Classic Movie Review : Batman (1989)
There’s a lot of revisionist history surrounding Batman. Many comic book nerds claim he’s supposed to be a borderline psychopathic, self-serious vigilante. That he was designed this way, which is ironic because most of them have been familiarized with the character through reruns of Adam West silly, harmless interpretation of the caped crusader. Our contemporary vision of Batman comes from Tim Burton’s 1989 adaptation Batman, which was the character great generational comeback to popular culture. A comeback we tend to …uh, remember with rose-colored glasses.
In Tim Burton’s iteration of Batman, the mayor of Gotham City (Lee Wallace) and Harvey Dent (fuckin’ Billy Dee Williams!) are trying to clean the streets before the city’s 200th anniversary celebrations. Local mobster Carl Grissom (fuckin’ Jack Palance!) is himself busy trying to set his second in command Jack Napier (Jack Nicholson) up for sleeping with his girlfriend. Instead of dying, Napier falls into a vat of chemicals and becomes a new creature hellbent on homicidal humor, Joker! A foe tailor made for the crime fighting Bat (Michael Keaton) prowling the streets.
Batman is widely remembered to be a new beginning for the character. The birth of his contemporary self. The truth is not that simple, though. This movie is a weird, not always coherent mix between dark, brutal ideas like the Joker inexplicably disfiguring his girlfriend or shooting acid from props and Tim Burton’s gimmicky, PG-13 goth style. It’s really weird to watch Joker commit atrocities (and he’s more graphic than most iterations of the character) to a fucking Danny Elfman soundtrack. Burton was trying to be comic book-like without knowing what comic books are like.
He’s like a dad trying to be cool in front of kids at a birthday party without even knowing what they like.
That said, while Tim Burton’s Batman has little to no regard for the character’s lore, it manages to convey interesting ideas almost in spite of itself. It challenges some core ideas like the fact he’s supposed to be a larger than life creature. Michael Keaton’s 5’8 frame alone gives a humanity to the characters other never could. Joker’s realistic brutality and homicidal tendencies clashing with his theatrical antics also give the character an edge other iterations don’t have. Burton always confronts the audience with the graphic consequences of Joker’s violence.
My favorite part of Batman, though is Kim Basinger’s Vicki Vale. Here’s a female character being badass in a dude-ish movie without throwing spin kicks in skin-tight leather pants and stiletto heels. She seduces the richest guy in town, doesn’t let co-workers rope her into unwanted romance, gets photos of the Batman, kicks ass at her job, fights for her man, etc. She’s the de facto protagonist of Batman. She eventually becomes instrumental to Joker’s plans, but in no way Vicki Vale’s a typical damsel in distress. Her problems are all Bruce Wayne’s fault.
He’s the toxic billionaire boyfriend. Come to think of it, Batman’s kind of a dude-ish Sex and the City.
Batman is a good movie. It’s not great or iconic like it’s remembered to be, but Tim Burton’s weirdo, iconoclast ideas are a breath of fresh air, more often than not, in the very conformist world of superhero franchises. It’s very hit-and-miss. Sometimes he cannot get out of his own way, like in the ridiculous Gothic cathedral final scene (which Christopher Nolan has shrewdly reversed in The Dark Knight), but it beats watching… I don’t know, Sweeney Todd? The Batman we know today was not a Tim Burton idea, though. The color palette maybe, but not the character.
7.1/10
