Batman '89

So apparently in 1989 when Batman was coming out, there was a group of fans who disapproved of the casting, and you can find interviews and stuff today used to show how wrong they were.. but here's the thing, in my opinion, they were and still are right.

Is he the worst ever? No. Not by a long shot. But he's like 5'7" and not particularly muscular, curly hair, bit wimpy, he just doesn't look like Bruce Wayne to me. Maybe it's better to look at this as it is, which is a new take on the character. But to me Bruce Wayne is canonically 6'2" and is supposed to be kind of a hot man in a ladyboner way. Remember he's a playboy billionaire.

In my mind, the only reason Michael Keaton is so beloved as Batman as he is, is because he was the first one to really be on the big screen for it. Nostalgia.

casting keaton was the only thing wrong with 89

Oh no.

Low IQ post.

I remember when Keaton was cast, everyone hated it, it was a shitty choice. It still is.

Unless you’re in your late 40s or older, I seriously doubt that you clearly remember the buzz around Keaton being cast.

everyone hated it

You weren't even alive when it came out.
I was and people liked it.

Nigga was only cast because he was butt-buddies with Tim Burton. That mf can't help but recycling the same damn actors

Nigga

Easy way to identify a worthless post.

Its called nepotism and its how hollywood functions.

89 is still a bad film. THER IS NO STORY. Its just scenes stitched together. The problem was the Director and the studio heads/producers.

how does he look around

Are saying there are no anons over the age of 40 on Anon Babble?

It was hugely disappointing. It was just surrounded by the most massive hype and marketing push I'd seen up to that point. WB spent a fortune to market it.

89 is still a bad film

It couldn't be that bad. It made money and spawned 3 sequels and an animated tv show (the best batman show ever made).

Look at it this way: Every Batman film reboot since Batman 1989 has been some variation of:

The Dark Knight Returns
Year One
Long Halloween
The Killing Joke

Seemingly there hasn’t been a single Batman comic run from the 2000s that’s been deemed worthy of adapting into live action.

The IQ deck was never stacked high for me to begin with, but watching the film definitely knocked a few off.
I can only imagine how much damage it's done to someone like you who's ostensibly seen it multiple times.

Okay, I’m calling out. State your age.

Seemingly there hasn’t been a single Batman comic run from the 2000s that’s been deemed worthy of adapting into live action

Duh. The comics industry died.

How old were you in 1989?

It was the marketing push behind it. It was insane. Was it good, no, it was average at best.

I was never into comics, so the variants of Batman that I grew up with were reruns of the Adam West show (lol), Tim Burton's movies, and The Animated Series. I liked all of them more or less, my favorite being TAS. Once Nolan's films were released that kind of replaced Burton in my head and I don't really care for Burton anymore. I'd easily rewatch those but not Burton.

If it were NOW I'd believe that line.
In the early 90s? No. The movie did good and was liked enough to spawn the best Batman tv show of all time and 3 sequels, one of which was actually good.

Yes, but keep in mind that the material they had to pull from in the 80s when they were developing the Burton film was pretty dire as well.

I don't follow comics.
What did Burton even pull from the comics other than characters?

The Dark Knight Returns came out in 1986 and represented a major shift in tone for Batman. That’s basically what led to Warner Bros. attempting a new live action film.

Yes yes but what did Burton lift from the comics into the movie?

If the success was Batman '89 was a one-off success, I might agree. That's not the case though.

Domestically, Batman '89 was the number 1 highest grossing movie in 1989.
Batman Returns was a controversial disappointment, but was still the highest grossing movie in 1992.
Batman Forever was the highest grossing movie in 1995.
It's not until Batman and Robin where it drops down to the 9th highest grossing movie in 1997 where the franchise gets put on ice.

The Joker’s laughing gas stuff is lifted directly from DKR

Greatest Batkino

I was still a spoim wiggling around in my dad's balls. That doesn't make me any less fit to judge the movie than you.

Batman and Robin

where the franchise gets put on ice

Kek. Nice anon.

Can't be. Caeser Romero was doing that shit in the 60s.

