"I use to think they were missing the point of Batman."

But it has nothing to do with the topic. That's how Burton-Nolan flamewars start. Please refrain from bringing Nolan into otherwise Burton exclusive arguments, even if you feel their is a Nolan propaganda subtext.

 

The first one on missing the point was burton himself, making those two awful movies.

And nolan changed batman, yes, but not as much as burton did. And at least, those changes didnt damage the batman mithos so much as the burton or schumacher ones.

 

First of all no changes made by Burton or Nolan have done any harm to Batman. Fans wanting to direct their own Bat-movie is another story.

With both Burton and Nolan Batman has been more popular than ever. Schumacher is another story again.

 

The point of the series was that Batman found no closure in killing Joker. No matter how hard he tries to get closure and be a normal human being, he can't.

That's how we got to Returns, where Batman was just killing the criminals at random. He's lost his purpose, and only finds a way to break out of the insanity through Selina, who is so much like him it's almost funny. Despite the fact that there's obvious love between the two, Selina was hellbent on killing the one who created her, Shreck. The similarities of the two are so in common, the movies both climax in the same way--a confrontation of the "monster" and the "creator," if you will, and the person who's trying to bring the "monster" to accept the world.

No offence to the people who liked Begins (hell, I loved it still), but '89 and Returns make Begins look like a children's story in comparison.

 

ummm no? how the f*** does that remove motivation? in BB, bruce wants to KILL chill, but then chill dies RIGHT THERE. does he still become batman even though he knows he could never really get the guy who REALLY murdered his parents? yes!

 

true statement right there. Returns not only was a cool batman film, but omg, it struck me emotionally. at the end, i felt like crying sometimes, other times, i feel stronger. its weird, i know, but BR, more then B89, is a very emotional film. i love what michelle pfieffer did with that role, i felt her pain, her anger, everything, and i STILL to this day wish her and keaton got together at the end. but you never know....

 

ab38416

 

he was cinematically interpreting batman's desire to be hidden and not in the spotlight. that's part of the story of the first one, batman being reluctantly forced into a more public role because of the flamboyant nature of the joker.

 

What makes even better is the fact that he loses Selina. His redemption and closure died right in front of his face and he comes to the realisation in the end that he will be Batman forever (I'm not sure if the pun was intended).

 

ab38416

 

Not in the Burton movies. I believe you and I have had this discussion before. I'll see if I can dig up what I said.

 

Batman was after the average thug (like at the beginning of B89) and after Joker (even before he realized he was his parents' murderer), not to mention Catwoman and Penguin & co.

He could have just spent his life tracking solely his parents' killer (what I'd call a personal vendetta) but he was objectivily fighting crime beyond that.

 

Like I've said in another thread, it's the idea that "He finds his killer, the motivation is gone" that shows someone doesn't "get" Batman. If that were the case, we wouldn't have Batman wasting his time catching other criminals. Crime is what took his parents, not any one man exclusively.

It's a popular, unfounded criticism of B89. He found his parents' killer.... why continue? Obviously, he does, so it wasn't about revenge, then, was it?

 

ab38416

 

Very true. And Burton answers that "He finds his killer, the motivation is gone" idea at the very start of the film; there will always be more crimes like the one that took Bruce's parents, and Batman is there to blast the scum off the streets and prevent it happening again.

 

Exactly. He even says in BF: "I would make sure that what happened to me never happened to anyone ever again." Or words to that effect. Batman isn't at all about revenge. In the Burtonon/Schumacher continuity, he got a chance to get revenge on the Joker, but that wasn't why he became Batman.

Fans who bash Burton's flicks choose to just forget that fact when they want to criticize the films....

 

Although Bruce does say in the same speech, "I would have my revenge." So you can see why people get confused.

 

The way I see it, there are several ways of interpreting Bruce's motivations for being Batman. One is the cowl being an outlet for his rage and pain. In both Burton and Nolan's interpretations, after the Wayne murderer is killed, it evidently doesn't get rid of the pain of his childhood trauma, so he continues fighting criminals to lessen that feeling. Another is altruism - that Bruce goes on this quest because he can, and he feels he's the only one who can stand up to the injustice. Again, I can see how one could interpret how both Burton and Nolan's visions accomodate that. The last reason is one that I think Burton emphasized more than Nolan, and that is that Bruce's obsession makes him an outcast from society and he cannot live without the alter ego. I can also see how Nolan could add this into the 2nd and 3rd installments of his Batman franchise, but we didn't see much of that in BB.

 

Does no-one esle find Burton's statement extremely arrogant? After reading one Batman comic, he thinks he gets Batman and others don't? Explain to me how that works.

 

On the screen.

 

*double steak*

 

He read more than one comic. He did do a respectable amount of research to find out how to best bring Batman to the screen. A 20/20 segment from 1989 has him saying he read several comics to "try and get a feel for the history of the character" before he realized that Batman's specifics changed every 20 years or so.

No, it's not arrogant. Burton's quite the opposite if you know the man at all. The key words in his sentance is "I used to think they were missing the point of Batman." He admits that he sees things differently, that he felt he was just respecting Batman's privacy, since the character tries hard to stay out of the limelight.

For what it's worth, I think Burton gets Batman more than most people here, including Chris Nolan, how 'gets it' in all the wrong ways. Burton just tossed the playboy aspect of Bruce Wayne out of the window, which is not a change I'm against, mind you.

 

ab38416

 

Bumping this thread cause I was watching the film with commentary last night with a friend and when Burton said that all she said was WTF. I'm curious as to how newer posters to the miscellaneous Batman forum feel about this quote.