MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > OT: 30 Year Anniversary: Tim Burton's B...

OT: 30 Year Anniversary: Tim Burton's Batman (with some Psycho references)

posted 5 years ago by ecarle (14979)
26 replies | jump to latest

We are so awash in comic hero movies now that its hardly worth noting the trend. As the recent Avengers: Endgame made clear, the Marvel Universe started in 2008 with Iron Man, in which the very witty line reader Robert Downey Jr. reinvented himself(in real life, too) as a multi-millionaire with help from Oscar winners Jeff Bridges(a BALD bad guy, he of the great hair) and Gwyneth Paltrow(the rest of her career went to pot, but she always had Marvel.)

Coincidentally, the summer of 2008 that brought us Iron Man also brought us Chris Nolan's best Batman movie: The Dark Knight. Heath Ledger's Joker, of course, a posthumous performance from a very young man(one critic sadly noted that Ledger lost 50 years of more life), who managed to create a character of hilarity, madness and criminal ruthlessness.

The comic book hero movie starts back in 1978 with Superman, in which Marlon Brando lent his legend(for about 20 minutes), Gene Hackman got the villain role(Lex Luthor) and a newcomer named Christopher Reeve followed in the footsteps of TV's George Reeves(ain't the world coincidental?) and made a fine, witty, sexy version of the Big Man.

Studios weren't thinking of the Marvel universe back then, less a cartoon show and a couple of TV movies. If respect was to be given at all, it would be to the DC brand and very, very slowly. Superman in 1978 -- Batman, finally, 11 years later in 1989.

I'm here to report that I was in my 30's when Tim Burton's Batman was announced for production and...I almost involuntarily locked into massive fanboy anticipation. I was a kid again at the end of 1988 and 1989, waiting for the first photos of the Joker and Batman(they arrived in Newsweek in January, I think); the first teaser trailer(January, also -- no music on the trailer, just scenes and voices.)

And then the long, agonizing tick tock , tick tock to wait for the movie to arrive in June. I recall convincing friends to move a camping trip we all had planned by a week. I didn't tell them this was because I needed to see Batman opening day.

And I did.

Its hard to explain exactly what drove my "return to youth" in the year of Batman. I loved the two hits of the summers before it -- The Untouchables(1987) and Die Hard(1988), and when the decade was over, it was The Untouchables that I chose as my favorite.

But Batman gets my favorite of 1989. And that one-two-three of summer action movies with stars, great scripts, and class is unmatched in my movie viewing history.

But back to Batman. I decided the two reasons I went nuts for the film were: it was Batman(not Superman) and...Jack Nicholson.

I wasn't a big comic book reader as a kid, but I dug Batman because, well...I suppose because the comics had a Hitchcock vibe. He wasn't a superhero with magical powers, ala Supes. He was more of a James Bond /detective type, and he worked at night. I pretty much ignored Robin, even though I was closer to Robin's age than Batman's. It was Batman who was cool.

But who was cooler was: his villains. The somewhat silly TV show was designed by its producer on that very premise: each episode was about the "special guest villain" more than it was about Batman and Robin. There were The Big Four: The Joker, The Penguin, The Riddler, and Catwoman(a sexy flirtation for the straight arrow TV Batman.) And then any number of known actors showed up to play additional villains over the three years of the show.

My favorite was David Wayne as Jervis Tetch, the Mad Hatter (evidently they had to call him Jervis Tetch to avoid lawsuits from Disney and the Carroll estate.) Wayne played the role with a big hat, long red hair, a moustache, big eyebrows -- he was a cartoon character come to life. And he selected a line-reading style of great flamboyance: he tended to call Batman, "Bawt-mawn" or some such. My favorite. He did two two-part episodes.

Plenty of Hitchcock players turned up as Batman villains: George Sanders(Mr. Freeze), Tallulah Bankhead(the Black Widow), Walter Slezak(The Clock King), Anne Baxter(Zelda the Great).

And we got Cliff Robertson playing a villainous version of Shane (called Shame), the same year he won the Best Actor Oscar for "Charly." And Vincent Price(naturally, he HAD to do one of these) as "Egghead."

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

What I realized many years later was that the Batman TV series was preparing me for one of Hitchcock's Rules: "The Better the Villain, the Better the Picture." Hitchcock's preference for his villains(Robert Walker, Ray Milland, Anthony Perkins) over his heroes(Farley Granger, Bob Cummings, John Gavin) was well known, and the Batman TV show made that a fact: Adam West and that kid Burt Ward were sort of treated as supporting players on their own show.

And I was being prepared(by the Joker et al) for: Mrs. Danvers, Charles Tobin, Uncle Charlie, Alexander Sebastian, the Rope guys, Bruno Anthony, Tony Wendice, Lars Thorwald, Gavin Elster, Philip Vandamm(who, like the Batman villains, had henchmen), Norman Bates, the Birds(yep, they were villains), Rico Parra, Bob Rusk(who rather looked like the Mad Hatter without the moustache, same hair), and Arthur Adamson(truly a Batman-esque villain with his nifty three piece suits and "plans for the heroes.)

TV Batman "bled into" Hitchcock and the villains across both canons are some of my favorite characters.

So you can imagine my delight when it became known that Jack Nicholson was being courted to play the Joker in this first Batman movie. Truth be told, I'd always found Cesar Romero's Joker to be a loud-mouthed annoyance on the TV show(though a murderous one), my preference had been the Mad Hatter in general, and The Penguin among the Big Four(stylish dresser, I liked that.)

But the idea of NICHOLSON as the Joker transformed everything. I knew that the Joker was THE main villain from the comic books -- he was a strange looking character to me as a kid when I turned the pages. And not only did I feel that Nicholson was one of the great movie actors of his era, for me personally, he was the BEST. He mixed prestige with superstar flash. He had two Oscars by the time he took Batman.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

And he had never really done a summer blockbuster type movie before. Nor even an Christmas blockbuster. Among the roles Nicholson turned down were in The Sting(the Redford role), Close Encounters(the Dreyfuss role), Superman(Lex Luthor).

In the corridor of 1969-1975, Nicholson established his "prestige actor bonafides' with a string of important films(some, but not all, hits) that made him the most important actor of the 70s: Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, Carnal Knowledge, The King of Marvin Gardens, The Last Detail(hilarious then sad), Chinatown(the BIG ONE), and Cuckoo's Nest(not quite Chinatown level, but a blockbuster and a Best Actor Oscar.)

As he "changed" in the eighties and got heavier and middle-aged, you never found him in movies like Top Gun or Rambo or the many cop buddy movies(48 HRS, Lethal Weapon.) He stuck to a mix of dramas(Reds,Ironweed) and entertainments(Prizzi's Honor, The Witches of Eastwick.) The Shining was a classic horror film by a great director(Kubrick) but it, too, was a "prestige movie." Nicholson had his rules. Don't make too many movies. Don't make movies that don't matter. And never do TV interviews(he joined Cary Grant in that dictum.) Make them pay to see you.

Nicholson had so carefully crafted his "prestige" status (a New Hollywood God in the 70's, an entertaining but serious superstar-in-winter in the 80's) that by the time the Batman producers came calling, he could decide to "cash in his prestige" and finally do "one of those summer blockbusters."

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

But Nicholson was savvy even here. He turned down Lex Luthor, but I expect he saw the Joker as a villain role of iconic greatness -- something to be remembered for. And as he told the press, he liked "the purple night sky mood" of the Batman tales. It was Gothic. It was noir. It was a little bit Hitchcock. And it was the movie that he was willing to cash in his prestige status on.

But almost not. To my chagrin over much of 1988, the press reported that Nicholson was backing out of playing the Joker, and that another actor was being sought. The front runner was Robin Williams and I can say that with that announcement(for me), the new Batman film faded almost instantly down to "I'll see it, but I don't care about it" status.

But then Nicholson came back on board (Williams reported he felt his name was used to pressure Nicholson.) And it was a done deal. Nicholson WOULD cash in -- a percentage of the movie, a percentage of the TOYS -- and get his biggest payday of all time.

But he deserved it. By deigning to play the Joker in Batman, Nicholson made the movie an Event Picture. Really, it was the same gimmick used in putting Brando in Superman. Except Brando only did a 20 minute cameo. Nicholson signed on for the whole show. In each case, "the greatest movie actor of his time" anchored "a comic book movie." (Around that time, Pacino and DeNiro were Jack's competish, and Al would have made a good Joker but Jack...better.)

