Batman (1989)
Batman (1989) 7/10
Ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?- The Joker (Jack Nicholson)
I will probably never be able to enjoy Batman the way i did after watching The Dark Knight.
Watching the original Batman by Tim Burton in 2008, soon after watching Nolan’s Dark Knight is like revisiting a treasured childhood cartoon. Sure, there’s a sense of nostalgia, but also the crushing realization that the show you thought was the “awesomenest” show ever!!! isn’t that great now that you are older. Such is the realization that hit me. Sure Jack Nicholson was still great, but lingering behind Nicholson’s performance is a shadow of Ledger’s redefinition of the Joker. Nicholson’s Joker is more an over-the-top crazed clown than the real menace that Ledger’s anarchistic Joker was.
To be fair, Batman is still a very good movie, just that it isn’t quite the masterpiece i remembered it. Tim Burton’s beautiful, gothic re-imagining of Gotham City still looks good, although it does feel a tad dated. The effects which wowed me as a kid now seem somewhat unimpressive. Despite its flaws, it still has many things going for it, amongst them Tim Burton’s assured directing and visual style, an excellent soundtrack by Danny Elfman that is better than even the soundtracks used by Nolan (although Batman does however contain tracks by Prince. WTF!). Still, the year was 1989, i was a kid and Batman was the awesomenest movie i had watched.
