Father Malone's Christmas Roundup - Batman Returns (1992)

Welcome mag Midnight viewers to a special Christmas roundup. I'm Father Malone, and with me is the festive pug straight from the North Pole, South Pole. It's not Santa, that's the thing. Oh that's where Jed, the dog who plays the thing at the beginning of the film is located. Okay, gotcha.

Whether you celebrate Hanukkah or Christmas, or Kwanza or Ramadan or to Life Day, it is a time of joy in every other year but this one. Although nineteen forty one must have been an interesting Christmas, so let's make this interesting year of our interesting times a little more joyous, a little more Christmas. And to that end, I've chosen to focus on and recommend the greatest Christmas movie ever made from nineteen ninety two. Here's the trailer. I've been down the angel all that's time for me to a cent from the sewers of Gotham.

A new villain emerges. You didn't invite me, oh, I cry the movetops of Gotham. The perfect enemy comes to life. I am catulis hermy fro Yeah, and the only one who can save this city is a creature of the night they stood. We had something together we do.

While she craves a romance, she can sink her claws into you headnot a girl like he plots a foul rain of destruction. My dear penguins, Tik stop man. That time I've come and I call out you have above Gotham lose its greatest hero. That's right, you tinsel covered motherfucker's Batman returns. What that's not even the best Batman movie?

Fuck you put that in your stocking? Is Diehard of Chris Movie, Yes, Gremlins, Yes, the Reth Yes, Kiss, Kiss, Bang Bang, lethal Weapon, long Kiss, good Night, The Last Boy, Scout, anything by Shane Black, basically Nightmare before Christmas. That one seems obvious, doesn't it? Yet somehow I have to hear those fucking songs in October. Don't get your snowflakes in my fake blood, Tim tim Burton.

If you're gonna mash up the holidays, Halloween needs to invade Christmas and then knock the other way around. And that is exactly what we have here. Let me tell you what a score Batman nineteen eighty nine was for US comic book fiends. Once it came out, you could say the name Batman out loud and not have some dingus immediately shout no no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no Batman, because that was the level of interaction most people had with the character. Can't be silly and for kids.

To be fair, that was the general public's view on comic books as a whole. They couldn't have known that by the time Tim Burton got time. They couldn't have known that by the time Tim Burton got to saying action for the first time, readers of Batman had seen him training with Assassins. The Joker had been given a tragic and twisted backstory, Dick Grayson had left and become night Wing, and thanks to Frank Miller, we'd seen not only a dark future for Bruce Wayne, but we got a reimagined origin in Batman Year one, so not just adult comics, but actually mature comics. That same public was unprepared for an industrialized Gotham city that drew inspiration from every decade in discipline, or a Joker who's grinning rictuses literally carved into his face.

Though these surprises were not unwelcome, pulling in four hundred million dollars off of its fifty million dollar budget, becoming the fifth highest grossing film of all time at that time, not to mention the merchandising. You couldn't turn around without seeing someone sporting a bat symbol somewhere on their person. Clothing and posters and toys and happy meals. Warner Brothers ends up learning a lesson that twentieth century Fox had been taught by George Lucas in the nineteen seventies. You can make more with the spinoff products than you can the actual film.

This will be a problem later, because right now Warners is a glow with the success of Batman, and plans are immediately set in motion for a sequel. Sam Ham, Batman's credited screenwriter, is brought back for its initial draft, which would have found Batman tangling with Harvey Dent in his transformation into two Face, a plot thread that had already been seated with Billy d Williams appearance in the first film, But Warners was insistent that the Penguin or the Riddler be the next antagonist, given the fact that nobody knows who the fuck two Face is. Ham chose the Penguin, Burton added Catwoman, and while Ham is given the credit for the Christmas setting, I suspect this was actually Burton, given that Burton had made his own pass at a Batman's screenplay some five years before that included a tree lighting scene where the Joker launched that Christmas tree into the stratosphere like a fuck in a rocket.

Ham's script for Batman Returns had Catwoman and Penguin teaming up against Batman, while its overall plot concerned a massive treasure hunt and uncovering Gotham's dark history and the Wayne Family's place in it, none of which was much interest to Tim Burton, who had by then focused on the modern day fairy tale Edward Scissorhands, and that was the fundamental stumbling block in the first film. I read more than one interview with Sam Ham at the time where he kept reiterating that we didn't want to make this a normal thing. You didn't want people saying, Oh, there's the Policeman, there's the Milkman, there's the Batman. Actually, Sam, quite a few of us did, including Tim Burton enter screenwriter Daniel Waters.

