Too bad we don’t follow that lesson anymore, but that’s a whole other topic.
Full disclosure: I am not a Tim Burton fan. I have nothing against his work…in general, anyway. It’s just the types of stories he tells tend to not interest me or follow my tastes. There are three exceptions I can think of off-hand. Beetlejuice and Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure are both fun rides and I can’t help but get into them. Beetlejuice later got an animated spin-off while Big Adventure had a few influences on Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, despite most of it being based on his stage show that became famous after airing on HBO. Oddly neither of these started out as kids properties per say. Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and the stage show were mostly family friendly with a few…interesting bits the parents had to explain later. (The stage show has Pee-Wee using hypnosis to get a girl to take her dress off, and the closing credits show her walking out of the theater in nothing but her slip.) As for Beetlejuice…
You kind of see why there were concerns when Burton used him as Batman. Surprising every detractor, the first Batman movie was quite good and Keaton was good as Bruce and Batman, even with a suit that didn’t allow the head to turn because padded leather was not a good replacement for spandex in the long run. It’s the third movie I mentioned liking, though I do have my nitpicks. One of them is the idea that it was Burton who undid the 60s show’s view of Batman. First off…no he didn’t. I still hear reporters and anchors break out the BIFF! POW! BLAM! stuff when discussing superhero stories. Also, it was the Bronze Age of comics and the writers and editor Dennis O’Neil that brought Batman back to his roots and took on a darker tone, even when Batman fought a guy who could teach a normal ape to be a surgeon and flew on a charter flight in full Batgear. That’s why I love the Bronze Age or whatever this new Copper Age division is: knowing not to take itself too seriously without the goofier nature of the Silver Age. Must as the 60s Batman was a product of its time (while also acting as a parody), the 80s Batman movie and the Animated Series that came out shortly after Batman Returns were products of their time and reflected the comics they were based on…for the most part.
Sorry, but Batman Returns is not on that list. I really don’t like that movie and despite what Joel Schumacher did to Batman and Robin I’m actually happy Burton’s third movie didn’t happen, even if it cost us Michael Keaton. Personally, I think Val Kilmer is underrated and George Clooney was a terrible replacement, but there are reasons Burton didn’t return. Burton, however, doesn’t seem to believe that’s a good thing. I have two interviews, one a preview to a full interview from 2022 and the other a full review from September of this year and while my title for this commentary may be viewed as a bit harsh, it does make me think that Burton believes only his take on Batman was good. I disagree, and I’ll tell you why. Because that’s what a commentary is.
The first interview is actually a preview on Empire‘s website, the full version available in the magazine.
In a major new Empire interview, Tim Burton revisited the film for its 30th anniversary, looking back on a movie that – at the time – was deemed as dark as Batman could get. This year, Matt Reeves’ hard-boiled noir The Batman proved there were darker depths to explore. “It is funny to see this now, because all these memories come back of, ‘It’s too dark’,” he says. “So, it makes me laugh a little bit.” While Returns has a skewed, playfully gothic, and often kinky sensibility, it’s far from the grounded grit of The Dark Knight movies or Reeves’ film, the latter of which Burton is yet to watch (“I’d like to see it,” he says).
Instead he wanted to make Superman Lives, speaking of movies I’m glad we never got. Of course by now we know why Burton was taken off of the Batman movies…though Burton doesn’t seem to quite understand it.
Given Returns’ reception and controversies over its dark tone at the time, the studio turned to director Joel Schumacher for Batman Forever and Batman & Robin – two films whose dialled-up Day-Glo aesthetic and kids’ cartoon sensibilities felt a million miles away from Burton. One of the more lambasted decisions from Schumacher’s films particularly rankled the Returns director. “[Back then] they went the other way. That’s the funny thing about it. But then I was like, ‘Wait a minute. Okay. Hold on a second here. You complain about me, I’m too weird, I’m too dark, and then you put nipples on the costume? Go @#$%#$ yourself.’ Seriously. So yeah, I think that’s why I didn’t end up [doing a third film]…”
I don’t know about “kids’ cartoons sensibilities”. The movie is still visually dark, the bat nipples, especially in Batman & Robin in which they were quite prominently featured in the suit-up sequence–for the boys as Alicia Silverstone’s Batgirl costume lacked them, and that butt ugly Batmobile (I don’t see chicks digging that car at all) don’t seem like something the kids would prefer. There’s a reason the DCAU Batmobile designers took more cues from Burton than Schumacher. It was less violent but also more immature. For all the issues I have with Burton’s take it took the material seriously even when a gang of killer circus folks went on a rampage.
Mask Of The Phantasm is considered the best Batman movie, and it managed to have a body count and STILL remain kid-friendly. It’s all in HOW you do it.
The problem with Burton’s version is that, much like the current comics and movies, left the kids out completely. I do not believe that superheroes are exclusive for kids, but as I’ve noted recently the kids are being denied superheroes on TV, in movies, and in comics. The exception has been direct-to-video fare like the Batman/Ninja Turtles crossover and Super-Sons despite the Starros now hiding inside their victims and the race-swapped Jimmy (I’m waiting for DC Comics to do what Marvel did with Nick Fury to Jimmy Olsen and ruin the redhead for good), and preschool superhero shows, with Batwheels being the most faithful Batman adaptation currently being released. They even got Ace’s species right when he debuted this season, so take that, League Of Super-Pets.
