher nor Chris Nolan ever tried to argue with the logic of having Batman's costume be all-black.  Frankly, I'd like to see someone try a real-life depiction closer to, say... the suit of the late-70's and 80's comics, but that's just me (and a topic for another blog!).

I, for one, loved BATMAN RETURNS and still do, even though it is sometimes difficult to watch and, interestingly enough, only got that way as I got older.  I was 13 at the time, though, so I did get the sense that it was very, very different - even compared with its predecessor - and so much so that perhaps it would be the last of its kind... and it was.  The news of Joel Schumacher's takeover were, even to my teenage ears, not altogether unexpected, but still disappointing.  Disappointing still was the eventual BATMAN FOREVER, which might have entertained me more had I not been so devoted to the Burton aesthetic and tone (which the film didn't even abandon entirel given Burton retains producer credit).  Jim Carrey was the draw for me on that film. Though I only really liked him in THE MASK, I knew he was right for the role of the Riddler, especially if they were making a lighter Batman movie, and as rendered, he was perfectly cast.  Then again, while not the darkest of Batman's villains, the Riddler could have been handled with a bit more care and given a bit more weight and menace instead of just being a Frank Gorshin homage on steroids and, well... in VERY living color. 

Rounding out this blog, all I can say is that BATMAN FOREVER made a ton of money and, BAM, two years later, we got a new Batman in George Clooney and the mostly abominable BATMAN & ROBIN.  I saw that movie in theaters twice, but I think I was just desperate to find something good about it.  Maybe if it hadn't been a Batman movie, but... no.  BATMAN FOREVER had frustrated me in that, by the time I saw it, I knew about Two-Face AND I knew that Tommy Lee Jones was a great actor, and it just remains painful to me how BOTH the fictional character and real-life actor were simultaneously wasted. BATMAN & ROBIN was worse because it took some really great actors and elements and just... defecated on them. 

Sorry to be so disgusting here, but really...  Arnold Schwarzenegger is an entertaining presence, but he's never been a good actor and he was NOT a good choice to play Mr. Freeze, certainly not the version from Bruce Timm's incredible Batman: The Animated Series, whose origin was basically stolen beat-for-beat for the feature film.  Strength-enhancing freeze suit notwithstanding, I never even pictured Mr. Freeze as being that physically imposing except, maybe, that he might be tall.  At the time, I pictured someone like hristopher Lloyd in the part, someone that could be both a credible comic book character, but still bring something more to the part.  All Schwarzenegger brought was his annoying accent (annoying here, anyway) and ill-timed dialogue delivery. Uma Thurman might have been tolerable as Poison Ivy except that she must have been given the same directive as everyone else, which was to play it as over-the-top and shallow as possible.  Interestingly enough, I'd seen an interview with George Clooney on TV not long after ER debuted and it occurred to me then that he might could play Batman, but only in the sense that he'd make a decent Bruce Wayne and had the physical traits.  I was thinking a live-action television series, at best, but not a feature.  To his credit, he does make a good Bruce Wayne, but only one version of him - which is to say that George Clooney does what is supposed to be the phony billionaire playboy persona very well, but brings no pathos or depth otherwise.  Without that, Batman is little more than an image, and if you reduce him to that, you take away much of what makes him so great.  That's what Schumacher did wrong in both films, but certainly in BATMAN & ROBIN.

In conclusion, most agree that about the only good thing that came from BATMAN & ROBIN was the termination of that Batman franchise - which was about to head into a movie called BATMAN TRIUMPHANT about the Scarecrow before Schumacher bailed - and gave Warner Brothers either the balls or the desperation to let Christopher Nolan take it down a completely different path eight years later. Indeed, Nolan's take is almost completely different when you compare it to what came before - though we still have the all-black batsuit.  That said, it's also the most appropriate given Batman's comic book origins without being slaves to its source material. Tune in next time for my rant on the Dark Knight Trilogy... "same bat-time, same bat-channel."