A film review by Craig J. Koban

BATMAN ½ 

15th Anniversary Retrospective Review

1989, PG-13, 126 mins.

The Joker/Jack Napier: Jack Nicholson / Batman/Bruce Wayne: Michael Keaton / Vicki Vale: Kim Basinger / Alexander Knox: Robert Wuhl / Police Commissioner Gordon: Pat Hingle / District Attorney Harvey Dent: Billy Dee Williams / Alfred: Michael Gough / Alicia: Jerry Hall / Carl Grissom: Jack Palance

Was there ever a comic book film adaptation that was more controversial then 1989’s BATMAN? 

I still can’t think of another bit of casting that inspired more anger, resentment, and   overall confusion and puzzlement than director Tim Burton’s choice of Michael Keaton to play the Caped Crusader.   Fan outrage would be a tremendous understatement when defining the casting.   Clearly, the only other exposure that the general public had with Batman was in the hugely popular 1960’s TV series, whose campy, tongue-in-cheek style was the complete antithesis of what the Batman character was really envisioned as by creator Bob Kane.  

Kane himself even had huge concerns about Keaton, as he explained in his autobiography BATMAN AND ME, “Whereas my hero was muscular and 6’2’’ tall and granite jawed, Keaton was…far from the classically handsome and debonair image…I had envisioned for Bruce Wayne and Batman.”   With even the creator expressing serious misgivings, the film, even as it was in pre-production, was garnering tons of free publicity.  Everyone knew there was a Batman film on the way, and were ever-so-curious as to whether a former stand-up comedian who starred in films like MR. MOM, NIGHT SHIFT, and GUNG HO could do justice to Kane’s creations and appease the public everywhere. 

In short, BATMAN was one of the gutsiest cinematic gambles in recent memory. 

The film did have a long history coming to the screen even before the controversy was a glint in anyone’s eye.  In the wake of the enormous success of the first SUPERMAN film in 1978, that film’s co-writer Tom Mankiewicz wrote an early draft of the screenplay in 1980.  It told the story of Batman and Robin's origins and included the villains The Joker and The Penguin.  It was going to be released in 1985 with a proposed budget of $20 million (high for a mid-eighties film). When the producers of that venture were booted off the production, the script lay dormant for years.  Several years later, producer John Peters picked it up and began fresh.  Unfortunately, he did not like the script.  He would need a new writer and a director. 

Peters’ choice was (at the time) a little known director named Tim Burton.  He seemed like an odd choice himself to make a Batman film, having only one film (PEE WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE) on his resume.  But Peters saw in Burton a director with a unique vision and sense of style; a man who placed a certain emphasis on being creative, bizarre, and darkly funny.  He seemed like a director with the chops to pull off the gritty film noir melodrama that was Batman. 

Burton hired a new screenwriter (Sam Hamm) and began to hammer out the new script.  Hamm would prove to be the unsung hero of BATMAN, being a comic fan all his life, and this would help transcend itself to fully realizing the film adaptation.   

Then came the announcement of the casting of Mr. Mom. 

Burton stood his ground with the press, and validated his concept of Batman as a real person with complexity at his heart; someone that tries to do good but inevitably fights with his own inner neurosis.  Batman was not an invincible superhero, but one with flaws and problems who has things at his disposal to become a super hero. 

Keaton’s casting, in retrospect, was a real coup. 

BATMAN was announced for release in the summer of 1989, perfectly in synch with the character’s fiftieth anniversary of first appearing in DETECTIVE COMICS.  The pre-release controversy and anticipation reached heights unheard of at the time.  A new wave of Batmania was ushered in.  BATMAN was not just a film.  It was an event in the making.  The media, both national and international, was ballooning up the hype from the moment the production started in England’s Pinewood studios.  Months before the film opened, Batman merchandise was everywhere…ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE.    This type of merchandising frenzy had not been seen since the last STAR WARS film opened four years earlier.   

The film, which was the most anticipated film of the 1980’s, and probably second behind THE PHANTOM MENACE as being one of the most hyped and eagerly awaited films of the last quarter of a century, finally opened in June of 1989.  It was the first major summer smash in years, and became the first film to make $100 million dollars in ten days. 

Box office success aside, was BATMAN any good and how does it hold up now, fifteen years later? 

The truly good news was (and still is) that the film gloriously evoked the spirit, tone, and mood of the original Bob Kane comic strips.  Sure, the film was not completely faithful to the comic books, but it felt faithful in its themes and look.  Burton had always promised that the film would be played straight and would owe more to the dark melodramas of the thirties and forties than the silly TV show.  He did not fail in anyway on his promise.  For the first time in nearly a decade, there was a living, breathing comic character occupying the silver screen, and in mostly successful fashion. 

BATMAN is a dark, haunting, poetic, and action packed noir of a film, and a magnificent vision come to live.  From the very first shots of Gotham City, which was envisioned by designer Anton Furst (who would later win an Oscar) as New York from hell, the viewer realize that this is not the light hearted and bright world that Superman or Spider-Man occupy.  Burton’s Gotham is a city of urban decay where around all of its gothic architecture emerges the seediest of humanity.  It’s a powerful jolt to the senses, and Gotham in BATMAN is one of the more unique film worlds, a place that draws you in until it becomes more real, in some sort of weird, abstract way.  BATMAN is surely a triumph of art direction, and its Oscar win in that category was much deserved. 

After the film opens with its disturbing look at Gotham, the film settles more or less into its narrative.  Gotham approaches its 200th-birthday celebration and is in the grip of a brutal crime wave, orchestrated mob boss Carl Grissom (Jack Palance) and his head henchman, Jack Napier (Jack Nicholson). Napier is a flamboyant and dashing crook who secretly sleeps with the boss’s wife on the side.  Things go dangerously south for Napier.  Grissom eventually sets up Napier and tips off the police of an impending raid at Axis Chemicals (another wonderfully realized set piece).  That is, of course, until Batman steps in.  Yet, unintentionally, the Dark Knight gives birth to this main nemesis for the rest of the film when he drops Napier into a vat of toxic chemicals.  He thinks he’s dead, but Napier survives and emerges scared for life and as crazy as ever.  He dubs himself (hilariously) as “the world’s first fully functional homicidal artist” and The Joker is born, a deliciously evil psychopath who kills for nothing more than for the indiscriminate pleasure out of it all.