Batman Returns (1992)

Good idea lost in the noise

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

I know it may not be a popular opinion but I really enjoyed this film, almost as much as I loved the first Batman film. It is not very much like the new Christian Bale Batman films, which are much darker and more serious and awesome in their own way, but the first Batman film series started out awesome too, just in a more cartoonish-but-dark kind of way. Of course once Tim Burton left the series went off the rails and turned into complete garbage (Ah-nold as Dr. Freeze?) but this first one with Jack Nicholson's Joker was incredible, and the first sequel was also still very good. Michael Keaton was a great Batman too, and a better Bruce Wayne. Michelle Pfeiffer is also incredibly sexy as Catwoman, and Danny DeVito actually gives a pretty touching performance as The Penguin.

The second Tim Burton directed Batman film, Batman Returns, is a film which denies the right of wonder to be associated with validation. Validation is to approve of something. Wonder is the invalidation of rules. The truth which is in question, is that it's okay to approve of rules being defunct - it's okay to judge that judgement is out of the question.The posit of Batman Returns is that the right to judge judgement is an unusual nature. But, what is the judgement of judgement? Unto itself, judgement is quality. Introduce the movie's posit, and the translation is that the quality of quality is unusual. Quality is a disparity of attention. This makes the quality of quality into a disparate focus which is a disparate focus: Batman Returns is a posit that an unequal focus has no right to be an unequal focus. An unequal focus ought to be an even focus.The argument, intended or not, of Batman Returns is that the act of giving different attentions to different things is supposed to be an equal reality. Is this logical?Let alone disparate focus, just the mere fact of focus is a disparity; so, the actual position of the second Tim Burton film is that a pseudo-state of equality - or a pseudo-state of justice - is something which is supposed to be an understood reality everywhere. Everywhere in reality is meant to understand the validity of false justice - everywhere in reality has an obligation to accept and to vindicate discrimination.Is that even physically possible? Is it physically possible, for all of reality to understand the exact same experience? Reality is founded on difference. Different perceptions, different experiences, different beliefs; it seems fundamentally misguided, and fundamentally out of place to be making an argument that all different beliefs and that all different experiences have the same obligation.Batman Returns is the guiltiness and the moral corruption of the same behaviour permeating throughout reality despite that same reality being an advocate of the validity of universal discrimination. Batman Returns is the nature of unjustifiably glamorising the corruption of actual reality: to dominate other forces despite being equal.And that's not all: another problem that Batman Returns has is that it can't possess magic to its own benefit. In Batman Returns, when magic crops up (the Ice Princess, played by Cristi Conaway) the film's failure is its inability to possess the magic as just a helpful device. The Ice Princess is a type of magic and a type of artistic value who has a monopoly over the effect of the product, which just goes to show how pathetically bankrupt and devoid of accomplishment Batman Returns is

Sequels are often unwatchable and almost never keep up with original or succeed to be great films independently from prequels. But Tim Burton obviously doesn't know how to fail. I had high expectations from movie that gathers Burton, Michael Keaton, Michelle Pfeiffer, Danny DeVito, Christopher Walken, Vincent Schiavelli... and movie absolutely justified them all. Classic that stands shoulder to shoulder with original.9/10

"Batman Returns" is by no means a bad movie. In terms of action, set-design, scoring and acting, there's nothing to envy from its predecessor of1989. Yet something was lacking, definitely. Whatever it was, I was so turned off that I'd rather explain why the original was so good instead."Batman" had that Gothic atmosphere that fitted the tormented mind of Bruce Wayne, billionaire, vigilante and misfit, and the noir tone of the film fitted a city where organized crime reigned supreme; but had it been just an exercise in style and design, "Batman" would've been poisoned by its own depressing mold, the film worked because it had an antidote, a grinning psychopath played by Jack Nicholson, a Joker who, as far as characterization went, was no joke.I said in the review of the first film that Nicholson's Joker scared me because of the way he enjoyed killing and made every homicide, an art, something fun actually. What it reveals about the performance doesn't need to be over-analyzed, you could tell Nicholson had fun playing the Joker, and that fun was communicative without making his actions any less impacting. The Joker, played by a deliberately over-the-top Nicholson was a histrionic bastard intoxicated by his own flamboyance and yet making the whole film a real macabre dance between organized crime and the Dark Knight.Keaton wasn't too present in the picture but his investigation on the Joker's action and the interludes with Kim Basinger were actually the moments we could catch our breath between two Joker's scenes. Now, to put it simply, Keaton isn't any more present in "Batman Returns", which makes the title a bit misleading, he's even a rather tertiary character, but the villains in the film could have made his absence unnoticeable except that they were as much in need of a psychotherapy as Bruce Wayne himself. The film got too psychological and dark for its own good.There is basically one villain too many, and I guess that is Max Shreck, Christopher Walken as the evil businessman who wants to control Gotham City through electric power. He doesn't have many shining moments, except for throwing his secretary Serena Kyle (Michelle Pfeiffer) out of the window once she unmasked her evil project, he does look good in an odd sexy way, but he's never as impacting a presence as Danny De Vito playing the Penguin or Pfeiffer as Catwoman, which is the height of irony since he's the actor most used to play creepy guys. You would think De Vito and Pfeiffer would spice up the film a little and "have fun" like good old Jack, but they're actually victim of the plot's intricacy.Indeed, "Batman Returns" feels more like an assemblage of many subplots that were certainly mouth-watering on the paper: Schrek's s plans, the penguin's quest to find his parents echoing Wayne's own trauma (he was abandoned an orphan child and was raised by penguins, living in the sewers for three decades), Serena Kyle seeking revenge against Shreck and criminals of male persuasion. There's also something interesting in the ambiguity governing the so-called villains, the Penguin wants to be loved by Gotham City community, Catwoman is a vigilante but her actions are often antagonistic to Batman, not to mention the romance growing in subtext.To make things even more complicated, you have Christmas in the backdrop, the City undergoes many assaults from the Red Circus Triangle, and many love or hate triangles from one character to another make the plot quickly derail. The original "Batman" had one villain, not the subtlest plot but that was enough, by trying to make many antagonists and make them as three-dimensional as possible, the film went in too many directions, creating a Rubik-cube of a plot, without the colors to make the final result look good.Indeed, each of these stories, was depressing as hell, there was something fun in Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman but like the Penguin, like Bruce Wayne, they were characters turned to the past, to the initial struggles of their human counterpart while the Joker was from any trauma. The only villain with a focus on the future was Schreck but he could only be underused, and so was Batman.In the end, you have a Christmas movie whose action sequence provided nothing new once you enjoyed the original but whose tone is so dark and depressing you might enjoy the film for the actors, the atmosphere, but you wouldn't think of watching it again.