...something was missing or incomplete when the movie was over. I left the theater puzzled.
Again - I was an adult at the time. So I guess a kid would have been "On man that was so awesome".
Anyone else not really dig this when they first saw it ?????
"In every dimension , there's another YOU!"
I was an adult - saw it with my fiancée. At that time I'd been a Batman fan for twenty-odd years and had been desperate to see a darker version onscreen. We got that but the movie didn't blow me away. I thought Nicholson was too OTT, and although I thought Keaton did a good job it really bugged me that they didn't really hide his lack of size. Thankfully Batman Returns did blow me away and still does.
Should add that I did loved Gotham and the general atmosphere of the thing.
"A big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff" The Tenth Doctor explains all.
I remember seeing the film in the cinema in 1989. The '12' certificate was created in the UK because of this movie instead of the jump from 'PG' or '15'. There's no sex or swearing so 12's understandable although the dark gangster tone of the film at the start of the film, including Grissom's death, does feel more worthy of a 15 so I'm sure that the film boards rolled over to Burton's vision for such an anticipated movie, not wanting to harm the artistry of Nicholson's performance by cuts/toning down, not wanting to disappoint 12 year old Batman fans and not wanting to disappoint Warner Bros bank balance. For video release, it rightly jumped up to a 15, perhaps in recognition that what can be a momentary shock shared with many others in the cinema can be more intense and replayed over and over, without restriction of whether younger children are in the house, when sat at home.
I don't recall how I felt about it all but I'm sure Jack Palance, and of course Jack Nicholson, will have left an impression and I like Keaton's chemistry with Nicholson - they both have history in playing unhinged and comedic roles. My heart jumped when the springloaded hand with flowers was opened by Vicki Vale. I wasn't, and am not, in to superheros in general but, of course, Batman has no supernatural powers so the relative groundedness of Batman, coupled with his glamorous life as a billionaire, appealed to me.
I'd only ever watched the 1960s Batman TV series before this and I liked it more for its creepy (psychedelic, some would say) camera angles in the villains' lairs than anything. This is one of the failings of an otherwise decent, if breakneck pace to within an inch of its life, film - in Batman (1989) we never get the spooky pleasure of Batman finding out where the Joker's residence is. There could have been a scene where the Joker , seemingly 'accidentally' but actually deliberately, lets Batman know where he lives and has laid fun traps / jokes, and later goons, around his apartment to try to scare and capture Batman. So, ironically, this could have felt like a weightier film by having a little more fun in it to, by comparison, accentuate the parts when the Joker gets really seriously dangerous. However, Nicholson does partly seem to channel Caesar Romero to me so the fun spirit of the 1960s isn't absent from this 1940s/1980s mashup world.
For video release, it rightly jumped up to a 15
I saw it when I was an adult and liked it so much I was willing to pay to see it the next night with a different friend.
My mom and her friend saw it a few days later and loved it. When it came out on video, she asked me to rent it so she could see it again.
I saw it when I was an adult and liked it so much I was willing to pay to see it the next night with a different friend.