Spiritual Quest, the End

As the math geeks who read this blog will know, I have, with the fourth step and movie, reached the end of my four step and movie spiritual quest of skipping along the happy paths of nostalgia to take a look at the pop culture powerhouse that was the 90's Batman movies.

As some critical readers may have noticed, I was, in all my steps, overly critical. This was by means. I set out to dethrone the false ideas and misconceptions we hold about the past, mostly in my own limited little brain, but set out I did. This final step on my journey is meant to gather up what I learned, so it doesn't need to be gleaned from my ramblings throughout the week. Unless you like that sort of thing, I've heard critical criticism (sounds kind of stupid, doesn't it - see what I did here?) is all the rage right now, and I've heard I'm easy to laugh at.

The quest began here. Actually, it began two days prior to there, when a friend of mine got a total knee-jerk reaction to Batman & Robin. An otherwise enlightened, intelligent individual got totally worked up about a movie, because it was supposedly so bloody awful that it was painful to watch. My friend couldn't reason this any further, it was just awful, period. I've seen this on the internet a lot, and it clashes with my personal memory of the movie. Sure, it's not groundbreaking, it's not even very good, but it's not G.I. Joe bad. (Okay, that's unfair, because nothing, except maybe Dragonball: Evolution is that bad. Don't watch them, just trust me on this. Or do, but don't blame me.)

This set me to thinking: the first two movies were really confusing to me as a kid, and I remember being afraid of the second one. The third one, I remember kind of liking and the fourth one, to me, was a bit bland but still ok. So, I set out to find out what was going on. I watched each of the movies in rapid succession (it took me a bit over four days to watch them all), made notes of each one and rambled about all of them here. My spiritual quest, thus, had a total of four steps. 1. 2. 3. 4. To summarize: (This will contain spoilers, as do the steps. If you don't want spoilers about the movies, don't read these.)



I can see how the first movie would be groundbreaking: back in the turn of the decade, starting off the 90's, it surely was. Thanks to that movie, we probably have the Avengers today (and definitely have the Dark Knight -franchise because of it). It also launched Tim Burton's career, and you can easily see where his imagery comes from. As a movie, it's a confusing jumble of stuff that doesn't really get explained or tied together. Here's a picture to pull it all together.

The Joker, the money, the brain numbing idiocy of it all.

Not that big a deal, right? Wrong. This is a picture of the Joker, giving out money. Fun fun fun! No. This is a picture of a guy who's killed people on national tv and is on every police wanted list (or atleast should be) giving out money while half the population of Gotham is there because hey, it's not like he's a killer. The real swinger of this party: there are no cops in sight, even though he announced he'd be there a day early, again on national tv. No wonder there are so many criminals in Gotham, if the Gotham's finest are this fine. This kind of sums the movie up: it's really, really, really stupid, to such extent that it's kind of insulting. Other than that, if you like gothic imagery, it's okay.

Next in line, Batman Returns. These are kids' movies, remember? Keep that in mind, and look at the main bad guy in the movie for a second.

I would've had creepier pictures, but the whole eating raw fish thing kind of underlines my point. This is the Burton aesthetic people cry out for so often: oh, if only more movies were like this. This is a children's movie, and this is really fucking creepy. This guy caused nightmares, and then there's the part where Selina Kyle gets eaten by cats and returns as a, uh, zombie, I guess? Even if this were an adult's movie, this would be sort if disgusting and a bit more than a bit creepy. Oh, yeah, the Penguin wants to kill all the firstborn sons of Gotham that are, you know, kids. This is a kid's movie. Now, have you gotten the jist of this, as in that it's really creepy? Good, then you're prepared for the rocket pack penguins.

You got it right. Rocket. Pack. Penguins.

The movie is so inconsintently jumping from being scary to being funny that it seems like it's done by a bipolar man. And it really doesn't make much more sense than the first movie: there's a token motivation for the Penguin, but other than that, the bad guys are bad, Batman is good, punching ensues. Visually and theme-vise, it's a Tim Burton selfwank. In my opinion, it's maybe the worst movie out of the bunch.

Batman Forever. There are more pictures in the Step 3 post, but to summarize: horribly, horribly Schumacher. Suddenly, there's, instead of gothic, neon lights everywhere (and a touch of gothic, because Burton's still on the production team). There is, however, real character development and a plot that, at least kind of, makes sense. It's a kid's movie, though, and this time it actually shows. It's kind of juvenile, but in a way you can laugh at even as an adult. Two-Face isn't that good, especially since the A-list actors as bad guys thing is really kind of stupid and holding the series back as a whole, but. Oh, yeah, and the amount of vaguely veiled sex appeal that is Nicole Kidman and Drew Barrymore in this movie is a bit confusing, since it's a kid's movie, but maybe they needed an early onset of puberty for a generation or something.

