Hot Toys - Batman 1989 - Michael Keaton

[Desamo]

Lots of stuff

Thats very good

 

[jye4ever]

Thou certainly art not in that likeness.

If I may kind sir I think that's a fine representation of a Reeve Batman

 

[Cap'n Cook]

Where art thou Batman?

So beautiful.

 

[DiFabio]

I know now why you cry but it is something I could never do.

 

[jye4ever]

I know now why you cry but it is something I could never do.

Said Conan to Subotai

 

[Cap'n Cook]

Another sorely needed HT figure!

 

[Voorhees27]

I know now why you cry but it is something I could never do.

An uppercut to your nuts would say otherwise.

 

[lambo944]

An uppercut to your nuts would say otherwise.

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4TVNb1LyY4"]flesh upper cut in the nuts - YouTube[/ame]​

 

[thenammagazine]

An uppercut to your nuts would say otherwise.

We're talking DiFab here, it'd have to be an...

 

[DiFabio]

An uppercut to your nuts would say otherwise.

I'm a Eunuch, brah.



True story!

 

[Spanbauer]

Eh, I don't know. I think the fact that there's still Batman '89 interest and awareness says, to me, that it does hold up. Dated, yes, but it certainly doesn't fall apart. I mean, it's constantly pitted against The Dark Knight (thankfully that hasn't been the case lately) with literally thousands of polls, that's got to mean something. The fact that it's quality is even questioned to this day should be an eye opener. It didn't just get lost in the shuffle, forgotten like the 80s Punisher (or the new one for that matter) or the 1990s Captain America. It transcended, became a household name and franchise.

Nostalgia is a powerful thing. Burton's Batman is held in high regard still today by those who saw it in 1989. And in it's time, it was exactly the right Batman movie. It was a huge leap forward not only for Batman but for comic book films as a whole; before Burton's Batman, all that existed was the terrible Adam West series. So for those of us who saw it in 1989, it absolutely made a lasting impression.

But that doesn't make it a great movie by today's standards. If it were released today, it'd definitely receive a rotten score on the tomato meter. And it's for that reason that I would consider it to be far from timeless.

That's why TDK is unique to this time and it's jaded audience. Today's audience lacks the imagination to appreciate movie magic and has to see it all for themselves. This is why there was no giant squid at the end of Watchmen, it's why Joker wears clown make-up and it's why all the mystique has been stripped from Batman.

Audiences today are smarter; you can no longer turn a guy into a clown by drowning him in a tub of green mystery liquid, and rightly so. Audiences and especially critics today expect a filmmaker to not insult their intelligence. And really, imagination should not be required to make sense of a story's unfolding events, should it?

 

[jye4ever]

I saw Jack's Joker as this:

He was so stuck up on himself that those events caused him to go insane.

Where Heath's Joker could care less about his appearance and girls being attracted to his looks, smarts or his criminal intentions, 89 Joker craved the attention and probably a good glass of wine.

So for him to be scarred by the richocheting bullet, fall into a vat of chemicals and then be stitched up in a dirty room, I bought him turning into an angry mob freak out for vengeance once his good looks were lost.

 

[Guinnessfan]

Nostalgia is a powerful thing. Burton's Batman is held in high regard still today by those who saw it in 1989. And in it's time, it was exactly the right Batman movie. It was a huge leap forward not only for Batman but for comic book films as a whole; before Burton's Batman, all that existed was the terrible Adam West series. So for those of us who saw it in 1989, it absolutely made a lasting impression.

I would consider it to be far from timeless.

Audiences today are smarter

I really agree with the first part of this post, except for the part about West's Batman...for me, since I wasnt a comic book reader, this show was the first exposure to seeing a comic book live. I enjoyed he hell out of it. Now when 89 Bats came out it took the idea of what a comic book could be and changed it to dark and moody. Quite simply it was ground breaking at the time.

As far as the timelessness comment, that has more to do with the fact that there isnt a specified year IN the move, it's intentionally blurry on what era it is I.e. the older cars and architexture, even most of the clothes.

If audiences were smarter there wouldnt be so many judge Judy like shows and terrible reality shows...and there are plenty of terrible movies that make $$$ at the box office while good movies bomb out and are considered failures.

 

[jye4ever]

I really agree with the first part of this post, except for the part about West's Batman...for me, since I wasnt a comic book reader, this show was the first exposure to seeing a comic book live. I enjoyed he hell out of it. Now when 89 Bats came out it took the idea of what a comic book could be, dark and moody. Quite simply it was ground breaking at the time.

As far as the timelessness comment, that has more to do with the fact that there isnt a specified year IN the move, it's intentionally blurry on what era it is I.e. the older cars and architexture, even most of the clothes.

If audiences were smarter there wouldnt be so many judge Judy like shows and terrible reality shows...and there are plenty of terrible movies that make $$$ at the box office while good movies bomb out and are considered failures.

Go Snoki Go!

Team Snoki

 

[Guinnessfan]

So for him to be scarred by the richocheting bullet, fall into a vat of chemicals and then be stitched up in a dirty room, I bought him turning into an angry mob freak out for vengeance once his good looks were lost.

I see this as a totally reasonable way for him to be "turned" into joker...what superhero movie doesn't have some crazy back story, some involve aliens, some are aliens, some are bitten by spiders...I realize that Nolan gave us his take and went with a very realistic approach, and I really dug it, but when this is rebooted and we know or will be it could very well go in a complete different direction than Nolan's.

