Legends of the Dark Knight #5 | Batman directed by Tim Burton



These days, our years are littered with as many event movies as they are bank holidays. Scarcely a season passes without a new chapter in the Star Wars saga or the MCU offering the media – and the rest of us - a brief respite from the real-life sagas of Brexit and Trump. But, in the dying days of the 1980s, Tim Burton’s Batman was the first film to really make waves before so much as a single frame of footage had been released to the world. The Wall Street Journal gave Michael Keaton’s casting a front-page lambasting. Viewers packed cinemas with the express purpose of watching the Batman trailer, then left to let the main feature play to an empty house. Propelled by the mainstream praise lavished on Frank Miller’s epoch-making reimagining of the Dark Knight, audiences were hungry for a cinematic take on the Caped Crusader that reflected the tone of such works. Rampant doubts and fears only seemed to fuel the escalating publicity. Batman was going to be the biggest film ever - and, in most respects, it really was.

It’s often said that Tim Burton’s Batman was heavily inspired by Miller’s Year One, but in truth the movie’s long genesis pre-dates Batman’s post-Crisis reboot by the better part of a decade. Burton’s movie may certainly be a clear steer towards the darkness of the fan favourites of the late 1980s, but it’s a heightened, romantic sort of darkness – all mist, melody and melodrama. Even Sam Hamm and Warren Skaaren’s script is unique, taking great liberties with character and canon in order to tell a complete and satisfying story within the film’s runtime. Jim Gordon, the beating heart of Year One, is little more than an slow-on-the-uptake extra in the film, and the police force at his command is as bent as the force that the young lieutenant finds in print. Bruce Wayne isn’t a recent returnee to Gotham here, but a well-established pillar of the community – and, crucially, a much more conflicted one that the purposeful twenty-something envisaged by Miller. If anything, Tim Burton’s film is a noirish love letter to the earliest days of Batman in the old Bob Kane comic books – a lone detective behind the scenes, a silent spectre in the dark.

As a youngster, I never questioned the suitability of Michael Keaton for the role of Batman – to me he just was Batman, and that was that. However, looking back on the film now it’s easy to see why his casting provoked the furore that it did - standing at 5’ 7” and looking like he weighed 150lb soaking wet, at a glance he seemed to – quite literally – lack the weight required for the role. However, save for a few sequences that stretch the limits of disbelief just a little too far (the diminutive Batman effortlessly holding a large mugger over the edge of the building, for instance), Keaton utterly convinces beneath the cowl. His eyes blaze out through that rubber sculpted mask with a purpose yet to be matched by another actor, and Burton shoots the film’s action sequences in such a fashion as to render the actor’s stature all but immaterial.

“Nice outfit.”

Where Keaton really excels though is in his performance of Bruce Wayne. Often treated as a mask worn by Batman, as opposed to vice-versa, this movie dispels any pre-existing ideas about Batman and his alter ego, instead creating a plausible amalgam persona that the movie sets out to dramatically tear in half. Hamm and Skaaren’s storyline makes a tragic lover out of the pretend playboy, juxtaposing Bruce’s apparent desire for love and a normal life against the nocturnal lure of warring on criminals to satiate the ghost of his slain parents. The figures of Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger) and Jack Napier (Jack Nicholson) embody these two competing lures as Bruce falls head-over-heels for one while Batman fixates on ending the threat posed by the other.

“Another rooster in the henhouse...”

Despite its departure from previously inviolate lore, these opposing pulls on our tragic hero’s soul are heightened by how Hamm and Skaaren’s script builds up the two characters at each end of the rope. Kim Basinger’s Vicki Vale seems to so obviously be the love of Bruce’s life that even Michael Gough’s trusty old Alfred is quite willing to betray his master’s secret to her with scarcely a thought - all because he thinks that it will help to bring them together, which of course it does.

“Do I look like I’m joking?”