With Nicholson's Joker as the anchor, Michael Keaton would be acceptable as Batman -- he was coming off of the raffish flamboyant lead in Tim Burton's Beetlejuice and he brought some of that crazy energy to the role("You wanna get nuts? Let's get NUTS! C'mon!"). Burton was a "new talent" whose Pee Wee Herman film and Beetlejuice established a weird hip Gothic sensibility for Batman. Kim Basinger replaced Sean Young as "the girl"(alas) but she was certainly a pretty one, with some professional edge as news photography Vicki Vale.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

In retrospect, I'm pretty certain that my mad yearning to see Batman in the summer of 1989 was driven by three things: (1) I always thought Batman was cooler than Superman -- the black/gray/purple of his world, the connections to Hitchcock; (2) memories of how fun all those great villains had been on the old Batman TV show(home, famously of "POW!" "WHACK!" comic book fight scenes) and (3) NICHOLSON. I literally couldn't believe that he was going to do this. And when I saw that first photo of him in Newsweek in full Joker make-up: I was delighted. That's how the movies work when they work well, for me.

I was so primed for Batman when I saw Batman that it worked from the first moments of the film. All these years later, it seems that the first Batman has been "lost in the shuffle." We've had Val Kilmer as Batman. George Clooney as Batman. Ben Affleck as Batman. That guy from "Twlight" is going to BE Batman(in a movie called "The Batman" which to me is so many faded Xeroxes away from 1989 I'm like -- hey, is this "Bates Motel," or what?

And we've had Heath Ledger as the Joker. And Jared Leto as the Joker. And we're gonna get Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker.

Leave it to Hollywood to run something into the ground.

As to the Main Event -- Jack versus Heath AS the Joker, well, I get it: Jack was too old, perhaps, certainly too thick around the middle, to give us a Joker like the comic books. But he gave us JACK NICHOLSON as the Joker, a superstar performance in which the superstar's famous face is quite visible behind the greasepaint, and whose famous stereophonic voice drove the character("It can truly be said that there is a baT in my belfry" -- hitting the "T" hard) . I'm basically Team Jack even though I'll join Team Heath as an alternative for his wild funniness. (For the time being, Jared Leto's impenetrable, sick, and unfortunately tattooed Joker is the exception that proves the rule: the Joker can be played badly and converted into a character who hurts scenes and doesn't energize them.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

And this: for all the praise about the "seriousness" of The Dark Knight, and its epic, mature quality(in HD visual clarity), I always felt that when Ledger and his Joker were off screen...The Dark Knight was pretty boring stuff, with a fatal flaw: the handsome Christian Bale and Aaron Eckhardt were competing for the affections of the decidedly NOT beautiful Maggie Gyllenhall(sp?) I know she was praised as "offbeat casting" but she did not fit what the role required. Leaving her out of it, the plot stuff was just rather weak. Though -- as always -- Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman were charismatic in support.

No, I prefer Burton's cartoon Goth first one -- which has the excitement of BEING the first one, and which made sure to keep things deadly and real beneath the cartoon veneer(example: how the Joker gives a mobster a hard-wired million volt handshake that reduces the man to...Mrs. Bates corpse.)

I think perhaps that people forget just how WEIRD the Burton Batman was. The Joker's attack on an art gallery. His very strange commercials for make-up that makes you smile -- and die. The generally abstract manner in which Jack talks -- Heath Ledger later had a crime boss's polished patter; Nicholson is just nuts ("Never rub another man's rhubarb!")

Now on to the Hitchcock/Psycho connections.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Burton's Batman, more than the Schumachers and Nolans that followed it, had a nice dose of Hitch to it.

First of all, the art director on the film made the statement: "I think the greatest special effect in the history of motion pictures was the house in Hitchcock's Psycho." The statement takes one back for a moment. What about The Birds? 2001? Star Wars? But I think I get it: the Bates house on the hill is all atmosphere and menace and mystery, looming over the entire movie and capturing our imaginations forever.

Evidently, the Psycho architecture informed a fair amount of the architecture in Gotham City in Burton's Batman. But Psycho isn't the only Hitchcock film being referenced here.

The film's climax takes place in a BELL TOWER, which resembles the Vertigo bell tower in all ways except that everything is BIGGER. The height. The stairwell. The steps. Its the Vertigo bell tower on steroids...and people do fall.

And the climax of the climax finds Batman hanging by one hand from the top of the bell tower, Vicki Vale in his other hand below him -- the Joker grinding down on his hand. You can superimpose Martin Landau-Cary Grant-Eva Marie Saint over Jack Nicholson-Michael Keaton-Kim Basinger and see how North by Northwest and Vertigo come together to give us the climax of Burton's Batman. Nothing wrong with that!

