5.7/10. Someday, possibly in the near future, we’re going to get a gritty, documentary-style Batman film about a regular guy who dresses up like a bat and gets into ugly fist fights with criminals. And when that happens, we’ll turn around and laugh at how cheesy and unrealistic the Christopher Nolan Batman films seem now. Today’s cultural sensation is tomorrow’s hokey relic. So it goes.

But until that happens, it behooves us to look at Tim Burton’s 1989 *Batman* film, which comes off pretty corny and even rudimentary relative to the Dark Knight Trilogy, with some perspective. After the semi-grounded approach to the character in recent years, it seems odd that Burton’s film was praised for its serious approach to the source material. But contemporary critics were comparing it to William Dozer’s *Batman ‘66* the overtly comedic, Adam West incarnation of the caped crusader. So while much of what Burton does in *Batman* feels broader and even goofier than the bat-stories people think of today, it’s important to keep it in the context of the wide spectrum of portrayals of the character and his world, whether on the page or the screen, that have taken place over the last eighty years.

Even with that thought in mind when approaching the film, it’s hard to reconcile it with the gut response to a film made almost three decades ago under very different standards and expectations for superhero films and blockbusters in general.

Some of what dates the film is easily forgivable. The effects are not up to today’s standards – CGI or no – with models or miniatures standing out fairly clearly, and even details as minor as Batman’s costume contribute to the “just playing dress up” vibe. Between the two-piece cowl, or the curtain drapery bit the Dark Knight does with his cape in an attempt to create an intimidating silhouette for the criminals he’s attacking, the entire enterprise feels chintzier than the polished (even overly polished) visuals of today.

And yet, that contributes to the feel of the film. If there’s one thing about the film that feels both entirely appropriate to the source material and yet also makes it harder for a modern day viewer to connect with the film, it’s the overall atmosphere of *Batman*. Burton embraces the cartoony, four-color roots of the genre in the visuals and overall tenor of the film, even when it includes more intense elements like gangland hits and dead parents.

Part of that comes from the film’s setting, which takes place in an interesting amalgam of the 1940s and the then-contemporary Reagan era. Certain elements of the film – like the cops and robbers motif and the production design as a whole place *Batman* in an old version of New York City that seemed to only exist on the silver screen in the first place. But things like Vicky Vale’s glasses or the breaks in the action for the Joker and his goons to dance to Prince songs, or even the particular energy of the Alexander Knox character, root the picture squarely in the late-eighties. It’s a blend that serves to make the film very specific, timeless, and dated all at once.

The set design contributes to that sense as well. It feels like Burton literally shot a movie with oversized play sets. Everything in *Batman* feels larger than life. The world of Gotham is a fantasy land, a theme park, that captures the unreality of Batman’s comic roots while also putting it at a remove from the audience. In effect, these choices make Burton’s *Batman* feels truest to those roots among the various Batman-related films, even as he departs from standard continuity and characterization. Even though Keaton’s Batman doesn’t feel pulled from the pages of *Detective Comics*, there’s a real sense of Burton taking the toys out of the toy box, moving them around his elegantly constructed play set, with all the bombast and silliness that goes with it.

The problem, then, is that little of it has any weight. Not every superhero movie needs to be a mediation on hope or morality or vigilantism, but Burton’s *Batman* comes out feeling like empty calories, with really only The Bat himself the only character who offers any sort of inner life. There’s fun to be had here – giant balloons and cartoony gadgets. But it doesn’t quite capture the pure sense of joy or investment that can come up in the lighter Marvel films of recent vintage. Burton’s *Batman*, instead, feels appropriately enough like a Saturday morning cartoon come to life, with the same commitment to whiz-bang action but also lack of depth.

The irony is that the actual Saturday morning cartoon inspired by Burton’s work on the screen, *Batman: The Animated Series* distills the character and his world down to a much more coherent and compelling version of the same ideas present here. It’s rare that the characters in Burton’s *Batman* feel like real people rather than four-color abstractions and broadly-sketched archetypes.

The peak of this is Jack Nicholson’s Joker. There are hints here and there at a unique conception of the Clown Prince of Crime. The most promising of them is the idea of Joker as a conceptual artist whose medium is homicide. It’s appropriately out there for the character, and accounts for the theatrical flair in his capers. But Burton’s Joker has little true motivation in the film beyond some quickly completed revenge. There’s reason to give Burton the benefit of the doubt, and take his Joker as the result of when someone with little empathy or control to begin with goes insane – unpredictable, almost random cruelty – but the bumpers of the film’s exaggerated atmosphere keep that idea from landing with any force.