It does!
It's Batman stopping the Joker!
It's as simple as that

The specific imagery of the new reporters is from DKR. IIRC, Joker gases a whole audience at a talk show in the comic.

youtube.com/watch?v=XU7gnMSzf_c

It does because you have a completely different frame of reference compared to someone that was watching Nicholson’s Joker performance when it was new and current.

The specific imagery of the new reporters is from DKR

That happens quite a few times in the old Batman tv show.

This looks stupid now but something silly like this was acceptable then. Society was optimistic and positive.

No it doesn’t.

he never watched adam west Batman

Here is a breakdown of what comics influenced Batman '89.
batman-online.com/features/2008/7/19/comic-influences-on-tim-burtons-batman-1989

We know Burton was familiar with Frank Miller's Dark Knight because Corto Maltese gets mentioned.
I think Keaton also mentioned that Burton was really into the Frank Miller stuff and that he looked at for influence on his own performance.

i mean it's a film made for kids, it doesn't really matter who you cast, i enjoyed it
the only batman that stuck with me into adulthood is batman begins, just the right amount of not taking itself too serious while not being too childish

nolan

All Nolan's movies are shit.

There has yet to be a good live action portrayal of the main character.

I 'member!

what is Adam West

what is Keaton

what is Pattinson

It was darker and more gruesome in DKR and the 1989 film. Show me a similar example from the 60s series, please.

youtu.be/7pru9_Wqk8I?si=HPKMl51WVEODrRXn

Nevermind 'from the 2000s' - the stories you listed are all within a decade of each other.

Keaton's menacing smile was him channeling TDKR Batman.

I stand uncorrected.

Remember he's a playboy billionaire.

ladyboner

Kill thyself

Yeah, 89 is not that great. Returns is where its at. If you want to easily identify a pleb, ask them if they prefer 89 over Returns. 89 was a glorified toy commercial maimed by studio executives. Returns was unbridled artistry.

The one thing Keaton's Batman always had, that has never been surpassed, was this slightly unhinged smirk, like after he put the suit on he became a different, somewhat deranged person that might actually fuck you up with his box of bat-toys.

Faggot is too stupid for West

That’s exactly the quality that Burton liked in Keaton rather than going with the more obvious choice of say Alec Baldwin.

That page is supposed to be dark and gruesome?
Fucking capeshit fags.

Still waiting for an example from the 60s television series.

Why bother? You are retarded.

Society was optimistic and positive.

It still is you just got older and follow the news too closely.

Nicholson joker is bad

That's the worst opinion ever on Anon Babble. He's the only movie joker who has a sense of humor

Mmhmm. Thought so.

It has no arguement

Yes, this is the appeal of Keaton. Bale is overall a better actor, but his Batman is too much of a goody two-shoes idealist. Keaton was more of a loner weirdo who got a sadomasochistic kick out of terrorizing criminals, and Returns gained a lot by doubling down on this aspect.

Yeah Nolan's Batman was pretty forgettable, he took it too seriously, it's the point where "realism" ruins art. 1989 Batman was great because kids could larp as Wayne/Batman, that he physically dominates everyone is just a given since he's the super hero, what is important is the question of, would someone who can physically dominate everyone when he's suited up act this way? And Keaton nailed it.

Based opinion anon

Hobestly, Nicholson and Prince really did not fit Joker or the music I'd want for Batman... but... damn if that shit didn't hit great as its own thing and now is a wonderful tine capsule. Tho given how timless most of the film was, it might take away from that a bit.

It's such a weird movie.
Great visuals.
But everything else is just meh.

If only two director mode of work was more accepted - sure have a visionary director to make your movie original and innovative but also have a second experienced one to make sure it tells a coherent compelling story.

THER IS NO STORY.

But there is though.

Yeah, 89 is not that great. Returns is where its at.

The whole world disagrees with you.
Batman Forever takes some inspiration from Year Three but also includes a bunch of stuff from the era ranging from the 70s-90s.
The Nolan films go from Year One to The Long Halloween to Knightfall to No Man's Land.
The Batman (2022) is a combination of Year Two and Hush.

The biggest lasting effect Batman '89 had on the franchise was the grapple gun.
Batman had had gadgets that did elements of the grapple gun, but Burton's movie combined all the functions together and really solidified it as the key Batman gadget going forward for all iterations of the franchise.

