The Terror that Flaps in the Night

This is Asteroid G’s regular column documenting the rise of superhero films in Hollywood. For the complete story, make sure to read the previous parts:

• Part 1: Batman ‘66
• Part 2: Superman '78
• Part 3: Wonder Woman '75 and the Incredible Hulk '78

It is inevitable that any discussion of superheroes would, eventually, turn to Tim Burton’s Batman. If we want to ask “what film launched modern superheroes?” we could just about stop the whole discussion here because, before there was Burton’s Batman there were a bunch of films trying to figure out how a superhero would even work on screen. After Batman there were a ton of films trying to be Batman. It’s like a switch was flipped and the entire genre changed around this film.

Now, that’s not to say that this is the only film worth discussing. Batman touched off an entire era of superheroes, to be sure, but there’s a massive difference between the films we know now and where Burton’s film was back in the day. This was a pivotal work, yes, but it’s not the end all, be all answer to our question. Like what came before, this film was a stepping stone for the superhero genre as a whole. It just so happens to be a big stone, the key stone, one of the great stones, and the first truly essential film of the genre.

Who Are You?!

Before Batman, Tim Burton had made two films: Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and Beetlejuice. Both of those are oddball films that seem to come from the mind of a Goth child and, in a way, they are exactly the films that would indicate what kind of film Burton would make when crafting Batman. They have strange, very specific aesthetics, existing in their own worlds even as they seem to mirror our reality. Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure takes the character made famous by Paul Rubens and drops him into a child-like adventure across the country, meeting new people, ending up in strange adventures, and seeing the country from a new perspective. Beetlejuice, meanwhile, and a dark, grungy, delightfully strange ghost movie that goes hard and the aesthetics to define its world. In both cases, it’s hard to think of another film like them to compare them to. Even follow-ups (Pee-Wee’s Big Top and the Beetlejuice cartoon) couldn’t match what Burton put in.

For Batman, Burton took his love of design, of the aesthetics of the worlds he could craft, and applied them to superhero adventure. The Gotham of his film is very specific, like a pastiche of the 1980s and 1950s, all covered in a scuzzy layer of Goth noir. The city is as much of a character as the colorful people running around within it, lived in but also unreal, and it’s the single greatest part of his movie. You have no doubt that this is a city that could give birth to a shadowy figure dressed like a bat because on in this Gotham does that seem perfectly normal.

But while Burton has a solid handle on the city and the design, the film is more sketchy when it comes to the characters. For purists of the comics, BatmanOne of the longest running, consistently in-print superheroes ever (matched only by Superman and Wonder Woman), Batman has been a force in entertainment for nearly as long as there's been an entertainment industry. It only makes sense, then that he is also the most regularly adapted, and consistently successful, superhero to grace the Silver Screen. and JokerOne of Batman's first villains, and certainly his more famous (and most popular), the Joker is the mirror of the Bat, all the insanity and darkness unleashed that the hero keeps bottled up and controlled. here (as played by Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson, respectively) don’t much resemble their comic counterparts. Batman here is a violent killer, willing to use guns (on his car) when need be while not putting much stock in saving the bad guys if they need saving. Hell, he lets Joker die at the end and, well, that’s just not what Batman would do. Plus, Batman does almost no detective work, missing the “world’s greatest detective” aspect of his character. Keaton’s performance as the Batman is great, as he really nails Bruce Wayne and does a credible job as Batman, but it’s clear Burton went for vibes and style over the actual substance of the character.

Faring worse is Joker, who, outside of pale makeup and a rictus smile, isn’t the comic’s Joker at all. He’s not an agent of chaos, the opposite of the coin to Batman. Here he’s a gangster simply looking to take over the city and consolidate power. He has more in common with the likes of Carmine Falcone or the Penguin (of the comics, not the films) than the Joker we know. Joker here has little concern for Batman outside of the times the two interact. He wants what he wants and if Batman gets in the way, so be it. They’re just two strangely dressed guys with opposing goals who can’t seem to make it work.

