The summer of 1989 saw the release of Batman, Tim Burton’s radical big-screen re-imagining of the character. It was the film that began the summer blockbuster branding/super-liscensing phenomenon that we now take for granted; the film that put “franchise” in an entertainment context. Batman is the father of the superhero film-as-genre that is most often discussed as a product of the post-9/11 moment; nearly all of the genre’s stylistic and thematic hallmarks can be traced right back to its feet. For my dollar, it remains the finest articulation of that set of tropes, at least in part because it doesn’t take itself altogether seriously, and because it handles its beats with a naive charm that later by-the-numbers articulations can’t hope to capture (Ben Affleck in Daredevil, anyone?)
This said, I’m extraordinarily biased, by my own admission. I was seven in the summer of 1989. After finishing first grade, I had my tonsils and adenoids taken out, a surgery that while quick in terms of hospital time, debilitated me for a week or so. A comic book store had opened earlier that summer in my town, and my purchases, mainly of Detective and Justice League were driven by my ardent, newfound interest in Batman (My purchase of JLA 124, the first comic I picked out for myself, was my first from that store, but far from my last). I read the few comics I had over and over. Following my recovery, my family went on vacation to a state park in Ohio. And there… Batman was in full force. The local grocery store had a mural in progress of the black-costumed Batman swinging in on a rope. The novelty shop that catered to the nearby university announced on its marquee that it was THE spot to but Bat-goods. The kid in the cabin next-door to ours had seen the movie, and we looked through my then still nascent collection of Batman comics with a fervor that made us quick friends.
And somewhere in there was the catch: Batman was rated PG-13, and I was in no uncertain terms forbidden from seeing it. It consumed my waking thoughts that summer, and that fall. I transferred schools between first and second grade, and while a few of my classmates came with me, I was largely in new territory. I was emotionally young for my age, and was strange enough that I was an easy target for the derision of my classmates. Consequently, for the next several years as this increased, I drifted even further into the primary colored world that comic books (and the Beatles) offered to me. This, understandably, didn’t at all lessen my desire to watch Batman. All the other kids had seen it. In my mind, if I saw it too, maybe I’d fit in better. I obsessed over film ratings, and looked at the movie advertisements each day in the paper, anticipating the discussed forthcoming sequel.
By the time I was finally allowed to see the object of my fascination (if memory serves, the same weekend as the LA riots over the Rodney King verdict), I had consumed every piece of Batmaniana I could get my hands on. I read the novelization, had collected the whole of the 123-card set of Topps cards featuring stills from the movie (except “Haunting Memory”, which I’ve still yet to find), and paractically memorized the Batman Souvenir Magazine, which was chock full of behind the scenes anecdotes and photos, and a brief but mesmerizing section on the collection of the world’s foremost collector of Batman merchandise. The Batman action figures that I had all looked like Keaton (I preferred the one where he was blue and grey, like the comic book, while still looking like he did in the movie). The brief vogue for superhero movies of similar aesthetics couldn’t have been aimed better than at me, and I devoured Dick Tracy, The Rocketeer, the Flash TV show, and The Trial of the Incredible Hulk. I was about as primed as I could be.
The movie, nonetheless, managed to live entirely up to my hopes. Batman swooped (the stills of the early rooftop scene where he descends, cape fully splayed, his chest symbol illuminated, didn’t do the scene justice), the Batmobile roared, The Joker leered, everything was there as described but even moreso. i was troubled that there were scenes missing (the ragamuffin asking “Is it Halloween?” in the alley, the kids playing Batman dress-up at the story’s close, Bruce Wayne rescuing Vikki on horseback) that I knew so well from the cards or novelization, but that was easy to overlook. Michael Keaton was as much, as authenticly Batman as Adam West was, who I’d watched daily, and I couldn’t have been happier.
I got to see Batman Returns in the theater, which was fun, but I didn’t enjoy nearly as much as Batman itself. I dutifuly saw each of the subsequent sequels as soon as they appeared, but they too were scarcely able to hold my excitement like their proginator. I had a poster from Nintendo Power (Though I didn’t have a Nintendo) advertising the Batman tie-in game hanging on the wall of my room through all of junior high and high school.
In the summer after high school, a nearby video stoare went out of business. I spent $200 (more money than I had) and bought hundreds of videos, the beginnings of the Mike Q Memorial Movie Library that exists today. For whatever reason, I’d not seen Batman since that first ecstatic time, and the novelty of owning it was too great not to give it a whirl. To my delight, it was just as much fun as I’d recalled. It hadn’t spoiled for me in the slightest. If anything, it had gotten better. I got more of the jokes, I was dazzled again by the visuals, and I was able to put to bed once and for all that the ending of Metropolis (a great high school favorite of mine that I’d first heard of all those years ago in the Batman Souvenir Magazine) was quoted for Burton’s conclusion almost verbatim (Alex Proyas’s The Crow pulls the same trick, incidentally).
