Movies: Batman

There are some movies that you see as a child that just don't hold up well upon later viewing. I hadn't seen the original "Batman" movie in its entirety for many years. It was on TV recently and I decided I'd see how it held up. Widely regarded as the work that brought Batman back from the campy Adam West series into the mainstream, it's certainly one of Tim Burton's most popular films.



The reasons I didn't really get into the movie are hard to pin down. The effects, performances, and even the plot are about how I remembered them. I didn't let the middling "Batman Forever" and straight-up awful "Batman & Robin" influence me, and I put "Batman Begins" out of my mind.

The real problem, I think, is that between the time I was dressing up as Batman for Halloween and the time I sat down to watch Burton's "Batman" again, I had seen a sizable portion of the fabulous "Batman" animated series. Michael Keaton was a respectable Batman, but Kevin Conroy's dark voice is pretty much the epitome of the Batman character. Jack Nicholson played the Joker mostly as a deranged criminal, but Mark Hamill's delightfully psychotic Joker was both a true clown and a dangerous killer. Even the structure of the animated series was closer in line with Batman's status as a master detective. In any case, a quick peek at IMDB reveals which Batman work the fans favor.

Rating: 7/10