You wanna get nuts?

The Pattinson Batman is way more Long Halloween than it is Hush.

the Joker is goofy

somehow that's a bad thing

Filtered

Michael Keaton did not have curly hair

It's a good movie in spite of the casting

The Batman (2022) is a combination of Year Two and Hush

The Batman takes a lot of influence from The Long Halloween and Dark Victory.
The whole "Selina is Falcone's daughter" is lifted from The Long Halloween. As is Falcone owing Thomas Wayne a favor for saving his life.
It also takes inspiration from "Batman Earth One", with the whole "Martha Wayne is descended from the Arkham family".

They're literally everywhere

The type of person that commonly starts posts with 'nigga' is pretty low rung and shouldn’t be given attention.

He did if you knew where to look (but let me warn you, it gets pretty rank down there after a few hours in the Batsuit).

Michael McKean in his short animated cameo role of Dick Sprang era Joker in an ep of TAS is an underrated gem.

Bale is overall a better actor, but his Batman is too much of a goody two-shoes idealist.

Bale's Batman is based on Year One's ideology, which was all about using criminology to put the fear of God into criminals. Bats, R'as, Scarecrow...they were all about using fear to control target groups in order to further an agenda.
Yeah I forgot to mentions TLH BUT it doesn't outweigh the Hush story by much. I'd say after establishing the Year Two timeline the influence of TLH and Hush are about 50/50 in terms of the overall story.

Keaton isn't a great Bruce, but he looks great in the batsuit. I'd say the best, with Affleck a close second. Bale may be the worst looking Batman, he looked goofy as fuck with his mouth always agape. Also his Dark Knight mask looked like a special ed kid helmet.

I think Bale was a bad Batman... in a way... and purposefully so. Nolan didn't adapt Batman as much as almost wholly a deconstruction.
Thr whole theme of thr film was the ideal of Batman as a superhero vs the reality of what a man can do. Bale's Wayne failed to truly become Batman... but why do we fall? To pick ourselves back up and try again to reach those Platonic ideals.

one of my earliest memories as a little kid was being too afraid of nicholsons joker to stay in the room when he was on screen. I would go to the stairs and wait around the wall for a scene with him to be over and come back into the room when he was gone. I was absolutely terrified of his face.

Bale has a weird head shape and thin jawline that they tried to work around. I agree the Nolan suits were never very good.

When will retarded men finally understand... Looks aren't everything. Charisma and acting skills ARE everything when you are in a movie. You can be a tall handsome Chad and not carry the character, the movie (look at Hallmark films, full of attractive useless Chads).
Keaton has the crazy in him that works for Bruce and Batman. He is attractive but even more so in the costume. And most importantly he looks like a MAN. Not like a pretty twink, not like a faggot, not like a bodybuilding faggot, not like a mentally ill drunk larping as a Chad (cough Affleck), no he is just a normal adult man that has his shit together.
And he had off the charts chemistry with Pfeiffer, no one will ever be able to top their Bruce and Selina relationship.
Sadly, actors of such caliber don't exist now. It's over for capeshit.

david spade has a rant that basically BTFOs the idea of acting being a difficult skill at all

I dunno. Keaton's Bruce grew on me as a weird eccentric billionare. Plus those kinda autistic assholes seem all the rage these days...

A man you say?

There’s a difference between a great actor and a great movie star.

look at Hallmark films, full of attractive useless Chads

from the big city... and then she meets a nice down home country guy back in her home town or the small countryside village she ended up visiting.

This.
Charlie Cox also does a great evil smirk/smile as Daredevil.

The whole world disagrees with you.

Ad populum fallacy. Do better.

I definitely appreciate Keaton as a different take on the character. It works for what Burton was going for. I think Affleck is the embodiment of what I imagine a more comic accurate Bruce Wayne to be.

No, really great actors are able to think as their characters while acting, that makes them comes alive and pulls you into their thought process, their psychology.
Acting is also very musical, your acting should be like a beautiful song, all the beats of your speech well-timed, the sound of your voice controlled correctly... True acting is art.

not like a mentally ill drunk larping as a Chad (cough Affleck)

Hey. Why ya gotta be fahkin retahded queeah like that?