And yet, Burton’s version has Batman killing like he’s the Zac Snyder “real superheroes would kill and I don’t realize I make fantasy worlds for a living” version. The Penguin is a disgusting mess that doesn’t even look like a penguin unless the penguin somehow ate the leopard seal instead of the other way around. Catwoman now wears latex stitched together by a home ec student, how Penguin got a hold of the Batmobile design plans makes no sense, Max Shrek is…Christopher Walken, and the whole thing was not kid-friendly, something you could barely say for the first movie with that body count. Not a good idea when you want to sell toys to upset the parents to the point where even the Happy Meal isn’t a welcome purchase. At least when Nolan and Reeves came out with their Batman movies there was no doubt that the kids had been shown the door to superheroes long ago and they didn’t care about them. Warner Brothers at the time was trying to give kids superheroes. I was introduced to Batman as a kid but I couldn’t show today’s kids a modern Batman story outside of the ones I mentioned in the previous paragraph.
Now that Batman’s big-screen outings tend to find him battling psychopathic terrorists and serial killers, the days of penguin-warfare seem somewhat quaint. As Burton looks back on Batman Returns now, he sees more than just the darkness it became known for. “I’m not just overly dark. That represents me in the sense that… that’s how I see things. It’s not meant as pure darkness. There’s a mixture,” he says. “I feel really fondly about it because of the weird experiment that it felt like.”
Not being as bad as what they make now doesn’t change the fact that you made the same mistakes. It’s just now Hollywood hates kids and anything parents thought they were getting from your movie.
The more recent interview comes from the British Film Institute, because apparently the current strikes don’t involve directors not being able to talk about past and current works. The main discussion is a sequel to Beetlejuice that we don’t need. Yes, there was a cartoon but they dropped a lot from the first movie. We’ll ignore that and go over his Batman thoughts, since that’s what we’re here for.
One more word about Michael. You obviously made two brilliant Batman films with him. Why did we never get a third from you guys?
Well, the studio, it was like the earlier Disney situation. They had enough of me for that one. I think I upset McDonald’s or something.
He still doesn’t understand what happened. Yes, Tim, you upset McDonald’s…because using toys based on Batman Returns was selling LESS Happy Meals instead of more after THE PARENTS got upset at how not-kid-friendly your movie was at a time people still believed superheroes were for kids, compared to today when kids aren’t allowed to have superheroes anymore. I’m sure that’s another reason they’re turning to manga like My Hero Academia, though I haven’t read it or seen the anime to know if it’s kid safe or not. The parents didn’t want their kids seeing or being otherwise exposed to your movie, Tim. That’s how the cross promotion works. You go to McDonalds, order a Happy Meal and get a toy with your burger and fries, and want to see the thing the toy is based on. Or the reverse is true: you go to a movie, see McDonalds has “free” toys based on it, and beg mom and dad to go to McDonalds even though you’re just going to eat the cookies so you can get the Batman toy. The store toys suffered a similar problem, and all that merchandising parents weren’t comfortable with were now not paying for your movie. It’s a bit more complicated than “Ronald McDonald had a conniption because Penguin bit a guy’s nose off for no reason while Batman tossed a guy down a well with a bomb and somehow thought that was bad for their kids”.
Earlier this year, The Flash contained a sequence within a multiverse, where they briefly show Nicolas Cage as Superman. In 1998 you were three weeks away from shooting Superman Lives with Nicholas as the star when the plug was pulled after two years of pre-production. Do you have any regrets about that?
No, I don’t have regrets. I will say this: when you work that long on a project and it doesn’t happen, it affects you for the rest of your life. Because you get passionate about things, and each thing is an unknown journey, and it wasn’t there yet. But it’s one of those experiences that never leaves you, a little bit.
But also it goes into another AI thing, and this is why I think I’m over it with the studio. They can take what you did, Batman or whatever, and culturally misappropriate it, or whatever you want to call it. Even though you’re a slave of Disney or Warner Brothers, they can do whatever they want. So in my latter years of life, I’m in quiet revolt against all this.
“Culturally misappropriate”?
I don’t know if that extends to the (mis)use of Keaton’s Batman, complete with the suit design (please tell me they fixed the cowl) and the “let’s get nuts” line that fails the context test in favor of “hey, remember this line” bit. I have my own issues with The Flash and how it used the multiverse for “memberberries” nonsense (a term inspired by an episode of South Park where talking berries just went on about random famous scenes that get misused to “get that reference” as if getting them to “say the thing” is a replacement for using the characters and names correctly) instead of actually having a story to tell with those characters.
Batman Returns was kid-unfriendly at the wrong time and the fact that the Nolan and Matt Reeves films as well as the Snyder movies told the kids to get lost is only approved because they did that at a time when nobody cared. Burton’s films were kid unfriendly when superheroes were still allowed to be enjoyed by kids, and his error cost Warner Brothers PR and money (more PR as I think the movie did well enough or there wouldn’t have been a third movie with or without Burton’s involvement). The Schumacher movies weren’t good, which is why it got one more movie than it should have but still had two movies before the whole timeline was completely tossed out. Their mistakes do not make your mistakes better, Timmy. It just means you’re a clueless as they are. They just have enough people as clueless about superheroes and why kids love and need them more than adults.
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