Movie Review: Batman [1989]

Batman [1989]

The Adam West Batman TV shows codified Batman as a household name, but it wasn’t necessarily an accurate depiction of the character. Adam West’s Batman, taking a decidedly Golden Age tone, was silly, campy, rambunctious and far less serious than what the character has evolved from in the comics. And while the 1989 Tim Burton movie isn’t the most serious of Batman material – it won’t be until Batman Begins that Batman’s super-serious modern comic book counterpart is brought into proper live action – the 1989 Tim Burton movie caused Batman to become cool again, to become the symbol of the cool, dark superhero, and inspired arguably the best chunk of Batman stories I’ve ever seen, Batman: The Animated Series.

Since 1989, Batman’s gotten a fair amount of new movies, live-action adaptations and cartoons, all to varying degrees of success. But how does the original 1989 Batman movie fare? It was a time when comic book movies aren’t really treated as anything really seriously, and while I wasn’t around for that period, being raised in the 90’s, big live-action movies of superheroes were a big deal. That was why everyone knew about Superman, Batman, Wolverine and Spider-Man, but show some of the B-listers like the Flash or Captain America and everyone will go “who?”

And I haven’t seen Tim Burton’s Batman since I was a kid, when I got the four live-action movies from a rental DVD shop and am super-excited to see these lovable characters I saw from the Animated Series and read the comics about materialize in live-action. And Tim Burton’s Batman… it’s a solid movie, all things considered. It ages well enough to be watchable with modern-day sensibilities, if you can excuse some campiness. And it codifies a lot of tropes in Batman as a franchise that we’ve since taken for granted – Batman’s all-black suit, for example, or the grapple gun (he used to use a literal batarang on a string to grapple in the past). It’s a bit too much work for me to really sort out which parts of the Batman character was codified by this movie, and which one was adapted, but whatever the case… this movie influenced the character in a huge, huge way, trying to make Batman something that’s pretty serious once more.

Of course, taken as a whole, Tim Burton’s Batman is… an odd beast. The cold open is pretty excellent – a fake out with a family going into an alley, which might lead you to think that these are the unfortunate Waynes setting up Bruce Wayne’s transformation into Batman, is actually our introduction to modern-day Batman as he pops up and beats up the robbers. While we, the audience, see the Batman skulk around in the shadows of the buildings, the robbers don’t, and they talk about Batman like this revered bogeyman, this mysterious shadow whose reality isn’t really proven, and that’s how Batman strikes fear into his minions. Sure, more modern efforts like Batman Begins and Batman v. Superman do it far more spectacularly, but back to the audience in 1989 it’s a pretty chilling debut for the Caped Crusader, despite the clearly dated special effects.

Sadly, the movie doesn’t quite maintain that quality. The pacing is insanely slow, with several subplots and characters clearly going nowhere – reporter Alexander Knox perhaps being the biggest problem, where he essentially acts as a literal wall for Vicki Vale to bounce dialogue off from. But there are also a bunch of characters introduced seemingly for no real point – I was genuinely surprised that Commissioner Gordon and Harvey Dent (played by Billy Dee Williams, no less!) were in the movie, because I didn’t remember them at all… because, in turn, they don’t really do anything. There was a whole subplot about the Joker (a.k.a. Jack Napier) being the right-hand man of the local mafia boss, Grissom, and that Jack’s sleeping with Grissom’s girlfriend, causing Grissom to essentially betray Jack to the police, and that just feels really convoluted and didn’t quite need all that much buildup. And add that to some really problematic pacing and scene-to-scene transition, and a climax that isn’t quite as impressive as it could’ve been, makes the movie a pretty odd beast. There’s nothing particularly bad per se, just rather bland stretches that really could’ve been trimmed. Add that to the action scenes, which, while not bad for that time, isn’t super impressive.

Add the fact that there are some really questionable choices for plot points. I can get giving Joker an origin story. As much as I dislike the idea of Joker having an origin story at all, the revelation does tie in to Batman’s own origin story, making the two’s rivalry intensely intimate, as well as giving us an actual reason to care for the origin story. But having Batman killing? And be driven for a vendetta for the climax, without any rhyme or reason? Not the biggest fan. I also am taken aback at how inconsistent the Joker was, jumping from madman to clown to mob boss to weird artist to lovesick stalker – the only consistency the character is that Jack Nicholson is insanely entertaining whatever facet of Joker he chooses to do, which is why this version of Joker is still fondly remembered.

