Two Directors Create A Series That Becomes The Best Cinematic Example Of The Law Of Diminishing Returns: The Batman Anthology

The Good: The first two films are good, Val Kilmer is decent, Great DVD/Blu-Ray bonus features!
The Bad: Joel Schumacher’s works, Repetitive plots, Series inconsistencies, Even the good films have not agd particularly well
The Basics: With no consisted story or direction, the Batman movies of Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher make for an unfortunately inconsistent series that gets worse with each installment after a point.


With the recent end of the Dark Knight Trilogy (reviewed here!), the cinematic Batman franchise is once again in limbo. That is a state not entirely unfamiliar to Warner Bros., who owns the rights to the franchise and is the studio that produces all of the films based on DC Comics properties. With the abrupt end of the Batman movies of the 1990s, the franchise had to regroup and reboot. Before the powerful, thematically complex and decidedly adult The Dark Knight Trilogy, there were the Batman films of 1989 – 1997, now encapsulated in a boxed set known as Batman: The Motion Picture Anthology 1989 – 1997.

Batman: The Motion Picture Anthology 1989 – 1997 is an incredible example of what happens when a surprise hit becomes a lucrative cash cow for a studio and that cow is milked too frequently and too hard. It is also a prime example of what happens to a franchise when the creative teams behind the camera and the talent in front of the camera are not kept consistent (in The Dark Knight Trilogy only one performer was recast!) and the vision by the later forces working on the series is clearly an attempt to capitalize on the formula as opposed to build upon the story and prior successes. The result is that Batman: The Motion Picture Anthology 1989 – 1997 is a film series that starts intriguing, rises well, and then steadily declines until its abrupt and painful crash.

Batman: The Motion Picture Anthology 1989 – 1997 consists of the films:
Batman
Batman Returns
Batman Forever
and Batman & Robin. The first two are directed by Tim Burton, the latter two by Joel Schumacher and three different actors play Bruce Wayne/Batman over the course of the four films!

In Batman, a young Bruce Wayne witnesses his father and mother being killed by a mysterious assassin. As an adult, Bruce Wayne manages the giant company left to him by his father by day and at night, he takes up armor and a cape to dispense vigilante justice on the streets of Gotham City. As the press pushes the police to admit that the Batman exists, a local gangster is smoked during a robbery of a chemical factory that goes horribly wrong. However, when Batman accidentally lets the gangster fall into a vat of chemicals, the man is not killed, but rather transformed into a psychopathic killer. Waging a battle with chemical weapons, the Joker menaces Gotham City and threatens to undo all the good Batman is working for.

Batman Returns happens around Christmastime a short time later. Gotham City is hit with a crime wave from a gang of thugs who use old circus equipment. While Batman keeps them in check, he is not prepared for the city to have to deal with more threats. Those threats come in the form of a mysterious man, Oswald Cobblepot, who literally rises out of the sewers to save an abducted baby and a catburgler who seems bent on wreaking vengeance at night to make up for her unsatisfying daytime life (and the fact that her boss tried to kill her). While Bruce Wayne fends off a corporate attack from his rival, Max Shreck, he finds romance with Selena Kyle and it slowly begins to dawn on him that she is the same person as the mysterious Catwoman he fights at night. When Shreck uses Cobblepot as a pawn to take the mayor’s office, the fallout creates a villain who wants to kill all the firstborn of Gotham City.

Joel Schumacher took over behind the camera and Val Kilmer took on the role of Bruce Wayne in Batman Forever. In that, a demented former-District Attorney, Harvey Dent, begins a reign of terror and violence (focused on bank robberies) as the villainous Two-Face. Bruce Wayne’s problems are multiplied, though, when one of his employees creates a device that can drain the brains of the citizens of Gotham City and unlock all the secrets the people there have. As Batman squares off against Two-Face and the Riddler, he is aided by a forensic psychologist and a young acrobat who lost his parents and wants to fight crime as well . . . Robin.

George Clooney’s only outing in the cape and cowl comes in Batman & Robin where Batman and Robin are assisted by Alfred’s neice, who takes up the alter ego of Batgirl. The pair could use her help as they are bickering over how to take down the formidable Mr. Freeze and they fall under the love spell-style charms of Poison Ivy and her thug, Bane.