He detracted Burton's attention with his nineteen eighty eight dark comedy masterpiece Heathers. Waters brought an absurdist almost nihilistic viewpoint to Batman, which paired nicely with Burton's idea of a Gotham fueled by trauma out when Vicky Vale and basically any narrative connections to the first film and in came an almost dreamlike reality where rich parents a bend and their babies into rivers that lead to sewers that lead to a life raised among penguins, where a herd of cats can resurrect you after you've fallen. Thirty stories to the hard pavement below. In other words, comic book a heightened reality than our own, one in which I do not need to know that Batman's tall bat ears are in fact antennae, the parts of which he's outsourced from shell companies, so his secret identity won't become public.

Blah blah blah, hit the fucking bat signal already. Waters script was a vast improvement. Although a little more snarky and occasionally one linery than I prefer it still wasn't Tim burtony enough, and when Daniel Waters refused to add that extra splash of a whimsy, he was replaced with then go to WonderBoy script Doctor Wesley Strick. He was more than happy to graft on a subplot about Gotham's first born in an entire penguin colony outfitted with tiny missiles and tiny metal hats. I'm going to sign with Daniel Waters on that Michael Keaton doubling his salary and actually getting the proper credit at the start of this film pulled back hard on the script's portrayal of Batman, reducing dialogue to the bare minimum.

In fact, he, like Burton, felt that Batman should be a piece of this story and not its focus, which is one of the main criticisms you hear about this flick. There's hardly any Batman in Batman Returns, to which I say, Ary, your fucking palette pastry is great, but sometimes you need some protein and that protein can be its own version of delicious? Am I hungry right now? I think I'm probably hungry right now? Anyway, we have returning Hammer Horror stalwart Michael Goff as Alfred penniworth n pat Hengele as Commissioner Gordon.

But when it came time to the New Hires, there was only one choice for the penguin, Dustin Hoffman, Marlon Brando, Christopher Lloyd and Robert de Niro. That was what Warners was pushing. Thankfully, Danny DeVito fit the vision Tim Burton had been crafting of the Penguin short, round and grotesque, and when it came to Catwoman, the choice was equally laser focused. There was only ever one Lena Oland, Jody Wattley, Ellen Barkin, and Jennifer Jason Lee. And of course we know who was actually hired, Annette Benning, no joke, She got pregnant right before she was hired and stepped away.

Then Sean Young went nuts and dressed up in a cat suit and showed up on the Warner Brothers lot demanding to see Tim Burton. And then we got Michelle Pfeiffer. Oh, and they hired Marlon Wayans to play Robin, a holdover from earlier drafts that introduced him briefly with an eye towards Batman and Robin. As the third film, Wayans had a payer play contract Warner Brothers paid. Filming was conducted in Burbank at the Warner Brothers lot instead of Shepperton in England, owing to the fact that Burton wanted this film to feel entirely different from the first, which included American extras as the denizens of Gotham, And although the penguin portion of the shoot I'm talking about the actual penguins in their habitat that needed to be maintained, proved a bit trying, Evidently it was a smooth operation overall.

Here endeth the smoothness. If you remember or have heard of any controversies with Batman Returns, then it definitely involves a clown no way scarier than the joker I'm talking about Ronald McDonald and the Batman Returns Happy Meal tie ins. Tim Burton himself is on record saying that executives from McDonald's were baffled and horrified by the black icker that sometimes dripples from the corners of the penguin's mouth. To be fair, the Penguin and Batman Returns is really fucking gross. I don't think I ate salmon for the entirety of the nineties, thanks to the sight of Oswald Cobblepot gobbling it down raw.

Also, I want to fill her void Jesus Christ. Of course, the disgusting elements are easy targets. I'm sure it was way easier to focus on that than try to articulate the unease they felt at the dark mirror version of Batman's origin presented at the beginning of the film. Paul Rubens and Diane Salinger that's Pee Herrman and Simmo from Tim Burton's Pee's Big Adventure are the Cobblepots, a disgustingly moneyed Gotham couple whose child turns out to be an abomination that they pull a Moses routine on casting his wicker basket into the sewers, so rather than Bruce Wayne losing his parents and inheriting everything and eventually playing at being a freak, Oswald, Cobblepot is abandoned by his parents and loses everything and is an actual freak.

