While the films in the Batman cycle speak powerfully for themselves, the reception of the films – and the resulting commentary – go a long way toward showing the different culture in which the movies were made, and which they reflect. In 1965, when the original Batman: The Movie came out, the focus was on action and humor. A review from the time (Variety Staff) indicated that the film is “packed with action, clever sight gags, interesting complications and goes all out on bat with batmania” (Variety Staff, web). The reviewers also noticed that the “script retrieves every trick from the highly popular teleseries’ oatbag, adding a few more sophisticated touches” (Variety Staff, web) should indicate to the prescient reader that it is “nearly impossible to attempt to relate plot” (Variety Staff, web). A viewing of that film shows that this is camp to the nth degree. While the more modern iterations have pitted the Dynamic Duo against one or two villains (such as the Joker in Batman and the Penguin and Catwoman in Batman Returns), this initial movie in the pantheon features all of the big ones at once: Catwoman, The Penguin, The Riddler, and the Joker, who have united to attempt nothing less than world conquest. Later iterations, of course, go for much less (Jack Nicholson’s Joker, for example, just wants to run the gang action in Gotham City). This early movie has all of the fun of the movie, exploded onto the screen as plot after plot unfolds against Batman and Robin, and the action becomes increasingly unreal. Instead, the primary contrast is that of “the intense innocent enthusiasm” of the villains and the “innocent calm” of Batman and Robin (Variety Staff, web). Note that the word “innocent” appears on both sides of this diabolical gulf. In later movies, that word would likely appear on neither side of the equation. In the 1960s, this was all in good fun, but Batman’s later incarnations would be much darker.
The milieu of the Tim Burton Batman films is dark and murky, instantly a sign that much has changed since the camp era. “At street levels, gray and anonymous people scurry fearfully through the shadows, and the city cancels its 200th anniversary celebration because the streets are not safe enough to hold it” (Ebert, web). Even when things are at their worst in Batman: The Movie, the air is still light and almost comic. Here, though, there is black and shadow and fog everywhere. Perhaps it makes sense, then, that “Nicholson’s Joker is really the most important character in the movie in impact and screen time” (Ebert, web). Things have darkened to the point where the city might actually look to the Joker for protection, at least as the headlines and the Joker’s own television announcements indicate – perhaps a Trump for their time.
When Burton got around to making a sequel, reviewers almost quailed at the prospect, indicating that it was the 1989 film’s “sour, cynical spirit and its taste for smirking sadism” (Maslin, web) that made it take three years for the film to open. While Batman Returns has much less of the “dourness and tedium” (Maslin, web) that marked much of the 1989 film, the direction is not back toward the comic and the camp but further in, towards that place in the id where the demons that roiled inside of the woman who would take on the persona of a cat and a lost child who was taken in by penguins could even come to exist. So while the film lightens from its predecessor’s black, it does not get any lighter than gray, and the journey is just as confusing, twisting and turning inside the tunnels that lead us from the present day to Bedlam (or, perhaps better said, Arkham).
Batman Forever and Batman and Robin represent a slight turn in the franchise back toward the camp and away from the dark and dreary. The pairing of Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey as Two-Face and The Riddler in Batman Forever is comic and a bit lighter from the previous two movies that had ”tried for a marriage of superheroes and film noir” (Ebert, web). Because “the message of noir is that there are no heroes” (Ebert, web), the thinking was that these two films would move the series back to entertainment rather than introspection. The problem for reviewers is that “Batman remains shadowy and undefined” (Ebert, web). How well, one wonders, is Adam West’s Batman defined? In the camp era, it is difficult to say that any character is any more well defined than a hired entertainer at a children’s birthday party, so expecting anything of substance when the series turns back to camp is going to be a disappointment.
And so Batman and Robin takes the viewer back to the spirit of the first film, “a wild campy costume party of a movie and the first Batman to suggest that somewhere in Gotham City there might be a Studio 54” (Maslin, web). The “nonstop glitter” (Maslin, web) is akin to the nonstop plotting in the 1965 film, and the fact that this film gets harpooned by reviewers while the 1965 edition was widely celebrated indicates the shift in the culture. The public did not want campy entertainment anymore, and indeed George Clooney even apologized for almost destroying the whole franchise (Kendrick).
All of this brings us, of course, to the Christopher Nolan trilogy, which represent a “postmodern, post-Sept. 11 epic of ambivalent good versus multidimensional evil” (Dargis, web). To be sure, the cycle of Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises comes to an end with a blast of light, but it is an uneasy rest. It included Batman taking the blame for the end of Harvey Dent, and turning into an eerie doppelgaenger of Howard Hughes by the beginning of the third film. This is not the Batman who joyfully became partners with Robin to fight the Riddler. Instead, this is a man in need of a therapist once again, showing us that Michael Keaton’s Batman may simply have come a couple of decades early. Bale’s Batman undergoes a lot less introspection, though, replacing it with a gush of emotion that rages more than reflects, but the rage roils on and on in the self, with the idea that eventually it will dissipate itself. Luckily, Batman is finally able to solve Bane, and there is a bit of a turn toward collaboration in the solving of problems, but the dark cloud that the sunny end seems to dissipate is not really gone. Instead, it is the cloud that, at least in the American pantheon, has become the sky.
Works Cited
Dargis, Manohila. “A Rejected Superhero Ends up at Ground Zero.” The New
York Times 18 July 2012. Web. 1 May 2016.
Ebert, Roger. “Batman.” RogerEbert.com. 23 June 1989. Web. 1 May 2016.
Ebert, Roger. “Batman Forever.” RogerEbert.com. 16 June 1995. Web. 1 May
2016.
Kendrick, Ben. “George Clooney Apologizes for Ruining Batman.” Screen Rant 9
October 2014. Web. 1 May 2016.
Maslin, Janet. “Holy Iceberg! Dynamic Duo vs Mr. Freeze” New York Times 20
June 1997. Web. 1 May 2016.
Maslin, Janet. “Review/Film: Batman Returns; A Sincere Bat, a Sexy Cat and a Bad
Bird.” New York Times 19 June 1992. Web. 1 May 2016.
Variety Staff. “Review: Batman” Variety 31 December 1965. Web. 1 May 2016.
