One of the most misunderstood films ever made.

Rating: 9/10 (17 November 2005)

When it came time to make a sequel to BATMAN, Tim Burton decided that he did not want to make a conventional sequel. Those are good too & with the proper imagination driving it could work well. Instead of giving us the Bruce Wayne that is self assured, he gave us a more realistic take on the character. A recluse who uses the guise of Batman as therapy. He may or may not be as psychotic as those that he fights depending on who you ask. This characterization fascinated film students, regular movie goers and more open minded Batman fans. However it also angered the fans of the "real Batman". The ones who don't want to see an adaptation but a direct translation of the comic books because they don't really understand the differences between comics & film. They don't quite get what may work best in one medium and what works best in the other. A lot of these same fans do admit that while they didn't like Wayne though they thought Batman was pretty well done.
Burton was into creating something a bit more original so he kicked up the German expressionism influence that Bob Kane & Bill Finger had in their very first "The Bat-Man" stories from 1939, when it came to creating Batman Returns. The film is a metaphorical representation of Bruce Wayne's psyche. Each character in this film represents a different aspect of Bruce Wayne's persona. It shows how all these aspects of Batman's mind cannot function as one. He is too disjointed because of the trauma he received the night his parents were killed. A lot of things in the film show us this. One example is when Batman blows up a guy then we see that at the same moment Catwoman blows up a department stores. They are one in the same, Catwoman represents the vigilante side of Bruce Wayne. Max Schreck & The Penguin also represent flip-sides to the Batman coin. The tough millionaire business man & the sad orphan longing for his parents love. There are also biblical references sprinkled throughout, many films students have pointed out that in certain ways The Penguin is a very evil & disturbed version of the biblical character Moses.
To me this is my favorite of the Batman films for that reason. I love the subtext of it and how there are so many ways to interpret it. That's what a great film is supposed to do. The fact that somebody even approached a superhero film as an homage to German expressionism because it added a certain depth to it & showed the potential of what could be done with these characters that we all love. I also feel that the romance between Catwoman & Batman is the best in any superhero film to date. For the record I've been reading Batman comics since I was 6 years old, I am now in my 20's it's not that I don't understand the character it's that I understand that in his 60 year history there have been too many interpretations for anybody to claim that there is a "definitive Batman". As a fan I am thankful for all 5 of the Batman films because they each showed how diverse the character could truly be just like the comics also have. They all have flaws and some of them are not that great but they all achieved what they set out to do. Be adaptations of in my opinion the greatest character in American fiction.