There is also the fact that Danny Elfman scores Burton's Batman, and the scoring is in the all-encompassing Bernard Herrmann tradition. 9 years later, Elfman would do great work re-orchestrating Herrmann's score for Van Sant's Psycho from the original -- probably the most impressive achievement in that woeful remake.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

There is also the fact that -- one Batman film later in Burton's "Batman Returns," Keaton's Bruce Wayne actually compares himself to...Norman Bates. As having a split personality, one of whom is a dangerous man.(This always made me wonder: is Psycho a movie that Bruce Wayne has seen? Or is Norman Bates a real life character in the universe that also houses Batman?)

Bruce Wayne has his Norman Bates discussion with Selina Kyle(Michelle Pfeiffer) who is also Catwoman and so you could say that Batman Returns takes up the theme of duality and split personalities and CERTAINLY ties into Hitchcock and Psycho.

Which reminds me: I've always found the Joker's closest corollary in Hitchcock to be Bruno Anthony in Strangers on a Train. He's more flamboyant than Norman, more openly crazy and villainous - a plotter(like the Joker), who likes to ruin other people's lives(like the Joker.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

The excitement that accompanied my wait for Batman in 1989 was a bit deflated once I saw the movie. I recall thinking that it wasn't nearly the big action movie that Die Hard had been(and that movie haunted my memory from 1988), and that The Untouchables from 1987 had more "heart," better lines, and a stronger narrative.

Still The Untouchables/Die Hard/Batman closed out the eighties for me with a lot of excitement. I could still very much be a movie FAN, back then.

And given those strong fan memories of the excitement of the summer of 1989 -- 30 years ago as I type this -- I must report that thus far, I've seen the 2019 summer blockbusters Avengers: Endgame and Godzilla: King of the Monsters and...no. Not even close. No excitement at all. What is it? My age? Or the lack of excitement of the films themselves?

I think I'll ponder that while basking in those 30-year old memories. And I'll hope that for some young person in 2019, "Avengers: Endgame" is THEIR Burton's Batman this year.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

PS. Additional Psycho trivia for Batman:

I read an interview with Burt Ward, who played Robin on the old TV show. Evidently both he and Adam West got a lot of ladies off of that show(Ward was older than a teenager in real life.)

And one woman who took Burt Ward home with her proved to be...psycho.

She waited for him to come upstairs to her bedroom and then rushed out at the top of the stairs at him with a knife. A real knife. With intent to kill..or injure. Ward fought her off and escaped. In the article he actually wrote that "she was trying to imitate the killing of Martin Balsam in Psycho."

Funny: what one reads a lot more about is about brothers and sisters and lovers pulling the shower curtain opening to scare their lovers with a knife raised, but not used(this happened to Cher, for instance.)

But only Burt "Robin" Ward drew the Martin Balsam card...and a woman crazy enough to play it.

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

In retrospect, I'm pretty certain that my mad yearning to see Batman in the summer of 1989 was driven by...

I remember it as being a triumph of marketing...the Bat-symbol was everywhere for at least 6 months on posters and t-shirts worn by adults (not just kids) and even by alternative/hipster musician types. I saw it at a midnight screening opening night in part as a social thing but mostly just to get the damn thing over with (since after all that advertizing one had no choice but to see the film).

I was a little underwhelmed - e.g., I'd read a lot about the production design in the NY Times and especially about the opening 2 shots of the city, the first of which the Times called a 'tour de cinema'. Well, I was expecting the opening of Blade Runner, but Batman didn't deliver. The shots seemed small to me and the FX murky. (I have to say that on this front The Dark Knight with key scenes in Imax did 20 years later deliver the cityscape goods.)

I remember too being a little creeped out by the reality of fan-worship: people cheered when The Bat would drop into a scene & most memorably when the bat-plane soared above the clouds and silhouetted against the moon. It was weird to be in an audience being pandered to and *loving* it. The pre-programmed feel of it all meant it wasn't my sort of thing notwithstanding the interesting-ness of Keaton & Nicholson.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I remember it as being a triumph of marketing...the Bat-symbol was everywhere for at least 6 months on posters and t-shirts worn by adults (not just kids) and even by alternative/hipster musician types.

---

See, that's where I think Batman -- as a movie figure at least -- had it all over Superman. Batman was on the dark side; noirish, cool. (Notable in both the Burton and Nolan films was to get rid of Robin entirely, less a possible clue at the end of The Dark Knight Rises. This KEPT Batman cool. Joel Schumacher used Robin in two films and got the two worst Batman movies ever made.) The Batman logo was cool, too. When, eventually the logo arrived with names:

Nicholson Keaton
LOGO

It was just TOO cool.

