The Burton/Keaton Batman films will always be the best. They were the first to make Batman dark, serious, realistic, and mature at least for mainstream audiences.

I’m sorry. I really, really can’t agree with you. As some comic book fans have noted, Tim Burton’s Batman is not really true to canon. This is especially noted in Batman’s willingness to deliberately kill and to use guns. In the 1989 film, Batman first tries to machine gun the Joker from his Batplane (in a manner comically resembling US airstrikes in Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia, and everywhere else) and then throwing the Joker from the roof of a building. Nolan’s Batman is more true to canon. The real Batman will never kill and never use a gun.

Joker (2019) is basically set in Burton’s Batman universe. The majority of producers/directors/writers/actors involved in Batman today are people who grew up on his interpretation of the universe. The film even makes a nod to this by having Bruce Wayne’s parents “killed by the joker” which comic book purists frequently dislike. Plus the Burton/Keaton Batman killed which is a massive improvement and is far more realistic than beating criminals to a pulp but never killing.

Batman never quits yet the Nolan Batman is ready to quit at every turn. I know it’s supposed to be “realistic” in the sense that nobody could continue that lifestyle forever but he’s Batman for barely two years. Plus he just gets outwitted and his ass kicked all throughout the third movie with barely thirty minutes of Batman screen time. The fight sequences were also far better done in Burton’s take than Nolan’s. The Dark Knight Rises in particular is embarrassingly bad.

I don’t think the Nolan Batman movies will have lasting value because they’re too infused with themes from the 2000s while the Burton movies feel more timeless. The latter’s Gotham is also surreal, stylistic, and darkly beautiful. That innovation later made its way into the comics. What Gotham should not be is Chicago (Nolan), a brightly lit neon city (Schumacher), or some New York/Metropolis rip off as the comics originally envisioned.

The live action series Gotham (which I’d highly recommend if you liked Joker) is a prequel to the Burton/Keaton movies infused with modern ideas while borrowing the best from the Nolan films. Joker (2019) continues that tradition even the detectives in the movie resemble characters from the Fox TV show. I know your post wasn’t about which take on the series is the best but the Burton/Keaton films were far more influential than you may realize.

I fell asleep during Burton’s Batman. That film is unforgivably boring. I would have preferred the campy tv version, which I loved as a kid. Burton rescued the character from that only to give us a dull moodiness that passes for “dark” (not his innovation–the original comics but for a brief period were always noir).

So, no.

Great piece, bravo!

Betrayal is the mark of the age.

Indeed, and I think the reason Joker 2019 clicked with lots of us older viewers too.

Joker 2019 got there when it started in the 1980s, the years when American mortality began to go backward.

Turning the camera around upon us, even in sympathy, is dangerous: one might experience the shock of self-recognition.

Plenty did.

Rustbelt downsized white guys in their millions already went through the primal rage period of having lost all they’d worked for in the years since Korea, Vietnam, the oil shock years. Now this. Self-recognition sometimes turned into self-loathing and taking the long walk out.

By placing Joker 2019 in Early Reagan, the grizzly period of the monster steel and car layoffs that had murders, petty crime and shame, and overtime at more than a few meth labs.

Yeah, we got it.

Nice to see it presented on the big screen and with a large audience, even if nearly 40 years after the fact.

The Burton/Keaton Batman films will always be the best. They were the first to make Batman dark, serious, realistic, and mature at least for mainstream audiences. They also made Gotham unique for the first time with Gotham City becoming a character onto itself. I also find their Joker origin to be the best; that of mafia enforcer Jack Napier becoming insane and taking over the most powerful organized crime entity in Gotham. Michael Keaton’s portrayal of Bruce Wayne and Batman has never been matched. Some actors excel in one area over the other but Keaton did great at both. Batman 1989 was an excellent self contained story and an amazing hit both at the box office and merchandise wise.

Batman Returns was even better and darker with a horrifying nihilistic vision. It didn’t make as much as the first movie but it did well at the box office and through toy sales. Its dark themes and vision were popular with fans/critics but not parents. This proved to be too much for parental groups who lobbied hard to transform Batman from a serious work back into a kid friendly mess.

The studio executives at Warner Brothers bowed to public pressure/cancel culture from these conservatives SJWs. We could have had an amazing series of films with the next installment of the Burton/Keaton saga being a Batman Begins style prequel. Instead we got the Joel Schumacher films which singlehandedly destroyed Batman and the latter of which may have been the worst film ever made.

Batman was on hiatus at least on the big screen but the lasting legacy of the Burton/Keaton era was Batman The Animated Series which heavily borrowed from their films. Kevin Conroy is considered by some the best Batman at this point doing TV, movies, games, and spinoffs like Batman Beyond. Individual episodes like Heart of Ice, movies like Mask of the Phantasm, and video games like the Arkham saga rank this interpretation highly.

The Nolan Batman movies were excellent given the 2000s was the era America truly degenerated. They represented the best of the past, present, and future while carving out their own niche. The movies were very heavy with 2000s themes like the author has described. They’re also the only completed trilogy in the franchise. Batman Begins was the best of the bunch. The Dark Knight was great mostly because of Heath Ledger’s performance. The Dark Knight Rises should have been split into two installments because it is the most polarizing of the three. Let’s be honest the movie starts to go downhill after the sewer fight and never recovers it only gets worse.

The Burton/Keaton saga and to some extent even the Nolan films were given the TV treatment through the Fox’s prequel saga Gotham. 2019’s Joker is in the same vain borrowing from both eras while carving out its own niche.

It’s not so much that the mask has slipped. Rather, the gloves have come off. The mask is still on. After all, what is the #1 reason for getting booted off platforms? Mentioning the JQ.

Because JOKER was such a massive hit, it’s worth discussing as a social phenom. But I thought it was artistically zero. And close to zero as entertainment.

“How about another joke, Tom?”

Joker has been topped.. by a billionaire oligarch.

The purest expression of American democracy is a hedge fund oligarch literally twerking for votes.

We must protect the sanctity of this process from Russian interference. https://t.co/qGRQeJCkmr

— Darren J. Beattie ðŸŒ� (@DarrenJBeattie) February 29, 2020

Dennis Dale! Great!