Ready?
The first time I saw Batman and Robin, I liked it. The second time I saw Batman and Robin, I liked it.
There, now you can never take me seriously again.
As long as we're trashing my reputation, I also enjoyed The Phantom Menace the first time I saw it. (I was 11.)
Now I mention Batman and Robin because for whatever reason when I was somewhere in the 12-14 range, we had two Batman movies, and that was one of them. Having seen it (and liked it) I wanted to see the other one.
Because I figured it'd be another campy neon film, right? I was too young to know which order they'd been made in or what a big deal a change of director can make. I was young and innocent, and...
Hellooooooooo skintight PVC fetish.
Meow.
Okay, where was I?
The movie opens on a mansion in winter. Get used to seeing scads of fake snow; it's going to be everywhere. Tim Burton gives us the same shot twice: guy at the window, pan right to the hallway. First time it's his wife giving birth. Second time it's the baby in a cage. The baby then eats the family cat. Gee, I wonder who one of the villains in this film will be.
The loving parents dump the baby in the river, and we get the opening credits. They're a lot like the opening credits in the last film but darker. I mean the music is darker. And working in the strings that will make up Catwoman's theme. The baby basket finally comes to rest next to some penguins. Gee, guess who the other villain will be.
If you said "Christopher Walken," you're right. Cuz he's in this film too. He's an evil businessman, and thus a shadow archetype to Bruce Wayne. We also have Catwoman, who gets her jollies by putting on a mask and beating people up, not unlike Bruce Wayne, and the Penguin, who's an orphaned freak not unlike Bruce Wayne.
The movie then cuts to "Gotham City, 33 Years Later." This may seem innocuous, but we've already had Moses in the Bullrushes, and we'll have resurrections, big crucifixes, and more!
So our evil businessman is named Max Shreck. His extremely mousy (look, the movie's puns are atrocious; I wanted in on the fun) secretary is Selina Kyle. Everybody gets attacked at the big tree-lighting ceremony, attended by about 150 people, tops. (Given that the climax to the film involves a rocket attack that will only kill 100,000 people, I assume Gotham is tiny.) Anyway these 150 people are attacked by the Red Triangle Circus Gang, featuring That Guy You May Recognize from Either Buffy or Tomorrow Never Dies as an organ grinder (complete with a monkey). Batman saves the day - and in case you didn't get that from the action sequence, Gordon's one line of dialogue in this film is "thanks for saving the day, Batman" - and Selina gets a stun-gun, but the gang makes off with Shreck. By the way, during this sequence, Batman frakking burns a clown alive. Holy moral high ground, Batman.
Penguin's lair is hidden beneath a model zoo. By the way, you're smarter than me if you can figure out how they got the camera to go under the model zoo's entrance arch in the establishing shot. Apparently the lair used to be "arctic world" but the waterlogged passage leads right to the sewer, so... uh, ew.
Fortunately, as the Penguin himself says, he didn't go through all that trouble just to kill Shreck. He wants Shreck to use his PR know-how to help the Penguin "ascend," and go back to living on the surface. He has a lot of Shreck's dirty laundry in his closet, so Shreck goes along with it.
This is a plot hole. 1, Penguin used to be part of the circus. We discover this later. So in contrast to what he just told Max, he shouldn't need any help to get back to the surface; he drove himself underground. Okay, yes, he's looking for an opportunity to get into the Hall of Records so he can write down the names of every firstborn son in Gotham, but he doesn't tell Max that. And 2, Max is apparently Mr. PR. He should be able to handle a few scandals... and how exactly is Penguin going to leak the information? It seems like Penguin already has connections, otherwise it's an empty threat...
Anyway, after being introduced to several trick umbrellas, including one that shoots flames (remember this later), Max agrees to help.
Cut to Selina Kyle, who lives alone in a pink apartment with her cat. A bunch of messages play on her answering machine to let you know how much her life sucks, and then she finds a message from herself that she has to go back to the office and do research for the Bruce Wayne meeting "on Wednesday." Well, when she's back in the office, Shreck walks in on her and she says she's boning up for the meeting "tomorrow." Now since this is night, and it'll be day, night, and day again before the meeting, the only way this isn't a continuity error is if it's after midnight and Selina's being more precise than anyone pulling an all-nighter in the history of ever.
Anyway Shreck throws her out a window because curiosity killed the cat. And then the cats brought the cat back to life. And then Danny Elfman's score goes berserk. In a good way. Selina's randomly butchering stuffed animals and spray-painting black lines on her pink apartment walls, but the soundtrack sells the scene.
