Welcome at long last to another edition of Awesomely Shitty Movies, here at Enuffa.com! It's been forever since I did one of these, so I might be a bit rusty. Bear with me please....
We just got through another Christmas season, and since most of my annual Christmas movies like Scrooged, Just Friends and It's a Wonderful Life are getting a bit tired for me (Eh, who am I kidding, I'm always happy to watch IAWL), I decided to branch out and take another look at a less conventional holiday-themed flick, the 1992 Tim Burton sequel, Batman Returns!
With the runaway success of 1989's Batman, Warner Brothers was understandably eager to get a follow-up out as soon as possible. But Tim Burton, having found the process of making Batman stressful and combative (He clashed with producers Jon Peters and Peter Guber at nearly every turn), opted to take some time for himself first. The result was 1990's Edward Scissorhands (another sorta Christmasy effort), where he was reunited with Winona Ryder. Ryder had just worked on the film Heathers, written by offbeat scribe Daniel Waters. As a condition of being coaxed back for a Batman sequel, Burton insisted on creative carte blanche, which the studio granted. Thus Waters was brought in to write a character-driven script with only a barebones plot, later refined by Batman writer Sam Hamm. This would be a Tim Burton movie first and a Batman movie second, with a focus on the film's two freakish villains and precious little screen time for the Caped Crusader. It would also be exceedingly dark and violent, earning a hard PG-13 rating and upsetting so many parents and children that McDonald's and other retailers received backlash for participating in their promotional tie-ins. While Batman Returns made a $267 million killing at the box office, it fell far short of Batman's $411 mil, and Warner Brothers opted not to bring Burton back for the third installment.
As a brooding teenager I more or less loved Batman Returns when it came out, though the startling lack of Batman in this Batman movie did bother me. But for a long time I considered this to be the best of the original four films (and in some ways it still is). The iconic Christopher Nolan Bat-trilogy of course rendered this whole series obsolete, and so I ended up kind of lumping Batman Returns in with the two atrocious Joel Schumacher sequels as cheeseball garbage that existed before Hollywood really learned how to make good superhero films. But a look at the Amazon Prime series Icons Unearthed, focusing on the 1989-2012 Bat-films, gave me a new interest/appreciation for this bizarre take on the Batman mythos, and so I decided to give BR another look. After all, it is a Christmas film of sorts.
So let's take a look at the Awesome and the Shitty of Batman Returns!
The Awesome
The Cast
Michael Keaton would of course return as the title character, along with Michael Gough as butler Alfred Pennyworth, and Pat Hingle in a glorified cameo as this series' most wasted character Commissioner Gordon. But at Tim Burton's insistence none of the other Batman '89 principles would be back. Instead he'd introduce not one, not two, but THREE new villains, two directly from the pages of DC Comics, and a third from scratch.
As classic Bat-villian The Penguin, Burton cast the only suitable actor for the part at that time, diminutive star Danny DeVito. But instead of just being a short guy with a top hat, monocle and umbrella, Burton envisioned Oswald Cobblepot as literally resembling an aquatic bird, with a beak-like nose and flipper-esque hands, waddling around Gotham. DeVito dove into the role head-first, adding penguin-like grunts and squawks to his dialogue and making the character sad and repulsive like a Lon Chaney villain.
Cobblepot's benefactor in the film is wealthy industrialist Max Shreck, played with slimy relish by Christopher Walken. Where the two rogue's gallery antagonists are weird but somewhat sympathetic, Shreck was meant to represent everyday, real-life tycoon predators who destroy the environment and buy elections, a theme sadly all-too relevant thirty-plus years later.
But the film's real casting coup would be...
Michelle Pfeiffer
In the role of Selina Kyle, Burton originally cast Annette Bening (Kind of an odd choice from where I sit), who had to drop out when she became pregnant. After considering numerous backup options (including Sean Young who'd had to withdraw from Batman '89 due to injury), the filmmakers settled on Michelle Pfeiffer, who ended up knocking this role out of the park. Pfeiffer brought to the Catwoman character the exact right mix of righteous feminist rage, sultry sex appeal, moral conflict and flat-out crazy, totally stealing the show. That a female character ended up the most memorable part of a comic book film in 1992 is nothing to sneeze at. Pfeiffer proved so successful in fact that the studio had to change the ending to her arc, with the intent of giving her a spin-off film. Her performance is the one aspect of this movie that really holds up, even if the script did her no favors in the dialogue department (More on that later).