I’ve still seen the movie only a handful of times, which surprises me to think about. I’ll watch it whenever I catch it on TV, but I don’t watch much television anymore, lowering those chances substantially. A few years ago, when I was the best man in a friend’s wedding, Batman ended up on TV as we were getting ready. I got so sucked in, I forgot to shave, and thus took part in the ceremony with a five o’clock shadow. I went to see Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins on June 23rd, which gave me a thrill (it was the earlier film’s 15th anniversary, then). Though I didn’t enjoy Begins as much as I’d hoped I might, the rush of the substitute experience was enough to make that day one of the most enjoyable in recent memory. I got the extended release of Batman from my parents (irony!) for my birthday a few years ago when it came out (the initial release of the movie was in the early days of DVD, and was light on additional features), and at least part of my birthday party that year was spent watching Batman with my friends.
I can think of few ways better to spend the night of June 23rd of this year, the 20th anniversary fo the film’s release, than to watch it again. I’ve recently aquired a projector, which changes the expereince of watching movies dramaticly from that of watching on the much smaller screen of my hand-me-down TV set. I can’t wait to see Batman, larger than life, playing out the drama I know so well on my wall.
We’ll almost certainly watch a short feature before the main event, but which one (or both) I’ll leave to the vote of my guests. Here are the contenders:
SUPER POWERS TEAM: GALACTIC GUARDIANS: “THE FEAR” (1985): By the mid ’80s, the Superfriends cartoon, mainstay of ’70s saturday morning lineups (and some of my first exposure to Batman and Robin, in reruns), was getting long in the tooth. To freshen things up, Hanna-Barbera revamped the show’s look and feel entirely for when ended up being its last season. Taking thier cue from the DC Superheroes toy line that was popular at the time, the name of the show switched to SUPER POWERS, and lesser-known DC characters such as Cyborg and Firestorm, who had action figures, appeared as regular members of the team. Alan Burnett, who would go on to be the story editor for Batman: The Animated Series, took over as story editor for the new series, and unprecedentally focused on characters and more “serious” situations from contemporary DC comics. The character designs developed by Alex Toth in the early ’70s, which had remained in play for the past 13 years or so, were discarded in favor of new ones based on the early ’80s merchandising style guide drawn by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez (which you know well if you had or have seen anything with a DC character on it from the early-to mid ’80s, or any of the recent spate of retro DC T-shirts or buttons).
Perhaps the most novel change, though, was the replacement of longtime Batman voice Olan Soule (who had been Captain Midnight in the early days of television) with Adam West.
This particular episode, written by Burnett, focuses almost exclusively on Batman and Robin (Wonder Woman also appears, though in a substantially reduced role). The Scarecrow’s fear skulls ime tgive Batman vivid hallucinations of Crime Alley, which render him almost useless. What is the dark secret of Crime Alley? And why is Professor Jonathan Crane so eager to help with the case? This episode features the first time Batman’s origin appeared on television (it’s mentioned obliquely in the first episode of West’s ‘66 tv show, but no more), and remains an even more explicit account than anything shown on the later Animated Series. Though still somewhat silly and bound by the children’s television standards of its time — you can’t make a silk purse from a Hanna-Barbera cartoon — this series, and this episode in particular, manages to be head and shoulders better than much of its ’80s kidvid competition and the prior Superfriends incarnations.
“PARTY MAN” & “BATDANCE” (1989): After being shown a rough cut of the film, sure-fire Time-Warner recording artist Prince came back a week later with almost a full record’s worth of material ready for use as its soundtrack. Though only two songs actually appear in the film, Prince’s Batman soundtrack shot up the charts in the summer of ‘89. This was somewhat deceptive; what drove sales at least in part was Danny Elfman’s stirring score, which was not present at all on the Prince record(a great disappointment to me as a youth). What the record did accomplish was a sort of market domination by Time-Warner: it had a successful movie released by its film wing, a best-selling novelization from its publishing wing, a best-selling album from its music wing, and chart-topping comic book sales from its comic book wing. Horizontal marketing, friends!
These videos by Prince, promoting songs from the record. These videos feature Prince as Gemini, a Batman/Joker hybrid (something like a late ’80s Composite Superman) that dominates the album. Prince makes a fine looking Joker, arguably more like his comic book counterpart than Nicholson. The aesthetics of these videos both match and trouble those of the film itself, sometimes verging on parody, sometimes diving right in, other times remaining rather faithful to the film’s look and feel. They are both supplementary and essential, and provide some of the missing bridge between the light, fun ’60s incarnation of the character that the movie attempted to revamp, and the more decidedly late ’80s Burtonian vision.