The next day, a clown kidnaps the Mayor's baby. In public. While the Mayor is giving a speech about public safety. Did Max bribe all the cops not to immediately shoot the clown on sight? Or is it just a fact that cops are completely useless in every superhero movie (oh right duh). Anyway the clown vaults down a sewer, only to hand the baby to the Penguin, who then ascends on a giant duckmobile. Somehow the head of the duckmobile does not crash through the ground next to the manhole.
Bruce is watching on TV and comments that he hopes Penguin finds his parents. However, that night, he drives by the Hall of Records and comments that he thinks the Penguin has already found his parents.
Sure enough, the Penguin visits a cemetery and finds their graves. Obligatory: he also bumps a wobbly tombstone. Of his parents he says "they freaked, and I forgive them." Cue the newspapers rolling out with the news that Penguin forgives his parents. (In order for the whole continuity issue I mentioned above to fit, this all has to happen on the same freaking night.)
One woman is dragged off into an alley by... we don't see a knife, but from his arm movements I can't tell whether he's going for a weapon or pulling down his fly, so he could be either a mugger or a rapist. (By the way, 12-year-old me was convinced there was a knife in this scene.) Then Catwoman shows up and claws the guy's face before punching him out.
"I am Catwoman," she says. "Hear me roar." Well, Winter is Coming and it brought Fire and Blood with it, and while he's not exactly soaring As High as Honor, you can't deny that the Penguin's popularity is (somehow) Growing Strong.
So now we finally get to that meeting with Bruce Wayne. The one that was "tomorrow" when Selina was thrown out that window two nights ago. So this is Wednesday. Bruce and Max snipe at each other a lot, and class warfare gets involved. See, Max is a self-made man, unlike Bruce, who inherited everything (except, y'know, his schizophrenia and whatever mental condition causes someone to dress up as a giant bat and beat the ever loving bejeezus out of petty criminals). Speaking of schizo, Selina Kyle walks in and flirts awkwardly with Bruce. Now, I nitpicked about the continuity (and will continue to do so), but this is an actual problem with the film. I believe Batman/Catwoman. I don't believe Bruce/Selina. While Selina's doing her "memory loss" routine, Bruce is just gaping at her like a horny teenage boy who just saw his first pair of boobies. (I haven't seen The Dark Knight Rises yet, but I have to imagine that Christian "my definition of 'playboy billionaire' is to show up everywhere with two or three women on my arm" Bale's Wayne plays his Selina attraction with a tad more subtlety.)
Alternatively, Bruce is attracted to her because he somehow knows she's nuts like him. Not that Batman's nuts-ness is really explored too much in this film. "My ex-girlfriend couldn't handle it" is about all we get.
Now we get to Max Shreck's big genius plan. The Mayor won't play ball with him on his power-plant idea, so he's going to organize a recall and run... Oswald Cobblepot, aka the Penguin, for Mayor. Oswald's campaign gets off to a great start when 1) meets his campaign team in his filthy long johns while messily eating a fish, and 2) bites the nose off an image consultant who mocks him. That was a genius idea, Maxie!
(I would now like to take the time to point out that the entire aesthetic of this film screams 1940s, and yet Richard Nixon gets name-dropped.)
Okay, so Oswald's platform is going to be that the Mayor can't control the crime wave, which is secretly run by the Penguin, so once Oswald comes to power, the crime wave will immediately stop. Daenerys never makes the obvious connection that Hidzhar is the Harpy no wait wrong story. Anyway, Penguin has the circus gang step up their violence, so it's round two for Batman. During this fight, a poodle steals Batman's Bat-GameBoy, and Batman frakking blows up a clown with a bomb.
Meanwhile, Catwoman prances around in Max's department store with her skintight outfit and her whip. Reminder: the first time I saw this film, I was too young to understand the meaning of the word "fetish." I would also like to point out that, per the internet, the scene where she decapitates four mannequins in a row was done in one take without any special effects. She, Penguin and Batman finally come face-to-face immediately after she blows up the store (this is Wednesday night; remember that later). Penguin and Batman both chase Catwoman, but Penguin magically teleports out of the picture for a while so Bats and Cats can go at it. After he gets the better of her, she says "how could you? I'm a woman!" as if the skintight outfit left any room for doubt... and then Batman's response is not "yeah but you were kicking me." Remember, this is a guy who roasted one clown and blew up a second one. Instead he suddenly turns into Mr. Chivalry, but of course it's a rule for Catwoman to get back into the fight and knock him over a ledge. Then Batman frakking napalms her arm. Holy seesaw mood whiplash, Batman. This causes Catwoman to fall into a truck of sand and "die." Not to worry, Catwoman literally has nine lives.