---

I saw it at a midnight screening opening night in part as a social thing but mostly just to get the damn thing over with (since after all that advertizing one had no choice but to see the film).

---

That's me with Avengers; Endgame. Its an obligation.

Batman 1989? Not so much. Yes, the hype was endless, but something about Nicholson being in it, Burton directing it and -- warily -- Keaton as Batman -- had me in some sort of "magnetic tractor beam" to see the film.

Also, I felt that Superman 1978 was pretty much a misfire. Hackman's Lex Luthor having that idiot assistant called Otis(played to idiot perfection by Ned Beatty, who'd been so smart in Network just two years before) set the tone of "not getting it"; the finale was a mishmash of toy houses, an offscreen garden hose(it seemed) and bad special effects to suggest dam break disaster. Too bad -- the SET-UP for Superman(the first hour or so, with Brando no less) was much better than the terrible ending. But...Otis. Awful. The end.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Batman 1989 was "campy" enough in its comic book looks to feel more like Superman 1978 than The Dark Knight 2008...but on the whole, Batman 1989 was sophisticated borderline art film entertainment. (And Batman Returns went all the way in that arty regard. Burton was relieved of his Batman duties shortly after that one underperformed and scared McDonald's regarding their Happy Meals promotion.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I was a little underwhelmed - e.g., I'd read a lot about the production design in the NY Times and especially about the opening 2 shots of the city, the first of which the Times called a 'tour de cinema'. Well, I was expecting the opening of Blade Runner, but Batman didn't deliver. The shots seemed small to me and the FX murky. (I have to say that on this front The Dark Knight with key scenes in Imax did 20 years later deliver the cityscape goods.)

---

Well, almost two decades of changes to technical movie-making made a difference. I must say that my copies of The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises are enthralling the clarity and precision of the cityscapes by day or by night --- the key to the Nolan films(we are told) is that they would play Batman as "realistic" with his criminal foes "explained" (Catwoman, for instance, is never CALLED Catwoman, she just wears a catsuit as a thief.)

The scene in The Dark Knight where Ledger's Joker first confronts a roomful of mobsters is a model of comedy and toughness; Ledger comes right out of the gate showing us his "realistic" take on the Joker, and it is very funny AND very scary at the same time. The Joker's opening "pencil trick" in which he rams a pencil into a black thug's forehead and kills the guy in one quick swoop demonstrates psychopathy, strength, ruthlessness -- and humor -- in the same ha-ha moment.

Batman 1989 has Nicholson's Joker meet some mobsters in roughly the same room with roughly the same reactions. Its not fair to compare it against a movie made 20 years later, but even the "cartoonish" Nicholson Joker proves deadly -- giving a mobster a million volt handshake and creepily talking to the singed corpse and letting the corpse "talk back"(like Mrs. Bates) in the Joker's mind, with instructions to kill the other mobsters("What? Grease them ALL?") In short, cartoony the 1989 Batman may have been -- but it had a sick heart.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I remember too being a little creeped out by the reality of fan-worship:

---

Well, I stood on line with a few Batmans and a few Jokers, that's for sure -- midnight showing, first night.

---

people cheered when The Bat would drop into a scene & most memorably when the bat-plane soared above the clouds and silhouetted against the moon. It was weird to be in an audience being pandered to and *loving* it. The pre-programmed feel of it all meant it wasn't my sort of thing notwithstanding the interesting-ness of Keaton & Nicholson.

---

A tell-tale cheer came early in the film when Nicholson isn't the Joker yet(unlike Heath Ledger, he does about a half hour as "a regular guy" -- gangster Jack Napier) and his mistress talks to him as he looks himself over in a mirror:

Mistress: You look fine(as in "really FINE.")
Nicholson: (Raised eyebrow, contempt.) I didn't ask.

Cheers, laughter, and applause -- to a man contemptuously dissing his woman. It was that kind of crowd.

I'm OK with cheers at the movies. I miss SCREAMS at the movies. Psycho, Wait Until Dark, Jaws...inconceivable without the crowd screaming. People are too jaded to scream anymore. Except for quick jump shocks.

I will admit that in LA, I soon came to realize that since EVERY movie got cheers and yells...they were likely studio shills paid to "goose the crowd."

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I appreciate your responding here, swanstep, but I feel that yet again I'm professing a memory of something powerful and personal that X number of other people likely didn't feel at all about Batman 1989.

In some ways, I remember it, because I didn't understand it when it happened to me.

