The Curious Case of Batman Returns

I always believed that “Beetlejuice,” with its quirky combination of horror and comedy, its silly visual effects paying tribute the films of Harryhausen, and its wonderful set design by Bo Welch, was the essential Tim Burton movie. But perhaps I’m wrong. Maybe it’s “Edward Scissorhands,” with its pessimistic view of normality, or “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and its juxtaposition of Halloween and Christmas, or “Ed Wood” with its homage to passionate yet not entirely conventional (or good) filmmakers. Or maybe it might actually be a rather divisive film, one called “Batman Returns.”

Tim Burton made “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” in 1985, “Beetlejucie” in 1988, and was then tapped to create the highly-anticipated “Batman” in 1989. A huge blockbuster and a highly-entertaining movie, it nonetheless left Burton in mixed spirits of his experience. He would return to direct the sequel three years later only if he was given more control, and more control he was given. The result was “Batman Returns,” a much more personalized and, well, less “Batman” of a movie.

But is it bad, good, or mediocre?

Allow me to use the words of Roger Ebert to demonstrate what is so perplexing about this movie: “I give the movie a negative review, and yet I don’t think it’s a bad movie; it’s more of a misguided one, made with great creativity, but denying us more or less what we deserve from a Batman story.” This is where the first dissonance lies: is this really a Batman movie? Burton is certainly one of its most famous students of German Expressionism in cinema, and his movies are always (except for “Alice in Wonderland”) fascinating to look at, and so is this film. But do I really want Batman to show up in “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”? (To be fair, all Batman films are flawed or at least divisive. Some might argue that Prince songs didn't need to be in “Batman,” or the samurais were too boring in “Batman Begins,” or there was too copious an amount of psychology and allegories in “The Dark Knight." I haven’t even mentioned “Batman Forever” or “Batman and Robin.”)

The movie returns Michael Keaton as Batman. There are also two new characters--Danny DeVito as the Penguin, in the style of “Freaks” and “The Elephant Man” as a character forever ostracized from society, and Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman, a role that might still be her best-known yet. The three of them constitute what I think Burton likes most in storytelling: the sympathetic view of outsiders. But even with DeVito and an enormous amount of makeup and Pfeiffer and her toughness and leather, the two characters are considerably less interesting than Jack Nicholson’s role in the previous film as the Joker. The character that really is more interesting is the non-canon role played by Christopher Walken as Max Schreck, a CEO with political interests and a giant lock of white hair, using his various methods to pin the three against each other. (The name of the character is borrowed from the the actor who played the title role in F.W. Murnau’s “Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror” from 1922; Schreck means “fright” in German.) Considerably more ambiguous and enigmatic than the other two villains, why is it that Schreck is more interesting to watch than two of Batman’s most famous villains? "That's what you get when you put Christopher Walken in a role."

Finally, one gets the sense as one often does when watching a Burton film that this is a deeply personal film about what it means to be alone, to be different. Welch's elaborate sets give the impression that something is truly wrong and disturbing with this world; its score by Danny Elfman, who composed all but one score for Burton, seems as if it was written with specific instructions to darken the mood this time around. While not being a Batman expert, I know it well enough to understand that the original character was meant to be more dark and mysterious than say Adam West was and that the comics, particularly those by Frank Miller and Alan Moore (whose “The Killing Joke" provided a model for the first Burton Batman film), have been particularly dark. But was it necessary for a Batman film to be so dark and personal?

Since 1985, Burton has established himself as sort of an “other” filmmaker. He is perhaps known best as the oft-director of his close personal friend Johnny Depp (they’ve made seven films together), or the quirkiness which has already been described; regardless, he’s who Christopher Lee called “one of the great directors of our age.” It’s not entirely clear who his movies are directed towards, but they are certainly appealing to many. Is “Batman Returns,” a fascinating yet perplexing experience, one of those movies?

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Alice in Wonderland

Todd Gilchrist recently wrote an interesting piece about the filmmakers who have influenced Tim Burton. It is not difficult to see the obvious similarities between Burton's work and that of Robert Wiene, Fritz Lang, Roger Corman, Ray Harryhausen, Terrence Fischer and Walt Disney, all mentioned in Gilchrist's article. The homages Burton paid to each of those filmmakers were really simple; obvious to film lover's but not blatant plagiarism. In essence they were appropriate and fitting, and helped to establish a Burton look highly admired.

