ENTERTAINMENT ESSENTIALS: Batman

For this week’s Entertainment Essentials, we’re taking you back to the summer of 1989. Jive Bunny's at number one, Seinfeld has made its debut on US TV and one word dominates the minds of filmgoers: Batman. One of the most successful films of the 1980s, Tim Burton’s delve into the world of the caped crusader brought the blockbuster bang up to date and remains hugely popular among twenty-somethings keen for a blast of sweet nostalgia. However, the rose-tinted glasses can be funny old things, and just as they’ve opened the door for Take That to make their horrifying return, so to have they worked their curious magic on Batman.

In the works for well over a decade, the film was originally scheduled for release in the late 70s/early 80s when it could take advantage of the overwhelming success of the first Superman flick. However, production problems kept the movie on hold and by the time it finally emerged in 1989, the fairy tale innocence of post-Vietnam blockbuster cinema (Superman, Star Wars et al), had hardened into the violent cynicism of Rambo and Die Hard.

Thankfully for producers, the comic book industry had kept up with the times. Titles such as The Dark Knight Returns (Frank Miller) and The Killing Joke (Alan Moore) had turned Batman from a campy caped crusader into a brooding detective looking for justice on the rain-drenched streets of Gotham. Mixing realism, emotion and sometimes horror, these books were wildly popular and their success inspired studio bosses to turn earlier scripts that had included Robin, The Penguin and Batgirl into something altogether more dark and adult.

Though bold and daring at the time, this decision can now be seen as the film's biggest problem. In trying to make a movie that had both darkness and mass-appeal, the filmmakers turned Batman 1989 into a mess of competing styles. Is it a gritty comic ripped straight from the work of Moore and Miller? Is it a dark, gothic fantasy with a brooding hero and deranged villain? Or is it a straight-up summer blockbuster with celebrity cameos and Prince soundtrack?

In truth, it’s all of the above, but what it most certainly is not is a Tim Burton film. Though the odd shot (the Batwing hauling away the Joker's ghastly parade balloons), idea (the Joker's teeth giggling post-death) or scene (The Joker's much parodied creation), are distinctly Burton-esque, the script, characters and themes are imported straight from Blockbuster 101 and you can almost see the maverick director wince as he limply shoots his way through Vikki Vale‘s love scenes with Bruce Wayne.

The one aspect of the film that does seem true to his style is Gotham itself. However, even this is misleading as the city was designed not by the director, but the late Anton Furst. One of the greatest production designers cinema has ever been blessed with, his career was short (he committed suicide in 1991) but brilliant, having also turned a disused British gasworks into Vietnam for Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. Batman’s Gotham is his Gotham, not Burton’s, a fact that further adds to the film’s confused sense of authorship and is especially underlined when you compare it to superior sequel Batman Returns.

With Furst no longer around, Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands designer Bo Welsh was enlisted to build the Dark Knight’s dark city and the differences are clear to see. Whereas Furst’s Gotham is one of menace and darkness, ripped from the pages of Miller and Moore; Welsh’s is one of whimsy and colour, ripped from his director‘s imagination. It’s Vincent. It’s Edward Scissorhands. It’s The Corpse Bride. It’s totally in tune with Burton who, for all his quirks and twists, is simply not dark enough to accommodate Furst’s masterfully macabre Gotham.

Indeed, looking back now, the city also seems too dark for producers, because rather than complimenting Furst’s murky aesthetics with an equally grim script, they keep the rest of the film light and almost fluffy. The love story between Wayne and Vale feels tokenistic; we never get any real sense of our hero’s pain over his parents’ death (a flaw only exacerbated by the brilliant Batman Begins) and Jack Nicholson’s Joker is so over-the-top he makes Cesar Romero look like Marlon Brando.

Batman 1989 will forever have its place in history for not only that ridiculous performance, but also its groundbreaking marketing campaign and sensational design. But it’s a film lacking cohesion, substance and a clear sense of authorship and, with The Joker set to return to our screens in next year’s The Dark Knight, perhaps it’s time to let Burton’s film sail off into the past where it belongs.