Batman (1989 film)

Batman is an American Academy Award-winning superhero film based on the DC Comics character Batman created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger. It is the first entry in the original four-part Batman film series, the first directed by Tim Burton and the first to star Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne/Batman. It also starred Jack Nicholson as the Joker. Inspired by the original work of Finger and Kane from the late thirties and forties and also by the darker Batman comics of the 1980s (including the work of Frank Miller and Alan Moore), the film moved the franchise toward Batman's dark roots and away from the campy 1960s interpretation of the character.

Plot
Approaching its 200th anniversary, Gotham City's leaders fear that the high level of criminal activity will deter citizens from attending the celebrations. Gotham's mayor William Borg orders District Attorney Harvey Dent to make the city safe again, in hopes of revitalizing local business. Dent, in turn, targets mob boss Carl Grissom, who sponsors much of the criminal activity within Gotham and has paid off a significant segment of the police force.

Meanwhile, a dark vigilante dressed as a bat has attracted the attention of both the police and the local media. Newspaper reporter Alexander Knox is attempting to investigate, but his questions are deflected by skeptical cops, including Lt. Eckhardt, one of many police officers on the take from Grissom. After stonewalling Knox, Eckhardt is shown taking a payoff from Grissom's second in command, Jack Napier.

Grissom, on discovering that his mistress is involved with Napier, sets him up to be killed by Eckhardt in a raid on Axis Chemicals. The plot is foiled by the arrival of Police Commissioner James Gordon, who wants Napier taken alive, and Batman. Batman captures Napier, but releases him when Bob the Goon holds Gordon hostage at gunpoint. Batman vanishes, and in the confusion, Napier shoots and kills Eckhardt, then attempts to shoot a re-emerged Batman. The latter deflects his shot, sending shrapnel into the former's face. Napier falls over a railing into a vat of chemicals, presumably to his death. Although surrounded by the police, Batman escapes the scene.

Batman, as we discover, is actually billionaire industrialist Bruce Wayne, an orphan who lives alone in the large mansion Wayne Manor, with only his butler Alfred Pennyworth in attendance. At a fundraising party, Bruce meets and falls for famous photojournalist Vicki Vale, recently arrived in town to cover the "Bat Man phenomenon."

Napier, in the meantime, is not dead but horribly disfigured, with white skin, green hair, and a permanent grin (after a botched reconstructive surgery attempt). Already erratic, the trauma has apparently driven him completely insane. Calling himself "The Joker", he kills Grissom and usurps his criminal empire. His first scheme is to spread terror in the city by creating hygiene products that can kill by fatal hilarity when used in certain combinations, laced with a deadly chemical known as "Smylex." Following the death of a news anchor on-air, the city becomes paralyzed with fear. Making war on several fronts, the Joker then sets a trap at the Gotham Museum of Art for Vicki, with whom he has become smitten; his fellows start to slash and deface the entire legacy of Western Art, but as one of them approaches to Francis Bacon's Figure with Meat, the Joker stops him saying "I kinda like this one". Batman intervenes and saves Vicki, to whom he then gives the secret of the Joker's chemical combinations. Batman renders her unconscious, and she awakes at home. Incensed at Batman eluding him while taking Vale and ruining his poisoning scheme, the Joker vows to eliminate the mysterious vigilante for interfering with his plans.

Vicki's apartment is then the scene of a confrontation between the Joker, who has come to woo her, and Bruce, who has come to try and confess about his double-life but not getting very far. After Bruce challenges the Joker to a fight, the Joker pulls a gun and asks him: "Tell me something, friend. Have you ever danced with the devil by the pale moonlight?" He then shoots Bruce. The Joker then leaves amid his own hoopla, and Vicki is shocked to see that Bruce has disappeared, leaving behind only a metal platter which he used as an impromptu bulletproof vest.

That confrontation confirmed for Bruce that the Joker is actually the man who murdered his parents many, many years ago in Gotham. The final clue was that his parents' murderer said the same phrase to him as The Joker said in Vicki's apartment ("Ever dance with the Devil by the pale moonlight?"). As Bruce grapples with this memory, he is shocked by the sudden appearance of Vicki in the Bat Cave; Alfred having decided that she deserved to know the truth.

The Joker has put his own plans in motion to upstage the city's canceled anniversary celebrations with a grand spectacle: a nighttime parade at which he will dispense $20 million in free cash. Vicki and Knox are there to cover the pandemonium, and they notice strange tanks on the balloons. In the middle of his generosity, the Joker begins gassing the crowd. Batman arrives in his bat-shaped jet and snatches the balloons away to carry them out of the city. Furious, the Joker shoots Bob the Goon, his number one thug. Batman returns to make a strafing run on the Joker, who responds by shooting down the jet with an insanely long-barreled revolver. Vicki approaches the downed craft but is captured by the Joker, who leads her to the top of Gotham Cathedral. Dazed but not finished, Batman pursues. At the top of the cathedral, the two adversaries confront each other in single combat.

In a moment of opportunity, the Joker pulls Batman and Vicki off the belfry, where they cling to the ledge for their lives. The Joker's helicopter appears and he grabs hold of a dangling ladder, about to escape. Batman shoots a wire around the Joker's leg, connecting it to a stone gargoyle on the ledge. As the Joker is lifted away, the wire pulls the gargoyle loose and he plummets to his death.

The movie ends with Commissioner Gordon announcing the Gotham police have arrested all the Joker's gang remnants who were not killed by Batman, and unveiling the Bat-Signal supplied by Batman with a note promising to return if the city needs him.

