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Robert Pattinson is the new Batman.
Disappointing.
Crikey!
I would rather have Armie Hammer cast as Batman than that choice
You should check out some of his most recent work. He's a very capable actor.
Wouldn't have been my first choice for Batman, still. But I look forward to seeing the inevitable first photos of his "incredible transformation" for the part.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/deadline.com/2019/05/rob-pattinson-nicholas-hoult-batman-short-list-matt-reeves-1202616908/amp/
I would prefer Hoult out of the two, Hoult is also 6ft 3 two inches taller than Pattison. I could buy Hoult as Bruce more so than Pattison, not sure either have the acting ability
I am not really familiar with any of his films, if he gets the role I'll look at his recent work.
I don't find the "style imprints" more indulgent than in the previous film. Both have the same unmistakable, unique directorial style.
But Batman Returns has almost exactly the same mix of tones as Batman--gothic/brutalist ambiance with operatically larger than life characters, leavened with macabre humor. The only difference from the first film is that BR has a note of kinky sexuality introduced by Pfeiffer's Catwoman, arguably the most complex and dynamic version of the character in any medium. Like Batman, she has a split personality; unlike him she can't control her warring sides, so Batman is simultaneously attracted to and repelled by her wildness. The Penguin also tries leading a double life but fails miserably. Whereas Batman and Catwoman feel the need to hide their sense of being a freak and outcast behind masks, the Penguin decides to fully embrace his freakishness.
Nicholson's Joker was hardly that. Romero played the Joker as a avuncular, jolly prankster. Nicholson's Joker begins as a sociopathic, lizard-like gangster and after his acid bath embraces his new face, viewing himself as a postmodern artist of crime ("I make art, until somebody dies"). As for Meredith, Burton was uninterested in a retread of what he called "a deranged version of FDR" and rightly so.
Then why was almost every single Penguin-starring episode either mediocre or downright bad? The only exception is "Birds of a Feather," which played upon the same themes as Burton, invoking the concept of Penguin as an outcast too uncouth to fit into society, whose sophistication was a facade covering a fundamentally coarse character.
The character's primary characteristic up to then had been his use of trick umbrellas, so let's not act as if Burton had desecrated Hamlet. As for Tommy Lee Jones's Two-Face, it did not bastardize the character so much as flatten it. He played Two-Face like a Joker clone, continually giggling and without much grasp of the character's tragic, conflicted nature. Burton's Penguin by contrast enriches, develops, and inverts what had been a one dimensional character. This Penguin is the rejected child of the wealthy, burning with resentment at everyone in society, everyone who isn't a freak. He tries ingratiating himself into that society by donning the trappings of wealth (hence the umbrellas and monocle) and simultaneously playing a populist politician, but he fails because he will never be sophisticated (he is vulgar to the bone) or free of twisted hatred. And so, like an evil monster in a folk tale, he embraces his freakishness and takes out his wrath on the first born of the city who enjoyed all the advantages he didn't.
The Phantasm comparison is hardly fair, since an animated film has far greater freedom in portraying action. And whatever the drawbacks of BR, they don't include the crude staging of action scenes in Schumacher's films, and even Nolan's first. Both Batman and Batman Returns lack great hand-to-hand combat, partly because of the limitations of the bat-suit and the director, but there is more to action than that, and more to Batman than action. The action on display--Batman taking out the Red Triangle Gang, Catwoman destroying Shreck's department store, Batman and Catwoman's rooftop fight, Batman seeming to sprout wings and flying across the city, the chase after the rogue Batmobile and its incredible transformation, the batboat streaking through the sewers into the giant duck and a penguin horde, and the confrontation with the Penguin as the old zoo explodes--is rendered though imagery vastly more powerful and memorable than anything in Batman Forever. BR also matches the previous film in gothic grandeur--it's hard to think of more "cool" Bat-images than Bruce Wayne rising into the reflection of the bat-signal, or Batman "flying" across Gotham.
And again the old cliche, repeated in every discussion of Batman Returns like a cross before a vampire. A false cliche too, since Burton did what artists with a degree of freedom have continually done with Batman: use the capaciousness of the material to address themes and concepts that interest them, and render Batman--who has enjoyed decades of malleability--in their own style. It just happens that Burton's style is more distinctive than many others.
Your thoughts on it are a strong reflection of my own, but for comparison, here's what I said about it after seeing it on the big screen in November just gone:
"I thought you were just going to scare the ice-princess?"
"She looked pretty scared to me."
One of my local cinemas (thank you, Lighthouse Cinema!) screened an original print of this during the week, and the inner completist in me couldn't pass up the chance to see it on the big screen, especially after seeing a 70mm print of BATMAN in the Irish Film Institute last year. Instead of a fully fledged review, I'm just going to spew out some thoughts...
BATMAN RETURNS is a mental piece of work from Burton that, despite its flaws, is still quite a fabulous film. It's extremely exciting to see films on the big screen in their original format after being accustomed to watching them on the small screen for most of my life. With the first film last year, the large screen experience gave me a newfound appreciation for Keaton's performance as Bruce Wayne.
With RETURNS, the same thing happened with Pfeifer's Selina Kyle. She's really quite incredible in this film and is still the best Catwoman by quite a margin. There are numerous little ticks she uses to highlight the duality of the effectively two different characters she is playing, and that makes her a really strong foil for Keaton when he's utilising the same kind of performance in and out of his cape and cowl. Hathaway was a decent Catwoman in her own right, but she has nothing on Pfeifer, who manages to make my heart skip a beat every time the film delivers that shot of her arriving at the masquarade ball. I always feel Bruce Wayne's awe, there.
