Franchise Friday: Batman Returns (1992)
A superhero movie where everyone smells like garbage.
Much was made a few years back of an interview in which Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League director Zack Snyder defended his decision to turn the Caped Crusader into a sadistic killing machine.
I’ve written about Snyder’s films before, and trust me: I have no wish to defend him. But one thing the majority of those articles leave out is that Batman hasn’t been too consistent with his “no killing” rule. In early comics, Batman used a gun and had no qualms about dispatching bad guys, and of course Frank Miller turned him into a grim thug.
But Tim Burton’s movies also were conflicted on whether Batman took a life. There’s a sequence in the 1989 film where the Batmobile blasts through a chemical plant and drops a bomb, with Batman seemingly unconcerned about the henchmen who are then blown to smithereens. He lets several baddies fall to their death in the film’s church tower fight and then wraps a gargoyle around the Joker’s leg that causes him to plunge to the ground below. Batman wasn’t exactly bloodthirsty, but it doesn’t appear Bruce Wayne’s conscience was too bothered by the lives lost in his fight to protect Gotham.
Burton’s sequel, released three years later, makes it more apparent that Batman isn’t killing most of the people he fights. Bad guys are usually tossed aside or put out of commission instead of being killed, with the exception of one bizarre moment: Batman is fighting a large henchmen and stuffs a bomb down his pants. The Dark Knight smiles before tossing the henchman in a sewer, where he then explodes.
I’d hesitate and call this moment sadistic. Except that the world Burton builds in Batman Returns is so dour and gross that the sweet embrace of death might actually be a blessing.
Burton unleashed
In a time where Tim Burton seems to vacillate between half-hearted attempts at furthering his Hot Topic image (Dark Shadows) and remaking Disney classics with an off-putting mix of whimsy and weirdness (Alice in Wonderland, Dumbo), it can be easy to forget that he was one once one of the most bankable directors in Hollywood (I highly recommend listening to the Blank Check podcast’s miniseries on the director).
Between 1985 and 1991, Burton’s filmography is filled with incredible artistic and commercial successes, from the antics of Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and Beetlejuice to the beautiful angst of Edward Scissorhands. While Warner Brothers was happy to give him the reins to their 1989 Batman adventure, the resulting film was a mix of Burton’s gothic sensibilities and obligations to the DC Comics source material, a combination that is sometimes sublime and sometimes awkward. But the film being a massive hit, there was no question that WB was going to ask Burton to come back for the sequel. While he was initially hesitant, the studio gave him full creative control to indulge his various fetishes and visual sensibilities.
That might have been a mistake. Batman Returns is less a Batman movie and more a Tim Burton film where he’s required to use DC Comics intellectual property. He unleashes a cold, squalid, bizarre and violent world that feels at right angles to the adventure and fun of a comic book movie. Whereas Burton’s sensibilities informed Batman, here they overpower everything, creating a movie that exists for no other reason than to indulge Burton.
Burton has, at times, been a true visionary, and several of his films skillfully combine his dark tendencies with a gleeful, almost childish, sense of humor. But Batman Returns is a sour, cynical movie. The sets are cavernous and underpopulated, the Christmas setting not providing warmth so much as an ironic counterpoint. Everyone is duplicitous, scheming or pissed off aside from Michael Keaton’s Bruce Wayne, who simply looks befuddled or bored depending on the situation.
The dark, dour knight
There isn’t a story so much as a series of events that occur and collide over the course of more than two hours. Selina Kyle (Michelle Pfeiffer) is a timid secretary who’s tossed out a window by her boss Max Shreck (Christopher Walken), so she transforms into the angry, seductive Catwoman, who sometimes appears to be avenging wronged women and other times just venting her rage by destroying department stores. Meanwhile, the grotesque Penguin (Danny Devito) emerges from his sewer lair to make a bid for mayor, all the while running a criminal gang of carnies. Max manipulates Penguin. Catwoman vacillates between wanting to kill Batman and wanting to sleep with him. Bruce Wayne looks confused. Eventually, they fight and some live, some die, some reappear in an awkward final shot.
Burton’s original Batman is not a great movie, but the mixture of a comic book world and the director’s strange aesthetic work well together. In its best moments, the film feels gothic and weird, mostly thanks to Jack Nicholson’s all-in portrayal of The Joker. Burton knew how to weave in imagery from noir and horror movies to give the film an unsettling and warped tone, the better to reflect his story of a hero who’s psychologically damaged and uncomfortable in the normal world. The film is a big piece of DC Comics product, but Burton found a balance between gothic horror and camp that makes it oddly engaging and rewatchable. The film needs him to make the superhero formula feel fresh, but he needs the formula to keep from turning the movie into a formless nightmare.