Out of the bunch, Batman Forever was the best movie to me. It's a lot more consistent, it makes a lot more sense, and while the neon disco that the movie is is kind of awkward, it's better than the wet-yourself-in-horror-if-you're-younger-than-ten that's Batman Returns. Sometimes, it's really horrible (especially in the aesthetics department) but that, I guess, is life. How horrible, you ask? How's this?

Last but not least, Batman & Robin. I think this movie suffers from three problems in the public mind, as it isn't as bad as people claim it to be. Then again, nothing much ever is, but dissing something on the net is all the rage. But, the problems. The Big One: the kids who loved the first Batman films as, well, kids, were in their teens or early adulthood when B&R finally hit the theatres. By this point, they were fans, and seeing as Batman Forever kind of went for a bit more adult-ey direction, they probably figured they'd be getting more of the same, in a better package. Too bad Warner Bros wanted all the Batman movies to be kid's movies, to pump out a new toy line with them that would print them money. Yes, it was all about money. So, teens that had, at last, the internet at their fingertips, went into a movie expecting a sort of an adult take of Batman, and got the vaguely homoerotic running gag that is B&R. The infuriated teens, unable to understand or appreciate the joke, took out their rage in this newfound medium that let them rage so that everyone could see it. Extrapolate and add about ten years, and there's a whole cultural sect grown into the belief that Batman & Robin is the deed of the devil himself.

Reason number two: Joel Schumacher is openly gay. He was openly gay back then, and for a while before that. This was already common knowledge back then. All of you who were young back in the 1990's, quick, what was the biggest insult of the late part of the decade, atleast among boys? Did you answer "gay" or a variant thereof? Spot on, jolly chap! In the late 1990's teen culture, it was definitely not cool to be gay, be associated with anything gay, or anything even remotely close to thereof. And then there's this gay director, making a movie that begins with body shots of two men in skintight rubber armors, all the way to codpieces and buttshots and continues with a few (there's actually pretty few of them, really) kind of maybe homoerotic insinuations in there.

Buttshots.

You'll notice I've used the term knee-jerk reaction with B&R a lot. This one got the biggest. "This movie is maybe gay, I must hate it. This conversation is over or you're a faggot." Of course, you couldn't really say shit like this out loud, not even back then, so you ended up with "it's just complete shit, okay" type of arguments.

Did you notice the part about a joke in the first reason? That's the third reason. The movie is one big joke. I think over half of Freezes lines are crappy ice-related one liners, and the movie prods fun at the comics, the other movies, the Bat franchise, the old Adam West tv show Batman... Remember this?

Yup, it's the Bat credit card.

Now look at it, really look at it for a moment. Notice the expiration date? It's a joke. Also, I suppose everyone is familiar with the Adam West show Bat shark repellant by now. If not, here you go. Overall, the Batsuit's utility belt could and would hold anything in that show. This is a joke about that. Robin, actually, like five seconds earlier, says: "It's a utility belt, not a money belt." Schumacher actually was a Batman fan and even read the comics (this making him unique among Batman directors). He's poking fun at all the goofy aspects that have riddled Batman throughout the ages, and every one was too busy being pissed to notice. I noticed, and some of the jokes actually made me laugh. Well done, Joel.

Overall, B&R isn't that good of a movie. As I go through in Step 4, the rubber Bane and cheeky, badly typecasted Freeze don't really make good bad guys, and Thurman's Poison Ivy is kind of inconsistent. However, none of the other movies is actually too good either. As far as movies go plotwise, Batman & Robin beats the two first movies, although Forever does win in that category.

There are a few other things that trouble the whole quartet: the plots are pretty thin at best, motivations are often nonexistent, and the world's greatest detective doesn't really do any detective work. There's a bit in the last two movies, but all the detective stuff in Batman Returns is done by Alfred.

There's two characters that stay the same throughout the four movies: Michael Gough's Alfred is the most consistent character by far in the series (and I actually love the way he does Alfred). The second character to stay the same is Commissioner Gordon, played by Pat Hingle, although he is mostly consistently incompetent. Talk about a steep learning curve.

Overall, nostalgia has been proven somewhat wrong on this subject. I kind of liked the movies as a kid, but watching them now I can see how the part "kid" might have been paramount there. Okay movies, definitely part of popular culture history, have not aged very well. As a series, maybe two, two and a half stars out of five. A definite two without Forever, and even with that a bit on the hinges. Kind of worth a watch, if it's the summer, you're stuck indoors and there's nothing much to do.