In Context
The year, as you probably gathered, was 1989. THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS had come out, THE KILLING JOKE had come out, and a plucky young director by the name of Tim Burton was ready to make America forget the name Adam West. Funny story: West actually wanted to star in the film and would let his thoughts on not being contacted known very, very publicly. The ‘80s are an interesting decade for film, especially moving into the ‘90s, and at this point “gothic” was very in. We hadn’t gotten The Crow yet, so I don’t mean the more industrial movement that would arise in the 90s, but angular, dark settings were very en-vogue. Burton’s Gotham looks almost like a combination of dark, Victorian architecture with a very modern cloak over it. This was two years before Doug Moench and Kelley Jones would turn Gotham into a Victorian hellscape in their Red Raintrilogy, so seeing this vision was still novel, particularly for non-comic readers, who likely didn’t know the Dark Knight could get this...well dark.
Critics were divided, with the best example being the legendary, late-great Siskel and Ebert, the latter of whom thought the film was too dour and depressing while the former loved how it gave us a mature, grownup look at a pair of comic book characters. The writer’s strike at the time of the film’s inception also dealt some blows to comics fans’ expectations, with Burton himself writing in Joker/Jack Napier as the Wayne parents’ murderer as well as having Alfred, apropos of very little, let Vicki Vale in to the Batcave, so even back then this grim, gritty and altogether serious film was far from universally beloved.
Modern Viewing
I’m not going to lie: I went into this particular movie not expecting much. I’d liked it when I’d first seen it, but I was ready for it to not hold up terribly well, but quite the opposite happened: I’d actually say I enjoyed it more now than when I first saw it. The opening has an incredible sense of visual language, setting up Gotham with just about everything you need to know in the first few minutes. It’s during a mugging that totally-isn’t-the Wayne family that we get our first look at Michael Keaton as the Batman (as he’s frequently referred to as), and ya know what? Here we are almost 30 years later and it still largely works! Yeah, it’s a little corny at this point, but if you let yourself get immersed in the setting, which is not difficult, it’s actually very, very effective. Particularly the voice, which Keaton nails to a tee. Being a “six foot tall bat” however...not so much.
He also plays Bruce Wayne extremely well, both in terms of realistically changing his voice and actually portraying Wayne as visibly unhinged. He’s not ranting and raving to the stars, but he’s got a lot of tics, both subtle and not-so-subtle, that let both viewers and characters know that he’s not a mentally well man. His interactions and introductions to Vicki and her cohort are some of the most interesting of Bruce Wayne that we’ve seen before and some might say since. Keaton uses him as more than a cypher and tool for Batman, but as a wholly separate character.
Now we come to what some would consider the main event: Jack Nicholson (who receives top billing) as the Joker. Looking back it’s an odd choice, but not anywhere NEAR as odd as Keaton. By this time Nicholson had already played a host of mentally unstable, visually arresting characters from his first role in the original Little Shop of Horrors to, of course, The Shining. We actually get a shocking amount of Jack Napier before the chemical bath that would give him his startling transformation. Along with an appearance from B-movie icon Jack Palance as his (former) boss and a girlfriend who becomes a sort of proto-Harley Quinn in retrospect, this is a performance I vastly underestimated. I remember liking it when I saw it, but also thinking it was definitely “Jack Nicholson plays the Joker” like so many of his roles. This time around that is still true, and while he doesn’t disappear into the role, he does play it up and inhabit it. The part echoes a much darker, more malevolent Cesar Romero, complete with an array of deadly pranks and over-the-top ploys. Nicholson is also legitimately hilarious in a few scenes, especially the infomercial-like parody in which he deploys one of his plots.
I’ll be the first person to admit I was wrong, and in this case I was. This movie holds UP! From the minimalist combat (in which Batman does play possum perhaps one too many times) to the presence of surprisingly apt Prince songs alongside the Danny Elfman score, this is a movie that exudes the ‘80s, but isn’t nearly as dated as it could be owing to the dark, timeless sets. Much like the much, and rightly, praised Dark Knight, this is a crime film before it’s a superhero one, though the climax definitely leaps toward the latter. The movie also broke new ground by hiring Keaton to play Wayne, as this was considered extremely unlikely casting at the time, a trend that continues even today. And while I, like so many, am torn on both Joker/Napier being the killer of the Waynes (not EVERYthing needs to be connected) and Alfred letting Vicki into the Batcave, within the world that they’ve established, it makes a certain sense. The movie may ultimately be style over substance, but the style is so striking and the substance still there enough to make it an extremely entertaining revisit.
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