Batman Returns 1992

7.4/10. Batman Returns is a firm step up from the Batman film that precedes it, but it’s also a firm step away from the character’s source material and toward Burton’s ethos and aesthetic. Batman’s no killing code has been scrapped; his enemies’ backstories and personalities have been changed, and major foils are invented for the film out of whole cloth. But at the same time, Burton creates his own imaginative world from these comic book inputs, one that fits with his penchant for collections of oddballs, gothic imagery, and protagonist and antagonists who are equally fractured in their own ways. It produces an enjoyable and original film, albeit one that is more Burton than Batman, and which can’t sustain its unique energy through the third act.

The film’s greatest success is the relationship it portrays between Batman and Catwoman. True to Burton’s style, both Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle carry their own particular damage, and that makes them attracted to each other, in-costume and out. Returns not only has the decency to take the time to write off Vicki Vale from the last film, but does so in a way that dovetails nicely into why Catwoman makes more sense for Batman as a love interest. Bruce describes the problem with his past relationship as stemming from there being “two truths” to him, with those being hard to reconcile. But though Bruce doesn’t know it, Selina is uniquely positioned to understand that, to be able to reconcile the idea of who he is in the boardroom and on the rooftops of Gotham.

So when the two of them make reciprocal excuses to Alfred for why they have to cut their date short, while attempting to smooth things over out of fear of losing someone electrifying, the point is clear -- these two people are insane, each racing off to confront in The Penguin’s maelstrom of terror, but it’s the same type of insanity, one that makes them enemies in one world and inexorably attracted to one another in the other. The film uses the dramatic irony of the audience knowing Bruce and Selina’s alter egos, while the characters do not, to blur those lines nicely.

The peak of this is the charged moment when Bruce and Selina are dancing together at the masquerade ball, and as is appropriate for such a gathering, the masks start to slip. A line of repeated dialogue changes their sharp-edged flirtation to a revelation of who each of them becomes when the sun goes down. The push-and-pull of that, whether Bruce Wayne can have a real life, a real love, apart from his Dark Knight mission, and whether anyone who would love or understand him would be healthy, or whether it would just further fuel his own issues, is a venerable area to explore with the character. For all that Burton departs from the source, his realization of that idea here gives Returns a complexity and a tragedy that warrants inclusion in the pantheon of examinations of The Bat.

Batman Returns is also, somewhat oddly for its genre, a very sexual film. The obvious fulcrum for that quality is Catwoman herself, who slinks around in a skintight outfit, trades innuendos with Batman, and isn’t shy about getting physical in her own feline way. Though Selina Kyle starts out timid and unlucky in love, her trauma and cat-transformation turns her into a confident, powerful, sexual being. It’s hard to tell how much of Catwoman’s persona works as liberation and how much of it is mere titillation, but it’s a distinctive ingredient in the film.

But she’s not alone. Danny Devito’s Penguin is every bit the antithesis to Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman in terms of conventional standards of attractiveness, and yet he too is (at least an attempted) sexual being here. Oswald Cobblepot is a letch, groping supporters, lusting after Catwoman, and turning bitter when his advances are rejected. There’s an undercurrent of sexual desire, even in the comparatively repressed Batman, that’s firmly present throughout.

Even when he’s not making offhand comments about female staffers, Devito’s penguin vamps it up with reckless abandon. Taking a page out of Nicholson’s book from the prior installment of the franchise, Devito goes full ham as the menacing former circus freak, abandoned to the sewers by his parents. There’s a mild tragedy to Penguin, a child of privilege left to neglect by the people who should have cared for him. Despite the loving farewell he receives, there’s little humanity in this version of The Penguin, a character who is instead filled with snarling threats and duplicitous come ons. Occasionally, it’s too much, but for the most part, the performance fits with the outsized world Burton has full control over in this sequel relative to its predecessor.

Penguin is just one of the four main characters of the film who are emblematic of the theme of duality that runs throughout the film. For him, that comes to the fore in his mayoral campaign. The political commentary of Batman Returns is mild and shallow--only stooping so far as to note that politicians may not always be on the up-and-up and that the public can be swayed by propaganda--but it’s in keeping with the motif of the idea that people are different in public than in private.

Penguin is a magnanimous media darling in the papers, but is exposed for being the brutish wretch he truly is, full of resentments and anger at a city he feels is his birthright denied. Max Shreck (Christopher Walken, in his natural habitat) is a generous Gotham magnate when in the public eye, but behind closed doors, he conspires with Penguin and attempts to strongarm the political machine to favor his business interest, even resorting to casual murder when necessary. And both Batman and Catwoman lead double lives, destined to struggle to serve each of them and have some semblance of normalcy in the balance.

All that thematic intrigue, however, falls apart in the third act when Burton, having realized he’s thrown so much into the air, can’t quite figure out how to make everything land properly. Instead, he offers a bizarre climax with rocket-strapped penguins, a thematically appropriate but odd Moses-inspired revenge scheme, all four major characters converging and disappearing at convenient moments, with deaths, fake outs, and explosions that feel straight off the standard Hollywood assembly line. The narrative choices are strange at best, and incoherent at worst, and the whole thing is an unsatisfying capper to a film that otherwise manages to hold the audience’s attention throughout.