But you know where the movie works? How it looks. By god, the visually gothic vistas of Gotham look amazing, this weird mixture of the fantastical and the real. The Batmobile, the Joker, the Batwing, the final clocktower, Wayne Manor, the Batcave… so much of the visual aspects of the movie are just a delight to look at, looking comic book-y yet still realistic enough to envision a version of the real world where perhaps the 40’s or 50’s does look like this. And while I listed the things that the movie got wrong, the movie pretty much adapted the rest of the Batman mythos amazingly well. The origin story, Batman’s status as Gotham’s boogeyman, Gotham being a city run by corruption and crime, the hint that Batman himself is probably as sociopathic as the villains he hunts (he just happens to have a moral code), the Joker’s madcap hijinks and his desire for the spotlight, Alfred the faithful butler… And the Batmobile being the coolest piece of awesome technology in the world. Always loved the Batmobile from this movie.

And I do like how the movie starts off grounded. The characters that populate that movie are the likes of corrupt policeman Lt. Eckhart, crime boss Grissom, the sinister Jack Napier, socially awkward billionaire philanthropist Bruce Wayne… pretty much the only comic-book universe character in the setting was the titular Batman, and for those unfamiliar with the character, the revelation that Bruce Wayne and Batman isn’t explicitly stated until much later, so for first-timers, Bruce Wayne’s just an oddball millionaire who happens to have cameras behind mirrors and has a crush on Vicki.

And then the Batman jumps in on the battle between the police and Jack Napier’s gang, failing to save Jack and dropping him into a vat of acid… and this causes the Joker to be created. That scene in the backdoor alley doctor is perhaps the most chilling part of the movie, with Jack Nicholson delivering a maniacal, insane laugh that’s just glorious to behold. And then the Joker just ramps the madness up not just in Gotham City, but in the movie itself. And yes, while I did complain about the Joker’s motivations being inconsistent, perhaps that’s the whole point of the character here. He’s someone who would go from calmly threatening Grissom before shooting him, and then immediately go on a dancing series of poses as he shoots and shoots. He’s the dude who fries a rival mob boss to a skeleton with a joy buzzer, and then in a couple of scenes he acts in an actual advertisement that he sends in lieu of a terrorist-threat video. He’s the dude that japes around and dances around with a boom-box as he spraypaints a museum, before revealing that he burnt the face of his girlfriend with acid. This is always what the Joker really should be – modern interpretations try to lean too much into the ‘insane, depraved anarchist’ side of the Joker too far, but I’d argue that what makes Joker interesting is that he manages to balance both funny and depravity in the same breath – take the funny away, and the Joker’s just a generic serial killer dressed like a clown.

Hell, even the parallel between Batman and Joker, with each of them being responsible for the genesis of the other now that Jack Napier’s been turned into the killer of the Waynes in this continuity, works pretty well to frame their final confrontation. I just really wish there was some actual buildup to the whole “danced with the devil in the moonlight” bit before it was dropped on Bruce Wayne (and the audience) pretty much out of nowhere.

Batman himself is decent, even if he doesn’t actually really do much. As Batman he’s just a serious crime-fighter, and as Bruce Wayne he’s just socially awkward and completely married to the job. Michael Keaton does a pretty great job at making Batman and Bruce feel like two different people, and while it’s nowhere as fun and flamboyant as Nicholson’s Joker, and the character arc of coming to terms with his past, or coming to terms with finding love, really doesn’t get a satisfying conclusion at the end of the movie, Keaton’s performance really works well. Even the bit in Vicki’s apartment where he goes “let’s get nuts!” and tries to challenge the Joker’s insanity with his own… something that would be reflected later on in the battle on the clocktower. It’s a shame that this Batman really doesn’t feel like the unstoppable perfect-human-specimen-vigilante as most portrayals portray Batman to be, actually knocking himself out during a pretty bad landing around the middle part of the movie… but eh.

Of course, the third lead in this movie is Vicki Vale… and her story’s just a mess. On one hand, the movie tries its best to try to portray her as independent. She ditches her strong man partner Knox to go investigate the Batman and the enigmatic Bruce Wayne on her own. She helps out to distract a bunch of thugs from unmasking Batman, and it’s implied that she figures out Bruce Wayne is Batman on her own. But she is also the prize that Batman and Joker fights over, she does the old-school damsel in distress trope of fainting when surprised, she spends half the movie as a hostage, and while she’s not quite as bad as some other love interests… she’s pretty bland. One of the worst edited parts of the movie is probably Vicki suddenly walking into the Batcave with Alfred, having figured out Batman’s real identity without any fuss, seemingly off-screen. (With the other interpretation of the scene seemingly being Alfred showing Vicki the Batcave because he wants Bruce and Vicki to make him some adopted grandkids).

As a Batman adaptation, there are some parts of this movie that just plain doesn’t work for me. Batman being taken out like a chump in the alleyway fight, Batman blowing up Axis Chemicals with full intent to killing the mooks (and he straight up drops a bunch of Joker’s goons to their presumed deaths in the climax), the handling of Vicki Vale… it’s still a movie that, while clearly a product of its time, is also pretty damn instrumental in shaping the Batman mythos. If nothing else, it’s worth watching just to see Jack Nicholson’s Joker be super-crazy.

(Also, happy 29th birthday, movie!)