In his newest film, "Alice in Wonderland," however, there is little of that previously found influence, despite how ripe his material was for it. It is not too inconceivable perhaps to envision what the film would have looked like with Burton's previous ways of making films. There could have been an Expressionism-style set, just as he did with "Batman Returns," or Corman silliness, just as there was in "Beetlejuice." (Wouldn't it have been more enjoyable to see Alan Rickman in a costume, able to project so much of that famous persona of many of his characters with that face, instead of being hidden behind graphics that appeared to have been stolen from a children's show?) There might have been a stop-motion climax of the Jabberwocky instead of hackneyed use of CGI.

Tim Burton has been in good company, with filmmakers like George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson salivating over CGI effects. Who can truly blame Burton? With the encouragement and perhaps pressure he must have felt when James Cameron's "Avatar" made so much money all over the world, it was probably much easier to shelve the older ways in favor of a CGI orgy.

In this adaptation, Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is pressured to marry a young man she is not interested in the slightest, so she rushes away from. Predictably, she falls down a hole and returns to Wonderland, a place she has completely forgotten. Her old friends (whom she has forgotten) are happy to see her, for the Red Queen has taken things over, and they need a champion to set things right.

On an acting note, Burton has as usual assembled a fine cast who all appropriately fit the parts: Stephen Fry as the Cheshire Cat, Alan Rickman as the Caterpillar, Christopher Lee as the Jabberwocky, Michael Gough as the Do-Do Bird, Anne Hathaway as the White Queen, Michael Sheen as the White Rabbit, Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, and Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen. Depp is his usual fun to watch. Particularly noteworthy is his approach to the character, and he explained that his inspiration to have the Mad Hatter's hair be orange came from the fact that the term "mad as a hatter" came from mercury poisoning from the hats of the 19th century, though for some reason he's so mad that his accent arbitrarily changes so often that it's maddening, if you will. Bonham Carter, though, really does shine here as the villain. Her head so ingeniously enlarged, and she really has understood how to perfectly combine the silliness and the terror of the character's tantrums. Finally, Lee, who has found his renaissance in the cinema thanks to Burton, has said that he is simply too old to travel to New Zealand if he is asked to return as Saruman in "The Hobbit," though he would like to voice the role of Smaug the dragon. If he does not get his wish, then he would have at least achieved it here as the Jabberwocky, though his voice is heard only briefly.

The sense of imagination I found in the Disney "Alice" and in previous Burton films was mostly missing here. For one, Burton has stated that he never particularly enjoyed the previous adaptations and so this called for a new story. So, in a style similar to "Hook," Alice has forgotten all about Wonderland and must learn about its wonders in new ways. That is fine, theoretically, but as a friend of mine stated, "Alice couldn't remember anything about Wonderland, and dammit, neither could I!"

Another complaint is that Burton has shifted away from his wonderful sets and marvelously simplistic stop-motion effects in favor of these bad CGI effects. By the end of the film, Alice now has a sword (so does the Mad Hatter), and she and the rest of the actors have to do their best to make believe with green screens. And finally, 3-D glasses are not the most comfortable glasses to wear, but sometimes (like in "Coraline") the movie is so good and the 3-D is done so well that it is justifiable. Here, this is not the case. One of the things that really made Burton's previous films work is that the designs of the films really elevated the stories, instead of simply forming a distraction. With "Alice in Wonderland," the latter prevails.

There is a fascinating article in the New York Times by Melanie Bayley called "Algebra in Wonderland." Bayley writes about the mathematical symbolism in Carroll's "Alice" stories. One example is the Queen of Hearts (or Red Queen in this movie) is often keen on ordering an execution by way of ax (a pun, according to Bayley, on the word "axes," the plural of axis of a graph). The point I'd like to make is that Carroll's stories apparently are ripe with symbolism, philosophy, and thought, little of which is evident here.

This does not make the movie awful, and to use the simplistic language of the newer "At the Movies," would say "rent it." But if one is looking for that true sense of wonder and awe found in Burton's previous films, one might be disappointed. To put it another way, hopefully this concludes Burton's trilogy--"Planet of the Apes," "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," and "Alice in Wonderland"--of films that are not particularly bad but not particularly satisfying either. Though, to be fair, in the time that he made those films, he also made "Big Fish" and "The Corpse Bride," much finer films. I do hope his next tale will be more wonderful. Please, Mr. Burton, please help rid movie-making of this unhealthy addiction. A return to the "Burton look" would help.

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