A Hippie in the House of Mouse (Jim Henson at Disney, 1980)
- Thread starter Geekhis Khan
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Programming-wise, possibly, but then there's the fact to consider of the kinds of folks helming Warner!Nickelodeon and CartoonTV. Warner!Nick still has some of the crucial early folks that were behind Nick OTL, with the caveat that without Viacom, some changes they pushed for are not inevitable. But for instance, MTV Networks president Bob Pittman had turned towards Fred Seibert and Alan Goodman (alongside others) to reinvigorate Nick's look, based on their experience doing so for MTV. And this was in 1984! And of course, Geraldine Laybourne is still at Nick, who TTL is now working with Warner for the things they had to deal with themselves OTL.
In contrast, CartoonTV still has the folks that were at Turner that ended up getting involved in Cartoon Network in some fashion OTL. Mike Lazzo was hinted at already, but Matt Maiellaro is still there, Barry Mills, Matt Harrigan likely, Sean Akins is still there (and still capable of pulling in Jason DeMarco), the folks that end up joining due to Space Ghost Coast to Coast, such as Michael Cahill, Dave Willis, etc.
Though Warner could buff out Nickelodeon's line-up with anime, there may also be a view of wanting to bring in new creators (potential Geraldine influence) or concentrate on properties Warner already has, which may limit the potential of anime appearing on the channel (though according to this article, there was some early anime in the late 80s era of Nick, though that's still the era of licensing other shows). In contrast, the entrepreneurial spirit at Columbia that's heldover from Turner himself may still have an influencing impact which can still result in a block dedicated from action cartoons which slowly transitions over to airing action anime, though likely with the same sort of managerial struggles of wanting to maintain an aesthetic versus what the network execs wanted to put on the block, even with CartoonTV likely having the same sort of freedom CN had OTL.
Speaking of Warner and Columbia, I wonder if Turner still "strike back" at Tom Ruegger being poached from H-B by tapping Fred Seibert to become the president of H-B, and eventually result in What-A-Cartoon and beginning proper Frederator's history of producing short cartoon "incubators".
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This begs the question. Is Count Duckula still a Nickelodeon co-production if Nick is owned by WB?
Count Duckula - Wikipedia
Well, that depends on if Danger Mouse still gets shown on Nickelodeon.This begs the question. Is Count Duckula still a Nickelodeon co-production if Nick is owned by WB?
Count Duckula - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
marathag
Banned
Which would turn out to be a 'Hell No' on reading the _Slaves to Darkness_ source books on that the Warp is actually Hell.
Or worse than Hell.
Just so everyone knows, I didn't plan to get too deep into the weeds of TV animation, so if there's anyone deeply interested in doing a deep dive as a guest post feel free to contact me.
I guess this means that Six Flags won't be purchasing the Fiesta Texas park in San Antonio, since Over Texas has four more acres, won't be landlocked until the late Nineties (unless WB buys up the surrounding land through shells and nominees, which should more than triple the area there for hotels, restaurants, and extra park concepts), and is technically on flatter ground, not being stuck in an old quarry.
Since it's almost across town from Sea World Texas, and not big enough for both good animal exhibits and good rides, it would be an inconvenient purchase for Anheuser-Busch, and there isn't quite enough available spare land on-site for Disney's tastes after being burned in Anaheim, the most likely targets for buyers of Fiesta Texas would probably be Herschend Entertainment, King's Entertainment, or Cedar Fair, as it's too far out of Kennywood Entertainment's footprint, and the other park chains at this point are either startups, or as in the case of the Great America, on their way out.
Speaking of parks that in OTL would have joined Six Flags, what's going to happen to Kentucky Kingdom? Around this time in OTL, it had just been spun off of the Kentucky State Fair's former midway area. I know! Have Ed Hart keep control of it, and when Gaylord Entertainment starts looking for an excuse to close Opryland, have Hart make a tender offer for it...
Can you imagine how that would mix with the satanic scare? Oh, I forsee hours of fun...
I really can't see any US company being interested in GW at this point though. If WB wants to compete in the gaming space, they have plenty of IP that would look more attractive than buying some podunk British company for their extremely derivative stuff.
I find it more interesting that this timeline seems to be having the other movie giants pushing into the park and cartoon space more competently than OTL. It looks like you're setting up a situation where in the 90s Disney will both be stronger, but so will its competition.
Anyway, this continues to be one of my favorite timelines on the forum. Thanks for keeping it going!
fasquardon
Yep. I'm starting to feel like the calm eye at the center of a crazy storm of mad creative energy. Perfection.
Hmm...I may have a different idea for Fiesta Texas, actually. Yea, I can definitely see WB buy up a bunch of land through shell companies and turn 6FoT into their Crown Jewel, actually.
- Could it be possible for Disney to buy Blockbuster? That way when streaming starts the Blockbuster streaming service would effectively be Disney+ decades earlier.
- It was suggested that Triad, Columbia, and Hollywood Pictures could pool their resources into building a theme park. Where should it be located? I've even got a name for it: "Worlds of Wonder" or simply Wonderland.
I'd rather not, because that would mean butterflying DisneyDirect as their direct play service.
I'm interested in having Blockbuster survive by buying out Netflix and making either Netflix their direct play platform or by renaming it to be more in line with the Blockbuster company, although it's going to be a long while before whether that pans out or not.
This is the creative energy afforded by Henson's Disney and we're all living for it. It's perfection indeed.
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I've since learned that Blockbuster's death knell didn't really happen until 2008 with the financial crisis. So it'd be easy for it to be butterflied away. I just suggested it because the idea of Blockbuster buying Netflix has been done before. Though I agree that Blockbuster doing that would be a good idea. It'll be a while before it'll really matter, but it's good to plan ahead.
It's not like Disney will struggle in the streaming department once that era arrives ITTL, since they have an even bigger library of media to choose from in DisneyDirect compared to Disney+, imo.
As for Blockbuster, I agree that it's cliche, but hey, Blockbuster really could've bought Netflix for the cheap and changed the whole media landscape forever. To be honest it probably doesn't matter if Netflix or Blockbuster are the leaders of the direct play era, but it'll depend on the Khan, of course.
Huh? Streaming wasn't even a concept when Netflix was first founded in 1997. They were originally a rent-by-mail DVD service before they transitioned to streaming a decade later. Heck, by the time Netflix offered to be be in a partnership with Blockbuster in 2000, VHS and DVDs were still a common occurrence, so I can't blame them for believing that home video sales were still going to be a thing a decade later when they were at the top of their game.
As for Blockbuster founding a streaming service separate from Netflix, it's very much possible and it happened, although by then it was far too late to save them from their ossified leadership, so that makes it pretty hard to do compared to just buying up Netflix and turning them into Blockbuster Online (or just Netflix).
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I suspect Blockbusters would have mucked up streaming had they taken the plunge. Most companies are very bad at big changes from what they started with, the list of transformations and re-inventions that failed is very long, the list of successes very short.
Companies have a culture, there is institutional knowledge and systems developed to make them successful at what they do. Start trying to do something else and it goes horribly wrong, all that stop being helpful and become barriers. Sure you can bring in new management, hire a lot of new staff, develop new ways of working, but at a certain point you are just starting a new company within the company and inviting a political infighting horror story.
What Blockbusters (and Kodak and countless others) should have done, by cold hard economic logic, was accept their market was dying, they couldn't transition to something else, and so just make as much cash as they could on the way down. But companies are run by people and who wants to work for a dying firm? Of course they are going to rage against it and try to save it, hence the many big changes that go wrong.
Companies have a culture, there is institutional knowledge and systems developed to make them successful at what they do. Start trying to do something else and it goes horribly wrong, all that stop being helpful and become barriers. Sure you can bring in new management, hire a lot of new staff, develop new ways of working, but at a certain point you are just starting a new company within the company and inviting a political infighting horror story.
