Batman Returns
Hey, Do You Remember...?
Christopher Schrader
4.8 • 676 Ratings
🗓️ 26 January 2018
⏱️ 179 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tim Burton's original Batman was so influential that the comic book movie genre is still living under its shadow today. But the sequel? This might be the strangest superhero film ever made. There were actually a fair number of critics at the time who appreciated this more esoteric approach to the material. Parents of traumatized children, on the other hand, did not.
Batman Returns remains a divisive film among fans and general audiences alike. It's inventive, self-indulgent, insightful, unfocused, and awe-inspiring all at the same time. There's so much to get into with this one, so it should come as no surprise that this is another giant-sized episode. Join us as we head back into Gotham City for a look back at one of the most notorious chapters in the Caped Crusader's history.
Topics include: Burton's reluctance to return and how Warner Bros. was finally able to lure him back, key differences between the finished film and earlier versions of the script, the pros and cons of redesigning every aspect of this from the ground up, how McDonald's influenced a more family-friendly approach to this franchise, whether or not Catwoman actually has nine lives, the wasted opportunities this version of the Penguin presents, how different this really is from the movie that followed it, and much much more!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, do you remember Batman Returns? |
| 0:07.0 | Hello and welcome, Hey, do you remember, Hey Do You Remember, a show where we reminisce about a movie or TV series we grew up with, then take off the rose-tinted glasses to see how it holds up. |
| 0:31.9 | I'm Chris. |
| 0:32.7 | I'm Donna. |
| 0:33.4 | And I'm Carlos. |
| 0:34.3 | And today we're revisiting Batman Returns. |
| 0:53.2 | Yeah. And I'm Carlos. And today we're revisiting Batman Returns. At the end of my favorite Batman story, The Long Halloween, there's an exchange between the |
| 0:58.1 | Caped Crusader and Jim Gordon. They've brought down the Falcone crime family, but one of the |
| 1:02.9 | casualties of that war was their friend and ally Harvey Dent. And so Batman is left to wonder if what |
| 1:08.6 | they've accomplished could ever justify the consequences |
| 1:11.4 | they've suffered, to which Gordon replies, if you're asking me, did the good guys win? |
| 1:17.0 | Yes, the good guys won, Batman. |
| 1:19.2 | But I won't know if it was worth it for a very long time. |
| 1:23.1 | Now, by his own admission, Tim Burton doesn't read a lot of comic books. |
| 1:26.3 | But if he did, I think |
| 1:28.0 | this story and this passage in particular might resonate with him, because his original 1989 |
| 1:33.5 | Batman film was nothing, if not a major victory in many, many respects. He hadn't just helped |
| 1:39.3 | steer the public's perception of the character away from the specter of the Campy 60s TV show. |
| 1:45.8 | He hadn't just cast a shadow over the comic book movie genre so large that we're still living under it today. He had helped |
| 1:51.1 | change the landscape of blockbuster filmmaking, forever. And he was barely in his 30s when he did it. |
| 1:57.6 | So for this young kid who had felt perfectly at home as an esoteric outsider making |
| 2:02.0 | quirky little films on the fringes of the studio system, the sort of mainstream exaltation |
... |
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