Batman Returns
I'm so glad to revisit this movie now, after so many years at this point in my life. First I gotta say that the movie deserves
much more credit that I've given to for many years, it's definitely a work of art and one of the most interesting pieces in the genre, particularly if you were to extrapolate to modern genre sensitivities.
I'm so glad personally that I've long gotten over the needless and pointless fanboy attitudes of "the new replaces the old" and "bring one down to elevate the other" and that I can enjoy so many different takes (just like in the comics, go figure) of whom until recently was my favorite CB character; Keaton, Kilmer, Bale, Affleck, all different takes and all "faithful" to the source material in their own different way, and this particular
dark fantasy take of Burton is something truly special, delivering very emotionally striking points on the themes of duality/identity found in, again, the source material. Due to the very twisted nature of Burton's presentation of the world, you accept the most illogical parts of this fantasy presented to you (and I swear I have a problem with none of those, except with one simple thing: Where the hell did the Penguin's gang get the schematics of the Batmobile??! Does it annoy me?? To no end. Is it important?? Not in the slightest.) and thanks to, I guess, me maturing as a person and a fan, I couldn't care less than an airborne copulation about "canon" of "fidelity" to a
particular or widely accepted "canonical" version of these characters; so give me that mutated Penguin, seemingly immortal Catwoman and shortie, physically unimposing psychotic Batman, I'll take it!!
I definitely have stronger feelings towards this movie than I've had for many years, and I actually find it now way more interesting than Batman '89 (although now I feel the need to revisit that one too), not to mention that it's just endless eye-candy, with stunning cinematography, some really remarkable imagery, excellent performances (specially the goddess Michelle Pfeiffer, who has the best performance and most interesting character in the movie) and a very interesting study of the psychology of identity, duality and masks. Also, I love any Batman story that points out that Batman can be quite a bit of a hypocrite sometimes ("It's no big deal if I kill,
but you shouldn't!!!"). AND it made me go and look into German expressionism, so thank you Tim Burton!!
Also, I'll bet my left nut that if this movie, as it is, was made nowadays in the current CBM environment, it'd be torn to shreds and have like a 10% RT score.