Make no mistake: the Batman films were the movie event of the '90s. Those movies were marketed to a degree unheard of even for summer blockbusters. I'm just old enough to remember the endless barrage of TV ads, toys and Happy Meals accompanying Batman Forever and Batman & Robin. The first Batman sold an amazing $750,000,000 in merchandising alone. That's of course ignoring their gargantuan box office take; even Batman & Robin did solid business.
Surely studio hype deserves some credit, but moviegoers likely appreciated a Batman more grounded than goofy Adam West reruns. Richard Donner's Superman films showed there was a market for earnest comic book flicks, rescuing the genre from its camp doldrums. Certainly Batman was due for a revamp after Frank Miller and Alan Moore's angsty, brooding '80s update of the character. The formula worked swimmingly until Tim Burton left... but we'll get there momentarily.
Batman (1989, Tim Burton)
Millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton) moonlights as Batman, a masked vigilante targeting Gotham City's underworld. He finds his archnemesis in Jack Napier (Jack Nicholson), enforcer for mob boss Carl Grissom (Jack Palance) who reinvents himself as The Joker after a nasty chemical accident. The Joker menaces Gothamites with several bizarre schemes, including tainted make up and mime hit squads. Batman fights Joker while romancing Vicki Vale (Kim Bassinger), a snoopy photojournalist.
Batman achieves the right balance: it's relatively serious without neglecting comic book stylization. Burton sublimates his style to the material, mixing brooding noirish scenery with cool '40s retro fashions and weaponry. The action scenes make perfect use of Burton's mis en scene: a shootout in a chemical factory, Joker and goons trashing an art museum, a rooftop fight reminiscent of Charade. Danny Elfman contributes a marvelous score, with Prince's songs a solid addition. Aside from some awkward animated effects, the movie's technically faultless.
Michael Keaton proves a surprisingly solid Batman. Not an imposing physical presence, Keaton handles the action well-enough and scores as a quietly haunted Bruce Wayne. Jack Nicholson's Joker is an even bigger home run. Nicholson cuts loose with an endless barrage of weird sight gags, twisted make-up jobs and nonsensical rants. He's silly and menacing in equal measure, a perfect super-villain.
Michael Gough and Pat Hingle appeared throughout the series as Alfred Pennyworth and Commissioner Gordon. Hingle is completely wasted but Gough nails his role with droll suavity. Kim Bassinger makes an appealing love interest. Billy Dee Williams has a few scenes as Harvey Dent, a role he sadly didn't reprise in Batman Forever.
Batman's main failing is the story, a collection of set pieces and character moments without much drive. Most egregious is altering the Joker's back story, making him the killer of Bruce's parents. This reduces Batman from a conflicted vigilante to a simple avenger, something Nolan's flicks wisely avoided. Not to mention Alfred inexplicably letting Vicki into the Batcave... But Burton makes the ride so enjoyable these seem trivial.
Batman Returns (1992, Tim Burton)
Batman Returns is the franchise's most divisive entry, fans either calling it the best or overly dark. I'm more sympathetic to the latter viewpoint, though "darkness" isn't the problem. Rather, it's a Tim Burton flick with an abundance of his annoying quirks. Fortunately, Returns has enough inventive elements to remain watchable.
Oswald Cobblepot is a deformed child raised by penguins in Gotham's sewers. Naturally he grows into the Penguin (Danny DeVito), who reemerges with help of unscrupulous businessman Max Shreck (Christopher Walken) as candidate for Mayor of Gotham. Bruce Wayne falls for Selina Kyle (Michelle Pfeiffer), who happens to be Shreck's secretary. After Shreck tries to kill her for stumbling on a plan for scamming Gotham, Selina becomes the vengeful Catwoman. She teams up with the Penguin to destroy Batman, unaware of his secret identity.
Batman Returns embodies everything irritating about Burton's directorial style. It's annoyingly twee in a way its predecessor avoided, all nauseating goth whimsy and self-conscious weirdness. Burton's touches grow increasingly asinine, from Shreck's cartoon cat logo to Penguin's rubber ducky vehicle. Worse, so much time is spent on villain back stories that Batman becomes a bit player. Instead of meshing with the material as with Batman, Burton's direction reeks of self-indulgence.
Michael Keaton is overshadowed by the grotesque villains. Christopher Walken does best underplaying his vicious tycoon. Danny DeVito mugs, leers and cackles, ghoulishly made up like an ovoid Alistair Sim. Amusing at first, his schtick grows tiresome after 126 minutes. Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman is poorly conceived as a feminist avenger ("Life's a bitch and so am I!") with no reason to hate Batman, aside from his testicles. Keep an eye for Paul Reubens and Vincent Schiavelli in bit parts.
