The Four Color Media Monitor

Tim Burton, the director of the eccentric who's known for helming at least 2 of 4 Batman movies from 1989-97, told Variety he won't be looking to direct any more superhero films soon:

Tim Burton pioneered the comic book blockbuster at the start of his career, directing Michael Keaton in both “Batman” and “Batman Returns” for Warner Bros. However, the filmmaker says he’s not interested in returning to superhero films in today’s industry, with its focus on long-term continuity and cinematic universes.

Well here I'm going to have to take issue, and note that before Batman, there was Christopher Reeve's Superman films, and 2 of 4 were successful, foreshadowing what could thought of as the result for the subsequent Batman movies, though the 3rd with Val Kilmer may have been more successful than the 3rd Superman movie, but the 4th Batman film at the time was the least successful, directed as it was by the decidedly overrated Joel Schumacher. Hmm, are they trying to obscure and water down what influence the Superman films with Reeve could've had, leading eventually to the Batman movies? That's not polite, and it certainly isn't accurate to leave Reeve's films out of consideration.

“At the moment, I would say no,” Burton tells Variety in a new interview. “I come at things from different points of view, so I would never say never to anything. But, at the moment, it’s not something I’d be interested in.”

The filmmaker, promoting his new sequel “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” shares that he was afforded a certain creative freedom and faced relatively modest studio supervision during the 1988 production of “Batman” in England.

“I was lucky because at that time, the word ‘franchise’ didn’t exist,” Burton says. “‘Batman’ felt slightly experimental at the time. … It deviated from what the perception [of a superhero movie] might be. So you didn’t hear that kind of studio feedback, and being in England, it was even further removed. We really just got to focus on the film and not really think about those things that now they think about even before you do it.”

On this, he's onto something. If memory serves, the Masked Manhunter, as played by Michael Keaton, did use deadly force, once on one of the Joker's henchmen, and on the Clown Prince of Crime himself, by tangling a heavy stone on his leg as he tried to escape by a helicopter, causing the Joker to fall to his death. It's peculiar how the comics long weren't allowed to depict Batman killing even in self-defense (sometimes, there may have been stories where a villain would die by one of his own traps laid for Batman, leaving the hero to ponder how the criminal tripped on his own sword), yet in Burton's movie, he has considerable creative license with how to portray Bruce Wayne. Of course, even if the comic editors changed their MO today, it would be much too late, since chances are they'd have it all written according to PC dictates. The same modern mistakes would no doubt also be made with Daredevil at Marvel.

All that said, Burton's doing the right thing to stay away from modern mainstream superhero adaptations, because chances are they'd really ruin his creative freedom, recalling the writers/directors of the film with Robert Pattison weren't allowed to depict even villains smoking cigarettes. Obviously, it's monumental hypocrisy when tobacco smoking isn't allowed, even in a negative light, yet jarring violence is. And since creative license is alluded to here, let's take a closer look at what's spoken about in the longer interview itself:

“Batman Returns” was the first film where you were totally free from budget or studio interference. How much did you actively want to push the envelope? How much were its idiosyncrasies an organic expression of your creativity?

It was the latter for me. I wasn’t really interested in doing a sequel, but I liked Penguin and Catwoman so I got reenergized by the whole thing. And that was when we started hearing the word franchise and where the studio started going, “What’s the black stuff coming out of the Penguin’s mouth?” It was the first time the cold wind of that kind of thing came upon me.

An odd thing about the 2nd movie is that it may have come under severe criticism for being more violent than the previous film, which led to the change of pace and director in the 3rd. All by the kind of people who at the time preached family values for stuff that could just as well be aimed at adults, but in hindsight, the film was mediocre, and hardly worth the effort. Burton also brings up his disillusionment with Disney:

Disney, the place that you started as an animator, has often become a home for film projects throughout your career. I read a quote that indicated that you didn’t think that you could or would be able to work with Disney again.

I’ve been at Disney on and off. During my first time there as an animator and designer, it went through maybe three different regimes even at that point. Each regime comes in with its own thing, so it’s almost like you’re dealing with a different studio each time. But I remember I had a desk looking out my window from animation: I could see the hospital where I was born and then I could see Forest Lawn, the cemetery where my parents were buried. It felt like this weird Bermuda Triangle that started very long ago. And then all my ups and downs with it — getting my wisdom teeth out and bleeding in the hallways of Disney and drawing foxes badly to all the different movies that I’ve done with them. Now, I just feel like a teenager where it’s time to leave home.

How much is that perception about Disney indicative of your view of the larger industry?

Going back to the ’80s, you had the animation building that was all designed for artists. By 1986, I was the last artist in there because all the artists were kicked out and put in a warehouse in Glendale and it was all then overtaken by the execs. I saw this transition of things a long time ago. And now, it’s bigger franchises, less little things. I don’t like it but it is what it is.

This has certainly become the problem in general with Hollywood - everything's become commoditized because the higher echelons say so, and now that I think of it, "franchise" may have become a problem similar to what company wide crossovers have become for nearly 40 years now in comicdom, where everything's tied into what the publishers boast is an "event", but doesn't hold up well going forward. And it's surely the same issue with movie franchises, something even the Superman movies with Reeve became, and surely that was what led to their creative collapse. Franchises clearly have, in their own way, resulted in a situation where the writer/director has less creative freedom, if at all. And for all we know, it's doubtless affected independent studios too. Towards the end of the interview, