BATMAN (1989): How It Changed Superhero Films Forever | Deep Dive

what are you I'm Batman I'm Batman you're you are yeah I'm Batman why does it seem like Michael Keaton wears the cow the best some say it's the lips but if you ask me it's the Brows Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson are perfectly paired in this film because they both have eyebrows shaped like someone tap shift plus six twice on their faces and they designed this cowl so that the Brows exaggerate Keaton's natural angles and it serves the purpose all theatrical masks should not to hide what's underneath but to unveil it I'm Eric Boss and this is the Deep dive let's dive into 1989's Batman directed by Tim Burton starring Jack Nicholson first and Michael Keaton this film redefined Hollywood to be driven by bankable superheroes it's Timeless visuals music and production design gave it a legacy so powerful that it bataranged Michael Keaton back into the cow 34 years later Keaton's return is so deserved because he more than any other Batman in my opinion understood that Bruce Wayne isn't cool he's an alute oddball with undiagnosed dissociative identity disorder Who moonlights as a bat in order to cope Mass acid wash skin toxic makeup Burton's Batman is all about the faces we wear and as we go through this film we will see how the faces of Batman unveil the freak Show Burton truly envisioned for this franchise now the opening credits of this film Bill Jack Nicholson first this was a contract stipulation by Nicholson on the film and on all marketing materials as his casting gave this project real heat so right here we gotta pause and talk about the bat Mania of Summer of 89. see unlike the past pop culture sensation of Star Wars which George Lucas worried would be a flop before that release so they didn't really commercialize it until after Warner Brothers upon casting Jack Nicholson and Batman knew this film would be a hit before the release so they went in with a hell of a plan their poster was simply the Batman emblem that's it and then it's summer of 1989 there were Batman toys Batman cereals people shaving the Batman logo into their hair freaking Prince was doing the soundtrack for the movie Batman was everywhere and it worked this movie made 40 million in its opening weekend which broke the record at the time and became the the then fastest movie to reach 100 million dollars this completely changed the industry to focus more on opening weekend sales but even more important the toys exclusive toy making rights for this film went to a company called toy Biz which was bought by a guy named Ike pearlmutter who used the huge profits from this movie to buy merch rights from a nearly bankrupt Marvel in 1993 which led to things like X-Men films Spider-Man films and yes the Marvel Cinematic Universe so without Batman 1989 without Jack Nicholson being such a heavyweight to give Warner Brothers so much confidence for that movie we would not have an MCU okay back to the film though the film opens kind of like a play a painting on a scrim showing us Gotham City this version of it conceived by production designer Anton first who won an Oscar for this to create Gotham he mixed clashing architectural Styles too in his words make Gotham the ugliest and bleakest Metropolis imaginable he said we imagine what New York City might have become without a Planning Commission a city run by crime with a riot of architectural style an essay in ugliness as if hell erupted through the pavement and kept on going Anton first crafted Gotham from 1930s Art Deco architecture that would go on to inspire the look of Gotham and Batman the Animated Series and several other titles like Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis or the 1920 film the cabinet of Dr Caligari the city structure feels like it's all part of one sprawling ugly steaming machine and I love how there's a fake out in this opening sequence a mother father and son leave a movie theater into a crime-ridden street the exact setup of Batman's origin story but no this is not the Wayne's not until we see Batman's silhouette and a shadow leering down at this mugging from overhead do we realize oh we're not seeing young Bruce we're seeing adult Bruce pissed off at criminals turned a gun on a wife and her kid and love that the criminal Nick is wearing the same I heart Gotham City shirt that the kid was wearing showing how we are in a Gotham that's suffering from a cycle of violence no one really loves Gotham City I love how Burton blankets this rooftop with steam and smoke from the pipes and chimneys and from Eddie's own cigarette as if all of this is contributing to a haze that Batman uses as cover to loom into like a shadow puppet to illicit fear now you'll notice Batman's chest emblem has a three-pronged tail which is not the case in the opening titles the bat signal the poster which used the more famous design it's believed there was a rights issue with the logo when they were designing the costume and when they shot the film that got cleared up during the post-production process and during marketing and then the famous line what are you I'm Batman I love it the cowl is lit to match the shape of his angled eyebrows which again match the shape of Keaton's own face future cows would Furrow the brow or just make it bulky or chunky they would fit whoever the handsome actor was into the cowl but here