Batman Returns

Second time round, director Tim Burton succeeds by simply not trying to please anyone but himself. Batman Returns is Burton's kitschy Christmas aesthetic amped up into hysteria. Everything in the film is overbearing and expressionistic. Returns' locations have nothing in common with reality, this universe's Gotham City apparently existing within an enormous snow globe. Michael Keaton barely shows his face for much of the first hour; he's a background spectre, filed away whilst we are treated to the canon-diverging origins of the various super-villains. Rather than undermine the character it gives this Bruce Wayne a mythic, supernatural quality. We first see him alone, bathed in the Bat-Signal, slumbering in his Gothic castle-mansion. Returns' Batman is a vampiric justice-god, slumbering deep within his ancient fortress until he is needed. 

It's a significant and welcome step up from the confused thug of the first Batman. His tenuous relationship with the Gotham police and his casual use of deadly force also lend him an air of absolute danger. Danny DeVito's Penguin is a vile ooze slobbering goblin; a snarling mouth and creeping eyes backed by a circus troupe's worth of amoral muscle. Like the Joker, this villainous character is a splintered reflection of one of our hero's key traits - in this instance, Bruce Wayne's loss taken hideous, violent shape. Indeed Wayne initially feels pity for Penguin, hoping that the former Oswald Cobblepot can achieve the kind of parental reunion that has long been denied to himself. Similarly, Catwoman is often depicted as the female opposite of Batman, equally skilled and of a similar intelligence. In Returns she is also driven by the need for vengeance over those who have wronged her. 

Michelle Pfeiffer's damaged counterpart is a much better fit for this Batman than the screeching Vicki Vale then - Returns' Catwoman already shares, at the very least, Wayne's kink for dressing up then lashing out. Both Penguin and Catwoman are eccentric villains fuelled by slights, and seeking a kind of human validation that, unfortunately, seems to be beyond their grasp. The real evil in this piece is Christopher Walken's Max Shreck, whose primary motivating factor is nothing but slathering greed. Shreck isn't seeking anything like the emotional equalizers craved by his villainous peers, he just wants to be the biggest, most untouchable leech. Walken plays Shrek with a louche flair: he's a shark in a well-tailored suit. Walken's Shreck is pale and unmoving, a dead eyed seeker constantly scanning his surroundings for weakness and leverage. Shot through with pain, loss, and bad decisions, Batman Returns is both a beautiful and romantic take on DC Comics' Dark Knight Detective. 

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Batman

A hysterical, nightmarish take on the Dark Knight. Tim Burton's film is a macabre comedy, blessed with an insistent, thundering score by Danny Elfman. Michael Keaton plays Batman as the typical Burton hero - isolated and childish, but with an inkling of strange sweetness. Kim Basinger's Vicki Vale is portrayed as an overbearing stalker one minute, a blonde bombshell the next. Bruce Wayne and Vale are a dreadfully mismatched couple, Wayne seeking her out simply because she is desirable. She is a trophy to him, to be coveted and fought over. In terms of brain space, Wayne seems far more interested in the enemies he creates. 

Jack Nicholson's Joker is terrifying, a cruel mobster transformed, by a toxic waste dip, into a flippant libertine. His violence manifests throughout the film as an on-going Avant-garde experiment. This Batman is an aggressive but awkward phantom with zero moral underpinning. Indeed, the third-act clash between Batman and Joker is more like the meeting of two rather nasty bullies than a finale that naturally tracks into your standard heroic triumph. Batman physically and verbally pounds his adversary, obviously quite enjoying the momentary power he holds over this criminal. Burton's Wayne is distant and possibly even mentally unhinged. 

A leaf through Jack Napier's crime file is capped by a dreamy flashback in which Wayne recalls a version of his parents' murder. The sequence feels needling - a feeling mostly derived from where the nightmare is physically placed in the film. There's a sense that this is an unconscious manipulation, as if Wayne is constructing the kind of massive justification he needs to access the deeper, scarier, parts of his own psyche. This may not even be Bruce's actual memory then, just the live ammunition required to get the job done. Not afraid to examine the superhero as hopelessly damaged rather than courageous, Burton's film is pretty subversive for a summertime money machine. Miraculously, Burton even out-does himself with his kinky sequel Batman Returns.