I was in my 30's after all, long in a career, etc. Why was I acting like a teenager?

To this day, I don't really know. I know this: the prospect of Superman 1978 was never so enthralling. I just never felt the same way about Supes -- and HE didn't have a TV show with all the stylish villains like Batman did(he had, in fact, a very clunky fifties TV show that was made in color but usually broadcast b/w.)

About Nicholson in the 80s: People forget how many 70s male stars lost their leading man careers in the 80's: Segal and Gould, Ryan O'Neal, James Caan, Jon Voight, just...gone. Pacino hung on by taking a few years off and coming back. DeNiro's 80's weren't like his 70's , after Raging Bull.

And Jack had a slump. Subtract The Shining(which wasn't all that well reviewed on release) and he had a string of underperformers from The Missouri Breaks to Goin' South to The Postman Always Rings Twice to The Border(about the Border Patrol, still relevant, but not a very good movie.)

Jack's comeback was as a "supporting player plus."

First he played Eugene O'Neill in Reds.

But then he did Terms of Endearment. And I thought he was so spectacular in that movie, so perfectly used, so "unique," that...well, I think that powered him on through the 80's so he could score that big payday in Batman and live on in the 90's and 00s.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

The key to Jack in Terms of Endearment is three-fold: (1) He's a "real man" in a story dominated by women and weak men(Jeff Daniels, John Lithgow, even a neutered Danny DeVito); (2) there's something "off" about him; the role was declined by James Garner, who would have played this astronaut "straight," but Jack gave it an off-kilter weirdness(and a big exposed belly for sexy laughs.)

(3) The big one: several times in the movie, we think it is Jack's last scene -- but every time we thought that, he comes back for another scene, and we are deeply grateful. He breaks up with MacLaine. That's it. No more Jack. No, wait, he comes to Texas to be with her at a motel in a time of need(the audience cries bigtime at this one.) He says goodbye to MacLaine at the airport("Seconds away from a clean getaway.") That's it. No more Jack. No wait, he comes back at the very end to help be a man to the boy who needs it(his mother has died.)

Nicholson won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Terms of Endearment pretty much for making the movie bearable(great though MacLaine and Winger were, he was the fun part.) And that same "unique power" made his Joker something special.

I know its fakey fellow-superstar praise, but Eddie Murphy saw Batman and said, "There's the rest of us, and there's Jack."

Part of what has stimulated this remembrance on my part is that there are some internet articles out there commemorating Batman on its 30th Anniversary. It was SUCH a big deal. This new "The Batman" with the Twilight Guy just seems like "who cares?" Though there seems to be some interest in Joaquin Phoenix going all Travis Bickle as "Joker" later this year.

But he's not Jack. Or Heath....good thing there's Jared out there to easily better.

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

I know its fakey fellow-superstar praise, but Eddie Murphy saw Batman and said, "There's the rest of us, and there's Jack."

Another 1989 sign of Nicholson being on another level from everyone else: Christian Slater's career-making imitation/channelling of '70s Jack for his character, J.D., in Heathers.

I *loved* Heathers at the time, and watching it again last year it still felt near-perfect to me. "Betty Finn was a true friend and I sold her out for a bunch of Swatch dogs and Diet Coke heads". It's quote-heaven easily up there with things like 'Sweet Smell of Success'.

The writer of Heathers, Daniel Waters, knew he had something special and for a long time would only consider selling the script to Kubrick! And when he did settle with a lesser figure to direct it seems that Waters' vision that he'd birthed the Dr Strangelove of High School films prevailed, so almost everyone ended up doing career-best work. Winona of course was on a kind of 5 year, near-continuous career-peak from Bettlejuice-on.

Waters never wrote another script that good. Director Lehmann only did a few (mediocre) films before retiring to TV. Oh well, they'll always have this one inspired thing to their names.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Another 1989 sign of Nicholson being on another level from everyone else: Christian Slater's career-making imitation/channelling of '70s Jack for his character, J.D., in Heathers.

---

Yes, Mr. Slater came dangerously close to being a "copycat star" with his Nicholson schtick; I suppose you could say that a few young actors(I can't really name them) channeled Jack as their muse in those days.

But go all the way back to 1976 and a little movie called: Family Plot. Hitchcock pitched Nicholson for the cab driver lead, George Lumley. Couldn't get him, but ended up with Nicholson's pal Bruce Dern, who rather had some of the Nicholson vibe himself(they had played brothers in The King of Marvin Gardens.) Meanwhile, William Devane was little known(making for playing JFK in The Missiles of October), but some critics found that Devane's voice in FP was rather....like Nicholson's(they both hailed from Jersey, I believe.) In short, Nicholson, having been OFFERED Family Plot and turned it down, rather haunted the film's male characters.