With that said, the film does take Burton’s vision of the hero, the villain, and the city seriously. Comic accuracy be damned, this is a superhero film that recognizes that seeing superheroes on the big screen isn’t goofy, it’s awesome. We can revel in the fist fights and the fun gadgets, enjoy the menace Nicholson brings as the heavy, and anticipate the thrilling climax as hero and villain inevitably come together in a bloody finale. Sure, Joker dies, but the film was building to that all along. In Burton’s world it was an inevitability. If you can accept that then you can absolutely get into the story the film is telling. You just have to accept it’s not an accurate Batman.

But How Did It Redefine Superheroes?

Burton’s style of superheroes would last for a few years. The colorful aesthetic, the grungy style, the music by Danny Eflman, these would become the mainstays (to greater and lesser extent) over the years. Naturally the first sequel to Batman was helmed by Burton and it followed in his visual and storytelling style. It was dark, Gothic, over-the-top, and it didn’t give a flying shit about comic accuracy. Batman Returns, with its Catwoman and Penguin (Michelle Pfiffer and Danny DeVito, respectively) taking over from Nicholson’s Joker, is the first film turned up in every way. Darker, uglier, more violent, more extreme. So extreme, in fact, that parents complained about how dark and bloody it was, and Warner Bros. decided to go a different way for their next Batman sequel (which we’ll get to soon).

But the dark aesthetic continued on past Burton’s work. Released a year later, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles took the lived-in, grimy aesthetic of Batman (without the 1950s noir) and applies it to the comic book story from Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. Combining Jim Henson puppetry magic with a fairly serious story about ninja turtles and crime in New York (a sentence that sounds so weird when you write it out) the film was a smash success at the Box Office and helped launch “Turtle Power” into the lexicon for millions of 1990s kids. And, like with Burton’s own works, parents complained about the violents and darkness, leading the studio to ton it back in the film’s sequels. Seems to be a recurring story, eh?

And that strange world, and dark aesthetics, can be seen again in one of the best superhero films of the 1990s, The Crow. Powered by the Goth-Punk music and artistry, and starring the late Brandon Lee (tragically in his last role as he was killed on set during its production), The Crow took the violence and grit of Burton’s film to its natural extreme. It’s a very dark, brutally efficient movie that, like Burton’s own works, knows what it wants to be and sticks to its guns. And no one has been able to make another of these films like it since.

Heck to a certain extent you can even feel Burton’s influence on Spider-man in 2002. Directed by another visionary, Sam Raimi, that film understood the power of making a strange, sometimes surreal, distinctly lived-in world. And it knew that Danny Elfman’s superhero soundtracks were great. Raimi made three of his films and while the studio eventually put their own interference in his works, he absolutely had a singular vision for how he felt superheroes should be depicted. Sadly, that’s something that’s been lost more recently.

It’s Influence on the Future

Of course, the biggest influence Batman has was to show just how profitable superheroes could be. Batman made $411.6 Mil at the Box Office, which was huge when compared to its $48 Mil budget, but it made even more from its merchandise. 1989 (and 1990, and 1991) was the year of Bat-mania as everyone fell in love with the Caped Crusader and wanted his logo slapped on everything. Home videos, toys, shirts, books, more toys, cups, coasters, posters, and more toys, beyond everything else you could think of. It all came out and made Warners so much money. It’s estimated that the film made $750 Mil from merchandise sales, nearly double its take from theaters. It was an absolute cash overload for the studio, and they wanted more.

That’s why, when Batman Returns didn’t do as well, Warners went a different direction: they didn’t want their merchandising cash cow to get ruined. Every superhero film had to have toys (naturally the TMNT were already there as well), and they had to appeal to kids to sell the toys. The outliers were the likes of The Crow and Blade, which weren’t designed for kids and weren’t meant (at least initially) to sell toys. Merchandising (or, if you want to channel Yogurt from Spaceballs, “Moichandising!”) was the name of the game and there was too much money to be made to worry about things like artistic integrity.

Next Time On…

Warners gets cold feel on Burton’s Batman Returns and turns to Joel Schumacher to create a very different, and visually distinct, Caped Crusader. You know, for kids!