With the shackles off, Batman Returns is pure Burton, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. The director certainly knows how to craft a gorgeous visual — he doubles down on the giant, art deco sets and everything is beautifully snow-swept — and Penguin’s theme of being discarded, along with the Catwoman and Batman issues of duality and loneliness, certainly seem up his alley. But Burton doesn’t know how to combine his angst with the action and heroics of a comic book movie. He leans into the grotesqueries of his villains and seems to revel in flowing body fluids, dismemberments and disgusting sexual insinuations (I’m no prude; it’s simply that the idea of Danny Devito’s Penguin as a sexual being is revolting).
Inaction figures
And I get it: That’s what Burton does. He leans into the dark side of his characters, and he’s always been more drawn to the weirdos than the heroes. And his actors have a blast doing it, creating disturbing but well-drawn characters. Devito relishes sinking his yellow teeth into every disgusting innuendo and making his Penguin a damp, pale foul being. Pfeiffer is the film’s strongest accent, giving a fun, confident performance that mixes sensuality with a mental breakdown. She seems to be the only one who can blend the dark and comedic well (Devito’s giving a purely comic performance), and Selina Kyle’s mental anguish and struggle with duality is the only thread that has any energy or resonance.
It’s certainly the only thing that makes Batman remotely interesting in this movie. In the first film, Keaton was a fine and neurotic Bruce Wayne, but he was overpowered by Nicholson. Here, there are stretches where it appears he is extremely unengaged. Not only does he not say a word until a third of the way through the film, there’s no reason for Batman to be around aside from beating up thugs. Bruce Wayne has one scene where he challenges Shreck as a businessman, but the film drops the thread almost immediately. Penguin attempts to frame Batman for a murder, but that never turns into a serious threat. Even the scenes where Bruce and Alfred (a returning Michael Gough) banter feel lazy and aimless, particularly a fan-service scene where Bruce chides Alfred for letting Vicki Vale into the Batcave in the first film. The action sequences are clumsily filmed, and Batman looks more confused than fierce.
The only time the character comes alive is in the interactions between Keaton and Pfeiffer. There’s a glimmer of a smaller movie, a twisted romantic comedy in which two lonely people leading double lives find someone who understands them. The film’s energy picks up whenever it’s just the two of them, whether in costumes or out of them, and Pfeiffer’s cry of “do we have to start fighting now” when they discover each other’s true identities is the film’s funniest line. But then the film swerves and introduces another plot complication (re: Penguin wants to drown all the first-born babies of Gotham) and Keaton’s personality disappears again.
Which leaves this to be a film overrun with villains, occasionally interrupted by an obligatory Batman fight. Penguin makes loud, gross declarations. Catwoman purrs. Shreck acts like Christopher Walken in a fright wig should act. At moments it’s fun, but at no purpose. If Burton identifies with freaks and outcasts, why make them his villains? If this is a Batman movie, why not bring in more Batman? Is he the hope for Selina? If so, why let Keaton look so visibly bored? The only things interesting in this film are the villains, but without anything to push against it’s just a lot of mugging for the camera.
Holy slog, Batman!
I’d say it’s at least pretty to look at, but the film is squalid and damp. The production design is gorgeous, but the Gotham streets are empty and cold; it always looks artificial and empty. Everything is gray and cold, punctuated by spurts of blood, black bile and green ooze. Everyone looks like they smell like garbage and the Christmas setting can’t alleviate the oppressive, depressed feel of the entire enterprise. This might actually feel moody if Burton didn’t let high camp smash up against it, with Penguin being followed by an army of penguins and parading around in a giant duck boat (everyone who likes to blame Joel Schumacher for ruining the franchise needs only to look at that duck boat or the Batman-branded CD player to see that the seeds for Batman and Robin were sown here). It’s at times a pretty film and there are moments where it spasms to life, but overall Batman Returns is an unpleasant, unlikable affair.
I don’t even know the intended audience. Is it for kids? It opens with parents dumping a deformed baby into a river, its anti-heroine traipses around in fetish gear, there are several sequences of spurting blood and severed body parts, and the film lingers on the eyeball-burning image of Danny Devito spitting up black bile and walking around in tight long johns. Is it for comic book fans? Its hero barely registers and Batman often feels like he’s interrupting a totally different movie. Is it for cineastes eager to recognize Burton as a true auteur? Aside from the visuals, there’s nothing to grab onto here. It’s empty, formless and dull, and the silliness likely turns away both movie lovers and fanboys.
In the end, the film exists only for Burton, but I can’t imagine that he’s having fun shackling his vision to IP he’s clearly disinterested in. The energy and wit that thrum through his best films is absent here, and his darker impulses seem only to exist because he’s so bored with the idea of doing an actual superhero movie. I’m sure he wasn’t devastated when Warner Brothers didn’t want him back for a third film, choosing instead to bring in a new director to create a true vision of Batman.
And the man they brought in was...checks notes...Joel Schumacher.