it's more theatrical mask to make Michael Keaton look more like Michael Keaton Harvey Dent in this film is played by Billy D Williams a big name from Star Wars in the 80s because Burton wanted him to be the two face of this franchise he later argues with the mayor over the cost of the parade we may be celebrating in the bankruptcy court this Festival is 250 thousand dollars I've written we haven't seen one balloon yes setting up parade balloons as the instrument of Joker's poisoned gas in the Final Act Jack Napier watches dense speech Alicia's model photos on the wall include one with her lips bright red foreshadowing the mask that joker will later make her wear white face with red lips everyone in this movie is wearing masks and I love how Burton even frames these two together later Napier bribes Lieutenant Eckhart played by William hootkins who played the rebel pilot poorkins and Star Wars A New Hope and the government man and Raiders of Lost Ark who's says top man seriously everyone in this movie shows up everywhere else Eckhart says that he answers to Grissom The Crime Boss not to psychos like Jack you ain't got no future Jack you're an A1 nut boy Grissom knows it so this film diverges from The Joker mythology in the comics in a number of ways including showing the Joker's origin as a gangster like he's certainly a sadistic sociopath but he's not clinically insane for him it's all ego beneath the faces and masks worn in this movie is a battle between ego driven performative Insanity the craziness that Nicholson's Joker boasts about and has fun with and the less fun authentic sad haunted mental illness that Bruce actually suffers from future film Jokers actually take a more empathetic approach to mental illness Heath Ledger's Joker takes it personally when people call him a freak or crazy you're crazy do not I'm not Joaquin Phoenix's Joker was a more direct product of the deep funding of Mental Health Services in the 1980s but Nicholson described his joker as pop art after playing mentally ill roles and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Shining Nicholson's take on Joker was a performance artist a showman a narcissist behaviors that were all present before Jack Napier fell in the bat of acid as a gangster he already wore a bright purple suit the one splash of color in this film were all other major players wear black and white and gray now Joker loves having a theatrical clown mask Stained on his face because it gives them an excuse to be the psycho killer he always was Bruce meanwhile is more understated in this movie when Tim Burton approached Michael Keaton for this role after the two would work together in Beetlejuice Michael Keaton says this was a terrible idea that he was known as a more comedic actor but when Keaton sat down to read the script he said that there was one take he had on Bruce Wayne and that was this man is truly mentally ill that's suiting up as a bat is all they can do to prevent a full psychotic breakdown and Tim Burton agreed that's how he wanted Keaton to play this role so notice how Keaton's Bruce is shy and aloof he's way less comfortable in the tux than he is in the bat suit Michael Keaton is in my opinion the only Batman to be more handsome in the cowl than he is out of it all the other Batman we got are hunks out of the cowl and this is not a knock against Michael Keane's appearance I mean the man is attractive it's more of a compliment to his acting skill when he puts on the suit a new confidence overtakes him in my opinion it's the most transformative transition between Bruce and Batman couple fun DC Easter eggs here the reporter Knox gets mocked by a staff with a bat man in a suit signed by Bob Kane who along with Bill Finger co-created Batman and he meets Vicki Bale who just took photos in Corto Maltese the fictional country in DC Comics it was recently the setting of 2021's The Suicide Squad so Grissom Jack Palance order snapeier to oversee the axis chemical job personally and Napier flips up a joker card eyebrows looking a lot like Nicholson's eyebrows and a hole in the cheek which is where Napier later gets shot when his bullet ricochets Vicky bumps into Bruce at the fundraiser could you tell me which of these guys is Bruce Wayne [Music] well I'm not sure again the faces we wear unlike other Bruce Wayne's and future Batman movies who are all tabloid Party Boys Michael Keaton's Bruce is more of a faceless recluse like a Boo Radley he's not even certain of his own identity unless he's wearing the cow axis chemicals is based on ace chemicals in the DC Comics and in this sequence with Batman slings the first gangster of the railing Burton gives us our first look at that open bat of chemicals in the background it's chekhov's bats and throughout this while the stunt combat is limited there is a great moment when Batman Jabs the Goon and the guy stays up a half beat longer just to sell his hat falling off sometimes great movie action is just about making it pop on camera so Jack Napier falls on the acid and his stay in hand reaches up from the runoff and he can see his lucky deck of cards floating up the Joker card right in front throughout this movie Nicholson's genius comes in how much delight he fuels into his monstrosity the way he demands mirror the way he doubles over in grief but transition s into his iconic cackle throughout this Nicholson is hiding his face