Blu-ray Review: Batman - The Motion Picture Anthology 1989-1997

Back before superheroes were all the rage at the box office, Tim Burton and his creative team brought Batman to the silver screen in 1989. The film was highly anticipated with the logo seeming to appear everywhere that summer. While Jack Nicholson seemed to be the perfect choice for the Joker, some fans were all in a tizzy over Michael Keaton getting cast as Bruce Wayne/Batman, going so far as to send thousands of protest letters to Warner Brothers back in the days before the nerds were online in large numbers. Ultimately when the film was released, they were proven wrong not to trust Burton’s vision.

Rather than offer up a movie version of the campy ‘60s television series (a mistake made by the final film in this collection), Burton’s vision of the caped crusader was dark, similar to his first appearance and the way the character was portrayed in the late ‘80s. Wayne was a brooding figure and Gotham looked like an extension of Blade Runner’s Los Angeles. Similar to the comics, Batman caused a criminal, Jack Napier, to fall into a vat of chemicals, which disfigured his face. The biggest change from the comics is the film shows Napier to be the criminal who gunned downed Wayne’s parents, which was the catalyst to Wayne becoming the Batman, borrowing from Spider-Man’s comic-book origin. The villain creating the hero is an interesting idea, but has since been turned into a cliché by lazy scriptwriters.

Not surprisingly, Nicholson’s Joker stole the show. He gave a great performance and had the best lines of the movie, causing Batman to be a supporting character. The production design was marvelous to look at and Danny Elfman’s score was an integral part of the film’s resonance. The main flaw would be the synergistic inclusion of Prince songs into this world.

After Batman’s great success, Warner Brothers had Burton and his team returned and gave him more creative control as the producer, causing Batman Returns to be a darker film. The villains are Selina Kyle/the Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer), whose dual personality is a mirror of Batman, and Oswald Cobblepot/the Penguin (Danny DeVito), although rather than the familiar figure of a distinguishably dressed gentleman, Burton created a grotesque figure with deformed features who ate raw fish and spewed dark-colored liquids.

Article Author: El Bicho

El Bicho writes for a number of movie web sites, including Cinema Sentries, which he runs for the geniuses of Forwerd Media. He also occasionally cleans up around here. Follow at twitter.com/ElBicho_CS

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