What Blockbusters (and Kodak and countless others) should have done, by cold hard economic logic, was accept their market was dying, they couldn't transition to something else, and so just make as much cash as they could on the way down. But companies are run by people and who wants to work for a dying firm? Of course they are going to rage against it and try to save it, hence the many big changes that go wrong.
To the Bat-Post!
Batman (1989)
Batman is a T-rated 1989 film by director Sam Raimi. It follows multimillionaire Bruce Wayne (Willem Dafoe[1]) as he battles a crime wave in the city of Gotham as Batman, a job made all the more complicated by the arrival of a supervillain known as The Joker (Robin Williams[2]). The film was a massive blockbuster success and is credited with launching the career of Sam Raimi, cementing Robin Williams as an actor capable of more than just comedy, and in reinvigorating the superhero genera in film and television.
Cast & Crew:
Produced by: Jon Peters and Peter Guber
Directed by: Sam Raimi
Executive Producers: Benjamin Melniker and Michael E. Uslan
Written by: Michael E. Uslan, Tom Mankiewicz, and Sam Raimi
Story by: Michael E. Uslan and Sam Raimi
Edited by: Ray Lovejoy
Music by: Danny Elfman[3]
Distributed by: Warner Brothers Studios
Starring:
Willem Dafoe as Bruce Wayne/Batman
Robin Williams as The Joker
Sean Young as Silver St. Cloud
Ian Abercrombie as Alfred Pennyworth
Jack Palance as Rupert Thorne
Pat Hingle as Commissioner Gordon
Kevin Kline as Mayor Harvey Dent[4]
Synopsis
The film opens at a fog-choked wharf in the dark of the night. A well-dressed woman is fleeing, terrified, through the maze of shipping crates. A bunch of armed thugs pursue her. Suddenly, there’s a quick fanfare of horn music and a flash of black cloth and one of the thugs vanishes. The chase continues and another thug vanishes in a flash of black cloth, then another. Suddenly the woman reaches a dead end and, starting to panic, a gangster lieutenant and two thugs walk up.
“Well, well,” says the lieutenant, “So good to see you, Miss Lamatta. You weren’t thinking of talking to anyone about our boss’s…indiscretions, now were you?”
“Oh no! I won’t say nothin’, no, never!” says Miss Lamatta.
Another flash of black cloth and one of the two thugs vanishes.
“That’s good,” says the lieutenant. “Only, well, we can’t really take any chances what will all you’ve seen and…what was that?” The second thug vanishes with a scream cut short. “Who’s out there?”
A voice calls out from the dark, “I am the bringer of vengeance.”
The lieutenant fires his pistol twice. “I’m warning you!”
Another flash of black in the corner of the screen. “I am the hunter in the night!” says the voice
The lieutenant fires twice more. “You mess with me, you mess with Thorne!” A black cloaked figure lands loudly on a crate. The lieutenant fires four times as the black cloaked figure vanishes straight up.
The pistol clicks twice, empty. As the lieutenant struggles, now panicking, to reload, the cloaked figure, upside down, slowly descends in front of him, revealing the iconic Batman mask. In a fanfare of music, Batman grabs the lieutenant, who is pulled, screaming, high up over the wharf below. Batman, upside-down like a bat, holds him loosely by the collar hundreds of feet up. “I am Batman!”
It cuts to a distance shot of the wharf as the lieutenant screams and the music blasts.
Cut to the same wharf at sunrise. All the thugs and the lieutenant are tied up, groaning. Ms. Lamatta is talking to a detective about wanting to testify. Commissioner Gordon is walking to a uniformed officer. “She said a ‘shadow’ came for them,” says the officer, “And we found this.”
He hands Gordon a card with the Batman logo as the music plays again, transitioning into opening credits.
After the credits we come to a fancy party in a downtown skyscraper. Bruce Wayne is talking with various wealthy elites, including Mayor Harvey Dent, about the crime wave. Wayne, playing the part of the playboy, expresses no outward interest in doing anything, despite the urging by Dent to “use his wealth and status for good” and support Dent’s new police funding effort. When Dent asks about his parents, causing a jump-cut of some pearls falling on a dark city street and Wayne’s face to twitch, Wayne simply says, “That was so long ago.”
They’re joined by Silver St. Cloud, host of the party, who expresses a desire to end the city’s poverty and pledges her inherited millions to do so. Bruce and Silver talk and flirt for a while when a butler interrupts, holding a phone. It’s Alfred, telling Wayne that he’s needed back at the manor. Wayne excuses himself.
Back at Wayne Manor Alfred lets him know that the gangster lieutenant Batman had captured the night before was freed by a lawyer who is linked to Rupert Thorne. The fanfare plays and Wayne says, “then I’ll pay Mr. Thorne a visit!” He opens a secret door and goes through a suit-up sequence becoming Batman and then drives the Batmobile out through a waterfall in the night.
We cut to Rupert Thorne’s mansion, where he and some gangsters are discussing crimes. Zoom in to show Batman place a hidden black camera, recording it all. We then follow Batman though the building, silencing guards, and slipping a micro-disk into a computer system, which beeps a couple of times. Then Batman fights his way through the guards in a big action scene, seemingly impervious to bullets, and captures Thorne, ultimately dropping him and all the evidence he’d collected off at the police.
The next morning Bruce Wayne is having morning coffee when the TV shows Throne being released from prison, the anchor talking about the DA dropping the charges due to insufficient evidence, which the audience knows is a lie. Wayne’s research reveals Thorne to be a major campaign donor to Mayor Dent through a series of shell companies. Batman confronts Dent, who speaks of how he did it “for the greater good.”
“The Gotham police are too few, and many are hopelessly corrupt,” says Dent. “This is the only way to guarantee peace in the city.” Adding, “what, do you think this city’s wealthy are any better than Thorne? Theo Galavan was an embezzler and did insider trading! Hell, Thomas Wayne was a corporate raider that put thousands of workers on the street!”
Another jump-cut of Thomas Wayne smiling down in the street from above, as if to a child.
“They don’t murder people! Thorne is a monster!” says Batman.
“There are worse monsters than Thorne,” says Dent.
Cut to a dark, grimy city street. An addict walks up to a shadowy figure in the foreground, face obscured. “Wh…where’s Skeeze?”
The figure giggles oddly. “Mr. Skeeze had a pressing engagement.”
Jump-cut to Skeeze in a trash compactor, screaming in horror.
“Y…you have my medicine?”
More giggles. “I’ve got something even better!” He holds out a baggy of purple crystals. “This is Smilex! It will but a great big ol’ smile on your face!” More chuckles and giggles as the addict takes the bag and carries it off into a dark alleyway. There’s the flare of a lighter in the dark and suddenly the hidden addict starts to snicker, then giggle, then laugh. Crane-pan back as the laughter turns manic and helicopter pan over the city as the increasingly unhinged laughter echoes menacingly through the streets.
Cut to the addict’s dead face, contorted into a twisted caricature of a smile. Pan back to reveal it’s a morgue. Commissioner Gordon overlooks the corpse next to a forensic doctor. “It’s called ‘Smilex’,” says the doctor, “And it kills up to twenty percent of its users.”
“Thorne has gone too far!” says Batman, revealed in a whip pan, causing Gordon to jump.
“I don’t think that it’s Thorne,” says Gordon. “There’s little profit in killing a fifth of your customers.”
“A psychopath, then. Or an accident, bad drugs. Thorne’s the type to cut corners. I’ll have a talk with him.”
Gordon grabs batman’s arm and says, “Don’t you dare! No vigilantes! This is police business!”
“I don’t trust Gotham cops,” says Batman, who pulls his arm free and vanishes.
Batman tracks down Thorne through a montage of fights with gangsters until he breaks into Thorne’s secret lair, easily besting the gangsters in a fight. He accuses Thorne of distributing the Smilex drugs, but Thorne denies it and tells him they have “a mutual enemy” and holds up a single playing card: a Joker. Batman leaves and Throne relaxes…only to hear a faint giggling in the background.
Cut to a computer at the Bat Cave below Wayne Manor and a montage of research and cut-scenes. We learn that a new gang called “The Clownz” is moving in[5], displacing the old gangs. There’s a “Rupert Thorne found dead, twisted grimace on his face” headline, among others.
