When it was announced that the Dark Knight was coming to the silver screen, there was a lot of excitement. Going back to the late 1980’s, fans of comic book heroes were recovering from Superman IV and the will they/won’t they? rumours about a Spiderman movie with Charlie Sheen spinning the webs. The Avengers fans don’t know they’re born! But here it was, finally something to banish the murky memories of the camptastic 1960’s TV series. Directed by Tim Burton (back when he re-imagined franchises as opposed to just remaking them) and starring, to everyone’s surprise Michael Keaton in the title role and, less surprisingly, Jack Nicholson as The Joker.
It even got its own certificate with the British film board creating the 12 certification to stop little brats from going to see Batman thus leaving the more refined teenagers to enter theatres along with middle aged geeks. (This reviewer really knows how to charm his target audience).
On top of all that, it was up against a tough crowd in the summer season of 1989. Not only was Batman going to have to duke it out with Indiana Jones but 007 was also on the prowl. Fortunately for Batman, the latter fell foul of the same people that gave it a 12 certificate as they handed the Bond movie an unusual 15 rating.
Batman made a shed load of money, which in hindsight, is and isn’t a surprise.
It tells the origin stories of both Bruce Wayne/Batman and the Joker quickly and efficiently such is the economical nature of the script from Sam Hamm and Warren Skaaren. But while they get that the lead character is complex, they along with Burton don’t seem to realise how important the action scenes in a project like this are. They can make or break it, like those in Superman served it so impeccably. In Batman the action is muted too often.
It was also criticised by many at the time for being so dark, not in tone but the lighting or rather lack of it. Burton understandably shoots most of the key sequences at night and in the shadows, symbolic of the moral ambiguity of his central character. But, at points, it is difficult to discern finer details, especially in Batman’s ascent up the tower block to confront the Joker during the climax.
But to the major problem with Batman as a movie and something that Burton would repeat in the superior Batman Returns. The Joker is given parity with the title character to the extent the film might as well have been named Batman & The Joker. This brings us on to Jack Nicholson.
Over the decades Nicholson has enjoyed a wonderful career but it’s telling that his best performance was probably in About Schmidt because he is at his least “Jack”. Nicholson unleashed “Jack” on a regular basis: One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, The Shining, The Departed, The Witches of Eastwick…
One imagines he was cast as Batman’s nemesis on the basis of those aforementioned movies – complacent or what – and his name meant he was elevated to being the star of Batman, receiving top billing. And he does indeed unleash “Jack”. But “Jack” isn’t the Joker. He’s a sadistic nasty piece of work, no doubt, but here Jack’s box-of-tricks doesn’t suffice. He gurns, he stares fiercely, he cavorts but it’s a busted flush of a performance, bloated and banal. Statesman-like at one moment, unreliable the next. The script and characterisation don’t help him but one gets the sense that the makers simply felt that they could hand over to Jack and he’d weave his magic. Instead we’re constantly left witnessing Jack being Jack and not the Joker, a mistake that would only be remedied nearly two decades later by Heath Ledger.
As for Keaton – the bloke playing Batman – he was a strange casting choice and, looking at his previous collaboration with Burton in Beetlejuice, might ironically have been better suited to playing the villain. But he just about satisfies as Wayne and his alter ego. He’s the thoughtful Bruce Wayne and, after several other portrayals including Val Kilmer, George Clooney and Christian Bale, it’s an interesting watch and maybe Keaton is underrated.
The plot is forgettable and, the darkness aside, there are some technical gripes. Everything shot in daylight is done so with sunny blue skies which doesn’t reflect the Gotham most would imagine. This was rectified in the sequel where Gotham is habitually in a twilight zone.
The fourth wall is broken when the Joker falls into the acid bath. Said toxic fluid hits the camera lens which is slapdash. In a movie so carefully blending the special effect sequences with the navy blue canvas of Gotham’s sky line pre CGI, this is shoddy. The dark humour falls flat and the narrative tool in using the news network to move the story along is too similar to Robocop.
Kim Basinger as Vicki Vale. While she starts out as a strong female character, detecting that Bruce Wayne might not be all he seems, she soon reverts to being a mere pawn in the power play between Jack and Batman and goes all Fay Wray by the end.
The action scenes are limited, the reality being that Jack is too old to do much so that a faceless bunch of goons do battle with Batman. The entrance of the Batwing is fun but do we really get enough? The answer is a resounding no, another ingredient that would be factored into the sequel with aplomb.
Then there’s the incongruous presence of Prince or rather his music. Prince famously recorded his own soundtrack for the film and, while it mostly uses the score from composer Danny Elfman, there is a random sequence in the film where the Joker and his merry band enter an art gallery to the backing of ‘Partyman’ which might almost be something out of a Broadway musical. The film did end up with two soundtrack albums which is puzzling and another distraction.
But it is also indicative of a wider issue in the film. With the sets and clothing, it retains the comic book setting of the 1930’s and 1940’s. However, conversely the gimmick of using the television news channel along with such aggressively 80’s icons like Prince and Jerry Hall as the Joker’s ill fated girlfriend popping up make this an anachronistic mash-up.
Burton and the script writers seem to understand the characters in the comic books but not the landscape. Gotham isn’t gothic enough. Thinking of Spinal Tap, they’re using an amplifier which will only go up to 7. While Nicholson unleashes “Jack”, Burton and his production team don’t seem as willing to let the action off the lead.
Yet despite coming up short on many fronts, one would argue that Batman was a very important and influential movie. Breaking ranks with the two-dimensional rendering of the Superman films, choosing to create complex characters. It also demonstrated that comic book action heroes were big business. Without Batman, it’s conceivable there would have been no Christopher Nolan Dark Knight trilogy, no X-Men series and certainly no MC Universe. And in many ways, that Burton would learn from his mistakes to make Batman Returns three years later, you do have to give him and the movie a certain degree of latitude. That it was such a box office juggernaut and cultural phenomenon is still surprising yet Batman, along with Superman, showed the way for how to translate comic book stories to the big screen.
Athon 