The Burton Batman movies are about as bad as the Schumacher ones...

[John Moores]

A light hearted Batman movie thread, eh? A much needed antitote to what's been goin on.

My vote has gotta be that Burton slightly has the edge on Schumacher, but it's all a pile of shit. Except for, like, three minutes of the first one (electric joy buzzer, of course, plus creepy mimes). Burton has that Gothic, Ronald Searle type thing going on all the time (seriously, all his movies look the fuckin same), and seems like a douche to boot, but yet he gets hosanna'd to the stars whereas Schumacher rightly is called a hack. I say thee nay! All four Batman movies suck. And since it was fun many moons ago to do the "20 things that suck about Superman II" - a film I like - I think it's fun, fun, fun to compile a similar light-hearted ho ho I can't stop with the laughing list that I call:

"Twenty Things that suck about the Burton Batman movie (because doing the last two is like shooting fish in a barrel)":

1. Bob the Goon. And the action figure that followed.
2. What a fat bastard that major character is. Yes, I'm talking about... Commissioner Gordon. What? Who did you think I was gonna mention?
3. The Joker killed my parents! "I made you, you made me, we both made doody!" How deep; how zen; I can really, really see how they're like both sides of the same coin. Bats and clowns eh? Indivisible in the minds of everyone. Also, this makes Joker a good twenty years older than Batman, and yet he's beating the shit out of him. Hey, you big bully, what's the idea of picking on that little bully?
4. Jack Palance snoring while he's delivering his lines.
5. Jerry Hall. "You look fahne!". Jagger's faithful steed steps up to the thespian plate to a resounding cry of don't call us, we'll call you. She later gets fucked over and scarred for life, and she doesn't do too well in the movie, either.
6. Jack bopping to that eighties-centric Prince soundtrack. How undignified.
7. What's My Plot Again? Seriously, is there one? Batman appears, creates the Joker ("I made you, you made me!"), Joker's motives seem a bit uncertain, something something Vicki Vale, they fight, Joker dies, which leads me into:
8. Joker dies. The first time he fights Batman? What the fuck?
9. Batman: Likes to kill, not to keen on detective work. "Hairspray won't do it alone, but..." Hey, don't break your brain there, Bats. Lucky you've got that computer, eh, Sherlock?
10. That art gallery scene. Supposed to convey Joker as anarchic lord of misrule, is just shit. Also, more Prince.
11. Secret Identity? Batman reveals his identity to every fucker in these movies. I'm surprised he bothers to wear a mask. Joker, Vicki, Max Schreck, Catwoman...Jesus. "Hey, alleyway thug, it's me, Bruce Wayne, of Wayne Manor, you know? Yeah, just off Highway 5!"
12. Penguin. Flippers, sewers, etc. How very Tim Burton. Also, "shit".
13. Catwoman's origin. "Thrown out of window, licked by radioactive cats..."
14. Whenever Catwoman meows, licks herself or in general acts like a woman acting like a cat in an exaggerated way, I renounce liking comics and hope no-one ever, ever sees me at the cinema. It's toe-curlingly embarassing.
15. Walken's hair.
16. "Hello There / Hell Here!" So clever, and also deep AND zen. What a complex mind you must have to come up with that!
17. Batman's eye makeup. You can spring for that Batwing thing, but not lenses? Don't give me that "can't see too well" business, it's a movie, he isn't really fighting crime, he doesn't need peripheral vision that much. I would say it's definitely preferable to Batman looking like a Goddammt panda.
18. Penguin dies. The first time he fights...yadda yadda yadda.
19. Catwoman leaps up, tries to twat Batman a good one, but Batman stoically and very slowly* knocks her on her ass. Then she says, "How could you, I'm a woman!", He helps her up, she kicks him in the junk. That seems to happen a lot in that movie. Does it?
20. The Penguin wants to be mayor? Feh. I saw that in the TV show, and that had Meredith doing a little jig to the ginchy sounds of Paul Revere and the Raiders. Burton KNOWS he couldn't beat that.

*Bonus one in general. Batman is a robot, not fast or athletic. He can barely turn his fuckin head and yet, it's lenses that'll restrict his vision?!. There, I said it. But you'll notice I stayed largely away from dissing the casting. That should earn me some leeway.

Anyway, gotta go, I hear Scot revving up...

[Coffee Joe]

John, I can't believe that you would seriously lump in 1989's Batman with Batman and Robin, and make the assertion that they weren't too far off each other on the Crap-O-Meter.  I'm sure Scot is eithe right now writing exactly why that's bullshit, or he's too apoplectic for coherent thought, and when he's done foaming and screaming he'll write a lucid response.