Robin Williams as the Joker (as imagined by "weminoredinfilm.wordpress.com")
The research leads to an abandoned factory that’s now cranking out the Smilex at an industrial scale. Batman travels to the factory and fights his way through the Clownz in a massive, swinging-from-the-rafters melee that causes a small fire to start in a chemical storage closet. The fight leads ultimately to The Joker, who we see in full for the first time. Joker and Batman exchange banter about the situation, Batman learning that The Joker is truly a psychopath, using the greed of The Clownz to simply cause death and chaos for the “fun” of it. “Ooohhh yes, my little batty-bat-bat. They see only green, but I see all the beautiful colors of the rainbow, like bluuue, and black, and red…lots and lots and lots of beautiful red-red-red!” He laughs insanely and jumps up and down as he brags about the chaos and murder he’s committed.
“There’s no point in taking you to the crooked cops in this hopeless city,” says Batman, rage in his eyes, “You’re a mad dog who needs to be put down!” As fires start to spread through the warehouse Batman suddenly, and uncharacteristically, picks up a pistol (dropped in the fight) and starts to aim it at the Joker, but hesitates.
Jump-cut to Thomas Wayne getting shot on the street.
As he hesitates, The Joker, laughing, blows some purple powder into Batman’s face, says “sooo sad and angry, batty…you need to learn how to laugh!” and jumps, laughing, out a window. Batman shakes his head a couple of times as if dazed, and then starts to chuckle, giggle, and laugh in an increasingly desperate manner. We follow Batman as he struggles, laughing in increasingly manic ways[6], to make his way out of the burning, exploding building to the Batmobile. Still convulsing in pain and laughter, he climbs in, hits a button, and the Batmobile drives itself off into the night.
Back at Wayne Manor, as a storm rages around them, lightning casting frightening shadows, Alfred helps the laughing Wayne recover from the Smilex. The next morning, still chuckling painfully, Wayne and Alfred work to develop an antidote, which is then shared with the local hospitals, thereby saving many lives. Batman sets out to determine The Joker’s next strategy, but the Clown Prince of Crime stays continually out of his grasp.
Meanwhile, we cut to The Joker’s lair, where we learn that The Joker has developed a plan to release an untold amount of the Smilex upon the people of Gotham by blasting it through the steam pipes that run throughout the city (“This town needs an enema!”). When some of the Clownz, who are just petty criminals, not murderers, try to resist this plan, The Joker and his more loyal minions murder them all, The Joker laughing maniacally as he brutally kills all of the more hesitant Clownz. Then he says, “But first…some guests!!” His maniacal laughter, joined by the remaining Clownz, now more a madhouse of circus freaks than a gang, fills the air as we pan away.
Batman, meanwhile, has hit a dead end. The punks he accosts are either ignorant, or laughingly commit suicide rather than talk to him. Back at the Manor, Alfred talks to a frustrated Wayne and tries to convince him that he needs help and should contact Commissioner Gordon, who “seems like a decent-minded bloke.” Bruce exclaims that the city police are corrupt and that they “weren’t there for his parents!”
Bruce heads out on the street, angry, as the flashback of the murder of his parents, now seen in full by the audience for the first time, plays out in his head. He sees Silver St. Cloud’s building. Cut to her suite. He meets with Silver St. Cloud, who can tell he’s troubled. They talk around the issue, him pretending it’s about a business deal with a shady client and that the client has illegal things planned “that will hurt a lot of people.” He expresses a desire to “stop” him by any means necessary. Silver instead explains the difference between justice and vengeance, and that he should find a way to bring the other person to “justice”, not seek revenge. She speaks of her uncle Theo Galvan, and the corruption he got away with in his life and how she plans to serve justice by seeing his ill-gotten gains returned to the people.
Bruce admits to his own family’s perfectly legal but less than honorable business methods and swears that he will do likewise with his money. They start to kiss when Clownz break in through the windows. Bruce goes to fight them, but The Joker breaks in the door, shoots Bruce in the gut, and kicks him out the window, seemingly falling to his death while Silver screams. “Awww, what’ the matter, sweet little nightingale? Did your nest mate fly away?” He laughs as two Clownz slap tape over her mouth and drag her away.
Pan outside to where we see Bruce hanging off of a window ledge. He holds the bleeding gut wound and winces in pain.
In the background we see other wealthy people being dragged away into disturbingly painted clown cars by laughing Clownz.
Commissioner Gordon is in his office with some cops and detectives, attempting to determine the fate of several of Gotham’s kidnapped wealthy elites. Sighing, Gordon retreats into his office…and jumps when suddenly Batman is there. Batman and Gordon come to terms with each other, each realizing that the other wants to protect the citizens of Gotham, and they hash out a plan to work together. They combine their intelligence and determine that the Clownz have moved to the Gotham Central Steam Plant with the assumed hostages, for reasons unknown. They clasp forearms and move to save the hostages, which according to Gordon includes Mayor Dent.
While Gordon gathers up his most honest and loyal officers, Batman heads to the plant. He reaches the outskirts and takes out a couple of Clown guards. He squats by a skylight, winces with pain and grabs where he was shot, wipes away some grime from the glass, and looks inside. Inside he sees the Clownz mixing up a giant industrial cauldron of frothing purple liquid above a giant boiler. Cut to inside where a Clown Lieutenant exposits to The Joker that they are ready to dump into the boiler and flood the Gotham steam pipes with Smilex vapor, causing “untold chaos and death” across the city. Joker, laughing like a hyena the whole time, goes to his “audience”, the assembled wealthy of the city, all in cages hanging from chains (among them Silver St. Cloud). He then gives a great, laughing, insane speech on how for so long the wealthy of Gotham have stolen from the people of the city, likening himself to Robin Hood, “only with a much more idiosyncratic style!”
Meanwhile, on the roof, Batman is about to jump down through the glass when a Clown says “Hey! Wanna play?” Batman starts to fight him and two more Clownz. Cut back to the inside.
“But first,” says The Joker in a Game Show Announcer’s voice, “please welcome your fearless leader, the great two-faced Mayor of Gotham…everybody give a warm round of applause for Haaarrvey Dent!” The Clownz cheer maniacally as Dent is dragged into the room in front of The Joker, who pats him warmly on the left side of the face. A female Clown in long rubber gloves sashays up holding a silver bowl of smoking liquid. Dent is stuck in the middle, Clowns to his left, The Joker to his right.
“Sir, please,” says Dent calmly. “We can make a deal. I agree, the city’s poor are desperate, but if we work together to help them out, we can make things better for them.”
“What makes you think I give a shit about the poor?” says The Joker, quietly, a faux-serious look on his face, and then, laughing, pushes Dent’s face towards the bowl of smoking liquid. The scene cuts away to Silver with a horrified look on her face as Dent screams off camera. We cut back as Dent runs off, holding the left side of his face. The Joker and the Clownz laugh uproariously, all dancing and cavorting around.
Cut back to the roof. Batman is easily beating the clowns, but winces when one kicks him in the gunshot. Sirens become audible in the background. Some of the Clownz start shooting guns at Batman, which catches The Joker’s attention down below, causing him to laugh. Batman is getting worn down and overwhelmed when the Gotham Police pull up and engage the Clownz. Taking advantage of the distraction, Batman crashes through the skylight and down into the plant, cape out like wings.
He fights his way through the Clownz towards The Joker, wincing as he takes a punch to the gunshot. The Joker notices, there’s a jump-cut to Wayne getting shot by him, and he laughs, telling a pair of Clownz to bring him Silver. Batman fights his way towards the laughing Joker, who now has Silver St. Cloud at gunpoint. Batman instead ignores them so that he can stop two Clownz from dumping the Smilex into the boiler and gassing the city. With the city safe, he finally confronts The Joker, who is now on a ledge over the Smilex, threatening to drop Silver in. “Ah-ah-ahhh, Batty-bat! At this big of a dose she’ll surely die with laughter!” He laughs.