To his credit, Tim Burton’s two outings – in addition to being appropriately weird (as one expects from Tim Burton’s works) – have larger themes. Batman explores crime and the nature of justice vs. the pitfalls of revenge and Batman Returns has a great deal about empowering women and the snares of political corruption. Unfortunately, by the time Batman Forever comes up, the writers and director are working for big action, flamboyant villains, and star power, as opposed to trying to create films of substance. This is not to say that Tim Burton got everything right in his two films. While the miniatures look great, even by today’s standards, Batman is surprisingly slow and the focus on the Joker is far less compelling in-context of Batman’s story than it is as a stand-alone film.

That said, it is almost inarguable that Tim Burton helped effectively usher in the youth culture mindset of the 1990s with Batman and then the even more violent Batman Returns. The two films created a nihilistic sense of the world; crime ran rampant and the victories were more ambiguous than celebratory and the hero uses many of the same methods as the villains, just with nobler purpose.

Val Kilmer was not a bad choice to replace Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne and Batman and he had the physical presence to pull off the dual roles more plausibly than Keaton, who played the part of Bruce Wayne as more goofy than gallant. Kilmer, however, was saddled with a particularly weak script with Batman Forever and a film that was intended to be a Jim Carrey vehicle and ended up disappointing on so many fronts. Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever also prioritized casting (the entire series has pretty impressive guest cast members from the major – Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, Michelle Pfeiffer, Tommy Lee Jones, Jim Carrey, Uma Thurman and Arnold Schwarzenegger – to the supporting players who flesh out surprisingly minor roles – Kim Bassinger, Robert Wuhl, Christopher Walken, Drew Barrymore, John Glover, Vivica A. Fox) over fidelity to the series thus far. To wit, in Batman, Harvey Dent was played by Billy Dee Williams and in Batman Forever he is recast with Tommy Lee Jones. It takes a lot more than an acid bath from a mobster to make Billy Dee Williams into Tommy Lee Jones!

The epitome of Schumacher’s obsession with star power and spectacle over substance is in Batman & Robin. There, Arnold Schwarzenegger appears as Mr. Freeze, a character written with a thin backstory surrounding his attempts to cure his wife (who is in suspended animation), but is executed as a character constructed almost entirely of catchphrases. To wit, his big monologue from the film’s trailer, where he introduces himself as a threat to Gotham City appears in the film’s middle, after he is incarcerated, when he introduces himself to two people (his jailers) who know exactly who he is! It is this type of stupidity that shook the series and almost gutted this franchise.

Performances in the Batman movies in this set are generally good. Michael Keaton is an intriguing Bruce Wayne and he pulled off the action sequences for Batman better than most might have suspected. Jack Nicholson performed opposite him in Batman with a flamboyancy and menace that worked beautifully to define the character of the Joker. Danny DeVito gives one of his most underrated performances as Oswald Cobblepot (the Penguin) and Michelle Pfeiffer and Keaton had great on-screen chemistry in Batman Returns. While Val Kilmer and Chris O’Donnell did fine as Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson, George Clooney seemed unusually stiff when he took up the mantle in Batman & Robbin. The less said about Jim Carrey, Uma Thurman, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the better.

On DVD and Blu-Ray, the Batman Anthology is chock full of goodies. There are extensive featurettes on the production of the films, from concept designs through casting and the bonus features provide a wealth of insight into how moviemaking was done, especially at the birth of CG effects. Fans of Batman may want to champion the whole series, but given how most people will only watch bonus featurettes once, the full Batman Anthology is hardly worth investing in. Tim Burton’s works might be worth picking up, but Joel Schumacher’s outings oscillate between the disappointing and the outright insulting.

For other live-action DC superhero works, please check out my reviews of:
Green Lantern
Jonah Hex
Watchmen
Superman Returns
Catwoman
Batman & Robin
Supergirl
Superman
Wonder Woman

3.5/10

For other film reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Perfection In The Background: The Batman Returns Soundtrack!

The Good: Amazing orchestral work. Very moody, deep!
The Bad: ? None
The Basics: Buy this if you like orchestral music or simply something deep and different!


The essential album of night and winter is the Batman Returns Soundtrack. Even without Tim Burton's visual images, Danny Elfman's music holds up as a solid body. The magic of how Elfman's score worked with Burton's images was that the music was complimentary to the scenes, but on its own, this work still is evocative of cold desolation and darkness.

Anyone who likes orchestral music will love the Batman Returns Soundtrack because it does not hinge on the film. That is, unlike my problems with the nature of the VR.5 Soundtrack, Elfman's score is not matching up sudden visual images to music. The pieces are not choppy, they are not simple pieces that seem out of context. That is to say that this soundtrack has longer, musically developed pieces than most soundtracks and that lends it to an interpretation of strength and completion often lacking from shorter instrumental works.

