Stubs - Batman (1989)

Batman (1989) Starring: Jack Nicholson, Michael Keaton, Kim Basinger, Robert Wuhl, Pat Hingle, Billy Dee Williams, Michael Gough, Jack Palance. Director: Tim Burton. Screenplay by Sam Hamm. Warren Skaaren. Characters appearing in magazines published by DC Comics, Batman characters by Bob Kane. Produced by Jon Peters, Peter Guber. Runtime: 124 minutes. USA Color. Superhero

By now superhero films seem to be everywhere, at least on the list of top grossing films. But back in 1989, when Warner Bros. released Batman, they were not. In fact, even an intellectual property like Batman was considered a risk. By the end of the 1970s, Batman’s popularity was waning. The last major adaptation of the comic book had been the 1960s campy Batman TV series, starring Adam West.

Wanting to take Batman back to its dark roots, producers Benjamin Melniker and Michael E. Uslan purchased the film rights of Batman from DC Comics on October 3, 1979. Uslan supposedly wanted to make a dark version of Bob Kane’s character, but could not find a studio interested in going in that direction. They wanted, instead, something more akin to the TV series.

When producers Jon Peters and Peter Guber joined the project, it was decided to develop a film similar to Superman (1978). Warner Bros., the studio behind Superman, decided to take a chance and produce Batman. Following the financial success of Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985), Warner Bros. hired Tim Burton to direct.

Casting the right actor to play Batman was seen as important to the film’s success. Mel Gibson, Kevin Costner, Charlie Sheen, Tom Selleck, Bill Murray, Harrison Ford, and Dennis Quaid were all considered for the role. Ray Liotta was even offered a chance to audition for the role, but turned it down. It was Peters who suggested Michael Keaton. Though he was best known as a comedic actor, Peters liked his dramatic turn in Clean and Sober (1986). Tim Burton, who had directed Keaton in Beetlejuice (1988), agreed with the choice.

While Jack Nicholson was the producers’ choice for The Joker, going back to 1980, it was until after they had looked at several others, including Brad Dourif, Tim Curry, David Bowie, John Lithgow, James Woods, and even Robin Williams before Nicholson was approached about the role. He agreed as long as his contract specified how long he would have off the clock as well as time off for Los Angeles Lakers home games. His contract called for only $6 million in salary, but his percent of the film’s gross made it worth between $60 and $80 million.

The film was shot in England, at Pinewood Studios, due in part to the media interest. Filming took place under highly secretive conditions and lasted about 106 days from October 1988 to January 1989. The budget was $35 million. Released on June 23, 1989, the film would make about $411 million worldwide, landing it in the 5^th spot for box-office up until that time.

Mayor Borg (Lee Wallace) flanked by Commissioner Gordon (Pat
Hingle) and D.A. Harvey Dent (Billy Dee Williams).

When Batman opens, Gotham City, a veiled New York City, is about to celebrate its 200^th anniversary. The city’s Mayor Borg (Lee Wallace) and the new District Attorney Harvey Dent (Billy Dee Williams) vow to make the city safer.

Meanwhile, newspaper reporter Alexander Knox (Robert Wuhl) and free-lance photojournalist Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger) begin to investigate the rumors of a caped vigilante called Batman, who is fighting back against the city’s criminals.

Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger) attends the fundraiser at Wayne Manor.

At a fundraiser for the bicentennial in Wayne Manor, Batman's alter-ego Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton) meets and falls for Vale, and the two begin a romantic relationship. However, the evening is cut short as Bruce is alerted by his manservant Alfred Pennyworth (Michael Gough) that Commissioner Gordon (Pat Hingle) has made a sudden departure due to police business. Bruce leaves to investigate as Batman.

Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton) watches a video to see and hear what caused
Commissioner Gordon to leave his fundraiser in such a hurry.

Mob boss Carl Grissom (Jack Palance), who has already been targeted by Dent and Gordon, discovers his mistress Alicia Hunt (Jerry Hall) is involved with his second-in-command, Jack Napier (Jack Nicholson). With the help of corrupt police lieutenant Max Eckhardt (William Hootkins), Grissom engineers Napier's death in a raid at Axis Chemicals.

Mob Boss Carl Grissom (Jack Palance) sets up Jack Napier (Jack Nicholson).

Grissom's plan is foiled with the arrival of Commissioner Gordon and other policemen. Gordon makes it clear that he wants Napier captured alive, not dead as Eckhardt has instructed his men.