Silver bites The Joker’s hand and mule-kicks him in the crotch and then runs to Batman. “Get to Commissioner Gordon!” he yells, and engages The Joker in a final fight, dodging acid spray from a lapel flower and other sick “gags” as they fight. It cuts between the fight and Silver, watching from afar, as she runs through the plant until police officers swarm in and start rescuing the hostages, including her.
Finally, Batman has The Joker in an arm lock. The Joker laughs and slips away from the arm lock with a sickening crack, punches Batman in the gunshot, and then jumps off of the ledge towards the Smilex. Batman dives and grabs him, holding him by his left arm above the purple goo.
“Give up!” yells Batman, “I’ll see that you receive fair Justice!”
“Ah, batty, but it’s just us now!” Joker kicks up onto the ledge, trying to pull Batman down with him. Batman is forced to release The Joker lest he too get pulled in.
Laughing, The Joker falls into the Smilex and thrashes in it, laughing even more maniacally than ever, and he slowly sinks into the goo.
Cut to Wayne Manor where Bruce Wayne is in his bed, a large bandage on his midsection. He’s reading a newspaper about the “gang fight” at the plant. There’s a drawing of Batman with a caption “who is the Bat Man?” Alfred warns him that his hobby will eventually catch up to him. He then tells him he has a visitor. In walks Silver St. Cloud.
Silver says that she’s glad to see he’s alright. He makes up a story about “getting lucky” and falling onto a ledge when The Joker shot him. They briefly discuss their philanthropic plans and then he asks her about what happened to her. She mentions being rescued by “the Bat Man” and wonders if he’s still out there somewhere.
Alfred suggests, “Yes, I suspect that he is, and that he will likely show up when and where he is needed.”
The Batman theme plays as it cuts to Commissioner Gordon atop a building, the sun setting behind him, supervising some officers unboxing something. It’s revealed to be a searchlight. They turn it on, displaying the Bat Signal.
Cut to Batman, standing atop a skyscraper, below the signal in the background. He says in a voiceover, “Signal me, and I shall come. Need my help, and I shall be there. For I am the bringer of justice, I am the hunter of the night…I am Batman!”
Batman opens his cloak wide like wings, jumps from the skyscraper, and soars off towards the signal as the music crescendos and credits roll.
Production
Producers Benjamin Melniker and Michael E. Uslan first acquired the film rights for Batman from DC Comics on October 3, 1979. After decades of campy, Adam West style representations, Uslan intended “to make the definitive, dark, serious version of Batman, the way Bob Kane and Bill Finger had envisioned him in 1939. A creature of the night; stalking criminals in the shadows.” After being rejected by United Artists and Columbia Pictures, Uslan wrote a dark, noir-tinged script titled Return of the Batman. Teaming up with producers Jon Peters and Peter Guber in November 1979, with Melniker and Uslan becoming executive producers, they decided to follow the lead of the popular Superman movie. They tried unsuccessfully to pitch the film to Universal before Warner Brothers picked up the production in 1980.
Ignoring Uslan’s dark script and following in the campier footsteps of Superman, a new script was written by Tom Mankiewicz titled The Batman in June 1983, which focused on Batman and Robin’s origins and featured the Joker and Rupert Thorne as villains. After considering Ivan Reitman, Joe Dante, and Wes Craven for the director’s chair[7], Steven Spielberg[8] suggested that they consider a promising young director named Sam Raimi, who had scored recent successes with Friday the Thirteenth Part 5 and The Running Man, and was eager to direct a darker take in keeping with Uslan’s original script. Uslan met with Raimi and was excited to work with the director, but the studio was concerned about his relative lack of experience and origins as a horror film director. Raimi, in turn, pushed it as “a horror film for criminals” where the themes were of justice over vengeance. He cited the works of Tim Burton as evidence of audience tastes moving away from camp and color and towards the darker and more gothic. Still, though, the studio was resistant.
At Lisa Henson’s urging, Raimi put together some test footage using his childhood friend and go-to actor Bruce Campbell as Batman. The scene, which was recycled, slightly modified, into the opening set piece of the final film, impressed the producers and the studio and Raimi was greenlit to direct. Raimi, going back to Uslan’s original script, drafted a darker take that none the less maintained a touch of the camp by way of its dark humor. Robin was cut from the script in order to focus on “The Dark Knight” himself with the intent to bring him back in a potential sequel. Raimi originally wanted to keep Campbell as Batman, reportedly saying “seriously, all we need is a good chin,” adding, “heck, he’s even named Bruce!” However, the studio didn’t feel that Campbell had the big name or the acting chops and didn’t like his flat, midwestern accent. Raimi ultimately cast Willem Dafoe as the title character, at first angering Batman fans, who came around after seeing his performance. Campbell would appear both in a cameo as an obnoxious reporter and as a “Fake Shemp” Batman stand-in for reshoots.
Raimi reportedly tried to change the villain from the Joker to a more mundane villain (some sources suggest Scarecrow), hoping to save the Joker for a sequel, but the studio reportedly forced his hand, wanting to use the iconic villain to spur interest. Several people were considered for the role of The Joker, with Jack Nicholson being the studio’s first choice. However, Nicholson’s pay demands were excessive, including a large share of the gross, top billing, and very limited work hours[9]. After practically stalking Raimi, Robin Williams was finally brought on as the Joker after filming himself in makeup playing the part. “At first I was afraid that Robin would camp it up too much,” said Raimi, “But he took his usual manic comedy and he gave it this dark, psychotic edge that was just perfect. Good Morning Vietnam came out that year to critical acclaim, which helped sell Warner [Brothers] on him.” Sean Young, fresh off of No Way Out, was cast as love interest Silver St. Cloud, Ian Abercrombie was selected as Wayne’s butler Alfred, Jack Palance as crime boss Rupert Thorne, Pat Hingle as Commissioner Gordon, and Kevin Kline, fresh off of A Fish Called Wanda, as Mayor Harvey Dent.
Batman was filmed primarily at Pinewood Studios in England from October of 1988 to February of 1989 with additional location shoots throughout England. Danny Elfman was enlisted for the score based on his “dark, ethereal, but beautiful” work with Disney and Prince was brought on board at the request of producer Jon Peters to provide original songs. Editing and post-production ran through the spring of 1989 and the film debuted with a T rating on June 22nd following a massive blitz-marketing campaign that saw nearly every teenager in America wearing a Batman T-shirt[10].
Themes and Style
Raimi, much like Tim Burton, was inspired by the German Expressionist cinema of the early 20th century and Batman demonstrates direct influence from Fritz Lang’s films, in particular M and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. He makes use of Dutch Angles, gothic-influenced architecture, and strong chiaroscuro contrasts. He uses his signature uncomfortable close-ups, whip-pans, and jump-cuts to build tension. This results in a film that is dark, intimate, and tense. And reflects the dualistic themes of the film. “I wanted this to be a ‘horror film for criminals’,” he told Entertainment Weekly in 1989, “and so I used the cinematic language of the horror flick and turned it on the killers and monsters instead.”
The overriding theme of the movie is duality, with its focus on night/day, dark/light, evil/good, poverty/wealth, crime/law, vengeance/justice, fear/humor, corruption/honesty, and victim/perpetrator and where these opposites cross over or bleed into one another. It’s a theme Raimi would explore in greater depth in the sequels. We see this duality in Bruce Wayne vs. Batman, Batman vs. The Joker, Commissioner Gordan vs. Rupert Thorne, and Harvey Dent’s pragmatic mix of honest public service and mild “as necessary” corruption. Other themes include justice for the innocent, the responsibilities of privilege, and the dangers of both drugs and the “war on drugs” that was raging while the movie was in production.
