Batman Returns (1992)-When The Villains Are As Good As The Hero, Part I

For a long while, I used to look at Tim Burton’s Batman Returns as the akin to Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises. The Batman installment that was the strangest, weirdest, funkiest (Is that even a real word?), and most difficult to comprehend of the ones that both directors have made with their incarnation of the caped crusader. Both films contain some of the biggest, boldest, and most ambitious work but also straight up the most clunky and messy of both directors filmography. And also, both happened to have Catwoman in it. Looking back now, the comparisons to The Dark Knight Rises is actually downright insulting as it’s actually more in line with The Dark Knight itself. Both movies are just as much about the antagonist in terms of story, character, and themes as the protagonist, perhaps even more so. They tell incredibly groundbreaking tails of the pros and cons of the Batman legacy along with showing a Batman that is truly unrestrained and beyond his limits. In the sense, both Batman Returns and The Dark Knight make for a great parallel with one another and terrific back-to-back featurettes. In case you’re wondering why the title of this post includes Part I, this will talk about the depths and importance of all the main characters scattered throughout Batman Returns and Part II will be about the same thing with The Dark Knight.

I’ve always had a very complicated relationship with Batman Returns. It was a movie that despite watching many, many times, my opinions of it constantly kept changing every single time that I’ve watched it. I’ve gone from liking it to not caring for it to loving it to hating it and then later to being incredibly lukewarm/indifferent towards it. The biggest reason for this is because I’ve never been able to grasp what exactly the movie was trying to accomplish here along with the reasoning behind the number of storytelling choices/direction that the film makes. However, at long last, after many different viewings, I finally understand Batman Returns! And now that I understand it, I can’t help but adore it! This movie is absolutely sheer brilliance!

Granted, I was not the only person in the world to dislike this movie at one point. At the time of the film’s release, it was panned across the board, mostly from parents, that the movie was too scary/horrifying for younger audiences and didn’t feel in like with what the world saw as Batman. So much so, that it lead to Warner Bros deciding to move on from Tim Burton and bring in Joel Schumacher to deliver much more light hearted and kid friendly bat adventures with Batman Forever and the absolutely beloved Batman and Robin. It was a movie that people back then didn’t bother to get as they were too busy complaining about the darker material presented throughout the picture that they couldn’t be bother to think of what the movie was actually about. Unlike with the 1966 Batman movie, being “good” actually was a factor with this movie, more so than any other Batman movie up to this point. An entire generation of fandom and millennials was introduced to Batman in the form of 1989’s Batman and started to develop their own standards of what constitutes as a good Batman flick.

Regardless of how you feel about Batman Returns, there’s no denying that this is a COMPLETELY different film than that of Burton’s original Batman flick. This is mostly because Tim Burton himself was giving much more creative freedom in this one as oppose to the first one. And because of that, people weren’t seemingly on board with a sequel that felt tonally different from the original and is what I believe led to audience members feeling completely unsure of what to think about it. However, just like with another certain sequel released back then that was different and practically “broke the rules” of the first one (*cough* Empire Strikes Back *cough*), many people have started to come around on it, so much so that some would even consider it the best Batman film ever made, even more so than The Dark Knight. As I mention before, the biggest reason this movie is completely worthy of being compared to that game-changing masterpiece that came out in 2008 is how it’s perfectly blends the story with multiple different viewpoints and knows that it’s just as much the Penguin’s and Catwoman’s (and to some extend Max Scherck) story as it is Batman’s. And it’s also realize the one hidden trait about Batman: that he is not only defined by who he is but also the villains that he pursues.

Similar to The Dark Knight, the central conflict is told through multiple different perspectives throughout the course of the film. You have the protagonist, Bruce Wayne/Batman, who despite being Batman for quite awhile now, seems to have lost himself and as a result, has become much more violent and crude with pursuing criminals. You have the antagonist, Oswald Cobblepot A.K.A. The Penguin, a sad, psychotic deranged man who was abandoned by his parents, raised by penguins, and plots for revenge against business man, Max Shreck after being cheated by him with his Red Triangle Circus gand. And then you have what could be considered either as another antagonist or as an anti-hero, Selina Kyle, A.K.A. Catwoman, a lonely secretary and the femme fatale, who gets a second lease on life after being nearly killed by Max Shreck thanks to the amazing power of kitty cats and plots revenge against Shreck by destroying him and his reputation. And lastly, there’s of course Max Shreck, the rich business man who everyone else has a complete vendetta against and wants to accomplish his goal of building a power plant in Gotham City.