You assert that all of Burton's movies look the same.  To a degree I agree with that, but I fail to see the similarities, visually, between, say, Batman and Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, or Batman and Beetlejuice.  I agree that Burton seems to have settled into a visual style starting with Batman Returns that has yet to be deviated from, but his earlier flicks were more visually distinct.  Now, if we're talking about score, then yes, I agree with you.  While I loved Danny Elfman's score in the first Batman movie, and I enjoyed it on Batman Returns, he does seem to have hit a wall.  Watch any Burton flick (minus, I usspose, Sweenty Todd( and you can hear bits of earlier Elfman work in each and every one.   Watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and you can hear pieces of Edward Scissorhands.  It's becoming a bit repetitive.

Now... as to the rest of your assertions:

1.  Agree.  Bob the Goon was a terrible character, and the leg on the action figure broke very quickly.  All he ended up being good far was re-enactments of various Rockettes dances.
2.  Disagree.  I thought Pat Hingle was more than competent as Commissioner Gordon in the first movie.  While he bore little resemblence to the comic version, I ws able to suspend disbelief enough so that every time I see Pat Hingle, all I can see is Commissioner Gordon.  (Which was rather strange seeing him tend bar on "Cheers" that one time.)
3.  You need to expand that.  The whole "Jack Napier" thing was shit.  Having him be the one who killed Bruce's parents screwed up a whole generation of film goers who hadnt read a comic book.  Bad form all around.
4.  Jack Palance had actually been dead for 10 years by the time Batman was filmed.  Nobody told him.  Apparently his role in Dracula (1979, I think?) was a documentary.
5.  Oh, is that who she was?  Yeah.  Fucking terrible.
6.  Again, go one step further.  Using Prince in ANY movie soundtrack (except for Purple Rain) was actually a violation of the Geneva Conventions.
7.  I'm still able to follow the plot very well.  It's no Citizen Kane, but it's the best of the four, and far less convoluted than, say, The Godfather Part III.
8.  The Joker dying was pure horseshit, and set up a very unpleasant trend.  Although the Joker DID die in his very first comics appearance.
9.  The machine guns on the Batmobile have always bothered me.  But then again, Batman DID employ guns in his earliest comic book adventures.
10. The art gallery scene is always the part in the movie where my eyelids start to get heavy.  Although it contains Batman's best film entrance of the four, when he comes crashing through the skylight.
11. FOrtunately, most of the people he revealed his identity to died.  Even though it was a bad plot device.  ... and the comic book Bruce isn't much better.  Bruce's identity is one of the worse-kept secrets in the DCU.
12. The Penguin was indefensibly bad.
13. Not only was this Catwoman's identity bad, it seems to be the only source of inspiration for Halle Berry's origin in Catwoman.  But at least THIS one was Selina Kyle.
14.  Say what you will, John, but when I was 13, I found it hot EVERY SINGLE TIME Michelle Pfeiffer licked herself.  And I still do.
15. Christopher Walken can do whatever he wants in movies.  In fact, every movie he's in automatically gets an extra star simply because it contains Christopher Walken.
16. The neon in general was stupid.  Seemed out of character for that version of Selina Kyle.
17. I liked the eye makeup.
18. Worse than Penguin dying was the honor guard of emperor penguins.  Shit all around.
19. There was a long period in the comics when Bruce would have fallen for that "i'm a chick" crap.  I found it comical.
20. ... anything the Penguin did was indefensible.  I did not like the character.

There were a lot of good points with the first movie.  Chief among them were the noirish feel about it.  Without this movie, we would not have had "Batman: The Animated Series", which took the majority of its visual and musical cues directly from this film.

[OMAC]

I voted "Burton slightly edges Schumacher."

I'm one of the guys who wasn't impressed at all by the original Burton film. The story was lame, the Prince music was awful, Gordon looked more like Bullock, and quite frankly, Nicholson just doesn't fit the bill as the Joker, IMO. ...And the rubber costume...

On the plus side, the theme song was great, the Batmobile was neat and I thought Keaton did a semi-decent job as Bruce Wayne.

You know how sometimes you go: "Oh, yeah! that scene in the movie was fucking great!" well, I can't think of a single scene that made me feel that way in Burton's Batman movies.

I wonder when Scot's gonna chime in.

[John Moores]

John, I can't believe that you would seriously lump in 1989's Batman with Batman and Robin, and make the assertion that they weren't too far off each other on the Crap-O-Meter.  I'm sure Scot is eithe right now writing exactly why that's bullshit, or he's too apoplectic for coherent thought, and when he's done foaming and screaming he'll write a lucid response.

Haha! I know, I'm a devil, ain't I? This is the price people pay for me having time to squander here because I have a regular internet connection again. This pure fun. Although I genuinely don't like the Burton movies.

8.  The Joker dying was pure horseshit, and set up a very unpleasant trend.  Although the Joker DID die in his very first comics appearance.

Technically, it was his second, even though it was in the same comic book as the first.   Kidding aside, he's only thought dead by Batman and Robin; the last panel states he's going to live. It seems that he was intended to die, but then they realised he was gold.

