I Watch Films: Batman Returns

 

Batman Returns

Gotham City at Christmas and industrialist Max Shreck (Christopher Walken) is kidnapped by the Red Triangle Gang, a circus-themed group of criminals. In their headquarters beneath the zoo’s arctic zone he is confronted by The Penguin (Danny DeVito). Penguin blackmails Shreck, wanting to return to regular society and discover his family. Shreck stages a kidnapping of the mayor’s baby, which Penguin then heroically rescues. With the help of a grateful city he discovers he’s the only son of the Cobblepots, a wealthy family who abandoned him due to his deformities.

This does not end Shreck’s problems. He’s planning to build a new powerplant but needs support, which he’s trying to get from millionaire Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton). Unknown to him Wayne is also the vigilante Batman who has been ineffectually fighting the Red Triangle gang. Shreck’s ditzy secretary Selina Kyle (Michelle Pfeiffer) has been rescued by him in an earlier attack; while working late she sees some secret files with Shreck’s plans (the powerplant is a battery that will suck power out to raise prices) so Shreck throws her out the window. She survives and the trauma creates a second identity, that of the criminal burglar Catwoman. Also Shreck has a large adult son, Chip, which ought to be more important thematically and in the finale but just drops out for some reason.

Bruce Wayne refuse to join in, so Shreck instead has a recall election for mayor, intending to replace him with the Penguin who will let him build whatever he wants. Selina and Bruce start a romance, even as Batman and Catwoman clash at night. Catwoman teams up with Penguin to get rid of Batman; they frame him for the murder of Gotham Beauty Queen Ice Princess, and sabotage his car. However the Penguin taunts him via video link, which Batman edits into a rant against the citizens of Gotham and broadcasts during a rally while running for mayor. Penguin swears revenge, giving up on the human world.

At Shreck’s charity ball Selina intends to kill Shreck, but Bruce intercepts her, the two accidentally learning of each other’s secret identity*. Before this can be resolved the Penguin attacks, intending to kidnap Chip, but Max takes his place. The Penguin has equipped the zoo penguins with rockets, intending to kill the first born of every prominent Gotham family, but Batman and Alfred turn them back, hacking the signal and everyone gathers at the zoo for a finale.

This is stylised and silly, with a greater emphasis on slapstick than the previous film. By thematically binding the Penguin and Bruce Wayne together, as only sons of prominent families, and also setting it at Christmas, the time of families, it reaches for something interesting, perhaps even more than the Joker/Batman dichotomy. Having Penguin and Batman as rivals for Catwoman** perhaps less so; indeed the third here is Max Shreck, whose sole redeeming feature is his love of his son and desire to pass something on to him. A giant scam of a rent-seeking money-stealing power-hoarding legacy, yet a legacy nonetheless. One even more relevant thirty years on.

Watch This: Stylish superhero action with extraordinary setpieces
Don’t Watch This: Grotesque people hurt each other

* They are, of course, the only two at the ball without masks

** Selina Kyle unmarried, childless, a single cat lady