Batman lets Napier fall into an open vat of chemicals.

Napier realizes he has been set up and kills Eckhardt for disloyalty. Soon after, Batman arrives and, in a struggle, Napier is wounded before Batman lets him fall into a vat of chemicals. Gordon wants to arrest Batman, but he manages to escape. Napier is presumed dead, but the vat empties out into the river and he survives.

When Napier emerges, he is left disfigured with chalk-white skin, emerald green hair, and a permanent grin. The sociopathic Napier is driven insane by the incident and begins calling himself the Joker.

Napier becomes the Joker and Nicholson starts to chew scenery.

Grissom, who is unaware that Napier has survived, is surprised when the Joker visits in the middle of the night and kills him. The Joker, wearing heavy make-up to disguise his deformed face, takes over Grissom’s criminal empire. The other crime bosses knuckle under when the Joker burns a dissenter amongst them alive.

The Joker lights on fire a crime boss who doesn't want to cooperate.

More anarchist than criminal, The Joker starts out on a sort of revenge agenda. He terrorizes the City by lacing hygiene products with "Smylex", a deadly chemical which causes victims to not only literally die laughing, but to end up with the same permanent maniacal grin on their face as the Joker.

A news anchor (Kate Harper) dies after exposure to Smylex.

As the Joker searches for clues into the true identity of Batman, whom he rightfully blames for his disfigurement, he becomes obsessed with the beautiful Vale. He even lures her to the Gotham Museum of Art for dinner at the restaurant there. However, the Joker gases the joint, knocking everyone, except Vale, unconscious. Along with his henchmen, the Joker destroys many of the great works of art at the museum before Batman arrives to rescue her.

The Batmobile Batman and Vicky use to escape the Joker.

They manage to escape in the Batmobile, but are pursued by the Joker as well as the police. With no other place to go, he takes her to the Batcave. There he gives her information from his research on Smylex that will allow the residents of Gotham City to avoid exposure to the toxin and to the combination of products that causes death.

Bruce Wayne confronts the Joker at Vicki's apartment.

Determined to tell her his alter-ego, Bruce visits Vicki at her apartment, however, the Joker interrupts. Bruce tries to hide before he confronts the Joker, who asks him "You ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?" before shooting him. Bruce, who has used a serving tray as body armor, plays dead and sneaks out before Vicki can tend to him.

A young Jack Napier (Hugo E. Black) killed Bruce Wayne's parents.

The confrontation reminds him of the mugger (Hugo E. Blick ) who killed his parents. That gunman had asked them the same question, and Bruce realizes that Napier was his parents' killer.

Vicki in the Batcave learns the truth about Bruce Wayne and Batman.

Alfred brings Vicki to the Batcave, where Bruce reveals that he is also Batman to her. But he tells her that he cannot focus on their relationship with the Joker terrorizing Gotham. Bruce, as Batman, then departs to destroy the Axis plant, which has become the Joker’s not-so-secret lair.

Joker's lair is the Axis chemical plant.

While the city announces they are going to put off the festival to celebrate Gotham City’s founding, the Joker interrupts the broadcast with a counter-offer. He promises the citizens of Gotham that at the parade he will distribute $20 million to those in attendance.

The Joker uses the guise of a celebratory parade to unleash more Smylex gas.

Even though he has previously terrorized the citizenry, they show up for the free money. While he and his henchman are throwing cash at the crowd, he also attacks them with Smylex gas released from giant parade balloons, think Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade but on a much smaller scale.

Batman flies in and tows the balloons away using his plane, the Batwing. He takes aim at the Joker, who stands defiantly in the street, but doesn’t hit him with bullets or missiles. The Joker instead shoots the Batwing out of the sky using a long-barreled gag handgun. The Batwing crashes at the base of the Gotham City cathedral.

The Joker plans his escape from the top of the cathedral and kidnaps Vale, who had been in attendance at the parade and had come to the crash site to check on Batman.

Batman, who survived the crash, chases after them. Despite his injuries, Batman manages to fight the Joker’s henchmen, who are also in the cathedral. After dismissing with them, he confronts the Joker.

Batman and the Joker have a final confrontation in the cathedral's bell tower. 

The two fight, with Joker eventually gaining the upper hand, leaving Batman and Vicki clinging onto an outcropping on the cathedral. The Joker tries to make his escape by helicopter, but Batman attaches a heavy granite gargoyle to Joker's leg with his grappling hook, causing him to lose his grip and fall to his death.