That leaves *Batman* with a semi-incoherent antagonist, with a rushed origin story, and only Jack Nicholson’s charisma to save things. Nicholson doesn’t just chew the scenery here; he gnaws on it like a dog with a bone. That leads to some enjoyable line reads (“where does he get those wonderful toys” is still a nicely arch bit from Nicholson) and some amusing dances from the three-time Oscar winner, but mostly leads to the character feeling as though it lacks an anchor or a purpose beyond dutifully moving the conflict along and giving Nicholson the space to do a handful of off-the-wall, unconnected comic sketches. Nicholson’s Joker is over the top, as he should be, but also rudderless and showy, undercutting any menace or threat he’s supposed to pose.

That extends to the film’s biggest break with the source material – making the Joker, as a young Jack Napier, the one who killed Bruce Wayne’s parents. It creates a certain poetry and connects the hero and the villain in the way that so many stories, superhero or otherwise, like to. (See also: the first season of Netflix’s Luke Cage show.) But it doesn’t amount to much, beyond turning Batman from a crusader for justice into a bog-standard seeker of revenge.

It’s a shame because Keaton’s Batman, while hamstrung by some of the movie’s shortcomings, makes for an intriguing version of the character. He doesn’t brood exactly, but he seems quietly tortured nonetheless. It’s a choice keeps Keaton’s Batman from the taciturn glumness that overly dark modern adaptations have taken too far, but still portrays him as a man who doesn’t quite feels comfortable with who or what he is, shutting people out and working through his problems by skulking through the night and protecting other little boys whose parents wander into the wrong alley. Beyond the “wanna get nuts” interlude, it’s a nicely unshowy take on the character that succeeds in ways even the Nolan films struggled with at times.

It also gives the film its only real bit of emotional weight, especially Bruce/Batman’s relationship with Vicky Vale. Kim Basinger’s Vale is a thin, if noble for the time to put a female lead with some oomph into the narrative. She shows some modicum of cleverness and resourcefulness during the film, but still devolves into standard damsel-in-distress tropes that make her feel more like a prop than a vital part of the story. Still, the film never feels more human and real than in the moments when Bruce and Vicky are flirting, or worrying about one another, or shutting each other out. The film goes back and forth, but in their scenes set in and around Wayne Manor in particular, there’s a chemistry there that buoys the film, and gives another layer to Keaton’s performance as his Batman is only willing to let someone so far into his life.

There are other smaller elements that make the film enjoyable. Danny Elfman’s score is, to borrow the title of the film’s aborted sequel, thrillingly triumphant, with an operatic bombast that perfectly matches the tone of the film. On the other side of the coin, Michael Gough brings warmth and kindness to his portrayal of Bruce’s butler and confidant, Alfred Pennyworth, that helps give the movie what little emotional grounding it has. In between is the film’s palette, which is garish and at times even lurid appropriate to the newsprint origins, balancing the darkness of the setting with an exaggerated color scheme.

Still, Burton’s *Batman* can’t help but feel like a half-measure to the modern eye. Halfway between the tongue-in-cheek cheekiness of Dozier’s *Batman ‘66* and the pot-boiling grit of Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy, Burton’s *Batman* can’t quite manage the balance of weight and whimsy that the animated series he inadvertently spawned nearly perfected. Instead, the film is a muddle of Batman’s sensibilities and Burton’s, presenting yet another one of Burton’s troubled loners, amid the painted cardboard world and cartoony figures, that leave the sense of a fingers-crossed adventure where everyone’s just playacting.

*Batman* is not quite a lark, not quite a thrill, and not quite an achievement. It’s a curiosity, an evolutionary step for the caped crusader on the silver screen, having not fully shed its previous form, and not yet worked out what the character might be. The film is a toy box come to life, with all the good and all the bad that the description conjures.

**Batman 1989 burst on the scene shattering the box office and rewriting the rules of comic book films with dark characters and high stakes in ways no superhero movie had seen before.**

Superhero movies of the 70s and 80s were bright and colorful, goofy and optimistic, champions of truth, Justice, and the American Way. Movies like Superman, Supergirl, the original Captain America, and even Adam West’s Batman all fit this vibe and aesthetic, with many overly campy but charming. This made Tim Burton’s darker, more violent Batman a huge gamble. Warner Bros literally sank every last penny they had into the movie as the studio was collapsing and going out of business. A dark superhero film with murder and blood? Michael Keaton? Mr. Mom himself as Batman? It was a massive risk with a tremendous payoff! Warner Bros survived and thrived off the enormous box office profits, and Batman reinvented the superhero genre showing that adults could enjoy superhero movies too. Even though Batman 1989 is a little dated and campy now, it broke every mold when it was released. Michael Keaton proved himself as the incredible star and bankable actor that he is. Jack Nicholson’s Joker stood as the iconic standard for villains for decades. Kim Basinger’s Vicki Vale is still one of the best Batman love interests to date. Tim Burton saved superheroes and movie studios with this dark reinvention of the comic book genre. It’s a true superhero classic.