17. I liked the eye makeup.

What? Why? Whhhhyyyy?

[John Moores]

I wonder when Scot's gonna chime in.

Yeah, no shit. I'm already flinching like a whipped dog. It's the terrible inevitability that hurts the most.

[OMAC]

There were a lot of good points with the first movie.  Chief among them were the noirish feel about it.  Without this movie, we would not have had "Batman: The Animated Series", which took the majority of its visual and musical cues directly from this film.

Gotta agree with that 100%, though.

Yeah, no shit. I'm already flinching like a whipped dog. It's the terrible inevitability that hurts the most.

Haha!

[Coffee Joe]

What? Why? Whhhhyyyy?

Because visually it looked good.  And it makes sense that he'd have black makeup under his eyes.  Much like American footballers do, I'd imagine tht Bruce would use black greasepaint under his eyes to minimize glare.

[John Moores]

White lenses! White lenses!

Which movie is it where the eye makeup disappears after the mask comes off? Is it the Phantom? That's lame, although I still like that movie.

[Coffee Joe]

White lenses would look terrible onscreen.

...and I think the makeup also disappears in Batman Returns when he reveals his identity to Selina and Max.

[Scot Eric]

A set of weary eyes look mournfully at the computer screen, as the monitor’s eerie blue light strains unsuccessfully to illuminate the darkened room.  The words, like brimstone daggers – stab at the viewer’s soul like few words have before.

After an elongated drag from a smoldering cigarette, he exhales a cloud of smoke intermixed with his own life essence, as his heartbeat slows to a dawdling ebb.

“Why do you do this to me, Johnny?  Why?”

He pitches forward, his forehead slamming with an appropriate crunch against the keyboard, whilst his hands and legs do a spastic jig of death.

Later the next day, a note was uncovered – a note both angry and sad all at the same time.  The transcribing of its contents is ongoing, but will be made public shortly…

[John Moores]

White lenses would look terrible onscreen.

I'm not so sure. Black lenses or even dark mirror lenses would also be acceptable.

...and I think the makeup also disappears in Batman Returns when he reveals his identity to Selina and Max.

Maybe that's the one I'm thinknig of then. That can be added to my list of shit then.

[John Moores]

A set of weary eyes look mournfully at the computer screen, as the monitor’s eerie blue light strains unsuccessfully to illuminate the darkened room.  The words, like brimstone daggers – stab at the viewer’s soul like few words have before.

After an elongated drag from a smoldering cigarette, he exhales a cloud of smoke intermixed with his own life essence, as his heartbeat slows to a dawdling ebb.

“Why do you do this to me, Johnny?  Why?”

He pitches forward, his forehead slamming with an appropriate crunch against the keyboard, whilst his hands and legs do a spastic jig of death.

Later the next day, a note was uncovered – a note both angry and sad all at the same time.  The transcribing of its contents is ongoing, but will be made public shortly…

That earns you some points.

So, am I off the hook...?

[Coffee Joe]

Johnny, you're gonna get it.

[measle]

A set of weary eyes look mournfully at the computer screen, as the monitor’s eerie blue light strains unsuccessfully to illuminate the darkened room.  The words, like brimstone daggers – stab at the viewer’s soul like few words have before.

After an elongated drag from a smoldering cigarette, he exhales a cloud of smoke intermixed with his own life essence, as his heartbeat slows to a dawdling ebb.

“Why do you do this to me, Johnny?  Why?”

He pitches forward, his forehead slamming with an appropriate crunch against the keyboard, whilst his hands and legs do a spastic jig of death.

Later the next day, a note was uncovered – a note both angry and sad all at the same time.  The transcribing of its contents is ongoing, but will be made public shortly…

Points aplenty.  For humor and building anticipation.

I thought there was a wirter stike on though.   SCAB

[measle]

Pretty much agree with John and Joe.  Outside of a few geek moments the Burton Batman films aint that good. 

Yes, we get that Batman created the Joker by his very existence, no need to beat us to death with it with entertwined origins.

As to that place where no one dares go, it's time to address the Elephant in the fil room.  Joker's been portrayed many ways over the years, fat is not one of them.  There I said it.

I think the noirish feel to the Batman films has been cheapened over time.  It turns out that it was not a unique look created for the films, but Burton just doing business as usual.  The real surprise is that Johnny Depp was not cast in the lead role.

Agree about Gordon.

I can't find any reason to have had Harvey Dent in the movie.  At the time I thought his brief and somewhat usless appearance was a set up for later plots, but it just went nowhere.  Billy Dee, again why, unless Burton wanted a one dimensional actor for a one dimensional character.

Kim Bassinger is hawt, but her screams drive me up the fucking wall.  Listen to the movie in the background and see how long it takes you to yell out "shut the fuck up".

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