Franchise Friday: Batman (1989)

Tim Burton's first superhero entry is a weird visual spectacle.

Do you remember Bat-mania? 

For a 10-year-old boy in 1989, it was inescapable. Even though I wasn’t allowed to see the PG-13 film right away, I was surrounded by it. The yellow-and-black bat symbol covered every inch of advertising real estate. Taco Bell sold cups featuring the Batmobile. I donned a pair of Skidz and a hideous vest on Halloween to go as the Joker, because even though I hadn’t seen the film yet, I’d absorbed Jack Nicholson’s performance by pop culture osmosis.  

Holy game-changer, Batman! 

If Jaws and Star Wars changed the movie game and ushered in the age of the blockbuster, Batman was the point of no return, a barrage of marketing for which the movie was almost an afterthought. This was the film that catapulted Tim Burton from a director of bizarre comedies into an industry until himself, making his dark aesthetic shorthand for angst and creating merchandise that keeps Hot Topic in business to this day. In an age where movies based on comic books were largely laughed off — see 1987’s Superman IV: The Quest for Peace — Batman set the groundwork for a genre that dominates the business today. 

In fact, the industry it spawned is partly why, for years, Tim Burton’s first Caped Crusader film had fallen sharply in my memory. Burton’s gone from visionary to cliché in the last 30 years, his films greeted less with anticipation than an eye roll. The Batman franchise he created devolved back into cheese with Batman Forever (produced by Burton, directed by Joel Schumacher) before collapsing with the notorious Batman and Robin in 1997 (we’ll get to those in the coming weeks). And Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy is so beloved that anything that came prior is now collectively remembered as amateurish. And I’ve made clear my dislike for Snyder’s take on the character (I am tentatively excited for The Batman, mainly because I have a lot of faith in director Matt Reeves).

So it was with that mindset that I recently sat down to watch 1989’s Batman for the first time in easily 20-25 years. And I found that Burton’s initial descent into superheroics is still worth talking about. 

Gothic Gotham 

Even critics who disliked Batman, such as Roger Ebert, raved about the film’s production design and Burton’s gothic aesthetics. Where the 1960s film was a bright piece of pop and Nolan went to great pains to create a Gotham City that looked real and lived-in (and was basically Chicago), Burton’s Gotham was a new, weird world inspired by his love of German Expressionism. 

Gotham looks like a city that could only exist in the corners of someone’s dark imagination. Its streets are cluttered and crowded, art-deco theaters and city halls clustered together, and giant cathedrals cutting into the clouds. Burton’s use of giant sets, matte paintings and miniatures creates a tactile, darkly beautiful Gotham City, one so particular that in an age of cinematic universes and linked films, it probably couldn’t exist today. 

Despite being based on a character who’d been a comic book mainstay for 50 years at that point, you can feel Burton’s obsessions and quirks peeking through. There’s the dark imagery, yes, but also the depiction of the Joker as an artist/anarchist, scratching up masterpieces in a museum but leaving a horrific painting because it speaks to him; one can imagine Burton’s interests being similar. And while he’d delve into the topic of duality and being an odd fit in a staid culture more in Batman Returns, you can see traces of Burton’s favorite themes in Michael Keaton’s Bruce Wayne, uncomfortable around normal people and only feeling at home in a suit of armor, one of the freaks. 

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Clash of the titans 

Keaton became so identified with Batman after this that it’s easy to forget that fans were outraged when Burton cast his Beetlejuice star (yes, Bat-fandom was toxic even in the ‘80s). Keaton was Mr. Mom; he wasn’t someone who fans could see as the brooding Dark Knight. They feared this would be a return to Adam West levels of camp, not the serious take inspired by the Batman comics. 

Keaton’s not really superhero material, but that’s why he’s so good. His Batman is not a brilliant detective or driven do-gooder, although those elements come into play. He’s not even a great fighter; the suit so hampers his movements that the action scenes either are cut around him or consist of villains coming to Keaton while he stands still. He looks less like a highly trained vigilante and more like an ordinary dude practicing karate in body armor. 

But that’s the appeal. Burton’s always been interested in society’s square pegs, the people who just don’t fit in. And Keaton plays Bruce Wayne as a man too altered by trauma to fit into the mold of millionaire playboy. He’s uncomfortable at parties, doesn’t know how to converse on a date and his weirdness is seen in the collection of war armor he keeps off to the side at Wayne Manor. He’s not a superhero; he’s a mentally unstable, awkward man who only feels at home donning a mask and trying to prevent crimes like the ones that ruined him. 

Burton delves into this more deeply in Batman Returns, and in this first film, Batman sometimes feels more like a supporting character than the protagonist. The screenplay isn’t an origin story; instead, Vicki Vale is our entry into Wayne’s world, and the Batman origin is treated as a mystery (which probably enthralled some viewers in 1989, but after seeing the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents in pretty much every Batman movie since, feels anticlimactic). Batman, good as Keaton is, often feels sidelined, mostly because this is the Joker’s movie. Nicholson even gets top billing over Keaton. And he deserves it; his Joker is iconic, a performance so big and memorable that it’s understandable why Nolan received the wrath of fans when he cast Heath Ledger in the role for The Dark Knight. 