Reception, Box Office, and Legacy
Batman premiered to mostly positive reviews, though many expressed concerns about the level of violence in certain scenes, particularly in a movie that would surely be seen by children and was marketed with toys and other children’s merchandise. Though some were put off by its dark tone, Dafoe and Williams were largely praised for their acting. Williams in particular shocked and awed audiences, who were at first taken aback by the casting but were ultimately won over by the manic darkness of the portrayal. Batman would go on to be a massive blockbuster, grossing an amazing $410 million worldwide plus an additional $150 million in VHS sales. Batman spawned two sequels, an animated TV series, and a reboot trilogy in the 2000s. Batman is credited with reinvigorating the flagging superhero genre.
Trivia
A deleted subplot involves three scenes of Commissioner Gordon and some of his loyal officers, along with Mayor Harvey Dent, questioning who “The Batman” is, and what he’s up to. Dent recommends “capturing the vigilante and throwing him in prison, or possibly Arkham Assylum.” These scenes were cut for time and pacing reasons.
A scene where The Joker kills Rupert Throne with Smilex was cut for time. Instead, an expository headline and photograph of Throne’s smiling face flashes by during a montage.
Several cuts were made at the request of the MPAA to keep the rating at T and not R. For example, in a deleted scene, The Joker visibly pushes Dent’s face into the bowl of liquid, which sizzles and bubbles as Dent screams. This was replaced with the cut to Silver’s shocked expression.
Director Sam Raimi's brother Ted plays the police officer talking to Commissioner Gordon in the opening set piece and handing him the Bat card.
Director Sam Raimi’s childhood friend Bruce Campbell plays the obnoxious reporter “Jimmy Scupe” and also acted as a body double for Batman during reshoots (credited as “Bat Shemp”). “Hey, what can I say?” Campbell said in a later interview with Vanity Fair, “I got to play Batman in a major motion picture! That’s my chin getting punched halfway through the rooftop fight!”
[1] Didn’t see that one coming, did you? I’m following in a long line of “casting people that everyone knows just can’t be Batman only to be pleasantly surprised by what a good job that they do.”
[2] Williams lobbied hard for the role in our timeline, but the studio was desperate for Nicholson. I’m sure he’s not most people’s first choice, but I can honestly see him taking the mania of his standup and overlaying it onto his frankly disturbingly realistic portrayal of a psychopath in later films (e.g. One Hour Photo) and really making it work. He arguably doesn’t “look the part”, but neither did Nicholson.
[3] Raimi and Elfman were frequent collaborators in our timeline starting with Darkman. Here, Raimi knew Elfman from The Nightmare Before Christmas.
[4] I would have loved to go with Billie Dee Williams, but that was a Burton choice. The studio reportedly wouldn’t have cast Williams in the role if they’d realized who “Harvey Dent” would later become, and thus shamefully dropped him in favor of a more bankable Tommy Lee Jones when they needed Two Face. Here, Kline is just getting off from A Fish Called Wanda, produced under the “adult contemporary” Hyperion label in this timeline rather than the “prestige” MGM name. January Man is butterflied.
[5] Yes, of course they look like Juggalos. Did you need to ask?
[6] Think of the “laughing scene” from Evil Dead II.
[7] All as per our timeline up to this point.
[8] Urged on by Lisa Henson, of course.
[9] As were his demands in our timeline, where he made out like a freakin’ bandit, making millions for the role. To this day it’s still the highest-paid acting role ever in terms of “dollars per word spoken”.
[10] Seriously, the marketing campaign for this movie was ridiculous. It was impossible to escape the movie and the merch. It took The Phantom Menace to finally outdo it in 1999. As a Nerd and Geek in High School at the time (when those were things you did NOT advertise about yourself), I was suddenly amazed and perplexed when the popular kids started wearing Batman shirts, something that just a year earlier would have gotten you harassed and assaulted. Ah the power of marketing!
Batman is a T-rated 1989 film by director Sam Raimi. It follows multimillionaire Bruce Wayne (Willem Dafoe[1]) as he battles a crime wave in the city of Gotham as Batman, a job made all the more complicated by the arrival of a supervillain known as The Joker (Robin Williams[2]). The film was a massive blockbuster success and is credited with launching the career of Sam Raimi, cementing Robin Williams as an actor capable of more than just comedy, and in reinvigorating the superhero genera in film and television.
Cast & Crew:
Produced by: Jon Peters and Peter Guber
Directed by: Sam Raimi
Executive Producers: Benjamin Melniker and Michael E. Uslan
Written by: Michael E. Uslan, Tom Mankiewicz, and Sam Raimi
Story by: Michael E. Uslan and Sam Raimi
Edited by: Ray Lovejoy
Music by: Danny Elfman[3]
Distributed by: Warner Brothers Studios
Starring:
Willem Dafoe as Bruce Wayne/Batman
Robin Williams as The Joker
Sean Young as Silver St. Cloud
Ian Abercrombie as Alfred Pennyworth
Jack Palance as Rupert Thorne
Pat Hingle as Commissioner Gordon
Kevin Kline as Mayor Harvey Dent[4]
Synopsis
The film opens at a fog-choked wharf in the dark of the night. A well-dressed woman is fleeing, terrified, through the maze of shipping crates. A bunch of armed thugs pursue her. Suddenly, there’s a quick fanfare of horn music and a flash of black cloth and one of the thugs vanishes. The chase continues and another thug vanishes in a flash of black cloth, then another. Suddenly the woman reaches a dead end and, starting to panic, a gangster lieutenant and two thugs walk up.
“Well, well,” says the lieutenant, “So good to see you, Miss Lamatta. You weren’t thinking of talking to anyone about our boss’s…indiscretions, now were you?”
“Oh no! I won’t say nothin’, no, never!” says Miss Lamatta.
Another flash of black cloth and one of the two thugs vanishes.
“That’s good,” says the lieutenant. “Only, well, we can’t really take any chances what will all you’ve seen and…what was that?” The second thug vanishes with a scream cut short. “Who’s out there?”
A voice calls out from the dark, “I am the bringer of vengeance.”
The lieutenant fires his pistol twice. “I’m warning you!”
Another flash of black in the corner of the screen. “I am the hunter in the night!” says the voice
The lieutenant fires twice more. “You mess with me, you mess with Thorne!” A black cloaked figure lands loudly on a crate. The lieutenant fires four times as the black cloaked figure vanishes straight up.
The pistol clicks twice, empty. As the lieutenant struggles, now panicking, to reload, the cloaked figure, upside down, slowly descends in front of him, revealing the iconic Batman mask. In a fanfare of music, Batman grabs the lieutenant, who is pulled, screaming, high up over the wharf below. Batman, upside-down like a bat, holds him loosely by the collar hundreds of feet up. “I am Batman!”
It cuts to a distance shot of the wharf as the lieutenant screams and the music blasts.
Cut to the same wharf at sunrise. All the thugs and the lieutenant are tied up, groaning. Ms. Lamatta is talking to a detective about wanting to testify. Commissioner Gordon is walking to a uniformed officer. “She said a ‘shadow’ came for them,” says the officer, “And we found this.”
He hands Gordon a card with the Batman logo as the music plays again, transitioning into opening credits.
After the credits we come to a fancy party in a downtown skyscraper. Bruce Wayne is talking with various wealthy elites, including Mayor Harvey Dent, about the crime wave. Wayne, playing the part of the playboy, expresses no outward interest in doing anything, despite the urging by Dent to “use his wealth and status for good” and support Dent’s new police funding effort. When Dent asks about his parents, causing a jump-cut of some pearls falling on a dark city street and Wayne’s face to twitch, Wayne simply says, “That was so long ago.”
They’re joined by Silver St. Cloud, host of the party, who expresses a desire to end the city’s poverty and pledges her inherited millions to do so. Bruce and Silver talk and flirt for a while when a butler interrupts, holding a phone. It’s Alfred, telling Wayne that he’s needed back at the manor. Wayne excuses himself.
Back at Wayne Manor Alfred lets him know that the gangster lieutenant Batman had captured the night before was freed by a lawyer who is linked to Rupert Thorne. The fanfare plays and Wayne says, “then I’ll pay Mr. Thorne a visit!” He opens a secret door and goes through a suit-up sequence becoming Batman and then drives the Batmobile out through a waterfall in the night.
