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Tim Burton's Batman/Batman Returns...


GhostOfTomJoad

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Has not aged well. I hadn't seen either of them in probably 20 years. Showtime has been showing them b2b lately so I watched them over a few days. The best thing I can say is Keaton had a nice take on Bruce Wayne. That's it. I was shocked at how campy Burton went, and just how bad the action sequences were.

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54 minutes ago, GreenspointTexas said:

Tim burton fucking sucks. All his movies are trash. Hes ruined so many goddamn franchises

 

alice in wonderland

Willy wonka

planet of the apes

Batman

etc

Beetlejuice, Big Fish, Ed Wood, and Edward Scissorhands are all great. Nightmare Before Christmas and Sweeney Todd are also pretty good.

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1 hour ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

Burton is a visual genius.  He's a third rate story teller though.

His visual stylings are a bit (okay, a big fucking bit) cartoonish. And  overrated IMO, but I give him credit for the pre-CGI ear he was working in. I think The Nightmare Before Christmas is his highest visual achievement.

Some things that really stick out to me about his two Batman movies:

  • Gotham & Wayne Manor were transformed from fairly believable,  realistic environments in Batman, to ridiculous backlots, cutouts & cheesy models in BR. WTF? You had a blockbuster 3 years prior & went in the opposite visual direction?
  • The bat suit was an abject failure. Burton screwed the fucking pooch on this detail. His desire to have long shadows & "dramatic" visuals of Batman emerging from shadows resulted in a suit that Keaton couldn't fucking move in. Seriously. He can barely walk in the fucking thing, and couldn't turn his head sideways at all. He looks like a cross between Frankenstein & the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz. 
  • Batman got his ass kicked by 105 lb Michelle Pfeiffer, wearing a vinyl suit and stilettos. Her performance as Catwoman is horrific. 
  • The villains don't scare anybody. Nicholson was more intimidating and interesting as Jack Napier than he was as the Joker. The Penguin? Walken's Max Shreck? They're just cringeworthy

I guess Burton & WB gets credit (?) for proving that comic book characters had a market & were viable for adult audiences. And in fairness who knew that a director of Christopher Nolan's caliber would come along 15 years later & elevate the characters & stories to true art? But Burton's take comes across as someone who was having more fun playing with toys & building models than developing characters or telling a coherent story.

 

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22 minutes ago, MoJames said:

Only movie I've ever walked out on was Batman Forever.

Teenage me would rank them 1) Batman 2) Batman Forever 3) Batman Returns 4) That which shall not be named.

Although I haven't seen any of them in a long time. I'd imagine the Nolan movies pretty much put them out of commission. 

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that last photo looks like Giuliani sweating at a press conference.  Appropriate since he too, was also a D.A. in a large city...Gotham/NYC...what's the diff?  

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5 hours ago, GreenspointTexas said:

Tim burton fucking sucks. All his movies are trash. Hes ruined so many goddamn franchises

 

alice in wonderland

Willy wonka

planet of the apes

Batman

etc

So much to unpack here. Alice in Wonderland is a franchise? Same for Willy Wonka. There is one fucking movie before Burton remade it. I agree it's not as good, but there were no franchises to ruin. 

Also Planet of the Apes and Batman? You do realize that there were many successful movies in both series after Burton made his, right? Do you know the meaning of either ruin or franchise?

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5 hours ago, MoJames said:

Only movie I've ever walked out on was Batman Forever.

Ed Wood (when Lugosi dies), Mars Attacks, and Nightmare Before Christmas all lost me. I just about never leave a movie.

The one-two punch of Joel Schumacher and Tim Burton on Batman would have killed the franchise for me if not for some later brilliance. Dark Knight is an outstanding movie (that's the one with Heath Ledger, right?).

Batman was my fave as a boy.

Edited by RomaVicta
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3 hours ago, RomaVicta said:

Ed Wood (when Lugosi dies), Mars Attacks, and Nightmare Before Christmas all lost me. I just about never leave a movie.

The one-two punch of Joel Schumacher and Tim Burton on Batman would have killed the franchise for me if not for some later brilliance. Dark Knight is an outstanding movie (that's the one with Heath Ledger, right?).

Batman was my fave as a boy.

Batman was my superhero as a boy. I had at least 2 birthdays with a Batman theme, heavy on batman present haul, and at least 1 Halloween in Batman costume.  I never missed an episode and remember when the Batman movie came out. That was porn to a 5- 6 year old kid.

Ed Wood bizzarre, but watchable.  Mars Attacks: campy, and funny, and so far still holds up well.  Nightmare before Christmas is a bit like Fantasia, very cool animation /stop motion, but the narratives could never hold me.  

If he and M. Knight Shyamalan ever team up the motion picture industry could possibly never recover from that self indulgent fiasco.

Edited by Onboard 2.0
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Beetlejuice and Mars Attacks are my favorites of his.  I never cared for the first Batman movie, even as a little kid.  Batman Returns was the only one of the 4 that came before Nolan in the 80's/90's that I really cared for and would watch multiple times.

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