The Nightmare Before Batman
Nolan gets it right
I actually saw it at a 10:00 pm showing on the Monday night after it opened, and the theater was not only sold out, but people were buying tickets to other movies and trying to sneak in. Seemed my hunch had been correct. After Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade had just set the box office record for fastest film to reach $100 million (19 days), Tim Burton’s Batman (1989) obliterated it by reaching the same figure in only 10 days. Conventional wisdom at the time was that the box office champ that summer would be Indy or possibly even Ghostbusters II . But I was convinced that Batman was going to be absolutely huge.
The thing the industry folks seemed oblivious to was the grass roots nature of the buzz (incredible by pre-internet standards) that existed for Batman . Sure, the Studio’s marketing blitz had done much to kick-start things, but much of what I was beginning to see seemed to be bubbling up from the people. The Batman logo was everywhere (and not just in store windows) for well over a year before the movie was released. The Trailer released around Christmas of 1988 had apparently heightened the anticipation to a fever pitch (though upon watching it again recently, it’s hard to see why.) Among the youth of America, hardly a conversation went by early that summer in which the topic of Batman wasn’t brought up.
But then I saw the movie.
Though the movie was fairly well-received by critics, and beloved by most movie-goers, I was despondent leaving the theater.
See, I didn’t grow up as a comic book fan or think much about Superheroes (other than watching Super Friends on Saturday mornings as a little kid.) So I didn’t have a great deal of pre-conceived notions about the aesthetics of the Bat paraphernalia, or which villains were chosen, or any of that. I was more concerned by his essence, the concept that was Batman. As a product of the ‘70s and ‘80s, I had fumed at the fact that the park I used to frequent as a preschooler had become overrun with criminal activity by the time I was 10 and was basically off-limits to families. I seethed inside when I heard the story about a murder victim’s cries for help going unheeded by dozens of onlookers on a crowded city street. I couldn’t stand how passive the older generation was in facing a society seemingly spinning out of control. Even more maddening was that society’s overall response to this cultural decay was with a yawn and a roll of the eyes. It was the age of cynicism. What’s more, the fictional characters that best represented the battle between good and evil, Superheroes, were often held up to open ridicule. Exhibit “A” of this phenomenon was the campy ‘60s Batman TV series (still in heavy syndication in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s.)
But then something began to change. As Superman had struck a chord with the American public against the backdrop of Hitler and his seemingly invincible army, so now the concept of a flawed, somewhat vulnerable vigilante-hero was beginning to as well against the backdrop of a society on the brink. In the era of Bernhard Goetz and the Death Wish sequels the mythos of Batman was beginning to resonate. Not only did he represent a fictional solution to a problem that actually existed in the real world, but he possessed a moral complexity that lent him an almost non-fiction credibility.
That’s what hurt so badly about seeing this movie. I had begun to let my mind race as to the vision of what a Batman movie could become, a specific vision for Gotham and for the general direction the movie should go…unfortunately, mine couldn’t have been any more different than Burton’s.
The way I looked at it, as violent as our cities had become, there was no need for unnecessary exaggeration or caricature regarding the criminal element in the Batman universe. If anything, concepts like The Joker needed to be toned down somewhat showing that some of the more extreme facets reported about his nature had merely been the exaggerated products of urban legend and myth. He was a psychotic clown. A sociopathic terrorist. No less. No more. The Penguin could be a Capone -esque mobster (always donned in a tux, of course.) And so on. The Batman universe needed to be dark, but realistic and Batman himself needed to be believable. The campy Batman of the ‘60s had to go. Just what could a person accomplish as a vigilante with unlimited resources and connections? Seemingly quite a bit. Almost to the point of believability. And that’s where I wanted to leave it: almost believable. Not that it needed to be mistaken by anyone for a documentary, but could it be a movie without the involuntary-eye-roll moments? That’s all I was asking for.
Of course, the studio wanted to “go dark” as well, but who did they pick to be director? The guy who directed Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and Beetlejuice . Great. In retrospect this choice horrifies me even more. Play “free association” with the name Tim Burton and you keep coming back to the word “quirky.” Not exactly the first thing that comes to mind when you think of a Superhero, even our most complicated one. Tim Burton had re-created Gotham in a Nightmare Before Christmas way that only he could. It was dark and creepy while being simultaneously campy and cheap looking. Not only did Gotham not look real, but it looked like it was filmed in miniature…oh wait, that’s because it was filmed in miniature . The script was mundane. The pacing inconsistent. The only thing that could have saved the movie would have been inspired casting…unfortunately that didn’t happen either.
I felt the role of Batman needed to be inhabited by an actor able to portray inner torment while still maintaining a comfortable-in-his-own-skin charisma. Something I still feel Michael Keaton was woefully incapable of. I had wanted Val Kilmer to play the title role long before he was tapped for the part in the 3rd installment of the Series, just because he had the chops to pull this off. (Clooney was probably too comfortable-in-his-own-skin and played it a little toward the campy side, but in fairness, he had by far the worst movie of the bunch to try to carry.) As for the Joker, at the time I had preferred a toned-down Christopher Lloyd , but a really creepy Crispin Glover would have been a perfect fit. Instead, their widely hailed choice of Jack Nicholson left me wanting. I thought his over-the-top, cloying performance was completely unnecessary and distracting. Most of all, he committed the cardinal sin as an actor playing an arch-villain: he wasn’t scary. The Joker should be terrifying . In a bone-chilling, inhuman kind of way. Instead, his Joker was weird, even funny. Just not scary.
When I walked out of the theater that night I sensed an opportunity lost. Here we have this uniquely American mythology about a regular (albeit uber-rich) guy turning himself into a Superhero, with all of its prospects for incredible character development…and instead it was turned into a broad caricature. I was doubtful there would be a second chance to tell this story any time soon. Fortunately, I was wrong.
Christopher Nolan was given a chance to redeem the story, and that’s exactly what he did. His nearly-realistic take, compounded by his spending almost the entire first movie developing the character of Bruce Wayne-as-Batman, was what I had in mind all along. His casting choices were spot-on, from giving the titular role to an actor as capable as Christian Bale , to bulking up the role of Alfred and handing it to Michael Caine , but from all accounts, the masterstroke was the choice of the late Heath Ledger as The Joker. I can finally say that it appears that the true essence of Batman has been captured on film.
This summer I can sense the same kind of buzz that existed 19 years ago, only this time I think the movie may actually live up to the hype.
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