It’s easy, and fair, to say that the actor is just going Full Nicholson in the part. He seems to be improvising much of his dialogue, and he flares up every eyebrow arch and tasteless joke as only Jack can do. He’s not that far removed from Cesar Romero, relishing every bad gag, laughing hysterically, and dispatching of his enemies with joy buzzers and comically large guns. Those who liked to argue that this was a total course correction from the campiness of the Adam West series might want to take another look; the film’s camp is just as evident, but balanced by Burton’s love of the dark and gothic. 

It’s why Nicholson’s Joker is so good. He’s over-the-top and boisterous, loud, obnoxious and kind of goofy. But it’s all the work of a serial killer, who uses a joy buzzer to fry a dissenter and scars his lover’s face with acid as a disturbing art project. The shot of a poisoned news anchor, dead with a ghoulish smile on her face, is still horrifying. While Ledger may have given the best performance in a Batman film, Nicholson’s mix of comedy and terror might be the closest fit to the comic book Joker. 

Burton’s tone has always been dark, but it’s probably good to remember he’s often used it in service of comedies; he navigates the tone so deftly that the campy and the ghastly combine to form something unique. It’s a movie that is by turns funny, scary and undeniably different from any other takes on the Caped Crusader; in fact, Burton’s films are auteur-driven in a way that I don’t know we’ll ever see again in superhero cinema. It’s refreshing, and works so well that it overcompensates for the movie’s glaring flaws. 

Not quite super 

The main flaw is largely with the film’s romantic interest, Vicki Vale. Kim Basinger feels utterly miscast, often playing it as if she’s in a romantic comedy (a scene where Bruce Wayne tries to confess his secret to Vicky is painful until the Joker shows up). Aside from the fact that she takes pictures and likes to sleep with billionaires, there’s no character to Vicky, nothing for her to do but fawn over Bruce Wayne and then play a damsel in distress. Burton seems unsure of how to integrate the character, and awkwardly finds ways to cram her into the plot. Vicki Vale feels less like an organic part of this world and more like a studio-dictated addition (the fact that Basinger is nowhere to be found in Batman Returns might confirm that). 

I’d say the same thing for Robert Wuhl as Alexander Knox, the reporter who is ostensibly uncovering the Batman story but whose journalistic knowledge seems to consist of cracking one-liners at the cops and flirting with women. It would be annoying, except Wuhl’s charismatic and likable in the role. I’m not sad we didn’t see more of him, but he’s harmless when he’s on the screen. 

The problem, though, is that the film’s focus on these supporting characters means the movie veers away from building any sort of mythology. Pat Hingle is a solid Commissioner Gordon and Billy Dee Williams would have been a great Harvey Dent if Warner Brothers hadn’t cut him out of the sequels. But here, they feel like glorified Easter Eggs. Jack Palance snarls effectively as the crime boss who betrays Nicholson, but he’s out of the film too quickly. Only Michael Gough, as Alfred, registers much, a kindly grandfather/caretaker of Bruce Wayne (it’s also a wonderful piece of dry comedy; watch him pick up after Bruce at a party early on). But then again, Alfred is responsible for the film’s most forehead-slapping gaff. 

The script by Sam Hamm and Warren Skaaren sets up a great universe for Batman to play in, but it’s also the film’s weakest link, showing a fundamental misunderstanding of the basic rules of Batman. Alfred would never let anyone, not even Bruce Wayne’s girlfriend, into the Batcave. For many decades, Batman’s number one rule has been that he doesn’t kill, but there’s a sequence in a chemical factory where he blows an entire goon squadron into smithereens. 

But we can forgive that; this was the early days of superhero movies and studios didn’t quite understand how much fidelity to show to the original text. What’s more frustrating is the script’s often flat dialogue and boneheaded moves, particularly in the final act. Making Joker into the person who killed Bruce Wayne’s parents might be its biggest misstep, turning a superhero story into a revenge thriller and the Joker into a common street thug. But the script often lurches into other directions for apparently no reason. Why, for example, does the Joker take Vicki Vale to the top of a cathedral in the climax? There’s no reason; he has to call for a helicopter to come get him. Nicholson apparently agreed, and refused to shoot the scene until he was told why Joker was climbing those stairs (beyond a reason to give Nicholson a Vertigo homage). 

The film is so visually rich and Nicholson so much fun that they carry the movie over these flaws. But you can feel Burton’s sensibilities wrestling with the demands of a studio blockbuster, and it’s this struggle that keeps Batman from being a truly great comic book movie. But the movie was still a giant hit, bringing in $250 million as the biggest film of 1989. And Burton would be given the chance to more purely showcase his voice in 1992’s Batman Returns. But it might have been too much for audiences.