Blockbuster Month: Batman (Dir Tim Burton, 2h 4m, 1989)

It's almost impossible, in this new age of heroes, to imagine cinema without them. Marvel's Cinematic Universe turned thirteen in May this year, and from the previously mentioned cavalcade of films I've covered and mentioned in passing, they are now the status quo in cinema, a perfectly primed machine that, as Black Widow rolls over the $215 million mark, seems to have been only briefly halted by such minor things as a global, century-defining, pandemic. But this was not always the case. Roll back the clock barely fifteen years and one comes face to face with films that are not just bad adaptions (X-Men: The Last Stand) but bad films (Elektra, Constantine, Catwoman). Superhero films, thus, are just the newest succesful trend in cinema, and they won't be the last.

But trends have to start somewhere. One could go back to the stately Superman (1973, by the recently departed and much missed Richard Donner), a film scripted by Mario Puzo, starring the superb Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman (as the best cinematic Lex Luthor to date), and Marlon Brando. But there's something too genteel, too mannered, too cinematic about Superman, and whilst Superman was, has and always will be a character with a planet-load of merchandise, little of it exists for this first, and admittedly groundbreaking outing. You could go back even further, to the enjoyable camp of 1960s Batman, which came with its own toyline, soundtrack (including, bizarrely, an early appearance by Frank Zappa), t-shirts etc. But here, we begin to conflate the much earlier merchandising of the television series, something that goes back practically to the medium's birth.

You have to start with the summer of 1989, and Batman, "Batmania", and the story of how an ex-Disney animator, fresh off the back of a gothic classic, not only started the superhero ball rolling, but codified the release, marketing and franchisement of superhero movies. This is the story of how, with the help of an actor known for his comedic roles squaring against one of cinema's greatest performers, the guitarist from an 80s new wave band, and one of the greatest roll and roll stars of the 1980s, Tim Burton, battling studios, writers strikes, and a film seemingly doomed to failure, changed the course, not only of the superhero genre, but the direction of blockbusters themselves. This is the story of Batman.

The year is 1988. Fresh off the back of Beetlejuice, perhaps still his greatest film, in which a newly dead couple enlist the titular bioexorcist (Michael Keaton), Tim Burton is riding high in popular opinion, both in cinematic circles and beyond, and he has an idea that he's carried with him since leaving Disney in the early 1980s. Also riding high in popularity is the Caped Crusader, Batman. Since his creation in 1939, the character had gone through substantial changes in the intervening decades, from his censorship under the 1950s' Comics Code (a, in hindsight positively MacCarthian witchhunt launched by the frankly mad publication of Seduction of the Innocent), a campy Swinging Sixties revival, and a grim return, despite his waning popularity, to form in the 1970s, and early 1980s.

Enter Frank Miller (The Dark Knight Returns and the seminal Year One), and Alan Moore (The Killing Joke). In barely a year, Miller has rejuvenated Batman, taken him back to his basics, and in barely two,a hardboiled Middle-American master of noir, and a addled out-there genius from Northampton, have brought Batman back from the brink, put him back on the streets as a master detective, and given his nemesis, the Joker, the mother of all origin stories. Batman is back, and for his next move, Warner Bros, having sat on the rights for the last decade, have the perfect plan. They're putting Batman back on the big screen.

No mean feat. Since they bought the rights from CBS in October 1979 they've been battling with the concept of a Batman film for years, see-sawing back and forth between campy, serious, and noirish elements, debating whom to include, whether this film should be an origin story, or skip that cinematic heavy lifting. At points, Wes Craven and Joe Dante are attached to direct, Bill Murray is to play Batman, and his friends and foes will include actors as far apart as David Niven, Peter O'Toole, and Eddie Murphy. It is a film in search of an identity. It is about to find one. Fresh off the back of directing the big-screen adventure of 1980s TV character, Pee-Wee Herman, (Burton hired, in turn, off the back of his two characterful gothic stop-start shorts, Frankenweenie and Vincent), DC approach Tim Burton.