but he wins us over with his laugh alone setting an important rule for all Jokers going forward you have to nail the laugh and make it your own on her date in Bruce's mansion Vicky says the house doesn't feel like him and Bruce says some of it is very much me it isn't yeah since Bruce has never been in the dining room the part of this place that is him is of course the bat cave Vicky later takes off her shoes as she climbs the staircase something she does in the final act as she climbs the cathedral stairs with the joker which is how Bruce knows that she's with him Joker reveals himself to Grissom to get his revenge now since Jacobson was allergic to spirit gum they had to use the silicone adhesive and an acrylic based makeup paint called Pax with a specific shade of white did not blow out the brightness I love how Burton lights the shots of Joker's approach so you can just start to make out his ghostly face in the shadows which on a big screen built projector just looks really cool easy Wonder am I the only one who can see this right now Joker shoots him and Grissom falls back into his chair and he's wearing his bathrobe after a shower his legs open on that table telling his stuff from Joker's point of view Jack plants is junk is probably exposed now some further proof that Joker's Mania is performative after he kills Grissom what really seems to activate him is the newspaper saying Batman terrorizes Gotham's Gangland will they get a load of me he's really like an actor reading a casting list and deadline realizing that a rival performer got role he wanted it's really all ego with him Joker takes over all the other bosses frying Tony with a joy buzzer in the old town tonight yeah a hot time in the old town yeah it's an old Minstrel song from 1896 commonly associated with the Great Chicago Fire and I love how in the scene he wipes away his flesh-colored makeup to reveal the white underneath think about how hard that would be to pull off the makeup team did this by first applying the white acrylic makeup and then coating that in Silicon oil which nothing really sticks to so they had to painstakingly cover that with the flesh-colored grease paint airbrushing and fading it to make it look good and then they soaked the handkerchief that joker uses with isopropyl alcohol so that when he rubbed his head it would remove just the flesh-colored grease paint but not smear off the white acrylic underneath so the result is we get this really unsettling magic trick so obviously Tim Burton's take on Batman is absolutely iconic and one of the most iconic things about it is Jack Nicholson's performance as the Joker and I can't believe this our friends at iconic cocktail helped us craft a joker inspired cocktail just for this video where do you get a load of this so iconic cocktail is perfect for anybody who wants to do a deep dive of their own into cocktail culture their site has over 150 recipes for any kind of spirit and tons of non-alcoholic cocktails as well you can order mixers like prickly pear sour spiced honey ginger syrup or Browse by season plus there's tons of posts from Iconic cocktails team of Mixology experts about everything from mixing to hosting to gear so the clown Prince of cocktails I'm drinking now is an uncle Bingo a riff on a Tom Collins with gin lavender flower lime juice and seltzer serve it over ice and a zombie glass with a lime wedge garnish or if you really want to make a jokery use a bit of green cotton candy now I got a cocktail swore that they never do a lavender mixer but man I'm glad they did it's not perfumey or soapy it's got notes of raspberry strawberry so it's really a perfect pair for sparkling water vodka or gin yeah this is a really tasty cocktail to get Fixins to make your own Uncle Bingo or a bazillion other cocktails head to iconiccocktail.com and use the promo code Deep dive at checkout for 20 off your entire order you'll also get a free set of speed pours so you can pour your cocktails like a pro again that's iconic cocktail.com and use the code Deep dive at checkout for 20 off Joker tells Bob the Goon are my number one yeah I love actors impersonating other actors in the movie this is just as weird impersonation of Jack plants you are my number one guy Joker kills Vinnie with a quill pin the pen This truly mightier than the sword a move that will later be echoed in the Dark Knight when the Joker kills a guy with a pencil it's gone I'm telling you a lot of Chris Nolan's playbook in the Dark Knight started right here in this movie but I just appreciate how Burton Minds everything unnerving about clowns sneaky mimes the freakish Smiles the oozing paint the hand buzzer the squirting water from the flower garish balloons a bang flag pistol everything clown like is weaponized in this movie Harvey Dent is asked about Batman on the TV news and Joker uses an extendable boxing glove to punch the TV directly on the side of dense face exploding at half of two faces face getting burned we see a CIA folder about nerve gas that leaves victims smiling and photographs a joker obsessively Cuts up and leaves all over his floor a literal Cutting Room floor as he's in the process of editing his smilex commercial his chemicals ship out from the axis plant and we cut to the new studio room where the poor female anchor has the last minute touch up which is what causes her death by laughter this whole sequence