Is it Just me?
Or is Returns the best Batman movie?
For some, it’s Tim Burton’s pop-culture smash Batman (1989). For most, it’s Christopher Nolan’s reality-rubbing The Dark Knight (2008). For me, though, the Bat movie with wings is Burton’s $80m sequel Batman Returns (1992). I mean, how not to love a blockbuster so dark and sexually depraved that it caused McDonald’s to shut down its Happy Meal promotion?
Declaring the notion of a Batman sequel as “the most dumbfounded idea”, Burton was made a producer and granted creative control by Warner Bros in order to secure his services. He immediately brought in Heathers scribe Daniel Waters to rework the script, which balances three oh-so-memorable villains – Danny DeVito’s grotesque Penguin, Michelle Pfeiffer’s sharptongued Catwoman, and Christopher Walken’s megalomaniac mogul Max Shreck, named after the Nosferatu actor – while still finding time to probe the tortured psychology of Bruce Wayne (a returning Michael Keaton).
The closest any Batman film has got to Bob Kane’s original comic strips, Batman Returns is blacker-than-black and bullishly bonkers, somehow managing to be fun, camp and deeply disturbing all at once. Bo Welch’s grandiose production design collides fascist architecture with the structures of the World’s Fair (a statement in itself), while Burton’s helter-skelter angles and smothering shadows reference German Expressionism.
A few CG bats aside, this is, for all its crazed designs and imagination, the real deal, with a half-million-gallon water tank dominating the Penguin’s lair, and hundreds of tuxedoed birds
– some robotic and crafted by Stan Winston, some men-in-suits, many real – waddling around with rockets on their backs. Sure, Justice League took a sly pop at exactly this, but that movie boasts not one ounce of Returns’ wit and creativity.
So while I, like most, greatly admire The Dark Knight’s post-9/11 terror tactics and Heath Ledger’s incendiary Joker, I favour Burton’s dementedly swooping camera, DeVito’s Richard III with an umbrella, Pfeiffer’s feminist icon and Walken’s bullshitting, power-hungry, proto-Trump businessman. This is a stunningly realised world that is both Batman’s and Burton’s, full of misfits, horror and pathos. Or is it just me? Share your reaction at www.gamesradar. com/totalfilm or on Facebook and Twitter.