On this week’s Film Seizure episode, we’re going back to a movie we covered earlier in the show’s history, and it’s just in time for our main character to return to the big screen! Join us for Batman – Revisited!
Three old friends get together to talk about movies.
Film Seizure Podcast 
I’m with Jason on the movie Batman, and unfortunately I have been since 1989. I saw it on its opening night, 7:00 p.m. show at Eastgate, sold out, as one can imagine. It was across the board pretty good, too. I’d say the only thing I actually noticed the first time I saw it, and I think Jason was feeling at this time, is that for about the first 5 minutes it feels like Gotham City is an actual city. There are those alley shots, there are people milling about, and we have the sound of city activity too. All of that just vanishes for the rest of the film. That sense of being filmed on sets can be a nice aesthetic, but it needs to be mitigated by there being a sense that there are more people in the movie than its stars. This was a problem the Superman TV show had, I mean the one in the ’50s, where it looked like the only people who worked at the Daily Planet were Perry, Clark, Lois and Jimmy.
I remember that standing out to me the first time I saw it, but the problem I had is that I saw it a second time that summer, and boy, the second time that movie really, really bored me. I was very conscious of the fact that we were just cutting from here’s the Joker in his lair and he’s going to make a comment, or give an order, or be given a report; and then we’re going to go back to Batman’s lair and he’s going to have a conversation, or he’s going to discover something, back and forth, back and forth. It was like an entire Joss Whedon television season in one film. To be honest, I was stunned at how much of a shift down that got on my second viewing, and it’s never really recovered.
It’s so much the case that the only reason I even saw Batman Returns in ’92 was because I had a friend who worked at the movie theater and got to see employees’ screenings. She knew that when I had worked at movie theaters a few years before, that I got to see movies early and that was fun, so she invited me. And I’m super glad she did because Batman Returns, I think, is a remarkable little movie. I still think it’s remarkable today. In fact, I worked at this video store that was slightly modeled after Blockbuster, in that every video store that wasn’t Blockbuster was a mom and pop store, and this was a mom and pop store that said good grief why aren’t we doing what they’re doing? And since it was in Bloomington, they would talk to the film professors and get all of the films from their curricula in stock, they had a foreign film section, they were very liberal so they did not have a porn section, and they comprehensively knew the magic customer service spell. Being a college video store, and an artsy video store, we also had a pretty artsy staff, somewhat anti-hollywood, often anti big movies, and I managed to see Batman Returns for my second time sitting in between two of those people, the two least likely to enjoy the big summer movie, and through the whole thing they just kept doing those gentle gasps, like “Oh, wow…!” because of the psychological story being told in that movie.
And of course that was a great year for Batman, because it was the incept of The Animated series, and Batman the Animated Series is my favorite Batman production, and that Batman is my favorite Batman, but I’m with pretty much all of you, I think anyway, maybe not Chuck, that I think Keaton is the best Batman, but I also think he’s the best Bruce. I think he’s the one guy that gets who they are. Other Batman performers, …well Val Kilmer there’s absolutely no difference. George Clooney I don’t remember, because I believe I’ve that’s one of the two things my mind has put behind a mental block. The other guy, the Empire of the Sun guy, his movies are the best Batman movies, and he’s a workable Batman, but he’s basically kind of one note, or maybe one or two notes. Everything seems affectational, and his Bruce is affectation on top of affectation.
The great thing about Keaton is that, for people who didn’t already get this, which is really anybody who wasn’t deeply into comic books, Keaton conveyed to the audience that Bruce Wayne is Batman in disguise. Batman is who he is. He is always Batman. Except for the times when he needs to put that straight face on. So Jason mentioned liking Bruce when Bruce was watching video footage. It’s not Bruce watching video footage, that’s Batman watching video footage, only he’s at home so he doesn’t need to deck up in the costume. When he’s listening to Robert Wuhl and Vicki Vale talk about him, Batman is listening, and then when they turn around he snaps on his Bruce Wayne mask. That’s just something Keaton was doing. You could tell when he was Batman and when he was Bruce whether he had the costume on or not.
Plus, he took that brooding thing and turned it into something other than just “I’m going inside and walling off, impenetrably hurting and angry.” I mean, that’s fine, but to be honest it gets boring after a while. Keaton’s thing is that Batman is always thinking. Keaton is always thinking, that’s pretty much every role he plays. Even when he plays an idiot, part of the thing that makes him so good at playing the idiot is that you can see the idiot desperately trying to work out whatever the hell it is that he’s being an idiot about. That’s not something that can be done in an animated Batman because it’s all in the eyes, and animated Batman didn’t have any of those, but Keaton, every second he’s on screen you just know him. I think his performance of Batman in both Batman and Batman Returns are kind of masterful. People who need to do things like play twins, or play two different characters in the same scene could watch him in his undisguised Batman scenes, where he’s dressed as Bruce but he’s actively being who he is, and really learn a lot about what makes your character different from your other character, aside from a bunch of affectations.
…I talk-texted this. It reads weird.
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