Re: What was the last movie you watched?
Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992)
Revisited the Burton Batman films for the first time in years and I think it's interesting the different things you notice when you watch something at different ages. It's been 5-6 years since I screen Batman '89 and much longer for BR.
I'll continue to regard Batman '89 as one of the best big-screen offerings in the franchise. It was one of the those films I watched over and over as a kid, so I thought I knew it well, but with age and maturity, I made connections I never have before. It's story is clear and the characters motivations are understandable. I like that it basically posits The Joker and Batman as two people shaped by the same moment and that you're seeing sort of the climax of them being on a collision course over the course of their lives. We're steeped in the mythology of the Wayne parental murder as the jumping off point for Bruce now, but discovering it the way Vicki does in the film is a good choice. It's almost an origin story.
The age and maturity gave me a little different perspective on BR, which I'd remembered as being on par with the first one. I think there's a lot of things it does well, but I'm unclear what Bruce/Batman's story is in the film. With the Joker dead, he's on call to help Gotham, so I guess that's his motivation, but the film doesn't really address that. (The best theme I've got is that he doesn't have to be someone else to find love.) His motivations are much less clear than Batman '89, when it was resolution with The Joker. Here, he's the fourth-most interesting character after Catwoman, Penguin and Max Schreck. He's decided to keep being the Bat, but that's taken as read and makes this feel like it's The Penguin's show. Much more time feels like it's spent on DeVito's character and his development/deviousness than whatever Wayne is thinking/feeling in this film other than "Durr I'm Batman! Gots ta catch the bad guise!" Ultimately, I think that hurts the story because while a good villain makes a lot of difference, it is ultimately Wayne/Batman's story, not the villains.
Also, I never noticed it before, but Penguin's one liners approach Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze territory in terms of how unrelenting they are. Lastly, I feel like the film became the template for the big screen tendency of having multiple villains in a single superhero film.
Last edited by coldengrey12; 10-22-2014 at 05:04 PM.
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