Based opinion. Batman Returns is one of the most romantic films of the 90s.

umm where is the rolling eyes emoji on this app??

They look fine in the movie, and I think begins and dark knight did a good job of feeling grounded and tactical while still looking like a batsuit.
They look absolutely awful when its just some production photo or in bad lighting.
Its a suit made to be shot mostly in the shadow from specific angles that hide that its a guy in a foam latex suit. That's genuinely true of all capeshit costumes.
There is also the problem of translating designs from a 2d comic into the real world. I was shocked they managed to make wolverine's mask (mostly) work in deadpool since even in the comics its changes its shape in 3d space depending on the angle its drawn from.
In my head the platonic batman I imagine has the really long point ears, which look cool and moody as fuck in a drawing, but I don't know if you could put that on a real costume with a real actor who has to move around and not have it look stupid and goofy and perceptibly jiggling every time he moves his head.

Why would anyone care about what David Spade has to say about acting?

Nolan didn't adapt Batman as much as almost wholly a deconstruction.

I somewhat agree with this, the deconstruction part. He made Batman a larger than life character but in a more grounded way, which fit the worldbuilding that he setup. I don't think he was a bad Batman but I dislike some of the character changes from part 3.

das a fallacy, I win!

that's not how this works. You presented your opinion as an objective fact which opens you up to weighted criticism. Maybe if you simply explained why you prefer it instead of trying to force your opinion on others things would go in a better direction.

How can the comics still be going on? Haven't all the stories been told? What's with 50 different Robins and Batgirls?

i mean it's a film made for kids

It was a Batman that killed criminals.
That's really the thing that people hopefully bitched about. Burton not reading the comics and making "his" own Batman. Which is retrospect worked out okay. Nicholson is goofy, Keaton is a skinny shit in a muscle suit, Prince and Elfman sort of mesh but only the main theme has any legs.
All you need to do is look at the batman insignia on the suit with the extra point added to it because they didn't know if DC had approved the trademark or not. It's not a proper Batman.

Corporations never let IPs die if they can help it. True all of the stories have been told. That's why it's best to read the stories from a certain era that were made for the audience of that time and then mentally you just have to let it go and move on to other material.

Batman begins is just Year One ruined with the shitty badguyspraysgasonthecity plot.

Even in the doujins I have from Japan, Bruce isn't some scrawny twink. Even if not full on bara, they make him a manly man.

Because they're cheap and fast to produce, and as soon as you have one audience growing out of it, you have a new one primed and ready to go.
Also in DC especially they've rebooted the continuity more than once, which means they can go back and retread the same fucking beats. For the most part marvel keeps things in one continuity that just kind of accepts that the audience will accept that peter parker isn't a geriatric, or tony stark getting replaced by a younger version of himself through time travel shenanigans to wrap up the "iron man is kang's pawn" arc.

Meh, I’ve never fully understood the complaint that something isn’t ’comic accurate' enough. Most comics have completely incomprehensible plot lines that can’t coherently be adapted into a standard feature length film.

Comics=/=films

You should check out the weird shit in the new Absolute Batman book. Practically an Elseworlds.
That is Alfred he's fighting on the cover by the way. He calls him Pennyworth.

He had the right face and piercing gaze and was the best in the suit. You are right on his appeearance though.

The thing about casting a comic accurate batman is that batman is 6'2" and built like a brick shithouse while also being a ninja that can do gymnastics. Its like Arnold Schwarzenegger if he could move around like jackie chan.
I thought Afleck was a decent batman, he was just stuck in a really stupid movie.
I also hate batman against cosmic threats and my favorite stories are usually a lot more grounded and more about him dealing with the corruption and decay of the city and the other maniacs that have been chewed up and spit out.

but I dislike some of the character changes from part 3.

We'll never know what 3 was really supposed to be since Heath Ledger died.

Films should be more like comics, specificly Japanese gay sex comics drawn by fujoshi who like manly men having sex with each other.