I mentioned the overwriting criticism of the movie is lack of Batman. That's the overwriting criticism from film fans. Comic book fans, on the other hand, took umbrage mainly with how loose Burton was playing with their beloved characters. And I get it. I have my favorites, and I have my own preconceived notions on how they should be presented.

I read a draft of one of the proposed remakes of Escape from New York that had Snake Pliskin as having bought land in Manhattan that was nullified when the government turned it into a prison, and that was part of his personal mission there, and it had flashbacks to the time on the front lines in Russia where he loses his eye. Fuck. It was horrible, and I'm sure i'd be twice as vocal about it had they actually committed that bullshit to Celluloid. So I totally understand wanting some goddamned loyalty to the character as originally conceived. For instance, the penguin here, as I mentioned, born a freak with flippers and that nose to a fabulously wealthy family.

They abandoned him in the sewer, where he's adopted by a colony of penguins that are still living in the abandoned Gotham Zoo. In the comics Golden Age, penguin didn't have an origin. He was just a jolly fuck who loves stealing bird themed shit. Then in the Silver Age we finally got a name in a history, Oswald Cobbalpot. The penguin grew up an only child with an overprotective mother who made him carry an umbrella everywhere lest he contracted pneumonia like his ailing father.

Oh, and his parents own a bird shop and he's fascinated by birds. He studies ornithology in college, and then the bird shop is reap and his parents are devastated and die and he turns to a life of crime. What they didn't go with that? It's so scintillating. And here's the thing, most of the fans upset with the change didn't even know this origin because it was rewritten in the Silver Age.

Then Oswald Combopot became a beak nosed fat boy who was mercilessly teased by his older brothers. Those brothers one time beat him up and killed his birds, and then Oswald slowly methodically murdered his brothers and made it all look like accidents. That's a way better origin. But wait, there's more, because after the crisis on infinite earths, now Combopot is a businessman who owns the Iceberg Lounge and came up thanks to his wealthy family's connections. So just like one tends to hold the Saturday Night live cast they experienced in high school up as the greatest cast ever, so too does one's initial experience of a character tend to cement your ideal version of them.

The origins for catwomen are just as multiple. She was simply the cat when she first appeared in Batman comics, dressed in a thigh bearing purple dress with a green cape and a cat mask. That was Batman number one in nineteen forty. Like the penguin, she wouldn't get in an origin or a name until a decade later. Now, let's say you aren't a fan of the mousey secretary who gets pushed out a window by her corrupt boss and revivified by Garfield and friends, which in turns unlocks an agent of chaos.

You must be a fan of the original backstory, the one that she doesn't know herself because meets Selina Kayle Jewel thief extraordinaire who was hid in the head and suffered amnesia. That's it. That's all we get. And then they've retired the character, thanks in no small part to the implementation of the comic book Code, which let me read to you the guidelines for costume and marriage slash sex. Nudity in any form is prohibited as indecent or undue exposure.

Suggestive and solacious illustration or suggestive posture is unacceptable. All characters shall be depicted in dress reasonably acceptable to society. Females shall be drawn realistically, without exaggeration of any physical qualities. Divorce shall not be treated humorously nor represented as desirable. Illicit sex relations are neither to be hinted at nor portrayed.

Violent love scenes, as well as sexual abnormalities, are unacceptable. Respect for parents, the moral code and for honorable behavior shall be fostered. A sympathetic understanding of the problems of love is not a license for morbid distortion. The treatment of live romance stories shall emphasize the value of the home and the sanctity of marriage. Passion or romantic interest shall never be treated in such a way as to stimulate the lower and baser emotions.

Seduction and rape shall never be shown or suggested, and sex perversion or any interference to same is strictly forbidden. Faced with that, most comic book companies pulled back on their costume female characters altogether, a freeze that would eventually be obliterated thanks to the popularity of the Adam West Batman TV series and its rotating Catwoman, which forced DC to finally bring her back. She'd get a new origin in nineteen eighty three, although it's more like they actually filled out the rest of her tale of amnesia. Turns out she's on the run from an abusive boyfriend and then they killed her. I'm not kidding, and they did it off screen.

Bruce just mentions it. It's so stupid, and it was on Earth two, so they could just disavow it if the fans didn't approve. After Crisis on Infinite Earths when they wiped the whole slate clean, Batman Year one introduced us to yet another origin for Selina Kyle, a sex worker. Way to go, Frank Miller, I couldn't stand the Nolan Batman films, but the Dark Knight got one thing painfully right. The Joker tells his own origin story a few times in a few different ways.