Tim, whilst not the biggest comic book fan (something that has become a point of friction between Burton and multiple figures in the comic book community ever since, most notably with Kevin Smith), sees something he identifies  with in the inherent darkness of Batman, typified with The Dark Knight Returns and The Killing Joke, with the latter in particular shaping how the figure of the Joker will develop. There is, however, the small matter that Burton has only directed one feature film, and despite Burton's treatment, written with then girlfriend Julie Hickson, eventually growing into a script by Sam Hamm (a noted comic book fan, and later Burton collaborator), reaching the approval of Batman co-creator Bob Kane, Warner Bros are in no hurry.

Burton needs a hit. Fortunately, this hit soon arrives in the form of Beetlejuice, and Burton heads to work, together with its main star, Michael Keaton, largely known before the gothic comedy as, well, a comedic actor, most famous for hits like Mr Mom, rather than the dramatic films that influenced Burton's decision like Clean and Sober. Here began the problems, the triple whammy of prior conceptions that threatened to sink the film before it began, and called for Bob Kane to essentially become the film's guardian as creative consultant. In essence, all three components (Batman himself, Keaton, and Burton) were most famous for being or producing comedic fare, rather than the dark and serious Batman film Warner Bros were busy making.

Enter Jack Nicholson, beating out a field that included David Bowie, James Woods, Tim Curry (who would later briefly voice the character in the wildly popular Batman: The Animated Series before Mark Hamill took up the other role that would come to dominate his acting career), and Robin Williams, later shortlisted but never cast as the Riddler in Batman Forever. Batman (and, arguably superhero) films, at their best, have always been dominated by their villains, from Ledger's stunningly warped Joker in The Dark Knight, a motiveless bringer of discord, to the warrior philosopher of Tom Hardy's Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, to the trio of villains that make up Batman Returns, from the filthy and ultimately sympathetic Penguin, to the femme-fatale Catwoman, to the crooked politician profiting from their schemes.

Nicholson is the godfather of this, the point zero where every superhero movie brings in the acting big-guns to play the villain (or villains). Through him we have McKellan's Magneto, Hiddleston's Loki, (and by extension Blanchett's wonderfully nasty Hela), Michael B Jordan's Killmonger, Tim Roth's Abomination, Brolin's Thanos, and so on. Without a suitable villain to best, the genre simply does not work-without the immovable object for its unstoppable force given flesh and blood to hit, without an adversary to battle and triumph over, the genre does not work. Whilst Hackman's Lex Luthor is a good foil to Superman, the quintessntial comic book villain doesn't arrive until Jack Nicholson, fresh from a dunk in mysterious and horribly transformative chemicals, smashes the mirror and completes his transformation into the Joker

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. We begin with the Batman. Or, more accurately, with his theme. Cue the Elfman. For, over the film's opening titles, as the famous logo that was soon to appear on hundreds of thousands of t-shirits across the world is panned over, we get the first of the many pieces from Danny Elfman's score-that this is the first score the rock musician did, thus paving the way for Reznor et al borders on the astonishing. Better yet, the piece perfectly encapsulates Batman, a stirring gothic set of strings giving way to a cresendo, and then the thundering march; a gothic mystery giving way to propulsive action. And then the film pulls its first trick. We've become, inevitably, used to the many deaths of the Wayne parents, and the film begins with what looks like another, tracking a family and their son into an alley, only to have them simply mugged. As they look over their spoils, so a dark figure arrives, unseen in the background.

Cue the next great move of Batman 1989. The superhero genre's one Achilles' heel is that of the origin story-who is this individual who has stepped up to become the great hero, where did their powers come from and so on. Whilst the Nolan trilogy managed to add some pace and gravitas to the evolution of Bruce Wayne into the Batman in Batman Begins, (and both the Snyderverse and the upcoming The Batman begin Bruce in media res as Batman) all too often, the superhero movie falls into the derigeur march of a superhero's comic book origins in a slow march upward to familiarity. Batman nimbly sidesteps this by having Batman already present in the world, albeit early on in his tenure as the Caped Crusader. Batman dispatches the thugs, growls a warning to one, and in a brutally economic couple of moments, Burton utterly nails the figure of Batman as a quasi-nightmarish thing of the night. For all the infamous restrictions of the costume-Keaton could not move his head, and much of the fight choreography has him essentially moving his upper body as one-it is a tremendous introduction.