is one of the scariest parts of the movie for me especially the way Joker's commercial interrupts the news broadcast like he has access to the airwaves now too really the creepiest aspect is the moving mouths of the think about it to do this The Joker must have recorded another mouth and close-up and then posed it on the dead model's face whose mouth is this it's never really explained in my Wanda Vision Deep dive I introduced the concept of unexplained arbitrary horror and Tim Burton loves to do this shots that don't really make any practical sense have no basis in reality a living cartoon some say an uncanny valley Tim Burton was an animator he knows what the uncanny valley is and loves to drag us into it just to freak us out and so in this movie he uses the idea of a creepily edited Lo-Fi TV commercial just to get under our skin and so throughout this movie the TV news reporters look increasingly drab unable to use makeup or any cosmetic products Joker brings Vicky to the museum and gives her a mask to wear forcing her to wear a mask to play the part in his game and then he and his goonsky face painting set to princess party man yeah it's wild Boombox goon follows Joker everywhere because this is performative insanity Joker wants the only Fine Art in Gotham to them did his own iconography he's pissed off that anyone would be looking anywhere else other than him now the artwork we see includes Rembrandt self-portrait and the Blue Boy by Thomas Gainsborough a print of which shows up in Arthur Flex apartment in the 2019 Joker the one painting Joker says not to touch is Francis Bacon's figure with meat and the work of the painter Francis Bacon would later Inspire Chris for Nolan for The Dark Knight Joker also points to the unfinished portrait of George Washington and says dollar bill which is what he says to Vicki Vale what do you want dollar bill later in the parade scene the original idea was for the money that joker threw out to be all counterfeit with his face on the dollar bills Joker shows Alicia's scarred face to Vicky and Alicia removes her mask so that it covers Biggie's face in the frame back to the faces we wear Joker's real threat in the scene is that he's gonna do to Vicky what he did to Alicia Vicky throws water on his face and he says I'm melting I'm melting just like the Wicked Witch and The Wizard of Oz in my running theory that every American Film is trying to be either The Wizard of Oz or citizen game Batman 1989 is actually Citizen Kane it opens with a Xanadu style hazy shot of Gotham and at the heart of this movie is a mysterious Charles Foster Kane figure with Bruce Wayne as journalists and the film try to decode who this eccentric billionaire really is Vicky stalking this orphan who puts roses on the spot where his parents were killed that is the mystery of what is Bruce's Rosebud Batman drops in and Ziplines them outside where we get our first shot of the Batmobile they use parts of a Chevy Impala but the engine is of a hairier jump jet which also inspired the look of the sliding cockpit Batman Zips Vicky into the catwalk allowing her to take some photos each punch is lit with a camera flash never mind that the camera flash at that height would just light the foreground of the alleyway and leave the ground level in total darkness but whatever it creates the effect of each of Batman's hits flashing like lightning I always love how the Batcave and the Burton Batman films is so vertical it's a bottomless Chasm whereas Gotham goes up and up and up blocking out the sky the bat cave goes down and down and down real life caves are tight claustrophobic spaces but this is a full mirrored underworld he shares with Vicky his decoded formula of which combination of products are deadly which she runs in the paper in the front page includes a sub headline on the left referencing President Truman speaking at Princeton that would make the newspaper's date of Friday November 7th as 1947 when Truman was president but with the cars the color TV this Gotham is deliberately set in an elsewhere that is removed from time Batman tries to confess to Vicky that he is Batman but Joker barges in take thy beak my heart yeah this is a paraphrase from Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven take thy Beak from out my heart and take that forward from off my door again it's more performative Insanity he's quoting a poem about someone who goes crazy as opposed to knowing what it actually feels like himself Bruce hides a tray under his shirt and tells Jack that he knows who he is he tells the story of a mean kid bad seed hurt people but he got sloppy crazy started to lose it made mistakes come on let's get nuts love this because Bruce is mirroring Joker's performative Insanity back to him Bruce fuels his performance with raw anger because he's pissed off that joker is making a mockery of mental illness trying to lay claim on what it actually means to be a mentally ill person but then Joker says something that legitimately throws him you ever Dance with the Devil in the pale Moonlight and Bruce remembers this as the line his parents killer said this might be the most actual psychotic thing the Joker does it's a ritual with no benefit weird creepy poetry for an audience who won't have the time to hear it or to appreciate it he's self-aggrandizing himself into the devil and again this is something Jack did before he