We cut to Rupert Thorne’s mansion, where he and some gangsters are discussing crimes. Zoom in to show Batman place a hidden black camera, recording it all. We then follow Batman though the building, silencing guards, and slipping a micro-disk into a computer system, which beeps a couple of times. Then Batman fights his way through the guards in a big action scene, seemingly impervious to bullets, and captures Thorne, ultimately dropping him and all the evidence he’d collected off at the police.
The next morning Bruce Wayne is having morning coffee when the TV shows Throne being released from prison, the anchor talking about the DA dropping the charges due to insufficient evidence, which the audience knows is a lie. Wayne’s research reveals Thorne to be a major campaign donor to Mayor Dent through a series of shell companies. Batman confronts Dent, who speaks of how he did it “for the greater good.”
“The Gotham police are too few, and many are hopelessly corrupt,” says Dent. “This is the only way to guarantee peace in the city.” Adding, “what, do you think this city’s wealthy are any better than Thorne? Theo Galavan was an embezzler and did insider trading! Hell, Thomas Wayne was a corporate raider that put thousands of workers on the street!”
Another jump-cut of Thomas Wayne smiling down in the street from above, as if to a child.
“They don’t murder people! Thorne is a monster!” says Batman.
“There are worse monsters than Thorne,” says Dent.
Cut to a dark, grimy city street. An addict walks up to a shadowy figure in the foreground, face obscured. “Wh…where’s Skeeze?”
The figure giggles oddly. “Mr. Skeeze had a pressing engagement.”
Jump-cut to Skeeze in a trash compactor, screaming in horror.
“Y…you have my medicine?”
More giggles. “I’ve got something even better!” He holds out a baggy of purple crystals. “This is Smilex! It will but a great big ol’ smile on your face!” More chuckles and giggles as the addict takes the bag and carries it off into a dark alleyway. There’s the flare of a lighter in the dark and suddenly the hidden addict starts to snicker, then giggle, then laugh. Crane-pan back as the laughter turns manic and helicopter pan over the city as the increasingly unhinged laughter echoes menacingly through the streets.
Cut to the addict’s dead face, contorted into a twisted caricature of a smile. Pan back to reveal it’s a morgue. Commissioner Gordon overlooks the corpse next to a forensic doctor. “It’s called ‘Smilex’,” says the doctor, “And it kills up to twenty percent of its users.”
“Thorne has gone too far!” says Batman, revealed in a whip pan, causing Gordon to jump.
“I don’t think that it’s Thorne,” says Gordon. “There’s little profit in killing a fifth of your customers.”
“A psychopath, then. Or an accident, bad drugs. Thorne’s the type to cut corners. I’ll have a talk with him.”
Gordon grabs batman’s arm and says, “Don’t you dare! No vigilantes! This is police business!”
“I don’t trust Gotham cops,” says Batman, who pulls his arm free and vanishes.
Batman tracks down Thorne through a montage of fights with gangsters until he breaks into Thorne’s secret lair, easily besting the gangsters in a fight. He accuses Thorne of distributing the Smilex drugs, but Thorne denies it and tells him they have “a mutual enemy” and holds up a single playing card: a Joker. Batman leaves and Throne relaxes…only to hear a faint giggling in the background.
Cut to a computer at the Bat Cave below Wayne Manor and a montage of research and cut-scenes. We learn that a new gang called “The Clownz” is moving in[5], displacing the old gangs. There’s a “Rupert Thorne found dead, twisted grimace on his face” headline, among others.
Robin Williams as the Joker (as imagined by "weminoredinfilm.wordpress.com")
The research leads to an abandoned factory that’s now cranking out the Smilex at an industrial scale. Batman travels to the factory and fights his way through the Clownz in a massive, swinging-from-the-rafters melee that causes a small fire to start in a chemical storage closet. The fight leads ultimately to The Joker, who we see in full for the first time. Joker and Batman exchange banter about the situation, Batman learning that The Joker is truly a psychopath, using the greed of The Clownz to simply cause death and chaos for the “fun” of it. “Ooohhh yes, my little batty-bat-bat. They see only green, but I see all the beautiful colors of the rainbow, like bluuue, and black, and red…lots and lots and lots of beautiful red-red-red!” He laughs insanely and jumps up and down as he brags about the chaos and murder he’s committed.
“There’s no point in taking you to the crooked cops in this hopeless city,” says Batman, rage in his eyes, “You’re a mad dog who needs to be put down!” As fires start to spread through the warehouse Batman suddenly, and uncharacteristically, picks up a pistol (dropped in the fight) and starts to aim it at the Joker, but hesitates.
Jump-cut to Thomas Wayne getting shot on the street.
As he hesitates, The Joker, laughing, blows some purple powder into Batman’s face, says “sooo sad and angry, batty…you need to learn how to laugh!” and jumps, laughing, out a window. Batman shakes his head a couple of times as if dazed, and then starts to chuckle, giggle, and laugh in an increasingly desperate manner. We follow Batman as he struggles, laughing in increasingly manic ways[6], to make his way out of the burning, exploding building to the Batmobile. Still convulsing in pain and laughter, he climbs in, hits a button, and the Batmobile drives itself off into the night.
Back at Wayne Manor, as a storm rages around them, lightning casting frightening shadows, Alfred helps the laughing Wayne recover from the Smilex. The next morning, still chuckling painfully, Wayne and Alfred work to develop an antidote, which is then shared with the local hospitals, thereby saving many lives. Batman sets out to determine The Joker’s next strategy, but the Clown Prince of Crime stays continually out of his grasp.
Meanwhile, we cut to The Joker’s lair, where we learn that The Joker has developed a plan to release an untold amount of the Smilex upon the people of Gotham by blasting it through the steam pipes that run throughout the city (“This town needs an enema!”). When some of the Clownz, who are just petty criminals, not murderers, try to resist this plan, The Joker and his more loyal minions murder them all, The Joker laughing maniacally as he brutally kills all of the more hesitant Clownz. Then he says, “But first…some guests!!” His maniacal laughter, joined by the remaining Clownz, now more a madhouse of circus freaks than a gang, fills the air as we pan away.
Batman, meanwhile, has hit a dead end. The punks he accosts are either ignorant, or laughingly commit suicide rather than talk to him. Back at the Manor, Alfred talks to a frustrated Wayne and tries to convince him that he needs help and should contact Commissioner Gordon, who “seems like a decent-minded bloke.” Bruce exclaims that the city police are corrupt and that they “weren’t there for his parents!”
Bruce heads out on the street, angry, as the flashback of the murder of his parents, now seen in full by the audience for the first time, plays out in his head. He sees Silver St. Cloud’s building. Cut to her suite. He meets with Silver St. Cloud, who can tell he’s troubled. They talk around the issue, him pretending it’s about a business deal with a shady client and that the client has illegal things planned “that will hurt a lot of people.” He expresses a desire to “stop” him by any means necessary. Silver instead explains the difference between justice and vengeance, and that he should find a way to bring the other person to “justice”, not seek revenge. She speaks of her uncle Theo Galvan, and the corruption he got away with in his life and how she plans to serve justice by seeing his ill-gotten gains returned to the people.
Bruce admits to his own family’s perfectly legal but less than honorable business methods and swears that he will do likewise with his money. They start to kiss when Clownz break in through the windows. Bruce goes to fight them, but The Joker breaks in the door, shoots Bruce in the gut, and kicks him out the window, seemingly falling to his death while Silver screams. “Awww, what’ the matter, sweet little nightingale? Did your nest mate fly away?” He laughs as two Clownz slap tape over her mouth and drag her away.
Pan outside to where we see Bruce hanging off of a window ledge. He holds the bleeding gut wound and winces in pain.
In the background we see other wealthy people being dragged away into disturbingly painted clown cars by laughing Clownz.