Batman and Bruce then essentially disappears into the shadows for the next twenty minutes, as the film sets up the bicentenial for Gotham, the political players, and the duo of photographer Vicki Vale and journalist Knox, as well as the criminal underworld of Gotham, headed by Carl Grissom. It's here that perhaps the film's best two character enter the frame. First, Gotham itself; whilst Burton's spiky noir gothicism would reach its peak in 1992's Batman Returns, by way of Edward Scissorhands (1990) and the then-gestating The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Gotham is Burton's woodcut oddness made flesh, a creepy selection of back-alleys, jutting spires and skyscrapers, gothic piles in the surrounding countryside and all manner of warped gothic and neo-gothic architecture that presses in around our heroes and villains, positively inducing claustrophobia at points. Rarely has a location been as integral, as perfectly fitting the mood and tone of a film as Gotham.

And then there is Jack. Nicholson already imbues Napier with a crazed energy against the classic mobster in Grissom; his first introduction, in the vivid purple suit that practically already marks him out as the Joker (and practically has become, with the exception of Phoenix and Leto, the character's trademark for the past six decades), is an offbeat moment of typically Nicholsonian oddness, playing with cards in the foreground, before addressing his boss as sweetheart. Everything marks, forgive the expression, Nicholson as the joker in the pack, the bright suit against the greys and browns of the room, the odd ticks and eccentricities. Little does Jack know that he's being set up by Grissom, sent off to Axis Chemicals to be offed in a doublecross.

Against this rising tension, Burton places the investigation of Batman by Vale and Knox-Batman himself is nothing more than a shadowy legend and it isn't till late in the film, by which time the Joker is taking over television and threatening Gotham with makeup induced death that he finally breaks from the shadows-but it is this hunt for the legend that brings both of them to one of Bruce Wayne's charity fundraisers. It is here that Burton and Keaton pull their next trump card. For, here's the thing. Whilst Keaton's performance as Batman may well have been superceded by Bale's towering figure, or Affleck's older, tougher, and more brutal armoured Dark Knight, their Bruce Waynes fall short, or feel like extensions of their respective alter-egos.

Keaton, for my money, is the quintessential cinematic Bruce Wayne (though the legendary Kevin Conroy is by far and away the best complete package in B:TAS), a gentle, occasionally awkward man, who appears not in grandeur, but almost slipping into the back of a scene between Vale and Knox as they investigate Wayne's armour collection. There's something, undeniably, disarming, charming-as Vale soon discovers, as the duo begin dating-about this iteration of Bruce Wayne. A sequence later, as Vale visit Wayne Manor for a date, sees the duo swap the austere grandeur of one of the countless rooms of the house for the homely warmth of the kitchen, attended by, in Burton's other masterclass of casting, Michael Gough's kindly Alfred.

This, then, comes in sharp contrast to the Batman, and it is perhaps this gulf between Bruce and his alterego that this version gets down perfectly, because no-body expects this gentle quiet figure, who spends the latter half of the film foiling the Joker's plans as much with his mind as his fists, as he goes about the detective work that renders the Joker's fiendish Smilex-based plans useless. Yet, whilst the Batman is tough, and often brutal in his methods-after all, it is he that drops the hapless Napier into the chemicals that sees him transform into the Joker, and his dispatch of the latter from the top of Gotham Cathedral via a snared gargoyle is equally brutal. He, though, is a Batman that perfectly fits the cold harsh gothicism of the city around him.