Expressionist Aesthetic
Like the first film, Batman Returns is full of neat visuals and otherworldly urban landscapes. Where Batman '89 felt like a 1940s film noir, Returns takes it further back in time by leaning into 1920s German Expressionism. From the impossible cityscapes to the costuming, to the near black & white palette, to the look of the characters - Cobblepot looks like Dr. Caligari mixed with Dr. Mabuse, while Shreck (named of course after the star of the original Nosferatu) resembles the mad scientist from Metropolis - this film is positively steeped in silent film influence. Whatever shortcomings the script contains, and there are many, Batman Returns certainly has plenty of fun stuff to look at.
New Bat-suit
I always loved Keaton's streamlined Bat-suit in this movie. Instead of bulky sculpted musculature, costume designers Bob Ringwood and Mary E. Vogt went with a more utilitarian armored look, while also tightening up Batman's signature cowl so it better fit Michael Keaton's face. Of course Keaton probably should've bulked up a bit so as not to look like such a waifish Batman, but hey, at least the costume fit him properly this time. Up until The Dark Knight, this was my favorite cinematic Bat-suit.
Chutzpah
Watching this film now, I have to keep reminding myself that its target audience was primarily children. Yes, a film that begins with a well-to-do couple throwing their deformed baby into the river and leaving it for dead. A film containing a scene where the primary villain, a deformed bird-man, bites a man's nose off in a spray of blood. A film whose script includes numerous explicit sex puns. A film where said villain kidnaps hundreds of babies with the intent of drowning them. A film where said villain falls to his assumed death and emerges from underwater with greenish blood pouring out of his mouth. This stuff is dark even for a Tim Burton film, let alone an early 90s comic book movie. And yet apparently the moment the censors really took issue with involved Selina Kyle jamming her stuffed animals into the garbage disposal. Huh? Anyway, you have to respect the sheer, shiny brass balls to make this film as dark as it was, at a time when superhero films HAD to involve family-friendly marketing tie-ins. Tim Burton don't give an eff about nothin'!
Tim Burton-y
In the end, Batman Returns is a much better Tim Burton film than it is a Batman film. Burton was clearly much more interested in developing these misunderstood villains and garnering sympathy for them than he was in exploring the character of Bruce Wayne, and you have to hand it to Michael Keaton for unselfishly helping reduce his own screen time to give DeVito and Pfeiffer more space. From the oddball set and costume design, to the outcast characters' quest for acceptance and/or revenge, to Danny Elfman's signature score, Batman Returns definitely feels like the uncompromising movie Tim Burton wanted to make. It may not quite fit into the Batman universe, but when viewed as sort of a DC Elseworlds tale it kinda works on some levels. I'm still pretty shocked this film even got made the way it did.
Okay, now for the stuff that doesn't work....
The Shitty
Dialogue
Batman '89 had some weak dialogue but this script is rife with bad puns, dumb trailer fodder, and over-the-top stupidity. Way too much of Catwoman's dialogue (and Penguin's dialogue about her) centers around the idea that she's a....well, cat-woman. For a character meant to be a sort of feminist anti-hero the script doesn't try to give her much depth while she's in costume.
"I am Catwoman, hear me roar."
"Just the pussy I've been lookin' for."
"I wouldn't touch you to scratch you."
"Ya lousy minx, I oughta have ya spayed!"
"You're catnip to a girl like me."
"Saved by kitty litter."
Yeah guys, we get it, she's a cat. Take it the fuck down a notch.
Set Skimpiness
While Batman '89 had numerous scenes shot outdoors on backlots (with matte painting enhancements), this movie was shot entirely on soundstages, which unfortunately made the sets built to represent outdoor Gotham locations feel too small, claustrophobic, and downright skimpy. Take for example the tree lighting ceremony. Instead of mimicking New York's Rockefeller center, this set looks like it's on some little side street somewhere. Batman '89's Batmobile had room to zoom around, but here the chase scenes feel like driving down a short hallway. Wayne Manor in this film consists almost entirely of one room, where Bruce watches TV while Alfred decorates the Christmas tree. Bruce's mansion in the first film was shot in an actual mansion, but for this movie they built basically one set and left it at that. The sets are impressive, to be sure, but the filmmakers should've moved some of them outside or used some real locations so Gotham City would feel more expansive.