Calm down. Audiences at the time were on the fence about Keaton based on the sort of projects he had worked on previously. He was a stand-up comedian who went to star in a bunch of comedy movies. Then all of a sudden it's announced that he's been cast as an action star playing the most grimdark superhero there is. Of COURSE they would question the casting.

inb4 comedians and their amazing dramatic timing

That's something modern audiences have come to understand but not back then

It's been a thing that has kept me from getting into comics because they don't end or change. Batman doesn't retire and Dick takes up the mantle, Superman doesn't fix the world, etc.

Not that anon but everything I've heard about absolute batman makes me not interested. Everyone seems to love it though.
I thought some of the absolute wonder woman stuff is kind of neat and weird. I genuinely haven't heard anyone talk about absolute superman.
Maybe the manhunter book will be good.
Its kind of all soured by the fact that its going to lead in an inevitable crossover with the main DC universe in another dipshit crisis to introduce Mega-Darkseid and reboot the main timeline again.

But it is objective fact that Burton had his hands tied by the studio while making 89, but was awarded far more artistic freedom to make Returns. It's fine if you don't like the film, even I think it's imperfect, but it is a fully realized vision from an artist, while 89 was deliberately more of a commercial product.

You know what is between cosmic threats and real world crime? Gothic horror and weird science fiction. I don't think we have really seen that explored in a film.

This is true. Personally I think Burton is better with some restraint, but Returns is definitely a fully Burton movie.

It's just superhero comics that are like that. Plenty of other comics out there.

Yeah. I haven't bought a new DC book in ages. I burned out after New52. I've mainly been collecting old issues and trades of old runs for about the past decade.

Batman doesn't retire and Dick takes up the mantle

He did for a while, Damien was his Robin.
And DC had an aborted attempt to actually move the timeline forward, superman was replaced by his gay son. Batman was replaced by Fox's kid (i think), but they got cold feet and ended up dumping most of it into some miniseries. They were going to keep the original characters around but have them go off and do their own things, like Superman went off looking for War World, since his son was watching over earth, and he wanted to finally save war world. He took the authority with him, got semi-depowered and had a decent gladiator-superman arc where he helps empower the people to rise up.
Then he goes back to earth with a couple of orphaned kryptonian kids in tow. But as always shit balances back to the status quo.
The best way to read comics is just to find some good arcs or miniseries that tell solid stories that get the character.

playing the most grimdark superhero there is

Lol, aside from comic book nerds, the average American's image of Batman was Adam West. And that's a good thing.

Yeah. I like Returns more as a Burton film than as a Batman one. I really did not like it when I was younger.

Jim Gordon was Batman was a while.
The beats of NML were already there in part 2 (the whole thing with the hostages and the snipers is taken from that story), so I think they were always heading in the direction they went for. They probably would have had him ruling a part of the decayed city. Maybe no Talia and just Joker and Bane as the big bads.
There's a range of comics you can read that cover his story from begin to end, including his death.

Jim Gordon was Batman was a while.

I mainly skimmed through storytimes on Anon Babble when those came out. I checked out buying issues after Court of Owls and before Death Of The Family with faceless Joker.

He had a grizzled face and a good voice for Batman. As Bruce Wayne he just played Michael Keaton

If I had "Fuck You" money I'd get someone really fucking weird to adapt "A serious house" and just annoy everyone with a fucking weird artsy-fartsy psychedelic occult nonlinear movie. (the TPB is great because the comic is basically reprinted twice with the annotated galleys with the writer's commentary that helps unpack some of the really really dense stuff happening.
I've also always been partial to joker's problem being "hyper-sanity."

I been looking into some of the greats and Knightfall looks promising.

My favorite batman book is always going to be year one.
Knightfall is a classic up to batman getting broke. Jean-Paul Valley is the most 90's fucking thing ever, and I can't objectively say it wasn't one of those "You had to be there" kind of things.
Also checked.
Killing joke is always a classic. Super short.
For The Man Who Has Everything is batman adjacent, but another classic story. Also has one of the most badass superman moments when mongol realizes superman is awake and that he is in a very bad mood. The adaptation of the episode in the justice league cartoon is one of the few times Moore has given an adaptation his personal seal of approval, even if it misses the "think clean thoughts, chum" line from batman

I always preferred Returns. It was kinda surprising to discover as an adult that it was poorly received and that most preferred 89. Every time I come back to 89 I'm always disappointed by how unfocused and poorly paced it is; I just don't get the hype. My best guess is that people just really like Jack Nicholson as the Joker.