Jack Napier, meanwhile, is unmasked as the man who murdered Bruce’s parents all those years ago. For Batman, this discovery blurs the line between vigilante and avenger as his code takes a backseat to apparently murderous vengeance - a development that’s essentially anathema to the character. It’s utterly wrong, of course, which is why it works so beautifully as played out here. As Batman locks his sights on the Joker and unleashes every bullet and projectile that the Batwing has to offer, it’s a moral victory for the man out to prove that he and the Bat are one and the same; extensions and reflections of each other dancing together in the pale moonlight. “I made you, but you made me first.”

Batman would have us believe that Vicki and Jack are Bruce’s ultimate lover and ultimate nemesis and, if you buy into that conceit, then as a self-contained piece of entertainment Burton’s Batman is hard to beat. As soon as we enter the realm of sequels, though, the stakes are inevitably lessened - no love interest could live up to Vicki, and no threat could be as personal or as dangerous as that posed by the Joker. Batman is thus the cinematic equivalent of a perfect Elseworld one-shot – and, in my view, best enjoyed as such.

Of course, Batman is most famous for Jack Nicholson’s memorable turn as Jack Napier / the Joker, which really raised the bar for all future actors playing the part. As a child, I questioned how the movie could give top billing to its baddie, as opposed to its eponymous hero, but there is no question now that Nicholson is the obvious star of the piece. That’s no slight on Keaton – it’s just a basic truth ingrained in the very fabric of the film. Batman chronicles the Joker’s origin, rise and (actual!) fall, whereas the titular Caped Crusader begins and ends the movie as an established creature of the night. The Joker is front and centre here; Batman is the foil. This inversion of what would become the typical superhero movie format serves the picture well, though, building up the mystique of the Dark Knight while at the same time indulging the audience with just as many scenes from the Joker’s perspective as from Batman’s or Vicki’s. The torrent of quotable dialogue alone is worth the price of admission.

“Where does he get those wonderful toys…?”

Yet whilst Nicholson’s award-winning performance is nothing short of phenomenal, as much credit goes to the production team for crafting the first plausible take on Batman’s greatest enemy to be shown on screen. Hamm and Skaaren spend a significant amount of time with the cruel and psychotic Jack Napier before a ricocheting bullet sends him tumbling into that customary vat of chemicals, establishing him as a worthy adversary in his own right. Even pre-Joker, Jack’s fierce intelligence and intuition are matched only by his capacity for treachery and cruelty. When the Joker does emerge from the waters of Axis Chemicals, his skin bleached white and his smile permanently carved into his features (a particularly lovely touch), he does so with a much savvier and purposeful agenda than most previous iterations. 

“Wait ’til they get a load of me.”

Indeed, this Joker isn’t just in it for the laughs. Rather than burn it all down, he wants to take it all over. A few beautiful little moments peppered throughout the film make Jack’s feelings towards Grisham, the mobster running Gotham’s underworld, quite plain. Whilst Jack clearly loathes his boss, he still wants to be him. He wants his woman. He wants his power. He wants to be the one squeezing the shoulders of a disposable lieutenant, telling him that he’s his “main man”, as opposed to being that lieutenant himself. Before Axis Chemicals, though, Jack was seemingly content to just sit back and play cards. Afterwards, there was only one card that he could ever play.

 “Let’s broaden our minds. Prince!”

Another outstanding aspect of this movie is its zany, high-concept soundtrack. Injected into the gothic splendour of Gotham City is a colourful burst of late-1980s pop courtesy of Prince, who provided Warner Brothers with an entire album’s worth of tie-in material, much of which is used on screen. Joker’s bombastic assault on the art gallery stands out especially as an iconic moment in cinematic history – a bizarre fusion of darkness and colour that seems to encapsulate everything Joker. And woven in amidst the likes of “Partyman” is prolific composer Danny Elfman’s most stirring score, which includes a Batman theme that would prove to be every bit as enduring as the rest of the movie and finally lay the ghost of “Der, ner, ner, ner, ner, ner, ner, ner…” to rest. It’s so effective and rousing a composition that, shortly afterwards, it would be immortalised by Bruce Timm’s animated series, with which it would become synonymous, and later even memorably reprised in 2017’s Justice League movie.