Commissioner Gordon is in his office with some cops and detectives, attempting to determine the fate of several of Gotham’s kidnapped wealthy elites. Sighing, Gordon retreats into his office…and jumps when suddenly Batman is there. Batman and Gordon come to terms with each other, each realizing that the other wants to protect the citizens of Gotham, and they hash out a plan to work together. They combine their intelligence and determine that the Clownz have moved to the Gotham Central Steam Plant with the assumed hostages, for reasons unknown. They clasp forearms and move to save the hostages, which according to Gordon includes Mayor Dent.
While Gordon gathers up his most honest and loyal officers, Batman heads to the plant. He reaches the outskirts and takes out a couple of Clown guards. He squats by a skylight, winces with pain and grabs where he was shot, wipes away some grime from the glass, and looks inside. Inside he sees the Clownz mixing up a giant industrial cauldron of frothing purple liquid above a giant boiler. Cut to inside where a Clown Lieutenant exposits to The Joker that they are ready to dump into the boiler and flood the Gotham steam pipes with Smilex vapor, causing “untold chaos and death” across the city. Joker, laughing like a hyena the whole time, goes to his “audience”, the assembled wealthy of the city, all in cages hanging from chains (among them Silver St. Cloud). He then gives a great, laughing, insane speech on how for so long the wealthy of Gotham have stolen from the people of the city, likening himself to Robin Hood, “only with a much more idiosyncratic style!”
Meanwhile, on the roof, Batman is about to jump down through the glass when a Clown says “Hey! Wanna play?” Batman starts to fight him and two more Clownz. Cut back to the inside.
“But first,” says The Joker in a Game Show Announcer’s voice, “please welcome your fearless leader, the great two-faced Mayor of Gotham…everybody give a warm round of applause for Haaarrvey Dent!” The Clownz cheer maniacally as Dent is dragged into the room in front of The Joker, who pats him warmly on the left side of the face. A female Clown in long rubber gloves sashays up holding a silver bowl of smoking liquid. Dent is stuck in the middle, Clowns to his left, The Joker to his right.
“Sir, please,” says Dent calmly. “We can make a deal. I agree, the city’s poor are desperate, but if we work together to help them out, we can make things better for them.”
“What makes you think I give a shit about the poor?” says The Joker, quietly, a faux-serious look on his face, and then, laughing, pushes Dent’s face towards the bowl of smoking liquid. The scene cuts away to Silver with a horrified look on her face as Dent screams off camera. We cut back as Dent runs off, holding the left side of his face. The Joker and the Clownz laugh uproariously, all dancing and cavorting around.
Cut back to the roof. Batman is easily beating the clowns, but winces when one kicks him in the gunshot. Sirens become audible in the background. Some of the Clownz start shooting guns at Batman, which catches The Joker’s attention down below, causing him to laugh. Batman is getting worn down and overwhelmed when the Gotham Police pull up and engage the Clownz. Taking advantage of the distraction, Batman crashes through the skylight and down into the plant, cape out like wings.
He fights his way through the Clownz towards The Joker, wincing as he takes a punch to the gunshot. The Joker notices, there’s a jump-cut to Wayne getting shot by him, and he laughs, telling a pair of Clownz to bring him Silver. Batman fights his way towards the laughing Joker, who now has Silver St. Cloud at gunpoint. Batman instead ignores them so that he can stop two Clownz from dumping the Smilex into the boiler and gassing the city. With the city safe, he finally confronts The Joker, who is now on a ledge over the Smilex, threatening to drop Silver in. “Ah-ah-ahhh, Batty-bat! At this big of a dose she’ll surely die with laughter!” He laughs.
Silver bites The Joker’s hand and mule-kicks him in the crotch and then runs to Batman. “Get to Commissioner Gordon!” he yells, and engages The Joker in a final fight, dodging acid spray from a lapel flower and other sick “gags” as they fight. It cuts between the fight and Silver, watching from afar, as she runs through the plant until police officers swarm in and start rescuing the hostages, including her.
Finally, Batman has The Joker in an arm lock. The Joker laughs and slips away from the arm lock with a sickening crack, punches Batman in the gunshot, and then jumps off of the ledge towards the Smilex. Batman dives and grabs him, holding him by his left arm above the purple goo.
“Give up!” yells Batman, “I’ll see that you receive fair Justice!”
“Ah, batty, but it’s just us now!” Joker kicks up onto the ledge, trying to pull Batman down with him. Batman is forced to release The Joker lest he too get pulled in.
Laughing, The Joker falls into the Smilex and thrashes in it, laughing even more maniacally than ever, and he slowly sinks into the goo.
Cut to Wayne Manor where Bruce Wayne is in his bed, a large bandage on his midsection. He’s reading a newspaper about the “gang fight” at the plant. There’s a drawing of Batman with a caption “who is the Bat Man?” Alfred warns him that his hobby will eventually catch up to him. He then tells him he has a visitor. In walks Silver St. Cloud.
Silver says that she’s glad to see he’s alright. He makes up a story about “getting lucky” and falling onto a ledge when The Joker shot him. They briefly discuss their philanthropic plans and then he asks her about what happened to her. She mentions being rescued by “the Bat Man” and wonders if he’s still out there somewhere.
Alfred suggests, “Yes, I suspect that he is, and that he will likely show up when and where he is needed.”
The Batman theme plays as it cuts to Commissioner Gordon atop a building, the sun setting behind him, supervising some officers unboxing something. It’s revealed to be a searchlight. They turn it on, displaying the Bat Signal.
Cut to Batman, standing atop a skyscraper, below the signal in the background. He says in a voiceover, “Signal me, and I shall come. Need my help, and I shall be there. For I am the bringer of justice, I am the hunter of the night…I am Batman!”
Batman opens his cloak wide like wings, jumps from the skyscraper, and soars off towards the signal as the music crescendos and credits roll.
Production
Producers Benjamin Melniker and Michael E. Uslan first acquired the film rights for Batman from DC Comics on October 3, 1979. After decades of campy, Adam West style representations, Uslan intended “to make the definitive, dark, serious version of Batman, the way Bob Kane and Bill Finger had envisioned him in 1939. A creature of the night; stalking criminals in the shadows.” After being rejected by United Artists and Columbia Pictures, Uslan wrote a dark, noir-tinged script titled Return of the Batman. Teaming up with producers Jon Peters and Peter Guber in November 1979, with Melniker and Uslan becoming executive producers, they decided to follow the lead of the popular Superman movie. They tried unsuccessfully to pitch the film to Universal before Warner Brothers picked up the production in 1980.
Ignoring Uslan’s dark script and following in the campier footsteps of Superman, a new script was written by Tom Mankiewicz titled The Batman in June 1983, which focused on Batman and Robin’s origins and featured the Joker and Rupert Thorne as villains. After considering Ivan Reitman, Joe Dante, and Wes Craven for the director’s chair[7], Steven Spielberg[8] suggested that they consider a promising young director named Sam Raimi, who had scored recent successes with Friday the Thirteenth Part 5 and The Running Man, and was eager to direct a darker take in keeping with Uslan’s original script. Uslan met with Raimi and was excited to work with the director, but the studio was concerned about his relative lack of experience and origins as a horror film director. Raimi, in turn, pushed it as “a horror film for criminals” where the themes were of justice over vengeance. He cited the works of Tim Burton as evidence of audience tastes moving away from camp and color and towards the darker and more gothic. Still, though, the studio was resistant.
At Lisa Henson’s urging, Raimi put together some test footage using his childhood friend and go-to actor Bruce Campbell as Batman. The scene, which was recycled, slightly modified, into the opening set piece of the final film, impressed the producers and the studio and Raimi was greenlit to direct. Raimi, going back to Uslan’s original script, drafted a darker take that none the less maintained a touch of the camp by way of its dark humor. Robin was cut from the script in order to focus on “The Dark Knight” himself with the intent to bring him back in a potential sequel. Raimi originally wanted to keep Campbell as Batman, reportedly saying “seriously, all we need is a good chin,” adding, “heck, he’s even named Bruce!” However, the studio didn’t feel that Campbell had the big name or the acting chops and didn’t like his flat, midwestern accent. Raimi ultimately cast Willem Dafoe as the title character, at first angering Batman fans, who came around after seeing his performance. Campbell would appear both in a cameo as an obnoxious reporter and as a “Fake Shemp” Batman stand-in for reshoots.
