Tim Burton’s Batman: Freakish Fairy Tales
They’re entertaining movies, but they're not my Batman of choice.
A deformed monster covets a fair maiden who’s fallen for a cursed prince living in a mysterious castle. Can the prince slay the monster, and can the fair maiden alleviate his curse?
It sounds like a fairy tale, but that’s basically Batman through the lens of Tim Burton.
From what I understand, Burton was no comic book fan when he took on these projects. Remember, this was the guy who later almost directed a Superman movie starring Nicholas Cage (though that movie was already plenty weird even before Burton showed up). We were never likely to get a faithful adaptation from him. What we got instead was a bizarre superhero/fairy tale hybrid, complete with a talking bat, a talking cat, a talking penguin, and a talking ham.
I get the impression this Gotham City doesn’t exist in the same world as Metropolis, nor is it the setting of any gritty crime noir. Burton’s Gotham is a dark fantasy realm in which a woman can be shoved out a window, plunge to her death, get licked by a bunch of cats, and return to life as a suddenly athletic cat-woman without any further explanation. (Maybe they’re Jellicle cats?)
In Batman, the Joker is the deformed monster who covets Vicki Vale, and Bruce Wayne is, of course, the cursed prince. He’s so cursed that he hangs upside-down, almost like some sort of “bat-man,” if you will.
In Batman Returns, the Penguin is the deformed monster who covets, well, every pretty woman he meets, but especially Catwoman. Selina Kyle is initially less a fair maiden and more the ugly duckling sort (yes, we have to briefly pretend Michelle Pfeiffer is ugly) who blossoms into an unhinged swan—so unhinged that she even sticks a live bird in her mouth at one point and seems to like it. Because she fell out a window and got licked by cats.
And Batman is still our cursed prince living in his castle/manor. At the start of Batman Returns, we don’t even see Batman out on patrol, proactively thwarting criminals (as we did in the first one). No, this time, Batman waits to be summoned. He must be invoked. He’s just brooding in his mansion until the Bat-Signal shines, and then slowly, very slowly, this spirit of vengeance rises and joins the action.
This is hands-down the most rigid Batman we’ve ever met, and it’s not Michael Keaton’s fault. That costume is more like a knight’s armor than a superhero’s costume. It’s thick and awkward and hinders peripheral vision, and it gives the impression of Batman moving around like a man possessed, animated by unseen spirits rather than his own initiative and skill.
When a woman falls off a building in Batman Returns, Batman just watches from the rooftop. The slowpoke doesn’t even attempt to leap into action and grab her. And sadly, there are no cats on hand to lick her and activate her nine lives, so this poor woman just dies.
He’s not the most heroic Batman we’ve ever seen. He flat-out kills henchmen without a shred of remorse. Not killing is Batman 101—he’ll bend a slew of rules and laws to stop crime and protect people, but killing is the line he knows he must never cross. Superheroes need guardrails, and that’s the biggest, sturdiest guardrail Batman has.
In these movies, we get the silhouette of Batman, but there’s a different character within. The same goes for the villains.
This Catwoman is bonkers. Traditionally, Catwoman is a rational, ultra-competent, self-interested thief. Occasionally, she even veers into Robin Hood territory and looks out for the little guy. Comic book Catwoman is not a candidate for Arkham Asylum. And she might quip about having nine lives, but she doesn’t actually possess magical death-defying abilities.
The Penguin is even further off track. Comic book Penguin is a highly intelligent criminal, an erudite ugly man with refined tastes. He generally isn’t among the Arkham crowd either, and he’s certainly no sewer-dweller who was raised by penguins. (By the way, why are there so many penguins in an American city? Did I miss a line explaining that, or are they like the inexplicably magical cats that licked Selina? Can penguins also be Jellicle?)
Michelle Pfeiffer and Danny DeVito both do great work with the characters they’re playing, but what they’re playing are complete reimaginings.
The Joker comes the closest to the mark. Jack Nicholson basically plays the Caesar Romero version with a harder edge, though he’s still tame compared to Heath Ledger’s Joker.
Generally, though, the Joker shouldn’t have a specific origin story. He works best when he comes out of nowhere, like some anarchic force of nature. Plus, having him be the one who murdered the Waynes was a bit too much. He and Batman are already perfect foils, representing opposing forces of madness and rationality, chaos and order. The personal connection is superfluous. Worse, seeing the Joker as an ordinary mugger reduces him, and turning that ordinary mugger into a supervillain reduces Batman.
And, oddly enough, whereas Catwoman and Penguin are too crazy, this Joker is slightly too sane—an eccentric ham instead of a wild and unpredictable lunatic.
At the time, Batman and Batman Returns were the best live-action comic book movies after Superman: The Movie and Superman II. There wasn’t exactly much competition.
In hindsight, these Tim Burton movies played a role similar to that of the Adam West TV show. They got a huge audience excited about the character and brought in a bunch of new fans. (Reruns of the ’60s show were my gateway drug.) And without these movies, we likely never would have gotten the superb Batman: The Animated Series, so Batman fans are forever in their debt.
Nevertheless, they’re not great Batman movies. They’re good Tim Burton movies, and taking them as their own thing, they’re fun to watch, but I hope they’re never considered the definitive takes on these characters.
The Danny Elfman score, of course, fully deserves definitive status.
I am curious to see Keaton reprise the role in the upcoming Flash movie, though. He was an unconventional choice to play a Batman in his prime, but Keaton is an excellent actor, particularly in movies like The Founder and Birdman and miniseries like Dopesick. He also made a great Vulture in Spider-Man: Homecoming, and he might work well as an old Batman—especially with modern effects that allow him to, you know, move.