Batman Returns

Tim Burton’s 1992 film sets Batman against a Penguin running for mayor and a Catwoman settling a score. Knowing how the ending was made changes it. Daniel Waters and Burton had written Catwoman to die alongside Shreck. Test audiences responded so strongly to Michelle Pfeiffer that Warner Bros. ordered a shot establishing she had survived, and the closing image under the Bat Signal was shot two weeks before release with a stand in, Pfeiffer being unavailable. That is why the close reads as attached rather than earned. None of Gotham is a real place. Photography began on 3 September 1991 and ran 170 days, almost entirely across eight soundstages at Warner Bros. in Burbank, with Gotham Plaza on Stage 16. Bo Welch, an architect by training, drew the city as a vertical canyon out of German Expressionism, Third Reich architecture and Precisionism. The penguin army mixed live Emperor, King and black footed birds with puppets, forty people in penguin suits and digital work. Warner Bros. received thousands of complaint letters from parents, and McDonald’s began demanding extended previews before agreeing to tie ins. A good fit if you want a Gotham that openly admits to being a vertical stage set. Not for anyone expecting Catwoman’s arc to close on the film’s own logic, since that shot is a studio patch.