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Mars Attacks!

Based on a series of sci-fi trading cards depicting intergalactic atrocity, Tim Burton's Christmas-coloured apocalypse is the harebrained, vandalised counterpoint to your typical Hollywood alien invasion. Here the human race is a vapid gang of idiots bumbling towards their extinction, lest they offend their Martian visitors. Every effort is made to ingratiate the cosmic tourists who never fail to misunderstand, slaughter the gathered humans, then cackle to themselves. If you really want, Mars Attacks! can be read as a critique of either political leaning. To wit: these 'wimpy' liberals prostrates themselves in the face of something deemed alien while the conservative spectrum is represented by an emotionally sterile WASP, a bellowing military man, and reactionary trailer folk who regard their television set as intergalactic bounty. People, regardless of allegiance, are simply noise in this film.

Mars Attacks! works hard to present a domestic race - almost entirely American at that - who not only seem to be actively pursuing annihilation, but perhaps even deserves it too. The relationship between the two species is broadly that of a comedy double-act. The humans are the straight men, the naive stooge to the jittery Martian jokers. We feed the invaders endless rope with which to hang us; the space-men twitching excitedly at the sheer stupidity of their adversaries. Warner Brothers spent $100 million bringing Burton's Topps card vision to the screen, what did they get? A prank. Mars Attacks! is a riot of sugar-high slaughter completely antithetical to any kind of established blockbuster framework. There's never any sense that the Martians want anything from Earth. There are no asides about plundering resources or any other sort of material currency. Instead, the Martians simply want to destroy everything they see, preferably with the maximum amount of skylarking whimsy. Intergalactic wrong 'uns then, with Tex Avery mindsets, armed with gee-whizz technology. It's impossible not to love these little green men. They just want to have fun.

Bone China Batman

Tim Burton's blockbusting Batman turns twenty today. I'm about to cue up a viewing. Reviewed elsewhere, so instead please find enclosed a pre-release trailer of uncommon pause. Hyperactive attention grabbing sits uneasy with Burton's nouveau stately staging doesn't it? The edit needed out on the first punchline, but stayed for the second. Of special note, when viewed out of context, are the first twenty or so seconds, in which it appears that Batman's Gothic justice stamp extends to wiping out frothing midnight parades. Bat-Mission: zipping around his rib like Castle in a toybox Bat-Fighter, unloading millions and millions of dollars worth of military explosives on a battered public whilst triumphant music blares. Now there's a movie! Did they really have to ruin the illusion by revealing Joker?

Dark Knight Detectives

With Batman 6 little over two months away, I thought I might as well drop some older Bat writings on you. How's that for a sense of non-occasion? Original pieces to follow shortly I promise. It's just looking a little bare around here.

First up is Tim Burton's 1989 summer sizzler: Batman. An unsung hero of this particular production is screenwriter Sam Hamm. A great deal of what's up there on screen that you'd retroactively assume to be Burtonisms are straight out his pop-nightmare screenplay. Hamm's opening gambit description of Gotham City reads like a particularly evocative tell on Burton cityscape's:

"The place is Gotham City. The time, 1987 -- once removed.
The city of Tomorrow: stark angles, creeping shadows, dense, crowded, airless, a random tangle of steel and concrete, self-generating, almost subterranean in its aspect... as if hell had erupted through the sidewalks and kept on growing. A dangling fat moon shines overhead, ready to burst."

Burton and his team of re-writers Warren Skaaren and Charles McKeown are responsible for Joker's capering and the ouroborus ring "you fucked me first" origin strand. Burton has gone on record several times to state that he's no great fan of the comic medium. In Faber and Faber's excellent Burton on Burton he puts it:

"I was never a giant comic book fan, but I've always loved the image of Batman and The Joker. The reason I've never been a comic book fan - and I think it started when I was a child - is because I could never tell which box I was supposed to read. I don't know if it was dyslexia or whatever, but that's why I loved The Killing Joke, because for the first time I could tell which one to read. It's my favorite. It's the first comic I've ever loved. And the success of those graphic novels made our ideas more acceptable."