It all feels very Burton-y though. The combination of a yuletide setting and a gothic aesthetic would be further realized by Burton and Returns composer Danny Elfman in The Nightmare Before Christmas. The fractured oddities, looking for acceptance or peace in a world that doesn’t quite know what to make of them, is a recurring motif in his work. And even the film’s arch sense of humor, though sometimes cheesy, feels true to his other films. Batman Returns is more of Burton grafting the Batman mythos onto his own sensibilities than the other way around, a choice that both helps and hurts the film, but which makes it unique among superhero movies, offering an off-kilter holiday classic for the mildly deranged child in all of us.

"Batman Returns" is much less of a Batman movie than it is a Tim Burton movie. After the first movie's success, Burton gets carried away by the Christmas spirit of "Edward Scissorhands", and applies the same gothic-pop fairytale tropes and aesthetics to the Batman franchise. Who cares if the Penguin was just a regular fat dude? Let's turn him into a mutant with a full-blown circus freakshow. Who cares if Batman is supposed to be the protagonist? Let's keep him in the background for the whole first half of the movie. Choices that I loved, but that definitely pissed off the fans of the comic books.

Even though I liked the somber and smoky atmosphere of the first "Batman," you can really feel that Burton poured all his imagination and passion into the film. While being the Batman film I have enjoyed the less as a child, it's at the same time the one whose images have kept lingering in my mind for decades. Needless to say, I wasn't possibly old enough to even grasp the whole parable of the outcasts being victims of our society. Unfortunately, the writing is still quite flimsy, although more ambitious and elaborate than the first movie. I am not sure if the silly jokes and gags are due to Burton's campy sensibility or the screenwriters' poor sense of humor.

Very little worked for me in this film. Where Tim Burton's first outing with the caped crusader at least had Jack Nicholson's Joker to carry me through the dated special effects and overly cartoony elements, this film doesn't find that success with Danny Devito's Penguin. I was just not a fan of the character design or performance. Too over the top. Particularly grating was his near constant superfluous grunts and groans, which tainted nearly every scene he was in. Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman was also a misfire for me, with the transition from put upon secretary to unhinged, impressively acrobatic, leather clad vigilante generating some serious eye rolls. Her conflict with Batman also felt manufactured (or at the very least it was forgettable given that I can't even remember what the source of conflict was only a week after watching the film). The only new character that worked for me was Christopher Walken's seedy, corporate overlord, Max Shreck. He has some solid dialogue and Walken rarely disappoints. Unfortunately, his performance is wasted sharing the screen with all of the over-the-top goofiness that makes up the majority of the film. All in all, I highly doubt your average modern audience member is going to find much to enjoy here. I know I didn't.

Some how the reviews are better than the first film. This sequel had to grow on me as I am sure it had to on many at the time of its release.
I remember on talk shows, this movie was compared to the My Girl surprise. Where you don’t go in expecting Macaulay Culkin to die. With this I guess, the audience didn’t expect it to be so dark.
I suppose even the reviews went up in the years due to there being far darker movies these days. Especially since even this movie is better executed and has more humor than Batman v Superman.
Though I still don’t get how it has higher reviews than the first 1989 film. Maybe because while making Batman, Burton admits in the film commentary. That he didn’t even know why he was having a Batman and Joker final confrontation at the church.
With this film the final confrontation makes sense more. Batman actually has to stop the Penguin from killing babies…. In the 1989 film, Batman is just stopping the Joker from dancing with Vickie Vale and then getting away on a helicopter ??
Still the Penguin’s death is disappointing in this film. The Penguin’s angry plot to take out his bad childhood on everyone. Is pretty much the same as the Joker wanting to put smiles on everyone’s face. Since he is really unhappy that he is stuck looking how he does.

If Tim Burton was on a studio leash with 1989's Batman, he's been completely unchained for this one. The entire film drips with the director's influence, from the eerie set decorations and twisted fairy tale atmosphere (characteristic black and white stripes abound) to the oddball cameos (dig Pee-Wee Herman and his Big Adventure co-star Simone as the Penguin's parents) and hypnotic Danny Elfman score. Throw in a heavily-costumed Danny DeVito, overacting his heart out as a creepy, deformed, sewer-dwelling foil and Christopher Walken, doing his most wild-eyed, exaggerated Christopher Walken impression, and you've got... a mystifying ensemble, to say the least. Elsewhere, Michelle Pfeiffer turns in the film’s most memorable performance as an unhinged secretary-turned-feline and leading man Michael Keaton once again plays a supporting role in his own movie, greatly troubled by all the unbridled insanity unfolding around him.

In many ways, Batman Returns goes out of its way to distance itself from its predecessor, while still trying to ape the bleak atmosphere and sheer quotability of the original. Those tricks don't work half as well this time, feeling more like a forced obligation than a natural eccentricity. Maybe the writing team lost its spark, or maybe DeVito, Pfeiffer and Keaton can't put as much sheen on a silly line as Jack Nicholson could. Whatever the cause, this one underperforms. Mesmerizing for all the weirdness, amusing for its litany of quirks, but a little too out-there and nonsensical for its own good.