fell in the acid so if you look at this scene structurally Joker only came over here to tell Vicky that Alicia is dead and to give her this gag gift this is really only in the film so that unmasked Bruce can have his confrontation with the joker the mirroring of the performative insanity is that important mariborg's press conference is interrupted by Joker pushing over a white Bennett and mareborg randomly turning to his left to talk to the screen next to him even though Borg would be looking at nothing Joker has warped all of Gotham into his grotesque cartoon soon Joker challenges Batman over the airwaves I have taken off my makeup let's see if you can take off yours yeah the irony is Joker's skin is actually white he didn't take off his makeup he put more on this is another face he is wearing here Bruce flashes back to the night of his parents murder now of course Joker being the one to kill the Wayne's is a major retcon from Joe Chill in the comics Tim Burton did it to make it more personal between the hero and the villain but a little visual detail I like here the cluttered pearls mixed with Spilled Popcorn from the movie back in Vicky's apartment when Joker said this pale Moonlight line and shot Bruce Vicky Spilled Popcorn there as well now during the parade Joker covers with the same mask he gave Vicki in the museum another face that he wears but this time the face of cowardice for him he goaded Batman into unmasking himself but now he wears a mask to protect from the nerve gas in his balloon Batman used the Batwing to snag the balloons and descends above the clouds into the light of the Moon to make the perfect bad signal before Hammer heading back down I love this shot one of the most iconic shots in any movie but here Batman is literally dancing with the devil in the pale Moonlight Joker faces down the incoming batwing in the middle of the street just like Heath Ledger Joker will later do [Music] you come to me now this Cathedral climax is actually part of the reshoots for the movie an attempt to work Vicky more into the climax Batman's finishing move is to lift his legs up from the ledge below to pull the guy down the shaft solid payoff to Bruce hanging upside down earlier after sleeping with Vicki Batman and Joker both accuse each other of making them but while Jack Napier was the cause of Bruce Wayne's mental illness Jack was sadistic before Batman let him fall into the acid Batman really just gave him the gift of an excuse he gave him a face to wear that matched the monster within the three of them dangle from the scaffolding and Joker snaps at the gargoyle what are you laughing at is the same gargoyle that Batman moments later will use to Anchor Joker when he tries to flee on the helicopter ladder and causes the Joker to fall to his death but we are left with Nicholson's haunting smile [Music] I really think it's meant to pay homage to Nicholson's famous ghostly smile and the final shot of The Shining but the mechanized laughter is actually coming from a small silk green bag from his pocket in the film never explains what this is now the official comic that came out later justifies that it is a laugh box but on its own I think the film wants Joker to have the last laugh with the trick of his sleeve that was left a mystery the film ends with Harvey Dent reading Batman's letter and he and Gordon unveiled the bat signal but there is more to this ending that we never got to see again the reason Billy D Williams gets the final speech and was cast as Harvey Dent is Tim Burton wanted him as his two face but Warner Brothers in the early 90s reportedly refused to have a black man play the role and Batman Returns Christopher Walken's Max Shrek was originally written to be Harvey Dent in the explosion at the end of that movie was meant to only scar Harvey Dent in certain drafts of the 1989 Batman film Joker would have survived based prosecution from Harvey Dent and then thrown a bomb in the courtroom that would have scarred Harvey's face so that last laugh green being silk bag perhaps only in my imagination I think was gonna be the Dead Man's switch a bomb which is carried Now by whom Commissioner Gordon who is directly to Harvey's left during that speech whether or not you buy that interpretation this movie does leave us with two faces the face of Bruce Wayne the man loved by Vicki Bale who now bails on dates with her in the face that this patient chooses The Loner on the rooftops the friend to the Gargoyles Batman thank you so much for watching this deep dive into the movie that made superhero Cinema such a big part of our Lives you can support us by grabbing some deep dive merch at nerd riot.shop subscribe to Deep dive turn notifications on and share this channel in its videos with everyone you know follow me at EA boss thank you for watching in hahaha [Music]

Channel: The Deep Dive

Views: 97,716

Keywords: Batman, Batman 1989, Batman deep dive, deep dive, erik voss, Michael Keaton Batman, joker, Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Tim Burton, Batman 1989 Easter egg, Batman 1989 breakdown, Batman 1989 analysis

Id: keH2lpvFKZY

Length: 23min 3sec (1383 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 24 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/rolling_steel]

Looking back Val Kilmer was an awesome Batman and could've been greater with more lines and a better written character