Word: burtons
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...first Batman seemed a symptom of that malaise. Batman Returns is an antidote. For a start, it's alive, not an effects showcase in a shroud. Daniel Waters' script delights in elaborate wordplay and complex characters. "The characters are all screwed up," Burton notes. "I find that much more interesting." Returns tops the first movie's shrill wrestling match between Batman (Michael Keaton) and the Joker (Jack Nicholson) with a funnier, more lithe and daring villain: the Penguin (Danny De Vito). He is a vicious troll with a righteous grudge: his rich parents dumped him in the sewer when they...
...animals in some way," Burton observes, and he doesn't mean it pejoratively. "One message of the film," says Waters, "is that the warped tensions underlying every personality should be embraced, not ignored." Unleash the beast. Otherwise you will be schizo, a stranger to others and to your other self...
That one was "just -- Batman." Now Burton has made Batman Returns, opening Friday on more than 2,500 screens, and it looks as though Warner Bros., which produced the film, got its $55 million worth. It is a funny, gorgeous, midsummer night's Christmas story about. . . well, dating, actually. But hang on. This is the goods: "The Batman." Accept no prequels...
That could have been the mood on the Batman Returns set. It was chilly enough: 38 degrees F for the 12-hr. working days. Annette Bening, set to star as Catwoman, ducked out when she got pregnant, and Burton scurried to hire Michelle Pfeiffer. Anton Furst, who designed Batman but was not working on the sequel, died jumping off a roof and plunged the crew into melancholy...
...Burton felt these burdens -- or the onus of topping himself after four films (Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands), all of them critical and popular hits -- he didn't show it. No screaming, no broken crockery. "He's the most un-Hollywood person I've ever met," says his co-producer, Denise Di Novi, who believes Burton's breakthrough came with Scissorhands, another Christmas phantasmagoria about lonely creatures making sad magic in the snow. "He connected with himself," she says, "and his art became much more intimate." Now, without Batman producers Peter Guber and Jon Peters hovering...