I had forgotten how front-loaded the film is. After a batshit insane opening encounter with what we come to know as Penguin's Red Triangle Gang, Batman doesn't really return for a good 40 minutes into the film - almost near the end of the first act. Burton manages to give us the origins of TWO major comic-book villains before Bruce Wayne even starts to play a major role in the story. A ballsy move, but it works. Alongside Catwoman, we get a very re-definitive take on the Penguin courtesy of Danny De Vito, who chews the scenery (and a nose, at one point) to high hell and back to the Arctic. Burton's vision for the Penguin is a somewhat sympathetic but majorly grotesque figure who spews sexual innuendos very freely and has an endgame that brings the film into horror film territory. BATMAN RETURNS is a goofy pantomime at heart, but it also leapfrogs from that lightness into some genuinely grim territory. I mean, THE DARK KNIGHT was, of course, dark - but it didn't feature a supervillain attempted to kidnap first-born children and drown them in toxic waste. RETURNS, however, has no issue with doing this along with featuring some really lucid, hypersexual overtones in parts. It also manages to feature a penguin army, strapped with missiles, marching through the streets of Gotham - so it's not without its camp. However, I still understand why Warner Bros. were crapping themselves over the adult nature of certain scenes and why, ultimately, both Keaton and Burton didn't return again.
I haven't even gotten around to Christopher Walken in his most Christopher Walken role ever. Max Schreck was an original character created for the film and written specifically for Walken, and he makes him fit right in amongst the gothic circus lunacy of Burton's Gotham. Schreck is an utterly awful human being and the film doesn't attempt to shy away from that fact in the slightest. In the first 20 minutes, he abandons his son to what could be his death and then throws Kyle, then his secretary, out of a window in a brutish attempted murder. After they form an alliance, he and Penguin are responsible for some of the more harsher quips about violence, especially towards women. Yet, he's still not repulsive to watch. That is surely down to Walken and his uncanny ability to make an irredeemable character somewhat charming and likeable and also still make you feel absolutely overjoyed when Catwoman fries him at the end, giving him his just desserts.
The gothic-machinations of Burton's Gotham is supported gloriously by a beautiful Danny Elfman score and the shadowy cinematography gives life to some expressionist-era set design. Both incredibly goofy and incredibly dark, BATMAN RETURNS is a film that most likely would not be made today. Despite it being released in June, it's a pretty great Christmas movie and one that doesn't age.
"Well, come what may, Merry Christmas Master Wayne."
"Merry Christmas Alfred, and goodwill to all men......and women."
What a lot of filmmakers don't understand is that audiences want to see a follow up to BR as the film had loose ends and was never provided with a deserving proper sequel.
Instead, they keep re-inventing the wheel as we are now on our fifth reboot, when you count the fact that the Joel Schumacher films are not quite Tim Burton sequels, the tv series, etc. This is actually going to hurt the franchise as Gotham and BR both demonstrate taking viewers into a world of their own and paying attention to character depth.
Someone on Youtube replaced the end scene music from QoS where Bond is talking to M in the snow with Batman Returns music as both films end with the main character accepting the fact that their femme fatals are gone.
R-Pattz is most known for being in Harry Potter and Twilight to audiences. But since, he has been seeking out edgy and interesting directors and producing high-calibre work.
If anyone has seen films such as Good Time (such an amazing film) and High Life, you;ll know this guy has something very special.
He's immensely pretty and can pull off the Bruce Wayne bravado and charm. But there is just enough of a weird, moody outsider in his acting style that suits Batman perfectly. I'm now beyond excited for this choice.......
Nicholas Hoult would have been an interesting left-field choice. But he just seems to 'nice' and not edgy enough.
Everyone lost their minds when Heath Ledger was cast as The Joker, and look what happened there. Ben Affleck was deemed an odd choice by many when cast as the caped crusader. Pattinson has obviously got something. Time will tell.
@Revelator , agree with all of the above.
I must admit rather ashamedly I was subjected to sitting through two of the Twilight films when they came out. I'd rather have Waltz's Blofeld put drills in my head than go through that experience again.
I wouldn't mind seeing Pattinson in something else, though just to see what kind of acting chops he actually has.
I certainly don't see him as Bruce Wayne/ Batman at all, though I'm not as picky about that particular character's casting as I am for Bond. The title, once again is something that turns me off from this film.
Having seen Big Time I agree. You encapsulated the case for him very well.
He can play mean, nasty characters--he was quite good as the haughty, foppish Harley in The Favourite. Whether he can capture Batman's obsessive, melancholy nature is another issue.
There's an angsty Bruce Wayne in him there, for sure.
I hate that performance and film...
That's a pity. The film didn't do much for me but I quite liked him in it. Same goes for The Rover.
It's the Daniel Craig phenomenon all over again, I suppose. To be honest, I've never really thought of Pattinson as a remarkable actor, but then I've only seen him in a handful of things such as Twilight and Harry Potter 4 and I doubt those films demanded a lot of range from him. So who knows...
I distinctly recall my Leo bias in his R&J and Titanic days. Now, Leo is one of my favourite actors. I bet Pattinson can do more than I'm willing to give him credit for at this point.
I bought Twilight when it was released having no knowledge of the film, I gave up quickly and threw the dvd in the bin, I like Vampire movies though it was no Lost Boys or Near Dark.
Pattinson apparently is appearing in a Nolan film, I am a huge Nolan fan and trust his casting 99% of the time. I should check Pattinson's more recent films
Mine either and between this and the batwoman trailer that looks like it was written by the spice girls writer (I am guessing though glad to se he got work) I just shake my head why can’t we get things like this
Or this