Batman

The centre of gravity in Tim Burton’s film is not Batman. Jack Nicholson’s Joker gets the museum raid set to music, the parade and the lines people remember, while Bruce Wayne barely explains himself. A viewer curious about the hero’s interior life finds that space filled by the villain. For its opening stretch Batman is less a protagonist than a city rumour reporters are chasing. This is a design object first. Gotham was physically built at Pinewood and the camera treats the city as architecture, so the plot stalls whenever the design gets a showcase. Anton Furst and Peter Young won an Academy Award for it. The third act has an offstage explanation. Producer Jon Peters reworked the climax without telling the director and had Furst build a twelve metre cathedral model, costing a hundred thousand dollars on a film already over budget. Burton has described shooting it without knowing how the scene ended, Nicholson turning around halfway up the stairs to ask where he was going. Dick Grayson was in the shooting script and cut for contributing nothing. Nicholson cut his ten million dollar fee to six for a share of earnings and merchandise. Good if you treat the city itself as the lead. Not for a viewer unwilling to let the Joker take over.