Joel Schumacher and Val Kilmer took over for Burton and Keaton, and what we got in return was a Batman movie that actually cared more about Batman than the villains. It’s a good thing too, since the outcry over Batman Returns’ violent, imagery and innuendo led to studio demands for a lighter, more family-friendly Batman movie. The extent to which Michael Keaton’s Bruce Wayne works through his own traumas while overcoming these adversaries makes him a happier and healthier businessman and crimefighter when Batman Forever rolls around. Batman Returns is a dark fairy tale horror story of a Batman movie, meaning it wasn’t that far off from the more foreboding (and also not appropriate for five-year-olds) comics of its day. Yes, all three villains represented potential “darkest timeline” personas and cautionary tales for Bruce Wayne and Batman, while offering ahead of its time pollical satire that now feels dated due to the whole “Gotham actually turns against the Penguin once he’s exposed” plot turn. Ditto Daniel Waters’ screenplay, which lowered the onscreen carnage but upped the gore, sexual innuendo and “disturbing imagery” to the point where it traumatized children and their parents nationwide.īatman Returns pitted a truly tormented Batman (whose Bruce Wayne persona has essentially faded from view) against Michelle Pfeiffer’s vindictive and uncaged Catwoman (murderous vigilante), Danny DeVito’s vile and anti-social Penguin (a vengeful, bitter orphan) and Chris Walken’s psychopathic Max Schreck (a heartless corporate tycoon). Strange’s mutated monsters weren’t just going to kill hundreds of people without a second thought) but the bloodshed was harsher and more personal.
Alan Grant’s stories were less violent (Dr.
The books of that time were deeply introspective and explicitly psychological, while also offering (courtesy of Norm Breyfogle) stark and sometimes horrific imagery. But if Batman was an ode to the pre-World War II (and pre-Comics Code) Dark Knight stories, then Burton’s truly ghoulish Batman Returns was both “full Burton” and a pretty accurate reflection of the late 1980’s/early 1990’s comics of the era.
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