"Batman" 30th Anniversary!
Joker art by me, Mike Olguin
I actually had another movie in mind for the 1st cult classic article. It's a movie I had been intending on covering for a long time, but then I read that it was the 30th anniversary of the Michael Keaton Batman movie. 30 years! Ah! When I was kid, a thirty-year-old film was probably black and white. I have feigned being an old person for a long time, but I had an “Oh my gosh, I'm old” moment for realz. In my imagination, I aged into dust like the guy who drank from the wrong cup in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.” I guess it seems shocking that so much time passed because I remember this movie so well. It's been a favorite of mine for years, so it was easy to miss the other anniversarys. I was so blown away by this 30th anniversary that I decided that this would be the perfect movie to start the list.
So why is this movie a cult classic? Well, if you remember this movie at all, you recognize what a huge deal it was. I just explained that a cult classic is generally less well known, and this movie was the biggest one of all time at one point.
Well, being that it's been 30 years, I think enough time has gone by that maybe people don't remember this movie right away or even know which Batman I’m referring to.
If you're young and know this movie at all, it's probably because a parent or older brother or something made you watch it. Second, this movie was largely overshadowed by the performance of Heath Ledger as the Joker in the 2008 version of Batman the Dark Knight. Let's face it, that was an unforgettable performance that truly gave credence to superhero movies as a legitimate genre. So a lot of the type of praise of the 1989 version got, was largely forgotten by the time Heath Ledger made that pencil disappear twenty years later.
Lastly, the big marketing campaigns that we claim to hate but get swept up in before these superhero movies come out can almost be directly traced back to this movie. There had been other huge movies that inspired action figures and cartoons before, but they didn't distill it down to an icon the way this film did with its logo. A simple yellow and black bat icon, similar to the one on Batman’s armor became the most recognizable symbol of that time. You could still find memes and tons of pop culture references to this movie; even today. So I think with those circumstances and given that it's the 30th anniversary we're going to qualify 1989 Batman as a cult classic for today.
In 1989, I was eight years old, into comic books and superheroes and precisely the right demographic for this film! This was a world before the Internet. A world of big hair and bright colors with Arsenio's, Arnold’s, and funky music. People went to the movies more back then because it was cheaper, there was less air conditioning places, fewer TV shows, no internet and there was way less to do in general than there is now. The trailers for Batman had been playing before every movie for like 6 months.
Now summer vacation was approaching, and the commercials started playing on TV regularly, even the action figures were already in the stores. I was really excited, to say the least.
Smyle-X Ad art by me Mike Olguin. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
There just hadn't been a good superhero movie yet, and this one looked like it could be awesome. I noticed from the clips on the commercials and previews that it had the look of the darker, moodier “graphic novels” of Batman I had seen at the comic stores. These were thick comics with a whole story arc. They were inky and dark and dealt with more substantial plots like mobsters and romance than your classic punching bad-guys, colorful Batman comics. But what really stuck out during that marketing blitz was that Batmobile!
! It looks like; if the guy who designed the stealth bomber, designed a limo for Dracula with bat-like fins and a jet engine. The whole movie had an aura of mystery about it, with that booming Danny Elman soundtrack! All of these things just building the anticipation of seeing this awesome flick.
Then the day finally came. I don't remember exactly where or when I saw this film actually, but I know my birthday is in late July, and I grew up in Alhambra, California, so it was probably sometime between opening and my birthday and at one of the Edwards theaters in Alhambra (both of which are now closed.) I've seen this movie so many times since that it's hard to remember how I felt the first time seeing it in the theater. I just remember being blown away! It was larger than life! The special effects were great and the soundtrack - unforgettable.
For those that don't remember, 1989 Batman stars Michael Keaton as Batman, Jack Nicholson as the Joker and Kim Basinger as Vicki Vale. Despite being the first movie in what would be a series, this installment of Batman isn't the origin story of Batman, it's the origin story of the Joker.
