A lot better than the first Tim Burton Batman film

Rating: 6/10 (14 October 2011)

In my opinion this movie romps all over the first Batman. Tim Burton isn't really an action director but the action scenes do not subtract from the overall impact of this movie. Batman Returns as set the standard for the next two Batman movies, though after Tim Burton handed the reigns over to Joel Shumacher Batman has become more comic book like and is slowly reverting back to the original television series.
The critics did not like this movie and the reason that they give is that it is not like the original comic books. It is too dark and the characters are not heroic as a comic book hero should, but they are more like the anti-heroes of the late forties, early fifties movies. Batman Returns is considered to be Film Noir, or Black Film, though a friend says that it goes far more Gothic than Film Noir. He also comments that these Tim Burton Batman movies are much closer to the original comic books where Batman is truly a pained individual and suffers from childhood torments. In effect the critics found Batman Returns far too depressing for their tastes. That is why I liked it. I really enjoy Tim Burton movies because they are close to my style of filmmaking and writing. I tend to create characters who are either pained or tragic and spend the movie either destroying themselves or trying to live with the pain. This is what happens in Batman Returns. The three main characters live lives of pain: the Penguin (Danny DiVito) was thrown into the sewers by his parents when he was a baby because they could not live with a freak, the Catwoman (Michelle Phieffer) lives a double life as a secretary who struggles to survive in an unloving, unforgiving world, and Batman also lives a double life as a lonely millionaire who has not got over the death of his parents.
The Catwoman and Batman are very similar and as such their respective characters are drawn together. They both live double lives and Burton does well to drop hints of this double nature. On one hand when they are in their masks, they fight for that is their nature: the Catwoman is a villain and Batman is a hero. When they are out of their masks they are lovers for they can see that there is something unique about each other. The pain comes when they know that they must then don their masks and fight. Batman Returns is not a film where the good guy gets the woman in the end because their is a rift between the characters that they cannot cross, and they know it. They love each other yet they know that they cannot.
Batman Returns, like Batman, is visually spectacular, but with Batman a bad story and characterisation destroyed that. Batman Returns comes back with a brilliant heart wrenching story that the critics in Hollywood cannot understand. Tim Burton tends not to make films that appeal to the masses at Hollywood and one of the reasons is because the dream world that people love to live in is rudely torn open. Here in Batman Returns, the dream world is ripped open with the realisation that the hero cannot always have the girl. He couldn't relate to Vicky Vale, and this is brought out here, and he cannot have Catwoman, because she is a villain and the hero must defeat the villain. Burton has created a brilliant dilemma here and this dilemma makes American heads hurt.