Batman

What the hell happened to Tim Burton?  I used to really dig his work.  It blows my mind that the guy who directed Ed Wood also directed Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  What might be the weirdest thing is that his career didn’t gradually go downhill it hit a wall, a giant hairy ape wall. 

But before that he gave us Batman, the perfect superhero movie.  There have been others that were more comic booky like Spider-Man and some that were trying to be more realistic like The Dark Knight.  But I think that Burton’s Batman has the best balance.  It was dark but wasn’t completely serious and still had a lot of humor.  It wasn’t overly comic booky and didn’t pretend like the movie was supposed to take place in the real world.  Oh yeah, and it had a soundtrack by Prince.  That’s fucking awesome.

The casting of Batman and the Joker in this film was spot on.  And for a movie like this that hinges so crucially on these two it wouldn’t have mattered what else happened in the movie if no care was taken in finding just the right people.  When it came out that Michael Keaton was to play Batman it was a surprise to just about everyone.  This guy does comedies why is he playing a superhero?  This is a superhero that’s very serious too.  Batman isn’t like Superman where he smiles when he’s done a good job saving lives.  Batman beats motherfuckers with a deadpan face.  So everyone thought, “really?  Michael Keaton is gonna pull this off without cracking a joke or winking at the camera?”  You bet your ass he did.  And his take on Batman worked incredibly well.  The facial expressions are mostly all you have to go by, especially the eyes.  Keaton was able to make scumbags fear for their lives with his “I’m going to throw you off of this fucking building” stare.  I guess part of the beauty of casting Keaton is that you ask yourself “would you believe this guy is Batman?”  No, not really.  But when you see him in the suit with that pokerfaced expression and you hear that calm but very menacing voice it paints a great picture of a superhero.  But you couldn’t just throw anyone in that role like Daniel Stern or some shit ‘cause that would’ve been pretty terrible in my opinion. 

An even better casting decision was to get Jack Nicholson to play the Joker.  And man did it look like he was having fun.  One minute you would think, “oh this Joker guy is pretty funny.  You know I think I would like to have a beer with him”.  And then he would fry a guy with one of those hand buzzer things and you would go, “holy shit that guy’s crazy.  You know having a beer with him wouldn’t be such a good idea.  He’d probably try to kill me.”  Having the Joker be so clowny and playful worked well and gave plenty of room for Nicholson to stretch his legs.  It’s amazing to see him go from gangster Jack Napier to an all out maniac. 

And just to talk about Napier for a moment, I love that they don’t actually tell you about his past but rather give you who he is in one brief moment.  Right before Napier is about to blow up Axis Chemicals his boss, Carl Grissom played by the always eccentric Jack Palance (Shane, Tango & Cash, City Slickers I & II), tells him not to forget his lucky deck.  We can see just a moment before that the deck has a bullet hole in it.  So Napier’s story is that he had a close call and that this deck saved his life.  So he’s superstitious and feels he’s indebted to the deck.  He also feels like he can get through just about anything because he survived that brush with death.  This one little part tells you everything you need to know.  He’s extremely confident.  Even to the point of killing a cop and sleeping with his boss’ girlfriend/wife.  This confidence increases exponentially when he becomes the Joker.  Now he feels like a God.  The Joker has no problem wiping out an entire crime syndicate, infecting toiletries causing the deaths of who knows how many people and later killing even more people with gas.  The thing is, we don’t know if the Joker thinks he’s actually going to get away with this shit or if he’s so crazy that he’ll never stop until he’s dead.  Nicholson’s understanding of the character and enthusiasm for the role really shines through.

I also like how small of a role Alfred has in this film.  As the series progressed it seemed like he got more and more screen time until you get to him being a kind of important part of the story in Batman & Robin.  It’s kina strange that the role continued to get bigger with the Nolan films too.  I liked it better when Alfred was much more in the background and not helping Batman solve crimes or fucking dying forcing Batman to get a cure from Victor Freeze. 