In fact, like a classical work, the Batman Returns Soundtrack tells a story. There are cohesive musical elements, chords, bars, that have the feel of characters and the whole album traces the progress of whatever characters the listener creates to make sense of the album.

The strengths of the music from Batman Returns (reviewed here!) continue without the film; that is the music is big, there's a sense of boldness that overcomes the auditory senses and indeed, the whole body and it frees the listener ultimately.

This album is composed mostly of strings. The tracks feature violins, cellos and bass'. As well, the more moody woodwinds and brass are tapped and on several tracks, there are noticeable oboes, bassoons and French horns. The percussion section is defined by the snare drum and fleshed out through the use of both bass drums and tympanies. Moreover, the ranges of each of these evocative instruments is fully explored. The woodwinds go from contemplative on "The Lair" to harsh and violent on "Selina Transforms." All of the music comes together in the complete, rousing sound of "The Finale" and it's enough to make us remember why people bother to play an instrument at all.

The album is an exploration of longing, sorrow and triumph and it's largely what you bring to it. But more than that, it is big and it's refreshing to be immersed in something so big and so powerful and ultimately cathartic. This is a musical journey of the best type.

On the album's lone vocal track, "Face to Face," Siouxsie and the Banshees continues the gothic musical tone with the addition of the guitar. There they impressively blend their voices to a story of duality that has been running through the album with the contrasting strings and woodwinds. In many ways, their end to the album brings words to the emotions expressed implicitly through the twenty musical tracks that precede it.

Even if you don't like Batman, have never seen Batman Returns the album is worth it, perhaps even more than if you are either of the former. The music itself has a purity to it that, when unencumbered by the expectations of images or the pretense that this belongs to a certain movie, reaches perfection. It's simply great music and Danny Elfman is the best unsung composer of our day.

For other soundtrack reviews, please visit my reviews of:
What's Love Got To Do With It? Soundtrack
Christiane F. Soundtrack
Twelfth Night Soundtrack


10/10

For other music reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2003 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Clunky Animation And Garbled Music Kill Corpse Bride

The Good: Moments of fun, Good casting
The Bad: Animation isn't the greatest, Not funny, Predictable plot, Music isn't clear
The Basics: When Victor Van Dort accidentally marries a corpse, the viewer is taken on a frantic visual trip to the world of the dead accompanied by mumbled music.


I suppose in the interest of full disclosure, I ought to open the review by saying (for those who have not read my review of it) that I was not a fan of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas. It didn't grab me. Where I had hoped for dark, quirky and macabre, I just found disappointing and surprisingly childish. It was, therefore, with rather low expectations that I popped in Corpse Bride to evaluate. The short response is that the movie pretty much lived down to my lowered expectations.

When Victor Van Dort, son of new money fishmongers, is pledged to be married to Victoria Everglot, daughter of parents who are poor-as-dirt old money, he seems to have some problems with getting into the spirit of the marriage. While practicing his vows, he accidentally places the ring on the finger of a desiccated corpse who suddenly is reanimated by his commitment to her. She drags him off to the world of the dead and while Victoria is searching for him (and Victor searches for a way home) she is preyed upon by the golddigging Lord Barkis Bittern whose connection to the Corpse Bride is obvious.

Where have you gone, Tim Burton? I'm calling out for the Tim Burton whose genius with Danny Elfman created such dark, dreamy, funny and/or quirky visions as Beetlejuice, Batman, Batman Returns, and the unrelentingly depressing Edward Scissorhands (which still surprises me is not found in more DVD players at the sites of suicides). Burton used to have a writing style and visual sense that was imaginative and unique. He could create creepy, he made action-adventure movies that used dialogue and created character (Batman Returns kicks The Fantastic 4 any day of any week), and he made haunting works that remain with their viewers.

As they say at the climax of The Usual Suspects, "And then like that . . . he's gone!"

I cannot recall the last Tim Burton movie I truly enjoyed. Big Fish didn't live up to my expectations and Charlie And The Chocolate Factory was just disappointment in bright, lush colors. Corpse Bride joins that sad descent in Tim Burton's works and it has a significant number of problems that Charlie And The Chocolate Factory had.

First, what's right; the casting. Tim Burton seems to have found a posse of actors and actresses that he has become comfortable with repeatedly exploiting for his cinematic experiments. Michael Keaton is out of the club, but Johnny Depp remains firmly entrenched, now with Helena Bonham Carter, Christopher Lee, and Deep Roy at his side. Perhaps Corpse Bride was completed using their voice-over talents while on breaks from Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, but either way, Burton has assembled a quality collection of vocal talents. And they do their best with what they are given.

