Batman – “Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?” This question made the film quite clever, it tied the Joker to Batman, making them two people who created each other, it adds impact and makes their final confrontation quite intense. Joker (Jack Nicholson) starts out as a serious mobster who falls into a chemical vat, he emerges as a deformed cackling madman who leans heavily on the clown aspect of his character. The Joker has a plan to use chemicals to kill anyone he wants and he’s actually quite a clever version of the character. The Bruce Wayne isn’t really developed much past the origin story and the fact that he easily falls in love but the question that I started with makes things with Joker personal. Everything in the film is quite dark, brown or grey which is an odd design decision until you see the Joker and realise it’s to make him stand out more. The whole thing revolves around the Joker, how he effects Bruce as much as Batman and it’s a well written story. It took a bit of time to get going but I really enjoyed this one.

Batman Returns – A deformed child is abandoned, the child is then raised in the sewer by penguins. The child grows up to be a penguin man who plans to either take over or destroy Gotham. Penguin comes across as weird and creepy but not in a good way, he’s a pervert who has no redeeming qualities, not even a good plan (he tries politics, framing Batman and actual penguins). Catwoman is also created in this film by being killed, gnawed on by cats, then coming back to life as a woman who behaves a bit like a cat (which is a really dumb origin story). Alfred works with Batman a little more and Batman starts to be more thoughtful as a character. They try to use a repeated line to connect Catwoman and Batman like in the first movie but it doesn’t work as well. Catwoman out of costume was a better character than in it. There a films that are weird in a good way like Batman, Batman Returns isn’t like that, with the dark tone and characters that go past weird into ridiculous it’s weird in a bad way. Although the Cat and Bat would have been interesting with more focus on them, the Penguin made this into a film that I didn’t enjoy.

I also find the Batsuit weird as it covers his eyelids for some reason.