Batman (1989)

I reviewed Batman Returns a few months back, so I figured I should go ahead and watch the first Tim Burton Batman flick.

First things first: Having Jack Napier be the one who killed the Waynes is still stupid. "Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?" is also pretty dumb. I can almost excuse that with the argument it shows Jack was already kind of messed up long before he became the Joker, or even long before he became a major hitter for Carl Grissom. That's the best I can do, that it establishes that the chemicals may have loosened what few inhibitions he had left, but he was a dangerous fellow already.

Incidentally, I like that Jack Palance is in this, if only for a couple of scenes. I remembered that, unlike somehow forgetting Christopher Walken was a major part of Batman Returns.

Beyond that, I like Nicholson's Joker. He laughs like he thinks things are actually funny, for one. Cesar Romero had that, Mark Hamill's got that, Heath Ledger didn't (presumably because Christopher Nolan didn't want that), I honestly can't remember if Jared Leto laughed. He was too busy laying on the floor of a hotel room surrounded by knives.

Beyond that, the Joker has charisma, somehow, and Napier has that even before the chemicals. Bob is loyal to him, not Grissom, and is immediately there to pull a gun on the bent cop or Commissioner Gordon. Burton doesn't run away from giving the Joker killer joy buzzers or acid squirting flowers. It seems silly, but it's still deadly. That's the point. The Joker deciding to go on his Smylex killing spree - complete with ludicrous commercial/threat - in part because he killed all the other mob bosses in broad daylight, including killing one with a quill pen, and still the news will only talk about Batman, felt perfect. He's indignant about it.

This Joker is dangerous, but he isn't some clown that read about nihilism in his first semester philosophy class and thought he was the first one to ever have the notion that life is meaningless. Nicholson's Joker has the showmanship and the willingness to run up a body count, but it's in service of his ego. His obsession with Vicki Vale, the whole spiel in the museum about how he's going to be the world's first homicidal artist, the huge parade where he throws out 20 million dollars just to try and gas a bunch of people to death. The one part that doesn't fit is the Joker wearing makeup to mask his chalk-white skin, but I assume that was a concession to Nicholson not wanting to have to go through that all the time.

OK, so that's five paragraphs about the villain. Michael Keaton's playing Wayne as this endearingly awkward sort of guy. Not the smooth playboy, but someone that has been mostly alone, save his butler/surrogate father, and it shows in his interactions with other people. He's not cruel, but he doesn't always know what to say. Such as the scene where he tries to tell Vicki he's Batman, before Joker comes barging into her apartment. (Also love Joker has a henchman specifically to carry a large boombox around and play whatever music the scene requires.)

Keaton's Batman is very efficient in his actions. He doesn't dart around through shadows or do a bunch of martial arts. No dramatic postures when he throws down a smoke bomb. Just throws it at the ground, waits for it to swallow him up. The "wonderful toys" do a lot of the work. He fights the guy with the two swords and doesn't move his arms or legs much to block the attacks, and the two attacks he lands are a simple jab and one good kick. (I remembered the fight shorter than it was, closer to Indy versus the guy with the sword in Raiders of the Lost Ark.)

Obviously that's because Keaton didn't go study Krav Maga or whatever to get in ripped shape for this role, but it suggests a Batman perhaps aware of his limitations, aware of the odds against him. There's lots of criminals and just one of him (although he designed his Batmobile with a passenger seat), so he tries to save energy. I feel like Burton tries to let the cape do a lot of the work in making Keaton looking imposing. A lot of swooping in from above with the cape billowing out around him.

Of course, Batman again kills some dudes. A lot of dudes, if you figure most of Joker's henchmen didn't have time to get out of the Axis Chemicals factory before he blew it up. But definitely the henchman that was kicking his butt in the bell tower. I'm not counting the one who tried to jump him from behind and just fell through the floor. That was that guy's own doing. And it sounds like he threw at least one guy off a roof, based on the conversation the two muggers had at the beginning. Or maybe the guy fell off the roof while trying to flee? Then there's the whole bit with the Batplane having missiles and gatling guns. Which he fires at the Joker, when the targeting computer has him on a big bullseye, but he somehow misses? Guess Bats needed to trust his instincts, but what the hell are we doing, Batman's trying to machine gun people? I know, I know, that cart's been pulled far away from the barn by the horse.

Kim Basinger is, part of me feels like she should handle this madness more calmly than she does? She was in "Corto Maltese" right before this, which was going through a war/revolution/ethnic cleansing/something horrific. Some guys in matching jackets with handguns shouldn't be that frightening. Maybe she was always on the scene after the dying was over, I don't know. Or maybe it's Joker is a different kind of killer from what she's seen before. Not killing for religion or power or control, but because he thinks he can make art of it. That makes him unpredictable. With the Smylex thing, even Joker doesn't know precisely who is going to die, because it all depends on who mixes the wrong products together. 

Vicki does see through Wayne's facade almost immediately. Before the apartment scene, before she sees him at the street corner where his parents died, she knows there's something going on there. (I didn't remember how quickly those two were having dinner together.) Of course, seeing him hanging upside-down working out in the middle of the night was probably a bit of a clue. Still, she's observant in a way that Knox (Robert Wuhl) isn't. He sees exactly what Wayne intends for him to see, and even when he realizes Vicki is intrigued by Wayne, can't perceive why. He's open-minded enough not to dismiss the rumors on the street of a "bat-man", but can't make that critical leap. He does try to attack the Joker's guys with a bat during the parade to make them let go of one of the balloons, which shows he's not just someone asking annoying questions and making smart-ass remarks.

When I was younger, I absolutely loved this movie more than Batman Returns. Not even close. And this one doesn't have the villain bloat, where Catwoman can barely find any space to have her own arc between everything going on between Batman and Penguin, to say nothing of Christopher Walken. But that warped reflection aspect of Wayne and Cobblepot is something this movie kind of lacks. I think because Burton bets too much on, again, having Jack Napier be the one who killed the Waynes. the whole, "you created me, I created you," thing.

(For the record, I'm not any more fond of Nolan's movies having the Waynes' deaths be part of some chess move by Liam Neeson. At least in this one, Napier attacked them for their money and killed them because he's a sick puppy. It's still ultimately a random crime, it just ends up being part of a weird twist of fate down the line.)