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Batman
a Tim Burton film
Plot (Spoiler Alert)A masked vigilante known as Batman brings fear into the criminals of Gotham City. Batman is secretly Bruce Wayne, a billionaire who as a kid witnessed his parents murders right in front of him. Jack Napier, a right hand man of a mob boss, gets knocked by Batman into a vat of chemicals. The chemicals change the color of his skin to white and gives him a creepy grin. Jack now calls himself The Joker, a psychopathic clown who plans to terrorize Gotham with a smile. 
Blaine: Production for “Batman” started with one of the executive producers, Michael E. Uslan, who had started a college course on comic books in the 1970s. Then he started to get to work with DC comics because they read all about him in the papers and his course was becoming a huge success. The next thing he wanted to do was produce the first live action Batman movie. He wounded up getting a job at United Artists and he explained how Batman could work out as a movie. The film would have to be dark, series and not look like something funny like the 1960s tv series staring Adam West. It would get turned down by studios, but Warner Bros. had already made “Superman” and Batman was the next hero they wanted to see on the big screen. There was a lot of directors that wanted to be involved with bringing Batman to life through their vision. There was also a lot of scripts that were turned down by the studio. Batman creator Bob Kane was hoping to find the right person to get Batman back on it’s feet and his prayers were answered after he met Tim Burton. Tim Burton wasn’t a big comic book fan, but he did love the Batman comics because of the "Phantom of the Opera" like nature of it and he understood the character a lot. He also liked Batman because he could relate to him like the duality, the hidden side of a person, the two sides light and dark, not speaking much, a loner type of person. The best comic book Tim said he read was “Batman: The Killing Joke” written by Alan Moore and he loved it so much that he wanted the movie to be something like that. Tim Burton also has a dark side to his imagination and wanted to make “Batman” as true to the comics as it should be. Tim had a lot of ideas for “Batman”. Pat Hingle (Commissioner Gordon) said that Tim Burton doesn’t live on the ground like the rest of us, he lives somewhere on a cloud, he’s always thinking and he’s brilliant, but he’s just not one of us Earth people. Michael Keaton was more of a comedic actor before he became Batman and a lot of people thought it was ridiculous when he was chosen to play Batman. They were afraid it was going to be like the old 1960s tv show with Adam West and they didn’t want that. The reason why Michael Keaton got the job was because Tim really liked the look on Michael's eyes. Michael Keaton knew it was going to be a huge challenge to take on a role like this, but he felt comfortable knowing the director was going to be Tim Burton telling him what to do and Michael had worked with Tim before in his second feature, “Beetlejuice”. Michael said he wouldn’t have done the project if Tim wasn't on board because he felt comfortable around him. 
A lot of actors wanted to play the Joker, but the number one actor that was on their minds at the beginning was Jack Nicholson. Question was would Jack play a role like this because he is one the biggest actors known to man. Tim Burton had met with Jack through horseback ridding. Tim was taking risks to convince Jack by riding a horse because he couldn’t ride and he was terrified. Lucky thing for Tim, Jack Nicholson had seen “Beetlejuice” and loved it. What Jack loved about the Joker was his origin and the fact that he does terrible things and has fun with it. Tim said the great thing about Jack is that he can fulfill everybody’s expectations and still go way beyond that. Nick Dudman, the person in charge of makeup, did one cast of Jack where he told him to pull the most extreme grin he could do and then they molded various casts of him smiling. They would glue the sides to Jack’s cheeks where it looks like he is smiling all the time. Then apply the white makeup. They went through a few different types of green that was light, dark or somewhere in the middle for the hair. It was a challenge finding a way for when Vicky Vale splashes Joker with water and the flesh color comes off showing his white skin. They used this special product called pax paint which was able to stay on as long as Jack didn’t touch it. Originally Vicky Vale was supposed to be played by Sean Young, but she had an accident by falling off her horse and Kim Basinger was brought in at the last second. “Batman” was a big movie back then and it costs a lot of money to make from what Tim Burton and the others have said. The thing Jack Nicholson found astounding about Tim Burton was the confidence and lack of fear he has. He was in his early twenties directing a big budget movie and even though he was being pressured he didn’t have the sense of it. Because of that Jack had a lot of support for Tim and gave him advice to not let anyone get to him and get what he needs to bring his vision to life. The Batsuit was designed by Bob Ringwood. It was clear to Tim at the beginning that the suit should just be black and not have any grey or blue on it. They looked through comics and both Tim and Bob knew they weren’t going to put the underpants outside the suit look. Bob and his team did a life cast of Michael Keaton and then sculpted the Batman elements over it. All the joints were made separate and once they made the under suit, they then glued the pieces onto it. The idea of how the cape should look came to Bob one day while he was having lunch at a restaurant with his team and he just looked at a circular table and thought they should use a table as a mold and they could have a circular cape. Wearing that costume was a weird thing for Michael Keaton to work in. It wasn’t comfortable to wear, the cape was heavy, you couldn’t hear that good in it and it was hot underneath. Tim said he would put the suit on just to see what Michael would be going through. The only thing that was comfortable to wear were the boots. Michael did try to do as much of his own stuff as he could, but it was hard to do while wearing this suit that would sometimes be hard to move around in. They had stunt men for whatever Michael Keaton couldn’t do. Everyone loved the Batmobile and it took fourteen weeks for the production team to build the Batmobile. The design and look of the Batmobile came from production designer Anton Furst. He had drawn a lot of sketches and they brought in this other guy who made this little clay model. They sculptured the full sized Batmobile out of polystyrene. Tim Burton thought it looked great, but he pointed out there was one thing missing and that was the door to get inside. So then they thought the window could slide open. The inside of it was built out of old existing car. Batman could fit into the Batmobile all except for the ears to the mask. They couldn't fit under the doors so Tim needed the seats to be lower. Problem was the seats were right down to the bottom and they couldn’t go any lower. So they made a new hood with shorter ears. One of the screenwriters Sam Hamm, didn’t think it was a good idea for Joker being the person responsible for the killing of Bruce Wayne’s parents when he was a child because it’s not in the comics, but it’s what Tim wanted and he had a lot of arguments with Sam about that. I don’t mind it because there is always new ways of re-inventing Batman. I think it’s a great idea for this film because when it comes to the scene where Batman arrives on top of the church building and smacks Joker around, Joker points out that Batman is responsible for turning him into a clown. But Batman says “You killed my parents” and that Joker made him become the bat all those years ago. The bat became a symbol of the vengeance Bruce has inside him after he falls into a cave and bats show up and fly around him. 
Composer Danny Elfman was working up a lot of ideas for the music score and there was some talk wondering if Danny was the right composer for the job and he understood that because at the time he never did a big budget movie or an action film before. Danny had to do a presentation and producer John Peters wasn't impressed with any of the samples of music he was listening to. Tim whispered to Danny telling him to play the Batman march he had written and John jumped out of his chair dancing in the room. Prince had written a song for the movie and that became a huge hit before the movie was released. Advertising the movie was very popular. A lot of fans were buying a lot of Batman products. There was a 30 second trailer that people would pay money to see in theaters and just left after that instead of sitting through the movie they payed money to go see. Everyone was happy of the Summer of 1989 because fans were happy to see another DC comic book character on the big screen. People would line up outside the West Wood Theater. Batman creator Bob Kane was all emotional seeing all those fans cheering to see something they’ve been wanting to see for a long time and that was his creation on the big screen. He had never experienced something this big before. My rating on “Batman” is five out of five stars 
Music by Danny Elfman Batman drawings by Tim Burton 
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