If you’ve watched a few episodes of Pop! Goes the Culture! (shameless plug), then you’re probably aware of the fact that I haven’t seen Batman ‘89, a feat that brings great displeasure to my co-host Greg as well as a bunch of other Shacknews Staffers. Well, I was looking for something to watch Monday afternoon and decided to finally throw on the beloved Tim Burton classic. I liked it! It’s a good movie, not that I ever implied otherwise.
Something that immediately stuck out to me about Batman ‘89 was the look of Gotham City. The building designs are silly and exaggerated, it actually feels like a town from a comic book. All of the modern Batman films try too hard to make Gotham look and feel like a real place. It just ends up being identical to Chicago or New York City.
In general, the movie is just more fun than a lot of the Batman movies that came after it. Keaton has his fair share of silly moments as Bruce Wayne (“you wanna get nuts? Let’s get nuts!”), but still captures the seriousness and darkness of the character. It’s refreshing to see Batman not be angsty 24/7.
Jack Nicholson’s Joker is quite beloved, and I have to echo all of those praises. He’s very twisted and sinister, while still being silly and playful. Again, the Joker doesn’t need to be an overly violent serial killer all the time. I also love the way that his mouth (and all of his victim’s mouths) look.
Now that I’ve seen Batman ‘89, I can cross a huge movie off of my “never-seen” list. So, where do I go from here? Ghostbusters? Indiana Jones? Do I just move on to Batman Returns? Idk, I’ll probably rewatch Scream 5 or something. Let me know if you have any thoughts.