---

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I *loved* Heathers at the time, and watching it again last year it still felt near-perfect to me. "Betty Finn was a true friend and I sold her out for a bunch of Swatch dogs and Diet Coke heads". It's quote-heaven easily up there with things like 'Sweet Smell of Success'.

Also: "My teenage angst has a body count."

---

The writer of Heathers, Daniel Waters, knew he had something special and for a long time would only consider selling the script to Kubrick!

---

THAT's aiming high. Kubrick is a mysterious figure to me. I read that he was offered projects like Network, but he seemed(rather like Hitchcock) to like to find and develop his own material. On the other hand, I also read that Kubrick WANTED to direct Network...and that just doesn't quite play. If he wanted to, somebody would have made sure he got to.

Meanwhile, Kubrick's Napoleon movie(to star...Jack Nicholson) evidently fell apart when a Rod Steiger Napoleon movie(Waterloo) got there first. But that was in 1970, I'm not quite sure Jack was Jack yet.

----

And when he did settle with a lesser figure to direct it seems that Waters' vision that he'd birthed the Dr Strangelove of High School films prevailed, so almost everyone ended up doing career-best work.

----

And I do believe that Daniel Waters wrote at least some of ...Batman Returns(the one with DeVito's creepy Penguin and Pffeiffer's campy Catwoman, and a dose of sadomasochism.)

---

Winona of course was on a kind of 5 year, near-continuous career-peak from Bettlejuice-on.

---

If only she had stayed on board Godfather III in 1990 -- there was word of a breakdown/exhaustion) and not ceded her role to Coppola's horribly miscast daughter(now a noteable director, sometimes.)

---

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Waters never wrote another script that good. Director Lehmann only did a few (mediocre) films before retiring to TV. Oh well, they'll always have this one inspired thing to their names

---

That's showbiz. Its the inverse of Hitchcock's "long distance runner" career, where he managed major films and classic over five decades. But that's pretty hard to pull off.

And I'm just talking about direction. WRITING great scripts over time? Joseph Stefano couldn't do it. Ernest Lehman came closer, but not really.

That Tarantino fellow has a good track record, though.

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

Also, I felt that Superman 1978 was pretty much a misfire. Hackman's Lex Luthor having that idiot assistant called Otis... set the tone of "not getting it"; the finale was a mishmash of toy houses, an offscreen garden hose(it seemed) and bad special effects to suggest dam break disaster.

I agree except I'd add that I remember the first hour having its problems too, mainly with pacing. Everything felt a little slow to me; even the opening titles seemed dragged out, although some people loved them.

These days the situation with Superman & Superman 2 strikes me as very confused: e.g., there's an extended cut of Superman with an extra *45* minutes - that's a completely different film! And there's a 'Donner Cut' of Superman 2 in addition to Lester's. I didn't love these films to begin with, and now I have to spend a weekend researching before I rewatch anything? Forget it.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I agree except I'd add that I remember the first hour having its problems too, mainly with pacing. Everything felt a little slow to me;

---

Yes, that's true. They spent about an hour on origin before taking the story to Metropolis for action. Burton's Batman made sure to avoid that entirely and open with "Batman in action."

It took all the way to Nolan's "Batman Begins" (2005) to really push a "Batman origin story" film. And it was pretty dull, right behind the two Schumacher films as the least interesting Batman movie, IMHO.

---

even the opening titles seemed dragged out, although some people loved them.

---

Me. I loved them. In fact, over the course of my youth, I found the credit sequences for North by Northwest and Superman to be the two most exciting credit sequences I ever experienced. The thunderous music in both cases, of course(Herrmann and Williams, the best of their eras). And also how, in the first 30 seconds or so(in both cases), things built and built and built and built until the music EXPLODED into a crescendo of continual excitement.

Elfman's Batman overture (over a visual stone maze that became the Batman logo, nifty) came close to the Superman overture of Williams, but not quite close enough...it was a bit more moody and heavy, in accord with Burton's vision.

---

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

These days the situation with Superman & Superman 2 strikes me as very confused: e.g., there's an extended cut of Superman with an extra *45* minutes - that's a completely different film! And there's a 'Donner Cut' of Superman 2 in addition to Lester's. I didn't love these films to begin with, and now I have to spend a weekend researching before I rewatch anything? Forget it

---

Ha. Yeah, they are all over the place.