Batman Returns isn't a total loss. The baroque satire of a Mayoral candidate leading in the polls after publicly biting off a man's nose is too rich to discount. Burton and scribe Daniel Waters keep the narrative taut despite its trio of villains. Burton again does a good job with the action, even silly bits like Penguin's driving simulator and the mass penguin attack. And best of all, the movie remains relatively serious for all its weirdness. With Burton's departure, these elements vanished.
Batman Forever (1995, Joel Schumacher)
Batman (Val Kilmer) squares off with Harvey "Two-Face" Dent (Tommy Lee Jones), District Attorney-turned-deformed criminal. At a circus Dent murders the Flying Graysons, a troupe of acrobats whose sole survivor is petulant young Dick (Chris O'Donnell). Bruce Wayne takes Dick under his wing, but the latter soon discovers Wayne's secret and begs to help him fight crime. Disgruntled scientist Edward Nigma (Jim Carrey) becomes The Riddler, joining Dent to drain Gothamites' brains via a special TV device. And Bruce romances Chase Meridian (Nicole Kidman), a sultry psychologist who's really attracted to Batman.
Batman Forever opens with a closeup of Batman's crotch and a quip about fast food. This perfectly sums up Schumacher's mixture of the gauche and commercial. He re-envisions Gotham as a garish casino, all neon lights and Greco-Roman architecture, with action scenes dominated by obvious computer graphics. Everything from the Batmobile to the villains is re-imagined for Happy Meals, complete with nipple-bedecked Batman for prepubescent S&M fans. Riddler and Two-Face's dopey preening amps the camp to 11. The serious moments (the death of Robin's parents, Bruce's flashbacks) are jarring amidst slapstick fights and dizzying kitsch.
Val Kilmer is thoroughly dull, presenting Batman as wax dummy. Jim Carrey gets by playing his usual frantic self, but Tommy Lee Jones's hambone antics are embarrassing. Chris O'Donnell narrowly avoids punchability... this time. Nicole Kidman provides kittenish sensuality but little personality. Drew Barrymore and Debi Mazar play Two-Face's gal pals.
Batman & Robin (1997, Joel Schumacher)
Batman (now George Clooney) and Robin have their hands full. Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger) initiates a crime spree, stealing diamonds in a convoluted plot to research a cure for his wife's terminal illness. Meek scientist Pamela Isley (Uma Thurman) turns into Poison Ivy after a chemical accident (what else?) and determines to destroy humanity for plantkind. The two villains team up to destroy Gotham, while Batman and Robin bicker with each other. Alfred's terminal illness, and the arrival of his niece Barbara (Alicia Silverstone) further complicate things.
You know Batman & Robin's bad when the title characters make no impression. George Clooney seems thoroughly bored, as if waiting for E.R. to come back from hiatus. No longer Batman Forever's clingy acolyte, Chris O'Donnell's Robin is now a bitchy teenager in need of a vicious paddling. Alicia Silverstone isn't convincing as either a computer whiz or a badass biker chick. Michael Gough, terminally ill in a half-baked subplot, upstages them all. Even decked in the finest fetish wear, they're the dullest superheroes ever.
The villains are even worse. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Freeze is a pathetic running gag, his tragic back story snowed over by an avalanche of chilling puns ("Let's kick some ice!"). But he's imposing compared to Uma Thurman, delivering leafy innuendos ("My garden needs tending") in a stomach-turning Mae West impression. Jeep Swenson's Bane is a monosyllabic moron ("Monkey... WORK!") while John Glover devours scenery in a pathetic bit. It's a stretch bringing these diverse baddies together and Schumacher hardly tries.
Batman & Robin is just one wrong-headed, inexplicable blunder after another. Freeze's minions singing along to a Rankin-Bass cartoon is comic relief, but whose idea was Batman's credit card? How will Freeze covering the Earth in ice help Ivy's plants take root? What's with the ill-conceived Blonde Venus homage, with Ivy doing a simian striptease? Why the extended street race with bikers dressed like Kubrick characters? Why decorate Gotham with giant nude statues and Day-Glo graffiti? And Coolio, seriously?
George Clooney moved on to bigger things but his colleagues weren't so lucky. Schumacher found himself toiling in modest indie flicks. Alicia Silverstone and Chris O'Donnell's budding stardom abruptly ended. After this and The Avengers, Uma Thurman vanished until Kill Bill. Jeep Swenson died before the film's release. Meanwhile, writer Akiva Goldsman... won an Oscar for A Beautiful Mind. It's a cold town, indeed.
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On the one hand, the Burton-Schumacher Batman films are inconsistent in quality and tone. From an excellent beginning they fell prey to the Law of Diminishing Returns, especially with Burton and Keaton's departures. And yes, Batman & Robin is exactly as bad as they say. Still, I'd probably rather revisit the first two films than Nolan's uber-serious entries. Whatever their flaws, they achieve a commendable mixture of superhero fun and pulp seriousness.
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