Superman: The Movie not only basically invented the superhero genre but showed what a smash such a film could be. Until X-Men gave rise to hordes of new superheroes on the silver screen at the start of this millennium, the only two real franchises were Superman’s and that of his rival, both in the comics and in movies.
Each one lasted four installments and each one had two installments considered great, one considered a terrible film that butchered what was great about the first two, and one considered quite simply among the worst movies ever made.
Last year, for whatever reason, Fathom chose to focus on the 40th anniversary of Superman: The Movie instead of the 80th anniversary of the character and only showed the first film. This year, for whatever reason, Fathom chose to focus on the 80th anniversary of the character Batman instead of the 30th anniversary of the first film and is showing all four of that series. The timing worked out perfectly as far as my getting to add vintage Batman movies to this series.
Will I do all four? I don’t think I’ll have the stomach for it. I’m kind of curious because I never watched Batman and Robin due to its atrocious reviews and I’ve heard it’s a “so bad it’s funny” movie. However, then I would also need to rewatch Batman Forever for the sake of completeness. I watched it when it first came out on video and was as unimpressed as anyone else, and now I don’t feel like giving it another chance because I’ve realized that I don’t even like the first one.
There, I said it. I remember liking Batman as a child when it first came out. I’d been waiting all summer to watch it, ever since I saw the majestically dark teaser TV spot. Once I actually sat in the theater for it I was blown away by the dark production design and cinematography, years before I’d ever actually heard those terms. This film came on the heels of The Dark Knight Returns, legendary comic book writer Frank Miller’s seminal reimagining of Batman that turned him into the brooding hero we love – a far cry from what was in the (in)famous 60s show – and stayed 100% true to that spirit. No better mind could have brought it to life than Tim Burton’s with his limitless imagination and his loving attention to detail.
So what went wrong? It can all be traced to The Joker. I know, that’s sacrilege because he’s what people love most about this film, but bear with me. People who have seen the disturbingly manic Joker as played by Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight or as voiced by Mark Hamill in Batman: The Animated Series know what would be true to the comic book form. Nicholson is playing himself playing The Joker. Really, what’s the point of the clown makeup even? He actually looks scarier without it in the scenes after his character’s accident.
Still, I expressed admiration for Nicholson in literally my most recent post and a film with him terrorizing a bleak metropolis can still be great, especially with these visuals. So let’s dig deeper.
He doesn’t even get particularly interesting stuff to do. There’s a vague plot about corruption in the city, followed by The Joker doing a bunch of sadistic things.
Notice I have yet to mention Batman himself? That’s not an oversight. Michael Keaton is given virtually nothing interesting to do other than play straight man to Nicholson. I recently shared the adage that you can’t have a great hero without a great villain; well the opposite is true also. Even if this film were true to the comics’ Joker (a far more interesting character than any real-world person could be, even Jack Nicholson) Batman is such a bore here there would be nothing driving the conflict.
To be fair, Batman does get to do one cool thing – make out with Vicky Vale, played by the astonishingly gorgeous Kim Basinger. I actually found myself thinking “I know things didn’t work out with Alec Baldwin; is she still single?”
As an eight-year-old watching this for the first time, I didn’t care about pretty girls though. Not even blondes. Actually when my older sister later asked me “Wasn’t Vicky Vale beautiful?” I didn’t so much as remember a girl being in the movie, LOL. I still liked Batman enough that I was excited when this became the rare movie available for consumers to purchase on VHS. Not that my family needed to – I went with the free way of owning movies by using a second VCR to copy from the rental tape onto a blank one 😉 Point is, I watched it again on video and liked it then too.
However, now all the years of being a cinephile has made me a much more discerning viewer, particularly relevant in this case because I have seen so many other comic book movies – I just reviewed the entire MCU! I actually got bored rewatching Batman – I wondered how it was so popular back in the day. I talked about how the adoration of the original Spider-Man film was probably due to the character’s previous lack of representation and how that movie is vastly inferior to Spider-Man: Homecoming. By the same token, I wonder if the original Batman movie was so popular because we hasn’t previously seen that character – or any superhero other than Superman – in a feature film. In a world where the infinitely better Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy exists there’s no need to dig up these old four.
To give you an idea of how NOT discerning I was as an eight-year-old, the following year I watched Superman IV: The Quest for Peace and liked it. Pay attention to my recommendation now instead and skip this film.
Up next: Its sequel.
Bottom line: Don’t bother. Just a Jack Nicholson clown show instead of a Batman film.
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