Raimi reportedly tried to change the villain from the Joker to a more mundane villain (some sources suggest Scarecrow), hoping to save the Joker for a sequel, but the studio reportedly forced his hand, wanting to use the iconic villain to spur interest. Several people were considered for the role of The Joker, with Jack Nicholson being the studio’s first choice. However, Nicholson’s pay demands were excessive, including a large share of the gross, top billing, and very limited work hours[9]. After practically stalking Raimi, Robin Williams was finally brought on as the Joker after filming himself in makeup playing the part. “At first I was afraid that Robin would camp it up too much,” said Raimi, “But he took his usual manic comedy and he gave it this dark, psychotic edge that was just perfect. Good Morning Vietnam came out that year to critical acclaim, which helped sell Warner [Brothers] on him.” Sean Young, fresh off of No Way Out, was cast as love interest Silver St. Cloud, Ian Abercrombie was selected as Wayne’s butler Alfred, Jack Palance as crime boss Rupert Thorne, Pat Hingle as Commissioner Gordon, and Kevin Kline, fresh off of A Fish Called Wanda, as Mayor Harvey Dent.
Batman was filmed primarily at Pinewood Studios in England from October of 1988 to February of 1989 with additional location shoots throughout England. Danny Elfman was enlisted for the score based on his “dark, ethereal, but beautiful” work with Disney and Prince was brought on board at the request of producer Jon Peters to provide original songs. Editing and post-production ran through the spring of 1989 and the film debuted with a T rating on June 22nd following a massive blitz-marketing campaign that saw nearly every teenager in America wearing a Batman T-shirt[10].
Themes and Style
Raimi, much like Tim Burton, was inspired by the German Expressionist cinema of the early 20th century and Batman demonstrates direct influence from Fritz Lang’s films, in particular M and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. He makes use of Dutch Angles, gothic-influenced architecture, and strong chiaroscuro contrasts. He uses his signature uncomfortable close-ups, whip-pans, and jump-cuts to build tension. This results in a film that is dark, intimate, and tense. And reflects the dualistic themes of the film. “I wanted this to be a ‘horror film for criminals’,” he told Entertainment Weekly in 1989, “and so I used the cinematic language of the horror flick and turned it on the killers and monsters instead.”
The overriding theme of the movie is duality, with its focus on night/day, dark/light, evil/good, poverty/wealth, crime/law, vengeance/justice, fear/humor, corruption/honesty, and victim/perpetrator and where these opposites cross over or bleed into one another. It’s a theme Raimi would explore in greater depth in the sequels. We see this duality in Bruce Wayne vs. Batman, Batman vs. The Joker, Commissioner Gordan vs. Rupert Thorne, and Harvey Dent’s pragmatic mix of honest public service and mild “as necessary” corruption. Other themes include justice for the innocent, the responsibilities of privilege, and the dangers of both drugs and the “war on drugs” that was raging while the movie was in production.
Reception, Box Office, and Legacy
Batman premiered to mostly positive reviews, though many expressed concerns about the level of violence in certain scenes, particularly in a movie that would surely be seen by children and was marketed with toys and other children’s merchandise. Though some were put off by its dark tone, Dafoe and Williams were largely praised for their acting. Williams in particular shocked and awed audiences, who were at first taken aback by the casting but were ultimately won over by the manic darkness of the portrayal. Batman would go on to be a massive blockbuster, grossing an amazing $410 million worldwide plus an additional $150 million in VHS sales. Batman spawned two sequels, an animated TV series, and a reboot trilogy in the 2000s. Batman is credited with reinvigorating the flagging superhero genre.
Trivia
A deleted subplot involves three scenes of Commissioner Gordon and some of his loyal officers, along with Mayor Harvey Dent, questioning who “The Batman” is, and what he’s up to. Dent recommends “capturing the vigilante and throwing him in prison, or possibly Arkham Assylum.” These scenes were cut for time and pacing reasons.
A scene where The Joker kills Rupert Throne with Smilex was cut for time. Instead, an expository headline and photograph of Throne’s smiling face flashes by during a montage.
Several cuts were made at the request of the MPAA to keep the rating at T and not R. For example, in a deleted scene, The Joker visibly pushes Dent’s face into the bowl of liquid, which sizzles and bubbles as Dent screams. This was replaced with the cut to Silver’s shocked expression.
Director Sam Raimi's brother Ted plays the police officer talking to Commissioner Gordon in the opening set piece and handing him the Bat card.
Director Sam Raimi’s childhood friend Bruce Campbell plays the obnoxious reporter “Jimmy Scupe” and also acted as a body double for Batman during reshoots (credited as “Bat Shemp”). “Hey, what can I say?” Campbell said in a later interview with Vanity Fair, “I got to play Batman in a major motion picture! That’s my chin getting punched halfway through the rooftop fight!”
[1] Didn’t see that one coming, did you? I’m following in a long line of “casting people that everyone knows just can’t be Batman only to be pleasantly surprised by what a good job that they do.”
[2] Williams lobbied hard for the role in our timeline, but the studio was desperate for Nicholson. I’m sure he’s not most people’s first choice, but I can honestly see him taking the mania of his standup and overlaying it onto his frankly disturbingly realistic portrayal of a psychopath in later films (e.g. One Hour Photo) and really making it work. He arguably doesn’t “look the part”, but neither did Nicholson.
[3] Raimi and Elfman were frequent collaborators in our timeline starting with Darkman. Here, Raimi knew Elfman from The Nightmare Before Christmas.
[4] I would have loved to go with Billie Dee Williams, but that was a Burton choice. The studio reportedly wouldn’t have cast Williams in the role if they’d realized who “Harvey Dent” would later become, and thus shamefully dropped him in favor of a more bankable Tommy Lee Jones when they needed Two Face. Here, Kline is just getting off from A Fish Called Wanda, produced under the “adult contemporary” Hyperion label in this timeline rather than the “prestige” MGM name. January Man is butterflied.
[5] Yes, of course they look like Juggalos. Did you need to ask?
[6] Think of the “laughing scene” from Evil Dead II.
[7] All as per our timeline up to this point.
[8] Urged on by Lisa Henson, of course.
[9] As were his demands in our timeline, where he made out like a freakin’ bandit, making millions for the role. To this day it’s still the highest-paid acting role ever in terms of “dollars per word spoken”.
[10] Seriously, the marketing campaign for this movie was ridiculous. It was impossible to escape the movie and the merch. It took The Phantom Menace to finally outdo it in 1999. As a Nerd and Geek in High School at the time (when those were things you did NOT advertise about yourself), I was suddenly amazed and perplexed when the popular kids started wearing Batman shirts, something that just a year earlier would have gotten you harassed and assaulted. Ah the power of marketing!
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Willem Dafoe as Batman? A lot more people peg him as the Joker. Still interesting choice- should be able to pulls off Bruce and Bats.
Robin Williams will make an awesome Joker. Go for that Oscar Robin!
Danny Elfman music? Interesting. Would add a certain quality to it.
Kevin Kline as Mayor Harvey Dent - at least that will be more consistent later on. Though Billy Dee as Two-Face would have been fantastic.
Glad it was still filmed at Pinewood Studios in England.
Raimi seems to made the Batman movie I would really want to watch! At least ITTL me got to see it- probably several times!
Great work @Geekhis Khan
Robin Williams will make an awesome Joker. Go for that Oscar Robin!
Danny Elfman music? Interesting. Would add a certain quality to it.
Kevin Kline as Mayor Harvey Dent - at least that will be more consistent later on. Though Billy Dee as Two-Face would have been fantastic.
Glad it was still filmed at Pinewood Studios in England.
Raimi seems to made the Batman movie I would really want to watch! At least ITTL me got to see it- probably several times!
Great work @Geekhis Khan
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