And there are a few moments that are quirky enough to make one smile, though almost exclusively relegated to the world of the dead. Burton, no doubt, is making a statement by keeping the world above in dark, moody grays while down below there are colors and a tremendous sense of movement.

Unfortunately, that ultimately works against the movie when the soundtrack is added. Danny Elfman has created one of his least memorable soundtracks for Corpse Bride, but during the frenetic moments in the world of the dead, the music only serves to jumble already confused, rapid-fire shots that are not effectively creating a world, but rather jerking the viewer through it. Much of the movie ends up feeling like a roller coaster. With some music.

With the animation style being what it is, and I understand it was a rather painstaking process, Corpse Bride ends up looking like a Puff's commercial on acid.

And for a musical, there are remarkably few songs in Corpse Bride. None of them are particularly memorable and, like several of the numbers in Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, many of them are jumbled, at least in part. The songs in the underworld all suffer at one point or another from moments where the lyrics are obscured by the music and I had to rewind just to catch lines. This is not an ideal way to make a movie.

But ultimately, the film fails because of the story. None of the characters are particularly interesting. The viewer ultimately does not care whether Victor ends up with Victoria or the Corpse Bride. Whatever sense of jeopardy from Bittern's presence is swallowed up in the absurdly obvious notion that the Everglots are virtually bankrupt.

All in all, this is a disappointment and while we applaud Tim Burton for stretching out in new directions, we wonder when his stretching will result in another work of enduring quality.

For other works by Tim Burton, please check out my reviews of:
Alice In Wonderland
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street
Charlie And The Chocolate Factory
Big Fish
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Batman Returns
Edward Scissorhands

3/10

For other film reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2010, 2006 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.




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Disappointment In A Candy-Smudged Wrapper: Charlie And The Chocolate Factory Slips For Tim Burton.

The Good: Johnny Depp is good, Moments of intriguing visuals
The Bad: Terrible music, Awkward pacing, Uninspired acting, Oppressively unoriginal
The Basics: With distractingly bad music and uninspired acting this remake is a dud. And not a good kind, like a Milk Dud.


Tim Burton has talent and if one does not believe me, they need only to watch Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, and Batman Returns to realize that I'm right. Unfortunately, Burton's talent seems to be stuck. While Big Fish was mediocre, Burton's vision of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory is flat-out disappointing.

Living in the poorest section of the city dominated by Wonka Chocolates is Charlie Bucket. Charlie is just a poor boy with nothing to set him apart but his poverty. When the mysterious Willy Wonka offers a tour of his plant to the recipients of five golden tickets hidden in his chocolate bars, Charlie seems unlikely to have any hope of finding one. And yet, of course, he does. Charlie finds a golden ticket and soon he is entering Willy Wonka's chocolate factory.

Accompanied by the obese Augustus, the gum-chewing Violet, the snotty Veruca and the television-obsessed Mike Teavee, Charlie is allowed inside the chocolate factory. However, this is anything but the typical chocolate factory. It is a magical community where confections are experimented to perfection and the reclusive eccentric Willy Wonka lives with his army of Oompa Loompas. As the tour of the factory progresses, the children give in to their specific vices and Charlie is made an offer that would otherwise be quite astounding.

There is a certain irony to the title of this movie and it is quite simple. Like the novel, this is Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. Unlike the earlier film version, which was Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory, which focused heavily on Charlie, this incarnation focuses quite heavily on Willy Wonka.

Which leads us to the fundamental problem with Tim Burton's Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. As Burton's vision, Wonka is given a motivation for his eccentricities and if you've seen a few of Burton's movies you know the reason has to be parent issues. Willy was criticized and emotionally abandoned by his father, a dentist and . . . okay, who cares? It's the same story Burton is always telling. Unfortunately, the predictability of Burton's cause for conflict leads viewers who have seen many of his other projects to be disappointed. It's not a bad thing to make Wonka a more fleshed out character, but the method is just tired.

And this is on top of other, more serious problems unique to this particular film. The first is that while the film relies - often successfully - on stunning visuals, the film's composer, Danny Elfman seems to be in a similar rut to Burton. Elfman is known to create masterful and haunting scores that work very well with Burton's visual sense. Elfman creates the winter of Gotham City in Batman Returns far better than any of the snow Burton created on the set. In Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, the music is unmemorable.

Except for the Oompa Loompa songs. The Oompa Loompa songs are entirely terrible. Jazzed or rocked up, the Oompa Loompas sing about the demise of the various children and the music that accompanies them is more loud than funny or poignant. It's not clever, it's not catchy, it's barely music and this costs the film a great deal of impact or interest.