Burton also fucked up by once again shoving his daddy issues into the movie. Once was enough with '89.

Complaints about Returns always seem to boil down to that it's too dark and too weird, which is why I refer to detractors as plebs. Yes, it is dark and weird, that's what's cool about it. 89 is just dull and toothless, except for that scene where Joker incinerates a guy. That was pretty hardcore, and arguably darker than anything in Returns even.

Blow it out your ass

Batman 89 sort of created the modern summer blockbuster as we know it. It came along with a big soundtrack, toys, video games, lots of tie-in deals, and so forth.

Make low effort posts, expect to be called on it.

Ledger was far better than Nicholson as the Joker. I like Nicholson, but he was horribly miscast in 89. His Joker performance feels like him just putting on a Halloween costume, and doing volunteer work as a children's entertainer at some charity event. Ledger, on the other hand, completely disappeard into the role, completely unrecognizable. Just because Ledger's performance is popular with normies, and parodying his portrayal was a joke that got quickly driven into the ground, does not take away from how great he was in The Dark Knight. Batman Returns is a pleb filter, but The Dark Knight is a contrarian filter.

For The Man Who Has Everything

Looks cool. Speaking of Superman I saw a page from some comic on Anon Babble a long time ago where Superman was fighting a literal tornado and there was another Superman with a bandaged face and something about Pa Kent, what the hell was going on?

Zoomer hate Burton Batman

More reason Zoomers should be drafted and shipped off to die for Israel and Ukraine.

Context, anon. Keep in mind that a lot of Ledger’s version of Joker wasn’t established yet in the mid to late 80s.

he wanted those to be permanent changes

I agree, superman's gay son was just cringey as fuck, and I'm not someone just instantly offended by faggotry.
But honestly I'd almost be down for it just to disrupt the status quo.
I'm still kind of mad about how krakoa ended. I liked the idea of the mutants finally having an ethnostate (again), but going off into some weird sci fi shit with terraforming mars, conquering death and sending Kurt off, as a true believer, to try and figure out how to reconcile all of this godlike power at their disposal to create a faith that they can survive in this new paradigm to maintain some kind of morality, and to help found a new mutant culture.
Or legion just making a pocket dimension where all the weird schizo and inhuman mutants could be free to do their own thing.
But now that disney owns x men again, and hickman got moved off the book, it foundered and had a god awful accelerated ending that reset everything back to the status quo. And I'm so fucking tired of "Mutants are underappreciated persecuted minorities with super powers!" after they were literally sitting at the head of an intergalactic empire with infinite wealth because they could supply the rarest material in the galaxy that makes vibranium and adamantium look abundant.

No, it's kino. Adam West Batman however is carried entirely by nostalgia. The silver age of comic books was the true dark age, more so than the bronze age.

Check out:
Early career:

Year One

The Long Halloween

Dark Victory

Mid-career:

Justice League Year One (for how/why he joined the JL)

Death in the Family

The Killing Joke

War on Crime

War Zone

Tower of Babel

Knightfall (remember, there are 3 acts) - this shows how the character was revamped for the 90s, new costume, darker methods

Late to end of career:

No Man's Land (read the full story, not the trade paperback) - he retires but comes back for good. Nolan reversed this in the movies.

Final Crisis (this is the canon ending to the DC universe before the official reboot)

Batman R.I.P.

Justice League Kingdom Come (non-canon alt future)

For random stories during his early to mid career that are self-contained, read Detective Comics starring Batman from the mid to late 90s.
One could include other stories but I'm not aiming to lay out the best stories, just the ones that take you through his career in a logical narrative.

Complaints about Returns always seem to boil down to that it's too dark and too weird, which is why I refer to detractors as plebs.

But no one ITT said any of that.

I also really like "The Black Ring"
Its all about lex luthor, but it is nothing but him being a magnificent bastard while simultaneously cementing himself as the just the pettiest bitch ever.

I did a recent rewatch of Returns and Keaton must have had it in his contract that he appear in the suit as little as possible. Bale did a similar thing with TDK. They appear in the suit way less in the sequels.

