When the bat signal is illuminated at the end it is Catwoman we see looking at it, not Batman.īatman Returns was not quite as financially successful as 1989’s Batman, grossing $266 million from a reported $50-$80 million budget. Wayne is last seen as a withdrawn billionaire, prowling the snowy streets of Gotham in his limo. Schrek, the actual bad dude, is defeated not by Batman but by Selina Kyle who delivers righteous justice in the form of an electrocution as Bruce Wayne impotently looks on. The Penguin’s death - a pretty gnarly scene where he belches black blood- is almost anticlimactic. They dropped the character of Robin, made Batman far less effective, and changed Selina Kyle from a cat burglar to a scorned secretary. (The set design was partially inspired by fascist architecture of the 1930s.) Burton along with writer Daniel Waters also rewrote the original script to make it not resemble the comics. Unlike Nolan or Reeves' visions, Returns offers a Gotham that maybe feels like it shouldn’t be saved: its one percenter citizens are clearly morally bankrupt, while the city itself feels malevolent. Today Burton gets a lot of rightful criticism for pumping out CGI bloated drivel but in the early 90s he was still the offbeat visionary who repeatedly clashed with studio heads. Part of that is due to an unleashed Burton who, after the mega success of 1989’s Batman, was reluctant to revisit the dark knight until Warner Brothers executives supposedly granted a high degree of creative freedom to “make a Tim Burton movie, not a Batman film.”
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(In one scene he attaches a bomb to a criminal and then tosses him down a sewer, the resulting explosion clearly fatal.) Keaton here seems more comfortable in the skin of Bruce Wayne than in the previous film, No more dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight. Speaking of which, it’s been pointed out multiple times that Returns marks one of the only times on screen that Batman willfully kills his enemies. Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman and Danny Devito as Penguin. Just like in the comic books she’s a morally ambiguous foil to Batman but in Returns she’s also a lot of fun, blowing up sporting goods stores, leveraging sex appeal to control the Penguin, and beating the hell out of the shitty men around her, including Batman. Nonchalantly pushed through an office window by Schreck, she survives her fall (albeit with brain damage) and manically reinvents herself as a leather clad, high heeled, whip cracking Catwoman. His only goal is to accumulate money and power for himself by manipulating others – like the Penguin and Catwoman - into doing dirty work for him.Īnd no disrespect to Anne Hathaway, Zoe Kravitz, or even Eartha Kitt but, meow, Michelle Pfieffer is the ideal Selina Kyle. He’s not an ersatz Zodiac killer like Riddler in The Batman. He’s not a brutal henchman masquerading as the leader of an idealist movement like Bane in The Dark Knight Rises. He’s an industrialist who is not motivated by psychopathic id like the Joker in 1989’s Batman. Walken is menacing, imposing, and maybe, most importantly, weird looking.
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Contemporary studio execs fed by a steady diet of algorithmic data would likely freak out at the prospect of an original baddie in a high budget superhero movie but it works in Returns. That title goes to Walken’s Schreck, a villain not found in the comic books. Courtesyĭespite some genuinely inventive character building - being born of wealthy parents and then discarded due to a freakish appearance - the Penguin isn’t the big baddie in the film. And it doesn’t even have Batman in it.Ĭhristopher Walken as Max Shreck. Instead, let’s highlight a scene that is the prime example of what makes Returns the best Batman film. Every single actor who has portrayed Bruce Wayne-be it Bale’s brooding trust fund kid or Affleck’s hulking bruiser or even Hot Topic Pattinson-has brought something unique to the role. And now that Warner Brothers has officially and inexplicably canceled Batgirl (which was to feature a Michael Keaton donning the cowl once more) Returns will likely remain Keaton’s final outing as the caped crusader.īut this is not a forum for criticizing the other Bat-men. This is also a Batman film that never gets weighed down by a cheerless, brooding Bruce Wayne. The deeply nuanced villains range from sympathetic to genuinely evil. Tim Burton’s 1992 sequel (which turns 30! years old this summer) reigns supreme over all other Bat-films because of its inventive storyline that skates between morbid fun and moody darkness. Hear me out for a moment: Batman Returns is the finest Batman film to ever hit theaters.