 

[thenammagazine]

Audiences today are smarter; you can no longer turn a guy into a clown by drowning him in a tub of green mystery liquid, and rightly so. Audiences and especially critics today expect a filmmaker to not insult their intelligence. And really, imagination should not be required to make sense of a story's unfolding events, should it?

Smarter is completely the wrong word. Dumber is more like it. Incapable of suspending belief, a total lack of imagination, always having to have things explained to them in remedial terms, simplified stories, etc. The remake industry is raking in the cash dumbing down the movies of old so that today's audience can understand them.

 

[Spanbauer]

Smarter is completely the wrong word. Dumber is more like it. Incapable of suspending belief, a total lack of imagination, always having to have things explained to them in remedial terms, simplified stories, etc. The remake industry is raking in the cash dumbing down the movies of old so that today's audience can understand them.

I don't want to turn this thread into a Nolan vs Burton Batman debate, but I will just say that i completely disagree with you if you're implying that Nolan's films are for dumb people and that burton's batman is for smart imaginative people.

 

[Khonsu70]

Audiences today are smarter; you can no longer turn a guy into a clown by drowning him in a tub of green mystery liquid, and rightly so.

Oh my God, are you effin' serious? There is so much wrong with this statement, I don't now where to begin. The idea that there could be a clown kingpin of crime, or a DA turned insane half-man/half charred corpse, or a deranged psychiatrist who dresses as a scarecrow and drives people nuts with fear gas, or a plant woman who bewitches men with her spores, or ANY of that stuff is pretty far-fetched in a real world sense. You aren't going to be seeing any of this on the nightly news. It is based on comic books. So to talk of the Joker's transformation via a bullet, a betrayal, and some funky green chemicals as if it is too lowbrow for today's audience is absurd. Even when the movie first aired, nobody thought "Oh yeah, that's completely plausible, happens every day." It was a plot device, a convention that audiences accepted to get from "point a" to "point b" in the movie. And the scene with the back alley plastic surgeon and the Joker smashing the mirror is still awesome - whenever I see it, all I can picture are comic book panels with the dialogue: "Hee hee hee hee hee! A-hee hee hee hee hee! Ah ha ha hah hah HA HA HA HAW HAWWW!!!" scrawled in crazy lettering across them. And that's what 89 Batman was all about, being a dark, motion comic book.

Oh, and before you completely poo-poo the mystery green chemicals from 89 Batman, in the 1988 one-shot comic "The Killing Joke", the Joker's back-story involves a chemical-engineer-turned-failed-stand-up-comedian falling into a vat of chemicals during a crime gone wrong and being transformed into the bleached white Joker. Anything sound vaguely familiar? I think you'll find it was this comic that influenced Burton's Joker genesis storyline, much like "Batman: Year One" and "The Long Halloween" have been influences on Nolan's take on Batman. These movies are ultimately a retelling of the comic book tales that are their inspiration - and either your imagination can embrace these ideas or it cannot.

 

[jye4ever]

Oh my God, are you effin' serious? There is so much wrong with this statement, I don't now where to begin. The idea that there could be a clown kingpin of crime, or a DA turned insane half-man/half charred corpse, or a deranged psychiatrist who dresses as a scarecrow and drives people nuts with fear gas, or a plant woman who bewitches men with her spores, or ANY of that stuff is pretty far-fetched in a real world sense. You aren't going to be seeing any of this on the nightly news. It is based on comic books. So to talk of the Joker's transformation via a bullet, a betrayal, and some funky green chemicals as if it is too lowbrow for today's audience is absurd. Even when the movie first aired, nobody thought "Oh yeah, that's completely plausible, happens every day." It was a plot device, a convention that audiences accepted to get from "point a" to "point b" in the movie. And the scene with the back alley plastic surgeon and the Joker smashing the mirror is still awesome - whenever I see it, all I can picture are comic book panels with the dialogue: "Hee hee hee hee hee! A-hee hee hee hee hee! Ah ha ha hah hah HA HA HA HAW HAWWW!!!" scrawled in crazy lettering across them. And that's what 89 Batman was all about, being a dark, motion comic book.

Oh, and before you completely poo-poo the mystery green chemicals from 89 Batman, in the 1988 one-shot comic "The Killing Joke", the Joker's back-story involves a chemical-engineer-turned-failed-stand-up-comedian falling into a vat of chemicals during a crime gone wrong and being transformed into the bleached white Joker. Anything sound vaguely familiar? I think you'll find it was this comic that influenced Burton's Joker genesis storyline, much like "Batman: Year One" and "The Long Halloween" have been influences on Nolan's take on Batman. These movies are ultimately a retelling of the comic book tales that are their inspiration - and either your imagination can embrace these ideas or it cannot.

 

[tbay]

Smarter is completely the wrong word. Dumber is more like it. Incapable of suspending belief, a total lack of imagination, always having to have things explained to them in remedial terms, simplified stories, etc. The remake industry is raking in the cash dumbing down the movies of old so that today's audience can understand them.

I agree, movie audiences are no way near "smarter" today, movie makers are conditioning them to be dumber. A lot of movie makers don't trust the intelligence of the audience so they become obsessed with "explaining" everything "intellectually" (I'm using this term loosely) rather than emotionally.

Jack became the Joker because he became progressively more ruthless, untrustworthy, and power hungry. The audience instantly understood that the chemical bath was the transition to something even more vile so there was absolutely no need to explain "the logistics" of how the chemical bath would do this, the audience understood it emotionally which is hallmark of effective movie story telling.