Batman (1989) Movie Review

 Hey everyone! Happy Friday. I hope you all had a good week. I did. I finally got to watch and review Spider-Man: No Way Home, which was awesome. Today I’m here to talk about Batman (1989), starring Michael Keaton, Kim Basinger, and Jack Nicholson. So let’s get right into it.

I first saw Batman on VHS when I was a kid. I don’t remember the year, but it was probably sometime in 1994 or 1995 because Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad was on YTV and I watched it on the TV in the waiting area for a procedure in the Medical Day Unit at CHEO, though it wasn’t in the playroom. Anyway, I only saw up to the point where the Joker kills Carl Grissom because it was on after the procedure and I was able to go home at that point. It wasn’t until the early 2000s, after I’d gotten my TV/VCR combo set from my uncle for my 16^th birthday that I borrowed the VHS from my dad as he had both Batman and Batman Returns on VHS when I was a kid. I enjoyed it when I finally saw the whole movie. Of course, I didn’t know just how important this Batman movie was to not only comic book movies in general, but to the people who saw the movie in theatres back in 1989.

The movie rights to Batman were originally purchased by Michael Uslan and his partner, Benjamin Melniker in 1979, in the aftermath of the success of Richard Donner’s Superman: The Movie (1978). Prior to the release of Superman: The Movie there hadn’t been a major superhero motion picture. Superman and the Mole Men had come out in 1951 and Batman: The Movie had come out in 1966 but they had been feature films tied into their respective TV shows, Adventures of Superman (1952-1958) and Batman (1966-1968) and both were fairly low budget, even for the standards of the 1950s and 1960s respectively. And of course comic book characters had appeared in the movie serials of the ‘40s and ‘50s.

By the time the initial script, written by Superman: The Movie creative consultant, Tom Mankiewicz, was finished in June of 1983, two more Superman movies had come out in the form of Richard Lester’s Superman II (1980) and Superman III (1983), preparations were being made to make Supergirl (1984), and Swamp Thing (1982) had come out. However, the way we know comic book movies wouldn’t happen until the success of X-Men in 2000.

On the comic book side of things, when the Mankiewicz script had been finished, DC Comics was preparing for Marv Wolfman and George Perez’s big reboot of the DC Universe, Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985-1986), which had been pitched by Wolfman sometime between 1981 and 1982, and had been intended to be published in 1983 but had been held over until 1985. Wolfman and Perez were also working on the successful series, The New Teen Titans, which served as a revamp of the Teen Titans, a group of teenage sidekicks who had come together in the mid ‘60s.

Within the Batman sphere of the DC Universe the character’s flagship titles, Batman (1940-2011) and Detective Comics (1937-2011) were telling a serialized story that would leave off in a cliffhanger in one book and then pick up in the other title. DC had experimented with this idea in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s when Neal Adams and Dennis O’Neil revamped the character following the end of the ‘60s TV show and it’s influence on the comics, but they abandoned it by 1972 and wouldn’t return to it until the early ‘80s. This was also the period where Jason Todd had replaced Dick Grayson as Robin when Dick became Nightwing.

By the time the movie was released in 1989 things were vastly different. At least with the comics. On the movie side, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) and The Return of Swamp Thing (1989) came out for DC and for Marvel Howard the Duck (1986) and The Punisher (1989) were released or about to be released.

 On the comic book side, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (1986) by Frank Miller was hugely successful along with Batman: Year One, Watchmen, and Batman: The Killing Joke, with The Dark Knight Returns and The Killing Joke having a direct impact on Warner Bros’s desire to make a dark and gritty Batman movie rather than a campy version in the vein of the 1966 TV show and accompanying movie.

Batman was released on home video on November 15^th, 1989. This is unprecedented as up to this point it was normally a year or two after a movie had come out in theatres that it would be released on home video. This original edition is the one my dad had when I was a kid. Recently I bought Batman on VHS during an outing with Brad, but the edition I have is a later printing as it lacks the Coca-Cola commercial that was at the beginning of the original release of the tape.

 The movie also had a comic book adaptation as well as a novelization. I’ve never owned the novelization but I do own the comic book adaptation. It’s pretty good considering it strips out a number of scenes that were in the movie, reducing it to it’s bare minimum. Which is fine for a comic book adaptation.

I really enjoy this movie. It’s not my favourite Batman movie ever, that honour goes to Batman: The Movie, but it’s still a really good movie. It’s also held up very well over the last 33 years. One of the things that I like about it is how simplistic it is in it’s storytelling. We don’t have to spend half the movie in a flashback to Bruce Wayne’s past and the origins of Batman. Instead we get a simple newspaper clipping telling us that Bruce’s parents were murdered and then a quick flashback to that night to explain why Bruce is so disturbed by Jack Napier/the Joker. That’s all we need to know.

The cast of this movie is phenomenal. Michael Keaton is a great Bruce Wayne/Batman. While I prefer Kevin Conroy’s portrayal in Batman: The Animated Series (1992-1995), Keaton is a great Bruce Wayne/Batman. Though I actually like him a little bit better in Batman Returns (1992), but we’ll get to that next time. I also love Jack Nicholson as Jack Napier/the Joker. Even though he’s a darker character than Caesar Romero’s version from the ‘60s TV show and movie, this version of the Joker is alot more fun than Heath Ledger’s in The Dark Knight (2008), Jared Leto’s in Suicide Squad (2016), and Joaquin Phoenix’s in Joker (2019). He steals the show for sure, but not in an intrusive way the way the villains of the other three movies in this series end up doing later on. This is still very much a Batman movie.

The characters I like the least in this movie are Vicky Vale and Alexander Knox. Both of them are pretty useless with Vale screaming way too much and Knox basically disappearing for a good chunk of the movie. Kim Basinger and Robert Wuhl are great in the roles, but I wish they had more to do here.

Alfred, played by Michael Gough is probably my favourite version of Alfred in any movie or TV show, though the version in Batman: The Animated Series is a close second. Yes, Michael Cain is great in the Dark Knight Trilogy, Jeremy Irons is great in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), and I love Alan Napier in the role in the ‘60s TV show, but Gough’s version is the most fatherly towards Bruce, giving him advice throughout this series. And being extremely sarcastic when necessary too.

I can’t say too much about Commissioner Gordon, played by Pat Hingle, in this movie simply because he doesn’t actually do anything. He just stands around Axis Chemicals looking stupid while his men are being shot at, and Batman takes care of all of the gangsters. Same goes for Harvey Dent, played by Billy Dee Williams. Grissom gets taken out so early in the movie that there really isn’t anything to say about him either.

One thing I’m a bit confused about is whether the Joker takes out the rest of the Gotham City Mob, or just Vinnie, the mob boss who looks like Marlon Brando in The Godfather (1972). It’s suggested that he takes out the rest of the Mob, but Vinnie is the only one we actually see him kill, aside from the guy he burned alive with the joke buzzer during the big Mob meeting. It’s also not actually mentioned in dialogue. I have to assume the gangs were taken care of since we don’t see them in the rest of the series. Maybe the Batman ’89 comic book series deals with that?

Overall this is a wonderful movie. Like I said, despite the things I mentioned, the movie does hold up pretty well for an early comic book movie. It’s extremely entertaining and I had no problems watching it two nights in a row, once on VHS and once on Blu-ray.

Alrighty, that’s going to be it for me for this week, but I will be back soon with my review of Batman Returns. So until then have a wonderful weekend and I will talk to you later. Take care.