BATMAN RETURNS 25 YEARS LATER: STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE?

http://nerdist.com/batman-returns-25th-anniversary-style-substance/

Unbelievably, it’s been 25 years since Tim Burton‘s Gothic melodrama-disguised-as-a-superhero-movie hit our screens. Batman Returns was the eagerly awaited sequel to Burton’s game changing blockbuster, Batman. Though well received at the time and later a bonafide cult classic, in the decades since its release, Returns has often been seen as lacking in comparison to the dark and subtle surrealism of Burton’s first foray into Bat-lore.

With Batman, Tim Burton brought to the screen a film that had been a decade in the making and changed the face of cinema all together. With its distinct visual flair, unexpected lead in Michael Keaton, and Jack Nicholson‘s star turn as the Joker, 1989’s Batman broke box office records and ushered in an age of branded merchandising that’s still with us to this day. After the immense success of the first film, a second was quickly greenlit and Burton was given free reign to create his unbridled vision of Gotham.

Batman Returns is a sumptuous feast of a movie, with dazzling set design and incredibly detailed costumes by Colleen Atwood alongside state of the art special effects. This Gotham is so expansive and expressive that it becomes a character within the movie, as it has always been in the source material. In a medium such as film, it could almost consume the story itself, yet its inhabitants never allow that to happen. Although Batman Returns is beloved for darkly stylized over the top visuals, the cast never let the setting shine more than themselves, often almost seeming to work in collaboration with the unbelievable world they inhabit to create truly memorable moments.