Hamm also advocated jumping straight into the piece in motion rather than have a first act dedicated to the whys and wherefores of Superheroing. Advice that most superhero movies would be wise to follow. The origin formula is developing into an inelegant albatross around many tights film's necks. Interestingly, it is Sam Hamm who is responsible for the creation of the Batman mentor character Henri Ducard that went someway to propping up an origins act in Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins. Hamm's Ducard is more of a Parisian master-detective in the amoral pulp mode, rather than a cypher ninja terrorist.

None of this Hamming up is intended to suggest that Burton is a creeping idea cribber, merely to illustrate film is a collaborative medium. Other than a brief stint on Masters Of Horror, it's been all quiet on the Hamm front. No doubt he's seen as having a spectre of failure about after box-office mega flop Monkeybone. It's a real shame. He's tremendously talented. Quentin Tarantino is widely quoted as saying in it's pre-rewrites Hamm form, Batman's screenplay is one of the very finest there is. Google it, and see for yourself. Anyway, without further ado...



Batman

A hysterical, nightmarish fairy tale version of the Dark Knight. Burton's film is an astonishingly - even perversely - violent and macabre comedy, blessed with an enormous, insistent, thundering score by Danny Elfman. Keaton plays Batman very much in the Burton hero mold - isolated, childish but with an inkling of sweetness. Kim Basinger plays Vale as a overbearing stalker of a woman one minute, a pedestal blonde the next. Nicholson is portly but terrifying as the clown prince of crime. His violence manifesting as an avant garde experiment.

Batman is an aggressive, slightly awkward, phantom monster, with little of the moral underpinning of the finer comic book iterations. Indeed the end clash plays as the meeting of two rather nasty bullies rather than a heroic triumph. Batman physically and vocally pounding his adversary and obviously quite enjoying it. Keaton plays Wayne as distant and possibly even mentally unhinged. A leaf through Napier / Joker's crime file by Wayne is capped with a dreamy flashback to his parents murder. The whole sequence plays like self manipulation / justification rather than deadly accurate memory.

Pacey, action packed and not afraid to examine the superhero psyche as damaged and aggressive rather than heroic. Burton's film is supremely nasty, even subversive, for a Warner's summer money machine picture. Miraculously, Burton even out-does himself with the frankly sexually perverse sequel - Batman Returns.

And for the collection:



Batman Returns

Second time round, Burton succeeds in simply trying not to please anyone but himself. Returns has the same deeply personal emotional drive as Edward Scissorhands. It's Burton's pox Japanese kitsch Christmas aesthetic amped up into infinity. Everything is overbearing, enormous and expressionist. Returns' locations have nothing in common with reality, the universe existing within a giant German snow globe.

Burton's film is again perfectly complimented by a fantastic ethereal choir accompanied, brooding, Danny Elfman score.

Michael Keaton barely shows his face for much of the first hour of Returns, he's a background spectre, out of the way whilst we are treated to the canon diverging origins of the various super-villains. Rather than undermine the character it gives him a mythic, supernatural quality - we first see him alone, bathed in blue Batsignal twilight; slumbering in his Gothic castle-mansion. Wayne becomes a vampire justice-god figure. He sleeps deep in his fortress till he is needed. It's a significant and welcome step up from the confused bully-thug of the first film. His tenuous, last-gambit relationship with Gotham PD and his flippant use of deadly force lend him an air of absolute danger.

Danny DeVito excels as Burton's take on the dapper little gangster of Kane and Finger's universe. He is transformed into a vile, deformed, sleazy waddling bird-man, backed up with muscle in the shape of a deranged circus act. He's very much Bruce's loss taken hideous, violent shape - indeed Wayne initially feels pity for him.

Phieffer is a believably damaged romantic counterpart for Batman. Catwoman when played correctly is the female reflection of Batman. Equally skilled, intelligent and driven by a need for vengeance. She's the only female in the whole of the Batman canon that makes any sense as a love interest.

Walken appears as the scheming genuine evil that is Max Schrek. His primary motivating factor is greed, rather than an emotional equalizer. Walken plays him with faux-charming, dead inside panache. He also looks like a psychotic Aryan hairdresser.

A beautiful, romantic take on the Dark Knight Detective. Absolutely criminal that the Warner's bean counters managed to block Burton's Superman film after this failed to score with the Happy Meal crowd.