Nolan lacks with visuals

Just because it's Chicago doesn't mean it's "dull looking", It was shot very well.

In Begins Gotham City had a grounded feel but still had more originality in its design and its lighting that set it apart from any other typical major city used for a major motion picture, despite using a pretty major building of Chicago to double for Wayne Enterprises without much tweaking than slapping the logo on it. The visual aesthetic of the city deteriorated in its following sequels, it didn't stand out very well and you could tell which city they shot this or that easily. Not only that, but Batman looked ridiculous and out of place rather than blending in and feeling like he was truly one with his environment. So yes, it was dull looking, too bad Nolan stopped being influenced by Blade Runner after Begins.

Well Burton really isn't that good at either at least in the 89 movie (Example A, The most boring version of Commissioner Gordon you will ever see)

A story doesn't necessarily have to be told through intricate action occurring on screen and character development doesn't have to be described through dialogue, visuals alone can do the job for both if done handled right. In the silent era, all movies were visually motivated and because people could not hear the actors say their lines they had to interpret their movements along with how the frame was playing out to dive into the story and feel for the characters. The use of dialogue intertitles became debatable till talkies came around and changed virtually everything, some people preferred using less as possible feeling it hurt their films which they felt told solid stories well enough on a visual level. They were all basically spectacle based. I think its pretty fair to say that Burton is definitely influenced by the silent era in his earlier films, especially those produced outside of the United States like Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu. Concerning Gordon's characterization in the '89 film it pretty much goes on throughout the original four movies - He was just there to be there and didn't really contribute anything( Hence I'm a bit hesitant to really call him a
"character"), which isn't Burton's fault but more on the studio and the screenwriters.

It can easily go the other way where you only focus on visuals and just have essentially a moving painting.

Which isn't necessarily a bad thing depending on what story is being told, when you break it down really the story for 2001: A Space Odyssey is pretty simple and the people in it barely register as characters because we don't get to learn much about them and really dive into their motives. Visually, however, it is still a marvel to look at and is a classic. Its sequel, 2010, which was more character driven and dialogue heavy, was not met with as much love as its predecessor and tends to be forgotten about, a lot having to do with its director being in a very different league than Kubrick's and could not compete or outdo him in certain aesthetic areas which made 2001 such a success. Burton's Batman movies are much more visually motivated than Nolan's films, that doesn't make them worse necessarily, just different and for their faults they did allow Burton to experiment more the same way Batman had for Nolan. Burton's Batman films just speak as they were coming from him as Nolan's are to his, neither iteration of the character is really the one from the comics stripped out from a panel its really their vision. Give Nolan a script for a Burton movie I doubt he'd knock it as out of the park as Burton could, same if Burton were to direct a script for a Nolan movie.

That's a recurring criticism of Tim Burton.

Its true, but by the end of the day Burton isn't really much of a writer he's mostly a director and as his work proves he's really only as good as the scripts he's working from. Nolan however has written just about every film he's directed so he's not as much a visualist despite the ambitious spectacle of Inception and Interstellar.

COOKIES AND MILK!-Ed

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