The superhero movie, which has dominated the film landscape for the first quarter of this century, actually reached its creative apex in 1992 when Batman Returns hit theaters. It was then the most anticipated movie of my short lifetime. At every cinema, lines were out the door and around the block. The fast food tie-ins were omnipresent. Then people saw the film and hated it. Parents regretted taking their kids. The themes were too adult, and the Penguin was too scary. Catwoman was a dom with a leather fetish—how do you explain that one to little Timmy?—and the subplot about how oligarchs leverage urban crime to line their pockets was startlingly honest. The movie didn’t bomb, but it failed to do well enough to satisfy the lofty expectations behind it. Everyone involved (except for Michael Gough, who played Alfred the Butler) was kicked out of the franchise, and the Batman cycle began again with new actors and styles that continue to this day.
In retrospect, of course it wasn’t a smash. Batman Returns is the rare superhero movie that cares more about its characters than the next action sequence. This is clear from the opening scenes when Penguin and Catwoman, two of the most famous villains in the rogue’s gallery, are introduced each with an achingly tragic backstory. Penguin is actually Oswald Cobblepot (Danny DeVito), a son of Gotham blue bloods who abandon him to the sewer when he’s born disfigured. Catwoman is Selina Kyle (Michelle Pfeiffer), a lonely secretary—excuse me, executive assistant—who’s murdered by magnate Max Shreck (Christopher Walken) after discovering his corrupt energy scheme. DeVito and Pfeiffer give dazzling performances, each emerging in a new form, hell-bent on revenge. In Batman Returns, villains are just heroes with bad luck.
And yet they—and the film—embrace their villainy. Oswald is ostensibly torn between his life in the sewer, where he rules over an army of penguins and a cadre of twisted circus performers, and a tantalizing existence in Gotham, where he runs for mayor and is feted by the masses. Look into his black eyes, and you’ll see that he doesn’t belong above ground. Meanwhile, Selina and Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton) embark on a twisted romance both in their masks and out of them, but it increasingly becomes clear they are more at home in leather and rubber than in formalwear. Note the scene in which they show up to a masquerade and are the only ones not in costume; their real disguises are the human suits they wear by day. The thin line between heroes and villains was not a new idea in blockbuster filmmaking even then, but rarely has it been centered in a genre typically centering justice.
It would be difficult to view Penguin and Catwoman so sympathetically if the film didn’t have a real villain lurking in the shadows. That’s Shreck, who, after clashing with the mayor (Michael Murphy) and Wayne over his new power plant, manipulates Oswald into running for mayor, so that he can wield power behind the scenes. It’s a brilliant performance by Walken, who can famously turn even a word of dialogue into an aria of hilarity and horror, and a sharp observation by screenwriter Daniel Waters. When Shreck cites the Gulf of Tonkin and the Reichstag fire in encouraging Oswald’s gang to turn the city streets into an urban hellscape and inspire a mayoral recall, you know you’re dealing with a superhero film with more than a cursory understanding of politics. All superhero films are about the ethics of policing the world; only a few know actually anything about it.
If Batman Returns captivates for its human element, the immaculate craft behind its look deserves just as much credit. Produced in the last gasp of the pre-CGI era, the film relies almost entirely on practical effects to build Tim Burton’s Metropolis-inspired Gotham. Matte paintings are all but a dead art in Hollywood (they’re done digitally now), but every wide shot of the city is a tactile work of visual art. Throughout, Burton’s focus is on mood, look, and character: The fight and chase scenes feel like a perfunctory nod to the exigencies of blockbuster filmmaking. They’re just killing time until he can get back to his twisted love story and German expressionist aesthetic that clearly animated the then-ascendant director.
Batman himself is an afterthought here; his only purpose is to share a traumatic backstory with Oswald and Selina, thus deepening our understanding of their—and our—plight. When Shreck tells Bruce Wayne that he and Oswald would have been “bunkmates at boarding school” had his parents not abandoned him, he reminds us of the narrow margins of success. Bruce’s courtship with Selina is more emotionally rewarding; Keaton and Pfeiffer have sizzling chemistry, but their characters keep each other at a distance, unwilling to share their secrets, guarding their traumas like sacred artifacts. Through this approach, Batman Returns transcends its genre and shines its Bat-Signal on our foibles and neuroses, conveying a collective humanity with neither heroism nor villainy, just a long, slow trip into the dark.
Batman Returns plays at 8 p.m. on Dec. 10. at Alamo Drafthouse’s DC Bryant Street location and 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. at its Crystal City location. drafthouse.com. $9.