Word: superhero
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...portrayed on television in the 1960s, the comic-book superhero Batman was the ultimate stuffed shirt, a crimefighter so morally upright that he would wait for a red light to change before following criminals across the street. In a bizarre world of Penguins and Riddlers, Batman was the perfect straight-man. He never realized how fundamentally weird Gotham city was, and that's why the show was funny...
...redress all grievances, we have a new Batman movie. Director Tim Burton has chosen to make a deadly solemn film about a superhero whose mental state is just this side of psychotic. This Batman does not battle crime out of any sense of moral righteousness. He does it because he is obsessed. He likes to scare the hell out of crooks by dangling them off the edge of skyscrapers. He enjoys slinking around in the dark, vanishing and reappearing without warning in the thick mist that envelops Gotham...
...real star of this movie is the city of Gotham itself. As envisioned by production designer Anton Furst, it seems to be part Transylvania castle, part Star Wars fantasy, part comic book, but mostly a decaying caricature of Manhattan island. The city is covered in shadow and smog. Any superhero who hung out there long enough would inevitably become a bit deranged, but fortunately Batman (Michael Keaton) has a head start...
...Baat-maaaan!" Not the bleating trumpets and Pop art facetiousness of the '60s TV series, which turned Bob Kane's superhero into a camp crusader. Director Tim Burton's approach is dead serious. He renounces the bright palette, the easy thrills, to aim for a psychodrama with the force of myth. He creates a Gotham City that looms like a rube's nightmare of Manhattan. He strips the Bruce Wayne legend down to its chassis, dumping Robin and the goony rogues' gallery. This is a face-off between two men in weird masks: one in a leathery black item...
...comedy . . . it's a psychodrama . . . it's Batman! From the director and star of Beetlejuice comes a dead-serious gloss on the cave-dwelling superhero. Its producers will be happy, in this summer of the sequels, if moviegoers of the future remember Tim Burton's movie as Batman I. -- Broken Bat: the film reviewed...