Twenty years on from the adventures of the Camp Crusader, Tim Burton’s movie presented audiences with a version of Batman that would redefine his mainstream perception for decades to come. It brought us the definitive Batmobile. The definitive theme music. It even turned blue and grey black and yellow. If you’ve seen any of the LEGO Movies, then you’ll have noticed that the LEGO Batman is Michael Keaton’s, right down to the yellow logo on his chest and his insistence that he, “…only work in black.” Even after Chris Nolan’s epic, fan-pleasing trilogy and Zack Snyder’s contentious but popular rendition of an older Dark Knight, the incarnation that continues to resonate in the public consciousness is the one created by this movie. Spock is Star Trek. Tom Baker is Doctor Who. Michael Keaton is Batman. And deservedly so.

On 16th September a 4K UHD steelbook was released to tie in with Batman’s eightieth anniversary. A thing of quiet beauty, as moody and strong as the movie that it houses, it’s an offering that’s surprisingly - but tastefully - understated. As is often the case, the rear artwork is even more impressive than the more obvious front cover’s as it depicts Batman looking out over the city that he’s committed to protect, instantly conjuring the film’s brooding tone. Inside, the bullet-shaped Batmobile emerges from beneath the set’s two discs, only the movie-poster-style credits marring its slick finish.

Click to enlarge images.

 

The release includes both a 4K UHD disc and a Blu-ray, with the latter also housing all of the extensive bonus material previously released on DVD back in 2006. Whilst the bonus material hasn’t been upscaled even to high definition, the version of the movie presented on the Blu-ray appears to have been downscaled from the new 4K transfer – it’s clearly far superior to the version of the film that’s already available to buy on Blu-ray.

Click to enlarge images.

 

And the set’s centrepiece 4K UHD disc is almost as impressive as the Chris Nolan’s movies’, which remain my go-to demo discs. Whilst a twenty-year-old movie couldn’t hope to hold its own against the glorious IMAX sequences in The Dark Knight or The Dark Knight Rises, the overall presentation still comes very close as it almost fills up a 16:9 television’s screen throughout (as opposed to just during IMAX sequences), thus providing a much more consistent, if somewhat less dramatic, experience. Though the resolution is expectedly superb, the obvious selling point here is the HDR, which really lifts to the movie to new heights. Burton’s tale tells of a shadow-lit hunter in pursuit of a colourful criminal, and this release finally delivers his vision of vibrant purples and reds contrasted against every shade of shadow on a ubiquitous, burnt orange canvas. A full-on ATMOS soundtrack is the icing on the cake for audiophiles. All told, this release is a triumph – the perfect birthday gift for an octogenarian crimefighter looking to put his feet up for two hours. I’d highly recommend heading over to Zavvi without delay to get one ordered before the limited run sells out.



Audiobook Review | Doctor Who: The UNIT Collection by Terrance Dicks & Malcolm Hulke

Despite being a generation too young to be swept up in the Targetmania of the late 1970s, I was fortunate enough to have an older brother and an uncle more than a decade older than me who, between them, handed down a modest library of Target’s Doctor Who novelisations encompassing many of the greatest stories from the second and third Doctor’s eras. From the claustrophobic terror of the London Underground to the besieged oil rigs of the North Sea, these clever and challenging little books captured my fledgling imagination with the force of few things before or since. As I had only the assaulting colour of the late John Nathan-Turner era as a reference point for the series on screen, these thin paperbacks’ tattered edges and yellow pages only added to their allure. Their near-monochrome covers and dull accent hues made them feel like a more adult rendition of the TV show that I loved, which, I suppose, they were. And along most of their broken spines ran the same name: Terrance Dicks.

It’s tough to explain to someone who isn’t a Doctor Who nut just how colossal a literary figure Terrance Dicks was. Few under forty will have even recognised his name when glancing at his well-read obituary on the BBC News website, but for many children of the ’70s and ’80s he was the kingpin of child literacy. He may not get the same sort of respect as the phizz-whizzing Roald Dahl or other notable children’s authors of the era, but he was just as responsible for hooking tens of thousands of youngsters on reading as they were. Even at nearly forty years old, I’ve still read more Dicks than I have any other author in my life, and in so doing I’ve barely scratched the surface of his prolific output.

