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5 Reasons Batman '89 Is The Best Batman Movie (& 5 Reasons It's The Worst)

posted 4 years ago by TMC-4 (20149)
9 replies | jump to latest

https://screenrant.com/tim-burton-batman-1989-best-v-worst-portrayal-debate/

10
Best: Michael Keaton's Batman Is The Ultimate In Cool

9
Worst: Batman Casually Kills

8
Best: Gotham City Is Stylish, Dirty, Corrupt, And Perfect

7
Worst: Too Many Original Characters

6
Best: It Doesn't Try To Be Too Realistic

5
Worst: Too Many Unnecessary Or Slow Scenes

4
Best: The Best Superhero Soundtrack

3
Worst: Vicki Vale Is Too Much The Damsel In Distress

2
Best: Jack Nicholson's Joker Is A Force Of Nature

1
Worst: Jack Napier Kills The Waynes

[–] LiquidOcelot (2405) 4 years ago

Can an admin please ban this guy. He's literally got 14 threads on the first page of this board alone. Stop spamming you colossal loser.

[–] moviefanatic505 (6119) 4 years ago

Nope I find his posts are far better than yours.

[–] LiquidOcelot (2405) 4 years ago

You still crying buddy, I really did a number on you lol.

[–] moviefanatic505 (6119) 4 years ago

Nah I find amusement from idiots lol. Carry on puppet keep entertaining me.

[–] Ace_Spade (9546) 4 years ago

It is super-weird that TMC basically just scours the internet for articles, quotes, and lists, and then posts sub-quotations from those articles (plus links).

[–] PrincessTutu (76) 4 years ago

In defense of Jack Napier killing Bruce Wayne’s parents, the creator of Batman said he would have written things that way had The Joker been created at the time.

[–] Ace_Spade (9546) 4 years ago

10, 8, 6, 4, 2 - Yes, agreed.

1, 7 - Adaptations change things from one medium to another. Movies tell more succinct stories than decades of comic books, so it's satisfying having this version of the mythos wrap up the Waynes' killer storyline because it doesn't have an extra hour and a half for Bats to track down Joe Chill. You also need new characters to fit new stories.

9 - Batman killed pretty casually for his first few adventures, even carrying guns. Not every version of the Dark Knight is against this. Don't all the movie Batmen kill? Keatonman stuffed bombs in guys' pants, Baleman used a train to kill Liam Ninjason, and I heard Affleckman wiped dudes out, too. I think this one's a wash.

5 - I don't remember the pace being slow or scenes being overly superfluous.

3 - Fair. It's better when movie characters are active and contribute directly to the story in a more meaningful way. I'll give you this: Vicki was not used particularly well.

[–] TMC-4 (20149) 4 years ago

Sam Hamm I know, protested the decision by Tim Burton to have Jack Napier responsible for Bruce Wayne's parents deaths instead of Joe Chill. Not just because it wasn't consistent with the source material, but if I remember correctly, he thought that it was way too coincidental and convenient of a plot point.

I think that one reason why did that is because they was no absolute guarantee that there were going to be sequels. So just in case, they tried to provide some sort of resolution or closure to Batman's story arc. With that, Joker (his biggest enemy) gets definitively killed off and he avenges his parents' murders in one fell swoop.

I don't know where the "unwritten rule" (if you want to call it that) that Batman doesn't kill people came from. I know that when Joel Schumacher took over the franchise from Tim Burton, he was very adamant with the stance that Batman shouldn't kill criminals. I think that if you look at this movie from the perspective of it being an adaptation of the earliest Batman stories from the 1940s (pre-Robin), then him having little qualms gunning down criminals is pretty accurate.

https://www.batman-online.com/features/2008/7/19/comic-influences-on-tim-burtons-batman-1989

[–] Ace_Spade (9546) 4 years ago

I don't think that it was a brilliant idea to have Joker responsible, or necessarily the only way to present the story on screen, I just think it was useful to the storytelling for that particular movie. Sam Hamm wasn't necessarily wrong. He also protested Vicki being let into the Cave. I think Hamm was a great writer for the movie partly because he was obviously a lover of the Batman comics. Ironically, Burton might have been a great director for the project because he didn't know them as well or hold them as precious, so he could fiddle with it and make it work for the version he was presenting.

My favourite Batman comics artist is Kelley Jones. His style is so vivid and imaginative. It's also hyper-stylized and takes huge risks pushing the character designs the way he does. He could have slavishly stuck to the other Batman artists who did more standard comic art, but he didn't, and I think he did something great. Burton was the same way.

The unwritten rule is written in the comics a few times. I'm not sure when it first showed up, but I bet it was early on. Somewhere around Batman #1 when he was transitioning out of Det-Com, Bats' editors were thinking, "This is for kids," and they ordered up a young sidekick for children to relate to, and I'm guessing shortly thereafter (if not concurrently) they pulled back on the violence and murder.

I do think that the character having lines like "I don't kill" does help us understand how Bruce justifies his vigilantism and differentiates himself from the criminals he fights. He has lines he won't cross on principle because he has to tell himself that narrative to keep his crusade justified. That said, I'm not against having a Batman who will cross that line, or bend some of his rules.