Both Bruce Wayne's parents were Jewish. He uses wit over brawn. Maybe they should have gone with Woody Allen.

The guy was talking about daddy issues being a problem, hence "too weird". Batman Returns being histrionic and disturbed is part of what makes it compelling.

people just really like Jack Nicholson as the Joker.

Nicholson is genuinely a fantastic actor, and his joker is just him going full ham and chewing the scenery, he is having fun every second he's on screen. I don't know how anyone can not love it.
The same thing happens again in Returns with Danny Devito as the penguin where he is basically playing the ID of Frank Reynolds and every second he's on the screen being gross and weird and creepy and hissing and puking up black bile in nasty stained clothes is magic.
Also michelle pfeiffer as catwoman as a formative lad is 99% of the reason why I have a minor fetish for vinyl.

Thanks bros.

I've heard good things about HoX/PoX (the early parts). But yeah, once they changed the X-Men to represented persecuted groups the stories became SUPER repetitive. There's always some fringe group storming the x-mansion and killing half of the students and the survivors have to seek revenge or something along those lines. It's a superhero group that's just constantly suffering and that's no fun. And the roster of writers keeps bouncing back and forth between are their powers scientific or religious.

That part was amazing and Nicholson never gives an uninspired performance

People forget that Nicholson’s Joker was the conventional portrayal of the character at the time. The Killing Joke came out in 1988 when Burton was filming the movie. Yes, Dark Knight Rises had come out, but it wasn’t mainstream continuity.

Well xavier basically became public enemy #1 by appearing to betray the x men, and then humanity in general as part of his keikaku to buy the trust of an godhead AI about to exist as a thing outside of time so he could get in touch with Moira to act as the inside man to save the day. But no one knew, and everyone thinks he just murdered a bunch of people.
So the old xavier mansion got turned into a prison, but then this weird mutant shows up, stages a break out, and xavier finds out his daughter with space-bird-bitch is in danger of being overthrown, so he breaks out, his powers are on the fritz because he has a brain tumor, so the x men are helping him or trying to stop him, then they find out he wants to resurrect his dead space-bird-bitch waifu with the last krakoan egg, and then goes off into space while telling scott and the assembled x men he intends never to come back and he just wants to try and do right by his space bird bitch empress daughter before he dies.
That's the latest thing I read in the news. Meanwhile a lot of the rebooted x-books are getting cancelled because no one's reading them.
The idea I think was that they forced the reboot because they want to align it to the inevitable x men movie and just hope capeshit movie watchers are going to read comics.

Come on now, he's in the suit plenty of times in Returns. Whenever I rewatch 89, I'm always baffled by how little Bruce or Batman is in the first act at all. So much time is dedicated to Vikki and her beta orbiter, and they're both so dull, the latter completely disappearing from the movie at some point with no bearing on the plot whatsoever. Gordon is introduced, then disappears. Dent is introduced, then disappears. It's just so meandering.

Returns doesn't just have a more compelling cast, it also balances them and their motivations far better. The movie has three very distinct villains, Catwoman, Penguin and Shreck, and they actually affect each other's trajectories in the story.

To this day if I'm trying to fuck with someone I will ask them if they've ever danced with the devil in the pale moon light? in a bad nicholson impression.

I hated Jonathan Hickman's run.
It was just a repeat of what happened before in the comics, but now gayer. Hickman based took gay fanfictions about the characters and made it canon, while writing convoluted sci-fi shit, again all based on what already happened before.
Felt more like a repeat of past storylines without pathos and just way more convoluted.

Back then if you wanted to shitpost you had to pay postage to mail it into the abyss, Im sure DCs editors got 100 page essays of why It was a terrible choice by jurassic 4 channers that went straight into the trashcan.
there was stone age internet back then. So it was probably discussed by MIT nerds. Now you can tweet that a celebrity is a faggot and you know someone close to them read it because you get blocked. All while taking a shit.

Keaton being a controversial choice is common knowledge. Still I actually like it. I think it works for this bizarre version of Batman where everybody is kind of ugly and weird.

Most of the Batman actors famously hate working in those costumes, with Keaton being #1. The Keaton costume all rubber and the neck doesn't move AT ALL and he's claustrophobic.