The Joker after the fall to his death from the top of the Cathedral.

At a press conference, Commissioner Gordon announces that the police have arrested the Joker's men and unveils the Bat-Signal that they can use to summon Batman when they need him. Harvey Dent reads a note from Batman, promising that he will defend Gotham whenever crime strikes again.

Batman at the end of the film looking at the Bat-Signal.

Meanwhile, Alfred takes Vicki to Wayne Manor to see Bruce, but tells her that Bruce will be a little late. She responds that she is not surprised.

The film ends with a shot of Batman, who is standing on a rooftop looking at the signal's projection against clouds in the night sky.

Batman falls somewhere between the campiness of the Adam West series and the darker Batman Begins (2005) directed by Christopher Nolan, but is definitely more campy than dramatic, though not same extent as later films in the tetralogy that the 1989 film’s box-office success would lead to. Much of the success of this film would depend on Michael Keaton’s performance.

Keaton brings an edgy comedic performance to the role. Of the three actors who would portray Batman in this first go-round of the franchise, he is definitely the best. He gives a somewhat understated performance. Not only does he do the best job of acting, but he also has the right jawline for the role. Since that is all you see of his face, the jawline is very important to being a believable Caped Crusader.

Michael Keaton's performance is one of the highlights of Batman.

It is interesting that Batman seems to be a role that Keaton never seems to get over. He’s gone on to have a distinguished career, but Batman is always hovering over him. In Birdman, he plays an actor who had previously played a winged hero that sounds very Batman-like. Keaton would make a return to superhero films in Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), playing this time a villain, Vulture, who, like the name suggests, flies with wings, sort of a bizarre Batman in that way.

Nicholson, on the other hand, chews the scenery in just about every scene while he is the Joker. His transition from a sociopath into a diabolical crazy man seems a little forced, but that doesn’t stop Nicholson from giving more than his all to the role. Arguably one of the greatest actors of his generation, Nicholson shows that he has no shame when it comes to money, perhaps thinking the more outlandish the performance the more his share of the profits would be. In an odd twist, Nicholson has too much gravitas for such an over-the-top performance.

While the Joker is Batman’s main archrival and they have been battling for most of the comic book’s 80-year run, the film kills him off at the end, perhaps saving Nicholson, and the audience, from a repeat performance. However, this ending robs the following films from going back to this dynamic again. While the actors playing Batman change over the run of the four films, it would be possible to have someone else play the Joker in subsequent films. Besides, most of the villains in the subsequent films follow in Nicholson’s footsteps and give exaggerated performances culminating in the downright awful Batman and Robin (1997). Batman’s villains can be cartoonish, but they become laughable, and not in a good way, before the tetralogy runs its course.

There are actors who are underused in this film and Billy Dee Williams comes to mind. For his billing, Williams barely has a handful of lines of dialogue. I don’t fault the film for changing the role of Harvey Dent around, but I do for making it seem superfluous to the plot. [Williams did get to reprise the role, after a fashion,  when he voiced Two-Face in The Lego Batman Movie (2017)]

The look of Gotham City seems reminiscent of Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

In this film, you can see some of the elements that the other films use to lesser success. In this film, the look of Gotham City owes a lot to the Metropolis in Fritz Lang’s German Expressionist Science Fiction classic. The buildings look old and are overly tall and the city has a claustrophobic feel. By the time we get to the final film in this franchise, the architecture has become almost laughable, the pinnacle of this being the city observatory is literally being held by a pair of hands.

There is the oft-mentioned campiness which only gets worse in future films. Here, aside from Nicholson’s Joker, the campy is somewhat kept in check, but only gets worse, culminating in the embarrassing Batman and Robin with their costumes with nipples.

Like most big-budget films, there are holes in the plot. As an example, why would anyone trust a man who had tried to indiscriminately kill the citizens of Gotham City by applying deadly chemicals to their personal hygiene products? For that matter, why would one city get all of these products from one source as seems to be the case in this movie? The film also ends with Bruce Wayne and Vicki Vale on the verge of a relationship, but she is absent from the direct sequel and dismissed with a line of dialogue.

Batman may have been a big hit when it was released, but it has not aged well. It seems to be a relic of the 1980s. Even Prince’s songs in the film seem to be best kept in a time capsule. In the intervening years, the bloom has come off the rose when it comes to this Batman. Aside from Michael Keaton’s performance, I would say this is a pass.