What makes these four storylines with the villains mixed together so well is how cleverly it ties into the central conflict with Bruce Wayne as Batman. It smartly splits the traits of Batman into three separate characters. The Penguin represents the side of Batman that has seen/believe to be a freak and outcast from the rest of the world along with someone who was raised as an orphan and became accustomed to the animal-like resources he has based his entire identity on. The Catwoman shows the side of Batman as a vigilante and his psychological conflict within himself, which also make the two a perfect pairing for one another. And Max Shreck is the wealthy business man/industrialist that Bruce Wayne so desperately wants to be. These aspects and traits alone make this arguably the most personal conflict that Bruce has ever had to endure as Batman throughout any cinematic incarnation the character. Especially since unlike with most Batman movies, the film actually tries to make you sympathetic and understand them from an emotional standpoint, more so with Penguin and Catwoman, not so much with Max Shreck. This is what makes the stakes of the story all the more personal as Batman, as he is basically at war within himself by essentially fighting three separate versions of himself.

That is also why Batman technically killing people throughout the movie didn’t bother me, unlike some OTHER Batman movie which I will speak on later on this month. Because there is at least a reason behind from a thematic standpoint. It shows how at the beginning, despite Bruce Wayne still standing as the Batman, he’s in the middle of an identity crisis and basically starts to forget why he became the Batman. This is showcase in the first opening action scene with him where he lits a random criminal on fire with his Batmobile and also when he sets off a bomb that’s about to blow up on someone and just lets them die. This was an issue I had for some time with the movie but what makes me forgive it now is because the way it’s addressed in the form of Bruce’s overall central character arc. If you’re going to make Batman kill, give an ACTUAL reason for it! And that’s something that this movie does well. It may not spell it out for you through dialogue but through subtle references and imagery.

This is what also makes the relationship between Batman and Catwoman the most important part of the film and is quite frankly the absolute heart of the story. It’s through their time spent together with one another that both pairing starts to see a bleak shadow of their former selves and just how corrupt they’ve become on the inside. So much so that in their minds that they have lost a big part of themselves that they may never be able to find again. And there is no scene in the movie that perfectly conveys that more than the dance ball scene.

Throughout the years, many people have claimed that Bruce is being a hypocrite here for trying to stop Selina from killing Max because he’s killed people as well. However, the way I see it, this is Bruce basically realizing the monster he has become, the same monster that the Penguin have become along with the one that Selina is about to turn herself into. He realized the mistakes he has made throughout the film along with role as being a hero. What Bruce is doing here is trying to tell Selina to not become what he has turn into and don’t let the vigilante justice consume the good in you. The Penguin and Max Schreck had already been considered unredeemable in the monsters they’ve become but not with Batman and Catwoman yet. This is what makes the conflict so heartbreaking by the end as Batman is really the only one out of the four main characters that was able to stay sane.

By the end, Cobblepot’s own humanity was consumed and became the blood-thirsty wild animal he never truly wanted to be deep down. Despite his best efforts /intentions to be the best version of himself and showcasing that to the world by running for Mayor, the world (or mostly Batman) had other plans and led the Penguin to his inevitable fate. Selina’s journey ends with her realizing the hurt she has caused onto the world and herself and knows there’s no backing down from that. Which is why despite wanting to spend the rest of her life with Bruce, she knows the Catwoman side to her consumed the Selina Kyle side and there’s quite simply no going back from that. Max Scherck, the villain that despite not changing much throughout the course of the film, stands as the one person responsible for all the outcomes of the main characters. However, unlike films nowadays that will use a character like him to make himself responsible for everything bad happening in a contrived, convoluted plot way (see Blofeld in Spectre), this is showcased in a more thematically organic way that doesn’t bring down the rest of the film.

It’s only Bruce himself that was able to escape this whole endeavor keeping the absolute whole soul of himself. Unlike those that came before him, he was able to carry all the traits he had split up with the three antagonists back to him and remember who he is once again. Bruce had let the Batman side of him be the definite version of himself but now that’s only part of the equation. Bruce Wayne is just as much Batman as Batman is Bruce Wayne. It’s two sides of the same coin, two parts of himself without allowing one side overthrow the other. It’s a tragedy but by the end, he was still able to find that light at the end of the tunnel. Something that the Penguin, Max Scherck, and unfortunately Catwoman could not. He was able to feel whole again.

I will share my absolute final thoughts on Batman Returns once I finished Part II of the “Villains as good as the hero” section with The Dark Knight. But, nevertheless, I understand the depth and importance of this movie and it’s now something that I absolutely treasure. While I’m somewhat interested in seeing Michael Keaton reprise his role as Batman in the future with The Flash and the new Batgirl movie coming out later on down the road, I can’t imagine there being a more beautiful and interesting take on his version of Batman then with this movie.

Next time, however, I will take a look at the movie which despite not being my favorite movie with Batman in it, might just be the best actual Batman movie period with Batman: Mask of the Phantasm.