Cast

 * Michael Keaton as Batman/Bruce Wayne
 * Jack Nicholson as Jack Napier/the Joker
 * Kim Basinger as Vicki Vale
 * Robert Wuhl as Alexander Knox
 * Pat Hingle as Commissioner James Gordon
 * Billy Dee Williams as Harvey Dent
 * Michael Gough as Alfred Pennyworth
 * Jack Palance as Carl Grissom
 * Jerry Hall as Alicia Hunt
 * Tracey Walter as Bob the Goon
 * Lee Wallace as Mayor William Borg
 * William Hootkins as Lt. Max Eckhardt

Casting Batman
Tim Burton said that he chose Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne/Batman because he thought he could play a dark, tortured Batman and a serious Bruce Wayne. Some people thought that Keaton wasn't built enough for the role of Batman and that he couldn't play a serious because of his comedic roles in the past. However, before shooting Batman, Keaton worked out for two months and spent some time kickboxing with the help of his stunt double. In spite of Keaton's being cast, Alec Baldwin and Charlie Sheen were also considered for the role.

Influences
The tone and themes of the film were influenced in part by Alan Moore's Batman: The Killing Joke and Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. The early Batman comics from late thirties and forties were also an influence. There are also notable similarities to Beauty and the Beast and The Phantom of the Opera. The climax is an homage to Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

Reaction
When the film was approved for production, there was considerable fan concern that it would emulate the farcical parodying tone of the 1960s Batman television series starring Adam West, concerns that seemed even more worrying after the casting of Michael Keaton (who was, at that time, known for his comedic acting) in the title role. To quell the concern, a rushed teaser trailer was released to prove the film would be more faithful to the original comic books.

The teaser trailer became so popular that many purchased movie tickets simply to see the trailer. The positive reaction to the trailer inspired a buzz that entered the general popular culture as t-shirts with the Batman symbol sold in large numbers in the weeks before the movie's premiere.

Despite the early worries, the film became the most successful of 1989 and received praise from many Batman readers, especially those who had read the Frank Miller stories that inspired it. Furthermore, Keaton changed many doubters' minds about his casting to become hailed as one of the best actors to play the title role. Critical reaction was mostly positive, with many praising the film for its set design and production value, while others panned it as being too much of an intellectual exercise for Burton and too little of a Batman movie. Roger Ebert gave the film two stars (out of four), remarking, "'Batman' is a triumph of design over story, style over substance - a great-looking movie with a plot you can't care much about." Hal Hinson of the Washington Post gave a more enthusiastic review calling the film "Dark, haunting and poetic."

Despite a mostly positive reaction, many comic book fans took issue with some aspects of the storyline, though, especially the fact that Batman killed Joker's henchmen, while in comics he only acted like that in early issues and was soon established as a superhero that doesn't kill. Many fans also complained that the Joker was portrayed as the killer of Bruce's parents, while in the comics it was an ordinary thug. One of the movie´s screenwriters, Sam Hamm, even claimed, during an interview for the movie´s Special Edition DVD, that the only reason why he didn´t protest against that decision was that he was participating in a writers´ strike at the time. Some fans, however, thought the idea helped to further establish the parallel between the two characters.

Robin was originally written into the earliest drafts of the script. His introduction would take place in the latter portion of the second act, during a chase between Batman and the Joker and his thugs, in which the thugs drive into a local flea market. At the market, the flying Graysons are performing their acrobatic skills to a large crowd. The cars crash through the area, causing the hundreds of people to run away in fear. The Joker's car hits a pole that the Graysons are standing on and causes them to fall off, killing all except one: Robin. Robin joins in the chase screaming "You killed my parents!". At the end of the chase Batman comforts him. This idea was mainly disliked, and rewrites would later remove Robin from the script entirely. The preproduction storyboards for the sequence can be seen on the 2-disc Special Edition DVD.

Box Office
Batman opened in 2,194 cinemas in North America. In its opening weekend, it grossed $40,489,746, which, at the time of its release, was a record. The film ended its theatrical run with $251,188,924, and was not only the biggest moneymaker of the year, but was also the fifth highest-grossing film of all time.

The film's total worldwide box office gross is $411,348,924, which is about $680 million in 2006 dollars. It is, to date, the most financially successful Batman movie.

Batman was the first UK film to be given a '12' certificate.

Awards & nominations
Batman won an Academy Award for Best Art Direction/Set Decoration (awarded to Anton Furst and Peter Young), making it the only Batman film to win an Oscar as yet. It was also nominated for a Golden Globe, two Grammys and several BAFTAs.

Home Video
The film was first released on VHS, Betamax, and Laserdisc in 1989.

The film's first release on DVD was in late 1997, shortly after the format debuted; it was a single disc release featuring the ability to watch the film either in widescreen or in full-screen but not featuring any bonus materials, save for sparse production notes and cast info. On top of that, the scene selection menu was a nightmare, with random scenes picked for the menu whilst the rest were left out.

To coincide with the release of Batman Begins on DVD in 2005, Warner Brothers decided to give all four of the original Batman films new DVD treatments and special edition versions of all four films were created. The special edition DVDs feature newly restored audio and video, a re-mastered Dolby Digital audio track, a new DTS audio track, and a second disc filled with bonus materials. Each title is available both individually and as part of a pack featuring the special editions of all four films in the franchise.

Soundtrack
There were two albums released in conjunction with Batman. The first was an album by Prince featuring songs from the film (including "Batdance") and others inspired by it. It is considered the official soundtrack album.

The second album features the original score by composer Danny Elfman. According to the DVD Special Edition, Elfman says that Jon Peters was not sure about him as a composer until Burton made him play the main titles. The theme score, however, went on to become an incredibly iconic piece. It also served as the basis for the theme tune to Batman: The Animated Series, which premiered in 1992 although the theme tune was later retooled.