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| In what universe does a major city's tree lighting draw such a small crowd? |
Not Enough Batman
This was my biggest hangup at the time the film came out and is still one of its biggest drawbacks. Batman's only in like 25% of Batman Returns. That's just weird. Keaton's performance is strong, as it was in the first film, but there's just not enough of it. His arc doesn't necessarily have to be the main one; in The Dark Knight for example the main character arc belongs to Harvey Dent, but Batman still has a major part, as half of a Faustian bargain with Heath Ledger's Joker. In Batman Returns, Bruce is there more out of obligation, and we get the feeling Burton would rather have just made this a Catwoman vs. Penguin movie. "Uh, now eventually you do plan to have BATMAN, in your Batman film, right?"
Nitpicks
-Wait, Bruce Wayne has a Bat-signal contraption that shines RIGHT INTO WAYNE MANOR? So anyone driving within sight of Gotham's most famous residence just figured out who Batman is. I don't think you've thought this through, Bruce.
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| Right into the guy's fuckin' living room?? |
-Let me make sure I understand this correctly: Selina Kyle gets murdered by her boss, pushed out a thirtieth floor window to her untimely demeez. And then a bunch of alley cats come along and, *checks notes*, LICK her back to life? So she's....a zombie who....has exceptional martial arts skills now? Fuck sense does that make? Is this real life?
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| God I wish cats could actually grant super powers... |
-There's a sequence where The Penguin's goons install a device in the Batmobile that allows Cobblepot to control it remotely, with the intent of framing Batman for vehicular homicide. But, um, how in the name of Zeus's butthole did The Penguin get a copy of the Batmobile's blueprints? Did someone break into the Batcave when Bruce wasn't looking? Did Bruce file the schematic with the US Patent Office? Or did the aforementioned Bat-signal mirror system give him away?
-When Catwoman drags the Ice Princess up to the roof and leaves her standing on the little wall, why doesn't she immediately step down from the wall to avoid accidentally falling? The scene still would've worked with the bats flying up and causing her to topple over, without making her do something no real human would ever do. Also, why do
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| You coulda just had her stumble and trip OVER the little wall instead of standing ON it. |
-During one fight scene Batman unintentionally knocks Catwoman off a building and she lands in a dump truck full of cat litter. Surely cat litter is processed and boxed up in a plant before being transported, yes? It's not like there's a Sand and Gravel facility breaking up larger rocks into grains of fucking cat litter.
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-Also, does she die in this scene and move on to another one of her nine lives or not? She counts it as a death later - "You killed me, Penguin killed me, Batman killed me..." - but it sure seems like she landed comfortably in the pile of litter unharmed. She even says "SAVED by kitty litter." Was she not actually saved? Was there a deleted scene where Batman actually did kill her?
-At the end of the movie Max shoots Selina with two bullets at a time and she counts them each as one of her nine lives gone. How's she know each of those wounds is fatal? Couldn't she have survived at least some of them? Again, I need to see a copy of the Dead Women Licked Back to Life By Cats Guidebook, these confusing logistics are killin' me.
-"Four, five, still alive.....six, seven, all good girls go to Heaven?" Someone's been watching Blade Runner...
-Two Batman movies, two times Bruce's secret identity is revealed to his love interest. This time Bruce and Selina find out who the other really is by accident at least. But why did Bruce reveal himself to Max Shreck of all people? He says himself to Max "Shut up, you're going to jail." Uhh, if Max knows Batman is Bruce Wayne and he squawks, IN JAIL, wouldn't that be bad for Bruce, to have every criminal in town know who he is?
Sooo yeah, it's been a tumultuous journey for me with this movie over the years. Loved it when it came out, considered it for a while the best Batman movie of the available choices, realized how ridiculous it is once real Batman movies started coming out, and now it's a fascinating and audacious bit of Tim Burton schlock that I may need to revisit every couple Christmastimes. It's truly an ELSEworlds tale. And an Awesomely Shitty Movie.
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