These are multiple characters. What do you need from them? That's what they are, Tim Burtons, In no way reality version of Batman is every bit as valid as Christopher Nolan's or even Joel Schumacher's. None affect the other and can be enjoyed in their own This should have been old news, considering we'd had the Batman black and white cereals in the forties, the Adam West Show in sixty six, that ridiculous seventies revival, the Legend of the Superheroes, not to mention the animated fair, The Adventures of Batman in sixty eight, or the shorts that appeared on Sesame Street. They were hanging out with Scooby Doo.

It was also The New Adventures of Batman and he shows up on the fucking super Friends. You can love any or all of them. For me, I love a contained world. The more outlandish the better, and as long as they're telling an interesting story in a deeply visual, deeply artful way, I'm willing to go along with any alterations. You think Batman lighting a fire breathing villain on fire is unforgivable, I'd counter there are worst crimes on screen.

Bruce Wayne scratching a CD like an LP a CD player with a bat symbol on it, which is better than a bat credit card, but not by much. Disappearing black Eye makeup, tiny people in penguin costumes. They're all really dumb, and I mentioned some of that cringey dialogue. I was their number one son and they treated me like number two. Oof.

Deliver me from the Cat's skills, but none of that can overshadow what a perfect, little, self contained film this is. I wish it had been Burton's only one. I think Burton wishes this has been his only one. It has the explosions and fights and car chases you'd get in any superhero film, but ultimately it's more interested in the inner workings of these broken people and all the ways they reflect and refract each other. More specifically, the villains function as aspects of Batman's personality.

People say there was not enough Batman in this movie, Well, what is the Penguin if not a far darker version of Bruce Wayne's origin, and Catwoman the perfect representation of the war between his own personalities in his present and Max Shrek a haunting portent of a potential future. And in that way, Batman Returns is the most clever retelling of a Christmas Carol of all time, and it did it with the height of style. People were shocked by the S and M latex styling of Catwoman suit. God damn, I love that white stitching. But I ask you, was that not the natural conclusion of that character's look into the Penguin?

He what waddled and sent that made him a penguin. How about he's the closest human equivalent, with a nose that can only be a beak, and actual penguins raised him. And of course Bruce Wayne is sitting in firelit Wayne mannor just pensively waiting for the moment when the bat signal will come streaming through that window and his life will have purpose. Not to mention, this film is savage when it comes to its take on merchandising and capitalism. The specter hanging over Gotham isn't the Riddler, it's Max Schrenk's department store as a giant symbol of consumerism, and at one point the script was even more pointed with suven stands all over Gotham packed with Batman paraphernalia.

So not just a shot at the overall commercialization of Christmas, but more specifically how exploited Burton felt at the hands of Warners and their merchandising frenzy in nineteen eighty nine. And then there's the plot where the citizens of Gotham are completely taken by this political outsider. After all, lawlessness is running rampant. It's time for a mayor who clamped down on all these riots and make Gotham great again. When I first saw Batman Returns, I thought that little plot contrivance was pretty corny.

It was in fact inspired by a couple of episodes of the old television series, which is as corny as you could get. I mean, sure, Gothamites would swarm around a parade where free money is being distributed, but come on, no one's going to fall for a slick makeover and aggressive advertising campaign. They wouldn't elect someone so clearly in the pocket of a crazed a billionaire, right, the one funding those fucking riots Nowadays. The outlandist part is that when Gotham citizens find out that the pengh as a horrible person and holds them in contempt, they actually turn on him. Tell me again how morally and politically complex those Christopher Nolan Batman films are again.

I know you're all gonna watch Gremlins and die Hard in a Christmas story, but I want to urge you all to add Batman Returns to the rotation. Maybe it didn't work for you as a Batman film, but give it a chance as a purely Christmas flick, because the fact is You're not going to find a film more suffused with the holiday spirit in either appearance or character. In the end, Evil is banished, Bruce finds a modicum of peace, and Catwoman is free from any of the shackles that we're keeping her down. The movie says it better than I can. Well come with me.

Merry Christmas, mister Wade, met Christmas, Holt, good will toward men and woman. From Ripley Jean and Foxy and me. Merry Christmas to all. It's all a good night.