The next day is Thursday. Oswald's campaign is in full swing. He's gesticulating wildly, giving hammy speeches, and groping groupies. (This film was made the same year Bill Clinton became President. Just saying.) Catwoman is waiting for him back in his lair. She proposes that they team up. She does this by licking herself and literally swallowing Penguin's bird. Penguin's plan is to turn the Batmobile into an H-bomb, but Catwoman says turning him into a martyr is a stupid idea.
So at this point, it pains me to admit it, but the smartest character in the film is the one running around in a dominatrix outfit and spouting the worst puns that don't have to do with ice in any Batman film.
Before they can go through with the plan to frame Batman, Selina runs into Bruce and agrees to come over for an early dinner. Because after her prattling on like an insane person and him staring at her, they're an item now. I'm going to go with "they each subconsciously recognize a kindred spirit in the other," which is giving the film a bit more credit than it deserves. Michael Keaton's a bit too good at making Bruce Wayne boring. I'll just leave it at that.
The Penguin kidnaps the Ice Princess - the "queen" of the Christmas festivities whose only job is to push a button that lights the big tree up, only she doesn't even seem to have that task down pat - and frames Batman for it with the Bat-GameBoy his henchmen stole before he came up with the plan to frame Batman. That's some foresight right there.
Bruce and Selina are making out on his couch when she touches him where Catwoman clawed Batman, and then he touches her where Batman napalmed Catwoman. Derp derp. Then they both see that the Ice Princess was captured on the news so they both have to get out of there without alerting the other to their sudden need to leave. This is over-the-top but still funny. And sad: Comic!Batman is basically Sherlock Holmes in a bat-suit, but his film counterpart can't tell that something is up with Selina.
Batman uses his BatTracking to immediately find the Ice Princess, but Catwoman shows up and they have a brief fight with some of the worst one-liners ever. Catwoman manages to haul the Ice Princess up to the roof, but Catwoman disappears by the time Batman gets there. The Ice Princess seems to think it was because she reasoned with her "girl-to-girl." In the time it took Bats to climb a ladder. Right. I can see why your big job is to push buttons and look pretty.
The Penguin throws an umbrella full of bats at her, causing her to fall off the ledge, down eighty million feet, and onto the button she was supposed to press. By the way, we didn't see the Joker hit the ground in Batman. We didn't see Two-Face hit the ground in either Batman Forever or The Dark Knight. But we do see the Ice Princess hit the ground here. Wow. I feel like the awful jokes were thrown in as part of a halfassed plan to convince the censors this isn't an R-rated movie. "Of course it's for kids! Only kids could laugh at that!" (Although I don't know who was supposed to find the Penguin's reaction to seeing Catwoman on his bed - "Just the pussy I was looking for" - funny. A James Bond fan circa 1963, maybe.)
The police magically teleport to the rooftop the Ice Princess fell from and shoot Batman. He falls onto a different rooftop. The police lose their ability to teleport, so it falls to Catwoman to catch up with and straddle him. There's mistletoe up here for some reason (I half suspect Catwoman planted it there herself), and Batman points out that "mistletoe can be deadly if you eat it." I have no idea why he says this. I know why it's in the script - so Catwoman can reply with "but a kiss can be even deadlier if you mean it" and then lick his face - but I have no idea why Batman would say such a thing.
Anyway Catwoman tries to claw Batman again but he pushes her off and then turns his cape into a para-glider and flies through the big cloud of bats released from the Christmas tree when the Ice Princess landed on the button. Because nothing says "I didn't kill the Ice Princess" like deliberately flying through the scene of the crime.
Penguin and Catwoman meet up, but Catwoman refuses his advances. He accuses her of sending mixed signals - and the man has a point, given that she showed up in his bed wearing that and proceeded to lick herself in front of him. So he kills her. That's three lives down.
Batman's Batmobile has been sabotaged in the meantime so the Penguin can control it by remote. But Batman burns a CD of him ranting and raving, and then kicks through the Batmobile's floor in order to remove the control signal's receiver. I try to stay away from inter-movie continuity issues, but in Batman, the Batmobile was a goddamn tank. Unless the Penguin's sabotage really weakened its structural integrity, there's no way Bats should have been able to kick through its floor.
All right. So ends Thursday. The next day is Friday, and as we quickly learn, Max is going to hold a masquerade ball that night in the lobby of the department store Catwoman kablooied on Wednesday. Huh. Okay, I suppose it's possible that a few more days lapsed in between Catwoman and Penguin making their alliance and actually putting their plan into action, but there's no on-screen proof of this.