I liked how when LA Confidential came out on DVD, there was NOT a single "deleted scene" on the disc. Curtis Hanson had faith that he had made the best story possible, no reason to show us what was left out.

The script for Psycho has several scenes that did not it into the movie. The mystery is: did Hitchcock shoot those scenes and cut them, or simply not film them at all? We will never know. I think even the late screenwriter Joe Stefano said he wasn't sure.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

A bit of a side bar to the 1989 Batman story:

I recall having a somewhat similar excitement(after all) about the 1987 Untouchables.

The series had been pretty cool, pretty violent and very stylish, what with Walter Winchell's staccato-rat-a-tat tat narration. Good guest stars too: Lee Marvin, Martin Balsam.

It was not a show that I watched first run, but it came around occasionally in syndication in the 60's and 70's and I watched it. Of course, it was a "men on a mission" show, and I already liked MOVIES like that, very much(The Magnificent Seven, The Dirty Dozen, The Professionals.)

So I had the TV show in mind when The Untouchables went into production. It had a star almost as popular to me as Jack Nicholson: Sean Connery, who had had a longer lived career than Nicholson(from Bond, James Bon and upwards), a new young star in Kevin Costner who I'd been reading a lot about (Spielberg, Kasdan and now DePalma all loved him) and...Robert DeNiro, then still in his "prestige movie" period(many of his movies were far less commercial than Jack's) but edging ever close to taking the role of Al Capone.

And then..DeNiro backed out. Shades of Jack two years later on Batman. But whereas Robin Williams was just "in talks" for the Joker, someone was actually HiRED to play Capone when DeNiro balked: Bob Hoskins, a coupla years after playing a fireplug British gangster in the Long..whatever(and a year from h is biggest star role, in Roger Rabbit.)

Hoskins was hired and announced, but suddenly DeNiro was interested again. And they got him. And Hoskins was paid off in full ("Anytime you want to hire me and pay me not to work," said Hoskins to DePalma, "I'm your man.")

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I will say that when The Untouchables finally hit in the summer of 1987, I went nuts for it, start to finish(this did NOT happen with Batman.) Morricone's music included four major motifs, all of them great:

ONE: The opening soundtrack: martial, staccato...a "march of the tin G-men"

TWO: The "big theme": a majestic "The Untouchables Ride!" aria that soared to a thunderous finale (and became the theme song for many an AFI Life Achievement Award show)

THREE: A very sad, very poignant "death theme" for the killing of two Untouchables in separate scene. I can still recall how , during the slow pan of an elevator from one body(a gang informer) to the next, the music moved me very deeply right up until the discovery of the second body(the nicest Untouchable) and Morricone kicked up the sadness RIGHT THEN and I thought: "This is PERFECT...its like he knew where our emotions should go."

FOUR: For the film's bravura staircase shootout set-piece, the Hitchcockian build-up got the interweaving of a lullaby(for a baby in a carriage enters the action) WITH suspense music.

The music, the story, Connery(above all), the team, the set-pieces and -- DeNiro cruising through the movie in stand-alone scenes, in a corpulent near-cameo as Capone(his career would soon yield to all sorts of commercial movies after this one.) I loved it.

Then Batman two summers later.

And we just missed Bob Hoskins and Robin Williams in getting Robert DeNiro and Jack Nicholson.

PS. Yes, Die Hard in the summer in between(1988) was possibly the biggest of them all as a lasting classic(though I doubt it made as much as Batman) but it surprised me. I wasn't buying Bruce Willis(yet) as a movie star, and I had no idea who Alan Rickman was. Without Connery or Nicholson as anchors, Die Hard had to prove itself through sheer monumental action brio. It did.

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

I just got around to watching a (fairly) recent Terry Gilliam movie, The Zero Theorem (2013) starring Christoph Waltz. The film does a lot of the same sort of world-building as Brazil (1985) but lacks the plot as well as the budget, energy and bounty of ideas of that landmark. I suppose that TZT is somewhat similar to & about as good as each of this year's rather muted and unsatisfying Black Mirror eps. - not unpleasant but not especially memorable either.

Anyhow - back to topic at last! - the creepy near-future/alternative-present that TZT sketches (but does not really explore, probably for budget & rights reasons) has a street-religion called the Church of Batman The Redeemer. It shows up in graffiti & in media ads in this scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs8GxPO55tM