The look of this film is pretty timeless I think.  Sure the cars look old, the hairdos are outdated, Kim Basinger, Robert Wuhl and Michael Keaton are in it and maybe Prince’s tracks will give this movie some gray hair but besides that it’s timeless…I guess...hey it still looks good now but I don’t know what the hell it’s gonna look like in another 20 years ok?  Anyway Gotham looks filthy and a little dangerous but not immersed in anarchy like in Batman Forever or Batman & Robin.  That shit got way outta control in those movies.  But in this film the henchmen are wearing regular clothes with jackets that have the Joker’s cartoony face on them.  I always thought that was kinda funny by the way.  That the Joker would have jackets made up with his likeness on them and have a helicopter with the same thing on it.  Oh and the cars are painted purple and green.  It’s just funny to imagine the Joker ordering his guys to do that for him, “I want my face on these jackets and on that helicopter and paint the cars while you’re at it.  We hit the art museum tonight.”  But anyway the darkness of the city looks really great.  The buildings, the streets, the outfits that people wear, almost everything is some shade of gray or black.  Even during the daytime it’s always overcast giving a gloomy feel.  The weird ass giant statues all around the city of ancient men holding things up or saints holding swords is in the right proportion.  It’s enough so you notice it but not so much that it’s distracting like it got in those fucking sequels. 

They also knew to not have Batman run.  Well he does run once and it looks pretty dumb.  I don’t know why but seeing that cape flail behind him and just the way the suit makes Keaton sprint looks awkward.  But otherwise the suit doesn’t look cumbersome and he can still move pretty well in it.  He can even sorta run in it but they must’ve realized that it didn’t look good so they only had him do it once.  Good catch Burton.

Another thing I love about this movie is that it’s not a “beginning” story.  I’m really getting tired of that shit.  It can be interesting sometimes but I’d rather them explain it briefly in a flashback or have the superhero tell his story to the love interest.  That way we can get a full 90 minutes or two hours of the superhero in action instead of only half a movie.  I like that in this movie Batman just exists, deal with it.  They tell you later what happened to his parents and stuff but it’s not elaborate.  I like how it’s more mysterious.  I especially like how they made Jack Napier’s transformation into the Joker very quick.  You don’t need to have how he came up with the name or the suit or his gadgets or any of that shit.  Get to the point.  I think that’s a big reason why The Dark Knight was a lot better than Batman Begins.  Really you don’t need Batman Begins.  The Dark Knight can stand on its own without another movie introducing it.  If you leave out most of that explaining then it frees up the film to get down to business. Only explain what you feel is absolutely necessary.  I don’t care how he found a cave under his mansion or that his cape turns into a wing because of some technology that his company is researching.  He’s Batman.  He’s got a Batcave and he’s got some gadgets ‘n shit.  Now let’s get to him kicking some ass. 

That’s why Batman is so wonderfully self-contained.  Our hero already exists, most of the movie he’s battling the fully formed villain, he gets the girl, they explain as much as they need to about his past just so the audience has an idea and there’s no dilemma about if Batman should continue doing what he’s doing.  Although I have to admit at the end of Batman Begins when Commissioner Gordon says there’s a new guy out there and this is his calling card and he holds up a joker card, that was actually pretty cool.  But there’s nothing like that in Batman.  The story begins and ends without alluding to another adventure.  Sure it’s obvious that Batman will keep on fighting crime because he’s suited up right before the credits but it’s not like, “tune in next week to see Batman and the Penguin face off.”  It definitely has a feel to it that they assumed that there would never be another Batman movie made.

This movie is really all about the Joker though.  Batman’s background and information are kept to a minimum.  They knew that the Joker is a much more interesting and entertaining character so they tipped the movie in his favor.  I think this is why the sequels and Batman Begins were not as good.  The villains were too weak and/or there was too much emphasis put on Batman himself or Chris O’Donnell or Alicia fucking Silverstone or some shit.  Nobody cares man.  We want those characters on screen for only enough time to get where they’re coming from, to be a little emotionally invested.  But most of the time we want to see awesome villains causing chaos and destruction.  In Batman Bruce Wayne/Batman doesn’t have a whole lot of lines and it works so well to keep his character hidden.  Batman is definitely in the foreground but he’s not that prominent. 

All of this isn’t meant to defend this movie or to try and make it sound cool because I don’t think anyone’s really against it.  But in the wake of hugely successful superhero movies like The Dark Knight, Spider-Man and Iron Man I thought it would be cool to talk about an old classic that paved the way and the set the ground work.  Sorry 70’s Superman but you just don’t hold up.  And also Superman’s not as cool of a character as Batman or has any villains that work as well as the Joker.  Burton’s Batman hit all the right chords and is of course one badass fucking film.

Batman Returns
Batman Forever
Batman Forever Laundry Scene
Batman & Robin