As The Dark Knight is the most anticipated film of the year, I figured it might be instructive to go back and take a look at the original Batman, made in 1989 by Tim Burton. It was not really the original Batman movie of course- in 1966, a big screen adaptation of the TV show starring Adam West hit theatres, but that was a low budget effort that, like the show itself, was played for laughs.
But the 1989 Batman was different- it was huge film, made on a big budget (Jack Nicholson alone cost $60 million), and made to compete in what was the most intense summer of blockbusters at the time. And it worked- it was the highest grossing film in America that year, beating out other big movies like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Ghostbusters 2, Star Trek V, Back to the Future Part II, and others. It also spawned three direct sequels (none of them any good), the Christopher Nolan reboot, and the surprisingly good animated film Batman: Mask of the Phantasm.
And what is most remarkable about the movie is how unlike the typical action or comic book movie it is. In its 126 minuets, there are only three large and one small action sequences, and unlike so many other films of its type, when the characters talk, what they say is actually interesting.
The movie has got to be tied with Soylent Green as one of the most intentionally downbeat-looking films ever released by a major studio. The movie’s Gotham City (brilliantly designed by genius art director Anton Furst) is the apotheosis of all that’s wrong with big cities- pollution, crime, corruption. If you didn’t know the personal tragedy that happened to Bruce Wayne is his past, you’d wonder why someone with all of his money didn’t move to a more a friendly town like New York.
As many critics have noted, the picture is built around the struggle of two obsessed men. Batman (Michael Keaton) is struggling to rid himself of his personal demons while the Joker (Nicholson) wants to be a living work of art, and to him, art and death are intertwined. The key difference between the two men is that the Joker realizes that what he’s doing is absurd, while the Batman is unable to laugh at himself or much else. There opposites of each other in other ways as well- the Joker takes pleasure at the suffering or others, Batman suffers from an overkill of empathy. When not suffering from a bout of anger the Joker is essentially happy, whereas Batman is miserable most of the time with an occasional human connection.
Keaton is not the type you would expect to play a superhero, but that’s why he’s right for the part- Batman is an extension of his psyche, not his physical person. Nicholson is actually kind of boring at the beginning, but after he turns into the Joker the movie takes off an he’s riveting.
Batman has too many flaws to be a truly great film- the climax goes on for too long, Kim Basinger is bland as Batman’s love interest Vicki Vale (no surprise she was gone in the next movie), the plot is somewhat confusing at the beginning with too many characters. But once the films winds up, you start to believe in its dark fantasy world, and you feel great sorrow for a man so hurt by the past that he feels he must dress as a bat.
Batman (1989)