When I did the first Batman I made a joke, but I was serious,” said Keaton “I just worked the suit. I made that suit work for me. I’m very claustrophobic, and we didn’t know that the suit was going to work at all until literally hours before we were going to start shooting the suit…In fact, it didn’t totally work. The first time I had to react to something the thing stuck to my face and there’s a giant hole!

darkknightnews.com/2014/01/25/michael-keaton-reveals-the-struggle-with-the-1989-batsuit/

Eh, sure. Like I said, I like Nicholson, but I don't like the decision to make Joker a run-of-the-mill gangster who just suffered some acid burns. It just feels so mundane to me, and Nicholson is simply too famous for the role. I don't feel like I'm watching a character, like I said, I feel like I'm watching Nicholsen perform as a children's entertainer. He feels like he should be the villain in Jim Carrey's The Mask, not Batman.

Whenever I rewatch 89, I'm always baffled by how little Bruce or Batman is in the first act at all.

There’s no mystery there. Nicholson was the much bigger star and got a huge salary so they wanted to give him a lot of screentime.

Pure unadulterated kino

Context. Refer to

I'm the anon who made the comment and you're putting words in my mouth to support your strawman bullshit.

I think it gets overshadowed as well by BTAS, which was created to cash in on the batman craze, and cemented another super iconic joker performance that was just has hammy but with a sinister edge.

Its genuinely has some great shots in it.

Okay. I still find Jack Napier dull.

The Jack character is Batman's father and the first act of the film goes over his life, madness and the effects it had on Bruce. Then Bruce follows in his 'father's' footsteps (goes batshit, starts playing dress-up, scaring the shit out of people in dark alleys) to some degree while trying to be better than him (a hero and not a villain). Then he has to confront his father and kill him in order to mature. I don't get how you guys are filtered so hard by this.

Well, the only criticism you had of Returns was just "daddy issues", so what else am I supposed to be addressing? Yes, Batman Returns is psychologically disturbed, which many take issue with, and this would fall under the umbrella terms "too dark" and "too weird". That's hardly putting words in your mouth.

And we circle back to my original grievances with 89. It's overall a commercial marketing product maimed by studio meddling.

Well, the only criticism you had of Returns was just "daddy issues"

But you came at me about how OTHER people don't like it because it's too dark and you went into a strawman argument about that. I don't have that issue which means we don't really have anything to argue about, yet you keep coming back to force your strawman in my face.
The daddy issue's I was referring to with Returns has to do with the Penguin, not Batman.

Jack Napier

I have to say I've enjoyed all of his performances and he knows how to bring out the best in his costars.

So apparently in 1989 when Batman was coming out, there was a group of fans who disapproved of the casting, and you can find interviews and stuff today used to show how wrong they were.. but here's the thing, in my opinion, they were and still are right.

The casting was purposeful as Keaton is physically just a guy, which was Burton's vision. His Batman had to make up for his stature with, in part, theatricality. His size was kinda the entire point, and the vision was executed.
There's plenty more interesting things about Burton's Batman and Keaton's involvement to talk about. The interview has been scrubbed so far as I know but Keaton himself said in the past, before his career revival, that he left the role because in Returns, he feels Burton went up his own ass. And he was right, that was the beginning of Burton's black-and-white pinwheel trash aesthetic.
And there's plenty to talk about Batman 89 being good, like the script describing Gotham as, loose quote,

As if Hell itself sprouted from the pavement, then kept going

and how the visual design of Gotham was based in part on industrial architectural designs by Adolf Hitler, for being imposing but also beautiful.

No, I was not referring to other people, I was referring to Returns detractors in general, which include you. You brought up daddy issues as a critique, and therefore I lumped you in with the greater mass of people who were put off by Returns simply for being too dark and weird, and I stand by that. If my assumption is misguided, you gave me no reason to believe otherwise.

Arnold is a great movie star, and Nicholas Cage is a great actor.

When are you and this strawman of yours gonna fuck already?

It's not a strawman, you're just hung up on semantics.

I'm anti-semantic actually

There is a really neat Spanish fanfilm that did a trailer in McKean's style like that:
youtube.com/watch?v=_v_XCMuufTQ