Let us land a man on the moon,
Only not in June,
That were too soon.
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)
Superman’s on the can contemplatin’ synergy.
— The Fugs
TV shows which I grew up watching include The Flying Nun, Mr Ed, McHale’s Navy, Gilligan’s Island, Bewitched, The Honeymooners, I Love Lucy, The Prisoner, The Avengers, The Dick Van Dyke Show, I Dream of Jeannie, The Flintstones, Lost in Space, Hogan’s Heroes, and Batman. (Shows of which I was aware but either seldom watched or never had occasion to watch—large family, one principal TV set—include Dark Shadows, The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone and Star Trek.)
As an adult (or, even, as a borderline antique) I have enjoyed returning to a number of the shows which had occupied my youthful eyes and mind. A number of the shows (if ever I thought of them when I was of college age) would not have inspired more than a mild sentimental mental glint.
It therefore was a mild surprise to myself when I found myself fetching in the blu-ray edition of the Batman of my youth. I suppose I enjoyed it more, and thought better of it, than my conscious mind might have made room for, say, in 1989 when Michael Keaton recreated the role. In the commentary upon his movie Tim Burton very early confesses an affection for the old TV series, notwithstanding that the film displays a very different tone (to say the least.)
Burton’s Batman was an enormous cultural success. I recently learnt that all the Joker-related merchandising sold out completely even before the film opened, and that the trailer itself was such a hit that people were calling theatres to find out when they were playing the trailer. For me the summer of ’89 was a time of uncertain transition, in that I had completed my Master’s at UVa, but as yet had no idea where I might land for doctoral work. Arguably, would not have been a bad time for escapism, but as it happened, I missed the theatrical release, and saw what may have been the television network broadcast premiere. I admit unqualifiedly that I bought right into the dark edgy interpretation. Did I implicitly endorse the Oh, gawd the series from the 60’s was an embarrassment to be memory-holed subtext? I do not recall. Subconsciously, there may have been a degree of when I was a child, I thought like a child, and now I’ve put away childish things floating around.
Of the serious Batman movies (for my purposes here: this one and Christopher Nolan’s trilogy) this must be my favorite. In watching the accompanying featurettes (interesting and informative) I found unintended amusement in all the talk of how everyone wanted an “authentic” dark and serious Batman. More than that, how supposedly essential that “back to the roots” mission was to the “legacy” of the comic books. And I’ll stipulate that the 1989 movie realizes this vision highly successfully, and full marks to Tim Burton therefor.
And yet, what happens with the following two movies?—a rapid descent into the ridiculous, but with none of the charm of the Bill Dozier series.
Batman Returns is, to put it diplomatically, not nearly as good as the first. No need to ask Keaton why he would not return. Not quite so utterly bad as I’d made it out earlier, but the cruncher is that I just find what Burton made of The Penguin an unnecessary hot mess. I find myself thinking less uncharitably of Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman, but she had big paws to fill. Burton made The Penguin too creepy, on the one hand, for a movie ostensibly for children. Yet they christen him Oswald Cobblepot (nothing cartoonish about that.) Supposedly his henchmen gain access to the Batmobile to tamper with it. And why? So Danny de Vito can play it like an arcade game. The Penguin's remark that he's cold-blooded, one hopes, is metaphoric, since obviously that is untrue of the birds.
I actually rather enjoyed Batman Forever, a title mildly ironic in that we have a new actor in the rôle. I had to do Val Kilmer the courtesy of not disliking him for not being Keaton. Kilmer is a bit more laconic, which works. I like Chris O’Donnell as Robin. I suppose there was a sort of inevitability resulting in Jim Carrey playing The Riddler. I kind of feel that Tommy Lee Jones is wasted, here. He had fun, though.
So, is Batman and Robin worse than Batman Forever? I’d rule that the team of Arnold Schwartzenegger’s Mr Freeze and Uma Thurman’s Poison Ivy (there’s Bane, too, but he’s basically just a dull-witted henchman) is overall arguably less persistently annoying than Riddler and Two-Face. And the reconciliation of Freeze and Batman struck me as a unique moment in the franchise. There’s ongoing tension in the Dynamic Duo which a fan of Adam West/Burt Ward finds fundamentally wrong, but as far as I know, maybe that’s another instance of being true to the source. It seems to resolve at the end, together with acceptance of Batgirl.
Bottom line: call it a draw. I didn’t notice bat nipples. Was I doing it wrong?
There is admittedly an ample dose of toleration baked in when I write of enjoying Batman Returns and Batman Forever. The best to be said of them, really, is that they fail to fulfill the promise of the first movie, which has elegance and directness of purpose. Once he entered Sequelville, Burton treated it almost uninhibitedly as a personal playground. If I had paid money to see either sequel in the movie house, my disappointment would have been palpable. And in hindsight, the Nolan trilogy (my quarrel here or there notwithstanding) has outclassed Batman Returns and Batman Forever to such a degree, it's like comparing The Da Vinci Code to Moby-Dick.
We’re talking, ultimately, about comic books, so of course there is a fan base whose population ranges between (or actively blends) passionate opinion and puritanism. So to a happy outsider such as yours truly, it is genuinely amusing to hear Sam Hamm, original author of the script, exculpate himself from A. having Bruce’s parents gunned down by Jack Napier/Joker and B. Alfred just bringing Vicki Vale into the Batcave. One documentary about the movie is titled The Legend Reborn. I mean, nothing pretentious about that, right?
At bottom, my core thesis is that, while Burton’s Batman is greatly enjoyable and almost thoroughly impressive, for an endeavor whose rallying cry was “the William Dozier series in the 60’s was inauthentic, and the solemn grandeur of the Batman mythos must be restored,” practically immediately in the sequels the franchise became a parody of itself and devolved into ridiculousness without the style and insouciant charm of the Adam West/Burt Ward days. Hey, it’s just one man’s opinion. Your Bat Mileage May Vary.