I’ve recently been enjoying the resurgence of Target-style Doctor Who novelisations with my eldest daughter, the continuing publication of which serve as a testament to the great man. Expanding and embellishing already fantastic stories, these new books continue Dicks’ legacy by making the Whoniverse deeper and richer than it already is. Yet reading Jenny T Colgan’s introduction to Doctor Who and the Christmas Invasion, I was reminded that Dicks didn’t just entertain; he inspired others to write too. Colgan herself is living proof that it wasn’t just little boys with their noses buried in his books for hours on end, dreaming of becoming authors. But ever since Dicks’ passing, enjoying new stories given new life hasn’t felt like enough for me. I’ve felt a need to revisit his golden age, and with time sat on my backside at a premium, but time out on my feet in abundant supply, I decided to dive into BBC Audio’s highly-regarded range of unabridged Target readings, starting with The UNIT Collection download.

Priced at just £9.99, the value offered by this bundle is staggering. Running to nearly twenty-two hours, it includes Caroline John’s fabulous readings of three of the third Doctor’s seventh-season outings along with her husband’s sibilant performance of Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons and Katy Manning’s lively delivery of The Three Doctors. To purchase these five books on CD would have cost me £100.00 or more, and of course I’d have been faced with the laborious prospect of transferring them onto my iPhone. 

Particularly with the more recently recorded stories like Inferno, the production values are comparable to Big Finish’s - these are not just talking books, but vibrant soundscapes populated with engines, explosions and rapid UNIT fire; only the over-use of each story’s custom musical refrain blights the aural splendour. Better still, each of the narrators truly gives life to the piece, as opposed to just reading it. Caroline John’s range, already evident to listeners of her Companion Chronicles, has to be heard to be believed - from Silurian to Australian, she makes every single character unique. Geoffrey Beevers’ delivery is altogether more contained, but no less interesting for it. It’s mesmerising to hear him play Roger Delgado’s suave Master more in line with his own, calcified iteration. And, of course, Katy Manning needs no soundbite of endorsement from me – she’s a walking one-woman show, as anyone even remotely familiar with her work will attest.

The five adventures on offer are an emblematic offering of not just UNIT adventures, but UNIT according to Dicks. His adaptations of the two Robert Holmes’ Nestene scripts (retitled Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion and Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons both here and in print) actually improve upon the iconic television serials. He takes the already delightful supporting characters dreamt up by Holmes and expounds upon them and their little worlds, all the while using precision prose to evoke the titular terror. Seeley the poacher and his ever-suspicious spouse, Meg; General Scobie the shy, reluctant leader; the doctor charged with safeguarding an apparently alien patient – a patient his boss is looking for any excuse to slice into; Luigi Rossini, the parsimonious “international showman”, whom Dicks reveals was born Lou Ross and built his little empire on violence and subjugation. These expansions, these digressions, make the stories feel all the more real; all the more relatable. For the children who grew up watching wide-eyed, these books allowed them to enjoy these once ephemeral adventures all over again, cementing rose-tinted memories in witty words and monochrome illustrations.

“He was our video recorder. He was the person that

got us reading, and, in some cases, writing.”

- Gareth Roberts, screenwriter and author

Even Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters, adapted by Malcolm Hulke from his own scripts, has Dicks’ fingerprints all over it as its most fundamental premise belonged to him. Determined to prove his erstwhile writing partner’s assertion that he had just two options for Earthbound Doctor Who stories (“mad scientist and alien invasion”) wrong, Dicks commissioned Hulke to write a serial about native, sentient life forms that evolved before mankind who are now looking to reclaim their planet.  