"Batman" never was my favourite superhero, and although Michael Keaton tries hard here to inject a little soul into the character, I'm afraid I found Jack Nicholson's totally over-the-top "Joker" to be just annoying and the whole film to be little underwhelming. "Gotham City" is essentially an urban jungle under the boot of the menacing "Grissom" (Jack Palance). He and his sidekick "Napier" (Nicholson) - who only has a limited grasp on his sanity - have a bit of a falling out, though, and the latter man is soon swimming in a vat of deadly chemicals... The result? Well his madness is now completely unleashed on his former boss then on the entire city as he attempts to gain complete control. Luckily for DA "Harvey Dent" (Billy Dee Williams) and Police Commissioner "Gordon" (Pat Hingle) the city might just have a chance of salvation in the form of our eponymous, black leather-caped, crusader. Equipped with a bullet-proof car, a super-charged motor bike and some heavy duty kevlar body armour he vows to take on the criminal element and restore some sort of order. He, too, has his demons - which we learn about as the story develops, and it seems they can only be tempered by his loyal retainer "Alfred" (Michael Gough). As the stakes rise, it soon becomes a man-to-man combat scenario that I found all rather too theatrical. The visual effects are solid, the audio and lighting also work well to create an at times intimidating atmosphere, but I just found myself missing the point. There can be no doubt that Nicholson's performance as an actor is outstanding, but for me it created a relentless, almost pantomime-style, character that as it persisted just rather left me looking around the cinema wondering what Burt Ward was doing nowadays. Groundbreaking it was in 1989. In 2023 - well I'm not at all sure. It does look good, though!

The film that taught me "C'mon you gruesome son of a b****, come to me!" in kindergarten, and obviously caused multiple parent-teacher conferences.

There's no doubt that Tim Burton's "Batman" gave a whole new dignity to the character, and that all subsequent incarnations owe something to this film. But, at the same time, we can't really say it aged well. It was one of the first attempts to create something between a comic strip and something a little gloomier, but the writing is all over the place, and the direction is so clunky it hurts. While it’s definitely a must-watch if you are looking into the history of the character, I doubt it will have anything to offer to casual viewers.

However, the trench coat and wide-brimmed hat film noir atmosphere is perfect for Gotham City. In retrospect, it may lead you to believe that the clumsy staging and stiff acting were intended to channel the classic film noir vibes. Kim Basinger could have been the femme fatale, but other than crossing her legs in her first scene, she is the average superhero flick damsel in distress who yells and falls from various buildings.

Jack Nicholson's performance is the most confident, and he is indeed carrying the whole film. There are times he ends up being as campy as the Joker from Adam West TV show, but he is not the only one to blame. His performance works when Burton had managed to build tension around his character, but especially in the second half, he ends up being as quirky as he is harmless. His motivations are unclear, but that’s part of his anarchic and chaotic charm. In the end, it all resolves into a bizarre love triangle between him, Batman, and Vale.

The Caped Crusader is quite absent, and it’s clear that Burton didn’t care much about the original character. The fact that he purposedly kills already says it all. However, I liked how clumsy and out of place Bruce Waye feels while acting like a billionaire playboy. Burton suggests that Batman is just as much of a freak as Joker is, and the fact that the two characters caused the birth of each other’s second identities is not a coincidence. A concept that Burton was probably planning to expand in further movies, but that in this case gets only roughly sketched.

While Elfman’s score is still regarded as the best and most representative in the franchise, Prince’s original songs are atrocious…

Probably one of the first serious attempts at bringing a comic to the big screen with a decent budget. The vision of the world is brilliant. Keaton's Batman is spot on and the Prince soundtrack ties the whole thing together perfectly. Unfortunately, Tim Burton's flamboyance lets things down in the end. But still the most memorable Batman to date. Although Ben Affleck's jaded, grumpy and bulked-out depiction of the character in Batman V Superman is my favourite.