At the centre of it all, though, is the Joker, and Nicholson skewers perfectly, right to the heart, how to make this maniacal gangster turned force of nature work; all subsequent iterations have, to some extent or another existed in the magnetic pull of this performance, either attempting to escape it but inevitably pulled back towards in, in the form of Leto's gang-banger turned cracked actor version, and Phoenix's Scorsese-ian anti-hero, or openly in its orbit, like Hamill's charming but utterly insane comedian, cracking wise against the ultimate straight man, or the late Heath Ledger's adaption of the motiveless malignity, the disturbing reflection. But this is to rather step around Jack Nicholson's performance, to look at the shadow it casts rather than the light it rages against.

For Jack and the Joker are, above all, fun, despite how deranged it is, how wild and unrestrained by sanity. It is a master actor leaning into at once the inner darkness that made him a star in the early 1980s, through the wide-eyed madness of Jack Torrance, and high camp-his execution of his former boss is a scene that flips from the former to the latter as the now blanch-faced rictus grin comes into view, whilst his dispatch of a former colleague in the mob crosses back over from openly comic to utterly disturbing as the man is electrocuted to death. He is at once warpedly fond of Vicki Vale, protecting her from his attack on the museum via a gasmask, and sitting down to a candlelit dinner, only to kidnap her late in the movie, and utterly dispassionate, shooting his henchman, Bob (Nicholson's real life friend, Tracey Walter), and driving his disfigured girlfriend to suicide.

In the film's standout sequence, a practical character study, we see him and his goons cavort through an art museum, vandalising pieces, only for protect Francis Bacon from the brushes and paint. That Nicholson does much of this, this animated gleeful madness shot through with sociopathic violence and murder behind heavy makeup (if not multiple layers of it, as for many sequences, that clownish mask is overlaid with an extra layer that still seems an astonishing bit of cinematic trickery), is nothing short of absolutely astonishing. Many of the best lines, the best moments of this film rest upon Jack's shoulders. He is the engine driving the film forward to his inevitable showdown with Batman. It is this that every superhero movie practically runs on.

There is, though, the other major impact that Batman left upon cinema. There's the simple fact that, whilst Batman made over $410 million, making it the highest grossing film of the year in the USA and second behind the triumphant home lap of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in the year overall, this is dwarfed by the $750 million in the almost exhaustive towering panoply of merchandise, from cereal to makeup kits to action figures to t-shirts. Whilst Star Wars and Jaws started this trend, their respective merchandise were ancillary to box office, rather than outgrossing it-at points in the summer of 1989, Batman was quite literally everywhere, companies struggling to keep up as the Batmania took hold. This saturation bombing of ephemera, most notably Prince's enjoyable but largely out of place songs, collected on the album Batman, set the blockbuster on a course where the film itself became a mere element of a huge cultural (and of course economic) moment, that would reach completion just four years later.

But this is taking away Batman's power as a film, rather than the cinematic wing of a marketing drive. Burton remains, three decades on, unhappy with the film, and his masterpiece will always remain the astonishingly dark and macabre Batman Returns, but it brings the superhero franchise as cinematic genre blinking into the light, never to face the darkness again. In the intervening years, we've seen some false starts-the Schumacher sequels, for all their garishness are charmingly campy throwbacks to the original 1960s piece, as the ambitions of marketing and toymakers overtook cinematic vision, whilst the superhero slump of the late 90s and early 2000s are as much a bellweather of an ailing multiplex than any one cinematic failure.

But Batman stands alone, a perfect storm of excellent writing, superb dual performances from Keaton and Nicholson, Elfman's at turns etherial and muscular score, the perfectly baroque visuals and the fact that in the intervening years, no film has captured the Gotham of the comic books so many of those original fans in 1989 knew and loved as well. Whilst it is as much an industrial moment as a cinematic one, without this, without Burton, without Batman, superhero cinema returns to the shadows, watching on from the darkness. Without Batman, countless worlds and stories that have become the new childhoods for the children who grew up with them are snuffed out, or remain trapped in their pages. Batman, in a word, introduces the multiplex to the world of heroes, and they have been walking with us ever since.

Rating: Highly Recommended

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