The Light Gives Way to the Dark

In 1989, Michael Keaton’s Batman said onscreen to Jack Nicholson’s Joker, “Ever dance by the devil in the pale moonlight?” Joker’s eyes widened, recognizing a signature line from an earlier time, before his face absorbed a blow from an angry Batman.

Tim Burton’s Batman, and this moment of cinema, was redemption of all of the shit I’d had to watch on television when the not-so-Dark Knight visited my cathode ray tube. Burton and Keaton rescued Batman, in one film, from the ridiculous 60’s Adam West and Super Friends Saturday morning cartoon versions to Matt Reeve’s in The Batman, which I just saw on an IMAX screen.

Batman was ridiculous to me as a child. That’s not entirely fair to say– I loved Batman. I loved the comic books. I used to get month-old comics for cheap with my dad at the Paperback Bookseller and the general store at the Ripicon Mall after a slice. Even clad in gray and blue, the comic book version of Batman was sullen, quiet, violent, and laser-focused on his mission. But on screen, he was ridiculous. I remember hating the Adam West show, wanting it to be something it never would be. The POOF and the PAZOW, the camera angles, the bright colors and direct lighting. It was better than nothing, but I hated it.

The Superfriends cartoon was more of the same. Batman was corny and unbelievable: he pulled all manner of things from his utility belt, a deus ex machinaaround his waist, complete with whatever might be needed at that moment to rescue him and the Super Friends from trouble. In one episode, he announced, “I’ll use the Bat Bazooka.” And from somewhere in the folds of his cape came a giant firearm, the likes of which would have made his moments-ago acrobatics impossible.

And the along came Michael Keaton’s Batman, in the Tim Burton film. Upon hearing that he had been cast for the role, I judged it a betrayal on par with Adam West’s ruination of the character: the long-awaited film casts a funny guy?

But Keaton was awesome. On Burton’s decision:

“A bat is this wild thing. I’d worked with Michael before and so I thought he would be perfect, because he’s got that look in his eye. It’s there in Beetlejuice. It’s like that guy you could see putting on a bat-suit; he does it because he needs to, because he’s not this gigantic, strapping macho man. It’s all about transformation. Then it started to make sense to me. All of a sudden the whole thing clicked, I could see the pointy ears; the image and the psychology all made sense. Taking Michael and making him Batman just underscored the whole split personality thing which is really what I think the movie’s about.”

Batman fans and critics can argue, but the ones worth watching were Burton’s two films, and all three of the Christopher Nolan/Christian Bale films. The others are not worth your time.

The World’s Greatest Detective(s)

The Batman is, at its heart, a detective story. We did’n’t need the origin story again, and so were spared it. There were tasteful and useful nods to it, but not once did the film dwell on the Crime Alley shooting that led to the Batman’s origin. Instead, the Wayne legacy takes a monied black eye, when John Turturro’s Carmine Falcone leans in and gives the orphaned Bruce Wayne a possible explanation for the killing. (Turturro, by the way, plays it like Pacino.)

The Batman’s Riddler taps into the zeitgeist; he’s a rabble-rousing conspiracy theorist, one who can, through force of persuasion and words, marshal a Kenosha, Wisconsin-esque militia of acolytes eager to bear–and fire–arms. As he admits himself, the Riddler lacks muscle, using his brains to inspire others to enact his agenda. This Riddler is a modern, timely take, ditching the corny cackle and bright colors for remote terrorism, shared using poorly captured video over a cell connection.

Pattison’s Batman, despite a prescient knowledge of all but one riddle, is classic early-era Frank Miller Batman: driven, able, but inexperienced and fallible. He is well equipped but a damaged recluse. Rather than a focused, single minded vigilantes of means, he is odd, unfamiliar with social interaction, and obsessed. He takes a lot of hits.

There are some cinematographically rivetting shots in The Batman: Batman narrowly escaping the police, grappling vertically up a central staircase while the police converge around the opening. He falters for moment in his escape, almost plunging to his doom before realizing he needs to activate his flight suit. In another scene, the Penguin (Oz, played by a physically transformed Colin Farrell) waddling in anger, having been cuffed at his ankles. I saw The Batman in an IMAX theater, and the appearance of the new Batmobile is announced by rumble that shakes and thumps. (I longed for my 2013 Mustang GT, in the shop for repairs, in that moment.) After a an explosive car chase on a dark and rainy highway, red lights squeezing through the murky dark, Batman swaggers up to Oz, who is suspended upside down in his car. With the grappling gun holster on his leg and the weighty clunk of his boots, he’s a cowboy. Near the finale, after Batman cuts the lights to “do it my way,” he takes down a squad of gunman in the inky dark, the battle illuminated only by bursts of syncopated gunfire.

If the movie has a weak spot, it’s the finale, the final bit of chaos the Riddler has sown. In this, the Batman is again tricked; he is never one step ahead of the Riddler. The New Yorker’s Richard Brody didn’t like the film, especially the ending:

Again avoiding spoilers, the Riddler doesn’t only target individual high-level miscreants in Gotham but decides that the entire city deserves to go down with them. (The possibilities, with its Biblical implications, are endless—and remain untapped.) When his monstrous scheme is unleashed, crowd scenes conjure mass destruction as a plot point, the staggering loss of life as a generic and inchoate jumble.

But otherwise? It’s a great story. Long, but great.