How the BATMAN ’89 Comics Adaptation Improves Upon the Movie
A look at a classic comic based on a movie based on a comic — 35 YEARS LATER… — UPDATED 6/23/24: Batman came out 35 years ago! Perfect time to reprint this piece from 2019’s BATMAN ’89 WEEK! Dig it! — Dan — It’s BATMAN ’89 WEEK! Tim Burton’s groundbreaking Batman was released June 23, 1989. All this week, we’re publishing a series of retrospectives and celebrations spotlighting various aspects of a movie that was less a film and more a pop-culture phenomenon. Click here for the complete index of features. — In this BATMAN ’89 WEEK edition of REEL RETRO CINEMA, columnist Rob Kelly shows you how the Batman comics adaptation veers from the Tim Burton film — often for the better: — By ROB KELLY In an age where movies based on comic books (specifically superhero comic books) come at you every few months, if not weeks, and literally dozens of other superhero films are available on the phone in your pocket, it’s hard to convey to those too young to remember just what a pop culture-shattering event the 1989 Batman movie was at the time. Other than the Superman film series (which crashed and burned two years earlier), superhero movies were mostly excuses to poke fun at the characters, the medium they came from, and sometimes even the fans that loved them. Comic book readers had to learn to accept some pretty rickety contraptions just to see some of their favorite characters in live action. All that changed when a build-up of unprecedented proportions crested on June 23, 1989, with the nationwide release of Batman, directed by Tim Burton and starring Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson, and Kim Basinger. I was a teenager when the film was released, and this dark, serious take on the Darknight Detective was, at the time, pretty much everything I wanted out of a Batman movie: an all-star cast, eye-popping visuals, and a tone that respected the source material. Don’t get me wrong: I loved the 1960s Batman TV series (13th Dimension major domo Dan Greenfield probably wouldn’t speak to me if I didn’t), but I couldn’t stand how it became the avatar for all things comic books to the wider world: some iteration of Bam! Sock! Pow! was featured in every single article written about comic books in the Western world,...
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