The other big problem is the acting. Far too much of the story relies on the acting of child actors and they fail to deliver. Freddie Highmore lacks the charm and charisma of the actor that played Charlie in Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory. While on screen, his performance is stiff and often painfully unrealistic. The children that play Violet, Veruca, Mike and Augustus are equally uncharismatic.

What saves the movie at all is Johnny Depp. Playing Wonka as weird and delightful, disturbed and invigorated, Depp steals the spotlight from the moment he appears on-screen. No one else comes close to making the movie watchable and Depp's performance keeps this from being a complete waste of time.

Deep Roy, who plays the Oompa Loompas, does fine, though much of his time on-screen is participating in the terrible musical numbers.

Geared overly for children, this movie robs the characters of their ambiguities. All of the kids but Charlie are rotten, Charlie is ultimate good. Removing a key scene from the beginning of the movie, which was present in the book and the other film, sets us a series of absolutes, which makes the ending completely unsurprising, even for those who never read the novel or saw the other film.

Both the book, which is creepy and clever, and the film adaptation known as Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory are vastly superior to this version.

For other films featuring Johnny Depp, please visit my reviews of:
Alice In Wonderland
The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street
Edward Scissorhands

3.5/10

For other film reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2010, 2006 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Nightmare Before Christmas: Not As Wonderful As I Expected

The Good: Imaginative, Adult
The Bad: Choppy, Simplified ending, Musically repetitive
The Basics: Occasionally imaginative, this musical quickly becomes predictable and childlike. Burton and Elfman do better in other works.


I'm a fan of Tim Burton's visual style. Especially when coupled with Danny Elfman's musical styles. The two play off each other to make something great. The team did Batman Returns which is still one of the benchmark sequels of all time. They create a place together using darkness and chords and usually they come up with a magical mood that is extraordinary.

Thus, I was looking forward to Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas. I leave that endeavor somewhat saddened. I was hoping for more, especially after all the praise of it that I had heard in the eight years prior to my seeing it.

The Nightmare Before Christmas is the story of Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King and de facto leader of Halloween Town. Jack has become disenchanted with Halloween and scaring people that one day a year. While lamenting this, Jack stumbles into Christmas Town. Enchanted by something different, he becomes determined to replace Santa Clause and make the Christmas sleigh flight himself. To that end, he sets the denizens of Halloween Town to making gifts, abducting Santa and preparing for Christmas.

The problem is, the character never truly comes alive. Jack always seems like a type rather than an individual and the overriding question I had while watching the film was that, if everyone else was content with their performances on Halloween and only Jack was disillusioned, why Jack bothers to incorporate the whole town in his plan. Instead, why Jack doesn't simply invade Christmas Town on Christmas Eve and replace Santa Clause and deliver Christmas gifts instead of the hideously twisted Halloween Town gifts, is something I'm left wondering.

A large portion of the film is simply establishing what Halloween Town is and it becomes something of a one-trick pony rather quickly. It's all Halloween stuff, but it just keeps going on like a list. The imaginative portion of the film is in the set and character designs. The visual appeal is great in this film. The rest of the film is Jack pulling off his plan.

Save for the B-plot, which is one Halloween Town woman's love for Jack. Sally is held captive by her creator (she's a frankenstein-like monster), pining after Jack. Her part of the film is relegated to the background and that is unfortunate. The far more interesting plot is how Jack and Sally relate and come together. Instead, a great deal of time is spent with singing about who lives in Halloween Town and how they live.

The success of The Nightmare Before Christmas is that it is imaginative and creates an adult world. The characters in Halloween Town are adult and they have menace and problems adults have. Jack is essentially having a mid-life crisis. And the look of the film is a good idea.  Some of the songs are even catchy, which is good as well.

Problematic, though, is the execution. The claymation is often choppy, the speed at which some things happen is exaggerated. The worse aspect is the soundtrack. This is Elfman music I've heard before. None of it seems terribly new. And the end seems like quite a cop-out. The film starts imaginative and dark and quickly becomes repetitive and predictable.

The truth is, I hoped for better. I wanted Jack Skellington to be more defined. I wanted Sally to have more screen time. I wanted the interaction between the pair to be heightened. I wanted the film to make sense, even if it was creative and wild visually. Unfortunately, I'll hold out for better and rewatch other Burton/Elfman works I know are great.

For other weird movies, please check out my reviews of:
Inception
Land Of The Lost
Despicable Me

5/10

For more movie reviews, please check out my index page!

© 2010, 2002 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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