Hulke’s book fits in beautifully amongst Dicks’ four, despite taking a very different approach to adaptation. Whilst a beautiful and tragic tale, on TV Doctor Who and the Silurians was marred by its undue length and poor realisation – two things that Hulke sets straight in his reimagining along with the monsters’ misnomer of a designation (there’s not a Silurian in sight here - these bad boys are Reptile-Men). Tighter, faster and with much greater emphasis on supporting players, Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters is another example of the adaptation eclipsing the original offering. Its focus on the Reptile-Men’s viewpoint is key in dividing our sympathies and heightening the inexorably tragic feel. Taking us from the height of the Reptile-Men’s empire – something never shown on the telly – to the madness of Barker and the intimate musings of Miss Dawson, who lives in silent terror of people replacing the question, “Why don’t you get married?” with “Why didn’t you ever get married?, Hulke’s novel also boasts the same sort of depth as Dicks’ four, whilst simultaneously addressing just about every complaint ever directed against the original serial that spawned it.

Dicks takes a similar approach with Inferno, a surprisingly late entry in the Target range - particularly when we consider that Dicks’ was heavily involved in the writing of the original serial. Memorable for its forays into a parallel universe, a concept reportedly introduced into Don Houghton’s scripts by Dicks, Dicks reworks the story to cut a hell of a lot of narrative fat as he balances out the story across the two universes. Many a child’s memory will have been cheated by Dicks’ streamlined, action-packed take on what was, let’s face it, a languid if occasionally dazzling serial.

The collection’s final story is its weakest despite probably being its best known. Strong on concept and character, Bob Baker and Dave Martin’s script for The Three Doctors was high on stakes but thin on substance (no pun intended). Just as he was television, Omega remains a bombastically tragic figure in the book, albeit one blighted by an overreliance on “Blob Men” to convey his supposedly superlative will. Here Dicks blesses these avatars of Omega with limbs, but even such an additional to their arsenal doesn’t make them sufficiently menacing to carry the countless action sequences that they are charged with.

What made the story so popular on television were the inimitable performances of Jon Pertwee and Patrick Troughton, whose unexpected bickering enlivened an otherwise repetitive runabout, ultimately setting the stall for every subsequent multi-Doctor caper. In the novelisation, though, that same magic proves elusive. Even with Dicks’ knack for concisely conveying complex ideas, the inevitable clumsiness that comes with constant disambiguation kills the flow of the banter. 

At times, the author does use his medium to do what the television serial could not, however, offering us insight into the third Doctor’s thoughts on his preceding incarnation, interestingly comparing “Doctor Two” to an annoying little brother whose irritating habits the third Doctor has long-since grown out of, but overall The Three Doctors is an aberrant entry in the range that feels like less rather than more. Nonetheless, as Mark Gatiss pointed out in the recent Doctor Who Collection documentary, Doctor Who and the Third Man, The Three Doctors was more than just the series’ first multi-Doctor adventure – it carried the show into a new era, re-establishing its title character as a wanderer in time and space in its final act. As such, it provides a fitting end to this UNIT Collection of Earthbound adventures.

Unfortunately, the digital delivery of this cut-price collection leaves much to be desired. Rather than making five separate audiobooks available for download (as they make separate movies available when purchasing a film bundle), Apple have amalgamated all five stories into one super-dense file. Not only does this take up a lot of space on a device (well over a gigabyte), but the DRM prevents the more obsessive of us from separating and retagging the five audiobooks with story-specific artwork and sort names. This lack of care extends to the division of the download file into nameless tracks rather than chapters ( or even books!), making navigation of the bloated file even more torturous. Worse still, whoever created this massive digital file apparently did so from the physical releases’ masters, as evidenced by their failure to remove all of the jarring “End of disc …” links from the download (such as half-way through tracks 37 and 41). Even the PDF booklet promoted in the listing is conspicuously absent. The need for a digital equivalent to the Video Packaging Review Committee grows by the day – this whole release smacks of being lazily cobbled together to be offered as a cheap lure for new listeners.

Of course, it has to be said, that lure is effective – thanks in no small part to the late, great Terrance Dicks.

Doctor Who: The UNIT Collection is available to download from Apple Books for the preposterous price of just £9.99, though as I’ve warned it is delivered as a single m4a file and without the digital booklet offered in the description. However, at least the latter fault has been corrected with Doctor Who: The Second UNIT Collection, which I downloaded last night, digital booklet and all. The collection is also available to download from Amazon for £14.08.


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