Well, Batman has that CD of the Penguin raving, and he's apparently taken the time to alter the tone of the rants, because Burton clearly used different sound clips. It's the same words, but the tone is completely different. Batman jams Oswald's signal at a campaign rally and has the speakers broadcast the Penguin's rants from last night instead. Oswald gets some eggs and tomatoes thrown at him (after wondering aloud why there's always someone who brings eggs and tomatoes to a speech - that was funny), machine-guns the crowd (although I don't know that he actually hit anybody) and then ends up diving into the river off the same bridge his parents threw him from 33 years ago. Ah, symbolism.
Shreck's plan for him in tatters, Penguin reverts to his original plan. All that time he spent in the Hall of Records? He was really writing down the name of every firstborn male baby in Gotham, so when all the socialites were out attending Max's party, they left their kids home alone (babysitters don't exist in Tim Burton's world; this explains all the things).
Batman goes to Max's masquerade as Bruce Wayne; Catwoman goes as Selina Kyle. They meet each other and start dancing, a Batman - who again has killed at least two random thugs so far - has qualms about letting Catwoman shoot Max. Then she notices that they're dancing under mistletoe and they repeat the lines about mistletoe and kisses from earlier. Oh, now they know each others' identity. But Penguin makes an explosive entry and separates the two, who both run off to get dressed. Meanwhile Max manages to talk the Penguin into taking Max instead of Max's son. And as a side note, the Mayor is present at the ball, and his "costume" is a knife in his back. No, that's not me saying the Mayor is dead; the Mayor went to Max's ball as "guy who got backstabbed." Even though he's useless, he's officially my favorite politician in a comic book movie ever.
The Penguin reveals another trick umbrella - the cute one. It's got squeaky ducks hanging from it and apparently he's going to use it to lure the children into raw sewage. Wonderful. Fortunately Batman puts a stop to this plan because he used his BatTracking again to figure out exactly where the Penguin's Evil Babynapping Train is.
That plan foiled, the Penguin reverts to Plan C. Plan C is to use an army of penguins with rockets strapped to their backs to kablooie Gotham City and kill one hundred thousand people. (Cue Doctor Evil.) Batman once again foils this plan by jamming the signal and turning the penguin army around. (How did they film that?! I have no idea.)
Penguin tries to escape in his duckmobile, but he's ambushed by Batman and a glowing button of doom. Penguin takes out his umbrella...
Okay remember way back at the beginning when I told you to remember that the Penguin has a freaking Spaceballs The Flamethrower umbrella? Well, never mind; he brought the one with the knife-blade instead. Yup, the fat guy with a limp is going to try to fence Batman to death. That works about as well as you'd expect; Batman lets him have the glowy button of doom, but pressing it causes the penguin army to launch their rockets at Penguin's lair, doing mostly superficial damage, and causes a bunch of bats to come out of Batman's sewermobile and attack the Penguin, causing him to fall to his death. Tragic irony or poetic justice? You tell me.
Shreck was a prisoner in the Penguin's lair, but he's escaped, only to be attacked by Catwoman. He manages to get a gun, but doesn't use it immediately because plot. Batman goes back inside Penguin's lair to confront Catwoman and get her to not kill Max. Because killing is bad, says the guy who killed two random mooks. Batman tears off his mask, but Catwoman says she can't live with herself (?) and rebuffs him. Max shoots Batman, but not, y'know, in the head. Then he shoots Catwoman four times, only for her to electrocute him (and her) with the help of her stun-gun and the zoo's power plant. Yup, the guy whose entire plan was to build a giant power plant to steal energy from the city's electrical grid gets electrocute. Tragic irony or poetic justice? You tell me.
The reason I ended two paragraphs in a row with the same line was because Penguin repeats it a couple of times in the film and it's stuck with me. Speaking of the Penguin, he rises from the sewer while Batman searches the wreckage. Batman manages to find Shreck's corpse, but no sign of Catwoman. Penguin makes it to the umbrella stand... and picks the cute one. And keels over dead. And gets gently pushed into the sewer by six emperor penguins. Amazingly, this is not scene-wreckingly funny.
Later, Bruce finds Selina's cat in an alley. The camera tracks up to Gotham's rooftops, where the bat-signal comes on while Catwoman watches. Roll credits.
I'll leave you with this quote from the film's YMMV TvTropes page:
Some fans think that the dialogue, acting, and overall tragic feel to the film gives it a weight and maturity that the other movies just don't have. Other fans believe that this movie is unreasonably dark and depressing, while simultaneously being completely ridiculous. The critics are similarly split.
It certainly would have been better if Tim Burton could have settled on one tone. That said, this is the best of the first four. Despite its comic book pretensions (which are admittedly completely appropriate given the source material) this is the deepest, most thought-provoking one of the bunch, while still managing to be extremely entertaining.
It is definitely not for kids, though.
No comments:
Post a Comment