After the success of Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman a sequel was inevitable and, while I’d not seen it in sometime, I had fond memories of 1992’s Batman Returns being the high point of 1980s and 90s cinematic version of the character (despite my youthful soft spot for Batman Forever).
As we open on an even more gothic and ‘Tim Burton’ version of Gotham City than in the first film we get the origin of our main villain The Penguin (Danny DeVito), aka Oswald Cobblepot, before meeting Gotham industrialist Max Shreck (Christopher Walken) and then Selina Kyle (Michelle Pfeiffer) who fairly swiftly becomes Catwoman.
With all of that we barely get a glimpse of either Bruce Wayne or Batman (Michael Keaton once again) in the first 40 minutes and even when he does appear in that it feels rather rushed and brief.
Much like the first film, where Jack Nicholson’s Joker feels like the main character, it is again the villains who really hog the spotlight and with three (sort of) of them it gives even less time for actual character for The Dark Knight who is almost totally relegated to a man with some fancy gadgets and a butler for large chunks of this.
The second half gives him a bit more exposure as Burton vaguely plays with the classic Batman/Catwoman – Bruce Wayne/Selina Kyle romance but even this feels rather perfunctory as Penguin ups the ante with his increasingly ridiculous schemes that point head into 1960’s Batman TV show territory (albeit with an extra sinister edge).
While the story and presence of Batman doesn’t hold together very well at all the performances from the aforementioned villains are all great.
Walken is his usual eccentric villain, somewhere between his outing in A View To A Kill and Max Zorin and his Headless Horseman in Burton’s later Sleepy Hollow.
In some ways this feels like a spiritual ancestor to that with its vintage gothic horror feel and references, not only Schreck’s name which calls back to Nosferatu, but with the presence of Kensington Gore style fake blood, a fine Wilhelm Scream and a visual style in places like a Hollywood budget Hammer.
Pfeiffer does a good job of making some sense of this reimagined version of Catwoman who treads a line between some kind of paranormal aspect and the more traditional approach and credit must be given for just being able to perform in that costume, which has become iconic.
The highlight though, much like Nicholson in the first, comes from DeVito who makes this deranged and deformed version of the Penguin truly horrific and actually scary (as much as a PG-13 might allow) and he manages to cut through the make up and grotesque image to be a character, even if his motivations jump around all over the place in the actual plot.
Visually, again, the whole thing is terrific with Burton seemingly having even more free reign to create his own vision of Gotham (though it feels like we see less of it) with giant statues and faces looming from almost every wall and edifice, alongside which we get the same twisting of eras established in the first that makes it unclear if this is 1940 or 1990 as aspects of both collide head on with surprising success.
This all makes Batman Returns something of a mess, kept together by the charismatic performances and great visuals but, in hindsight, it’s not as good as an already problematic first film and really it’s no surprise things went down hill rather swiftly from here – also, much like the first, it’s a shame some ground work laid here for future instalments never paid off on screen either.
Tommy Girard 