In this film, Batman has been around a short time, and the public is still unsure of what to make of him. Jack Nicholson is a mobster who is double-crossed and takes the fall for his boss… into a vat of chemicals because Batman is attempting to apprehend him. He survives, but the chemicals leave him deranged and disfigured. He takes his revenge on the crime boss and Gotham and only Batman can stop him. Kim Basinger is Vicki Vale, a reporter who helps Batman get the word across to the public that the Joker is going to poison everybody by putting chemicals in hygiene products. When this thwarts Jokers plan to take revenge on the citizens of Gotham, he decides to trick everybody with a poison gas attack, under the guise of the parade celebrating the city’s bicentennial anniversary. This leads to the big showdown between Batman and the Joker. Did I mention that at some point in all this, Batman comes flying out in a bat-shaped jet plane? I mean, how cool is that?!
Wow, just from writing that out some of those plot points seem pretty wacky, but with the moody, film noir look and the gothic, industrial Gotham City backdrop, it all seemed to make sense. Granted as a kid there was a lot of stuff I missed the first time. Not just in an adult joke going over my head sort of way, but the movie was just so big it took me seeing it a couple of times to really nail down some of the finer plot points, but I loved it. The movie and the action were great, but the soundtrack by Danny Elfman and Prince really made the whole film sparkle mixing powerful orchestral music with the Prince of purple danceable fun.
It wasn't just seeing the movie though; it was playing with the toys and singing along to “Party Man” when it played on the radio. It was a summer of riding my bike down my street imagining it was the Bat-Wing swooping down, guns a blazing, or the Batmobile roaring down the road with a trading card stuck in the spokes of my bike to simulate engine noises. It was summer evenings in the park pretending the playgrounds were rooftops of Gotham, and the pool was the chemical vat at Axis chemicals.
It wasn't just me that loved it either, Bat-mania swept the country. The actors made appearances on all the major and less major talk shows. People made references to the movie in TV shows, other films, The Simpsons and commercials. And the merchandise! Oh the merch.
Everyone and everything had that yellow and black bat logo on it. It was on wallets, hats, frisbees, fanny packs, stickers, T-shirts, plastic sports bottles, and of course pinatas. That reminds me, the knock-off merchandise was hilarious! Every time you would pass a swap meet, carnival, or anywhere with vendors, you would see all the crappy fraudulent merchandise. Posters with art that look nothing like the actors, any kind of crappy toy that was yellow black or you could put that bat logo on, T-shirts where somebody's cousin did their best to try to copy the logo and so on. Now presenting “Bat Dude!”
When summer was over, school was back on, and Batman was out of the theaters, it seemed like everyone began to get over their case of bat mania. But then it came out on home video as well as a bunch of new toys just in time for Christmas. This kept people talking about it for quite a bit of time after. I would watch it so much on VHS, I think I had a couple of different copies through the years as VHS tapes would wear out if you watched and rewinded them a lot.
There were so many cool stories I dug up researching this article. Like the movie was filmed in a large studio in England complete with full-size facades of blocks worth of Gotham city streets and alleys. The creepy-ass Axis chemicals was a real abandoned power station that also appeared in 1986’s Aliens. Jack Nicholson has said it’s one of his favorite roles in interviews since then. Or when it was announced Michael Keaton was playing Batman, thousands of people furiously wrote in to protest it proving fanboys were difficult even before the internet. I could go on, but I have already.
There was a sequel a few years later with Danny Devito as the Penguin and Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman. Even though it was nearly as good, had a huge marketing blitz and a great success, it just didn't capture the public consciousness the way it did in 1989.
I think of the other huge movies that came out shortly after like Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park. They were great and got a lot of buzz, but you just didn’t see every walk of life embrace the fad the way they did that one summer of ‘89 cause they didn’t have such an iconic symbol. Some may say that perhaps loving that film was as much about being the right age at the right time rather than the quality of the film itself. I’d buy into that except I’ve been watching it regularly these last thirty years so it’s not a throwback to a particular time in my life, it’s always been a part of it. For whatever reason, the weird world of Gotham City in 1989’s Batman really captured a part of my imagination. So while it's not as epic as the 2008 version, it’s artistic style, and fun comic book type plot makes this film a fan favorite! Thirty years? Pish-posh, I’ll continue enjoying it with cult-like enthusiasm indefinitely.
Thanks for reading Cult-Classic Cinema!
-Mike Olguin
7/1/19
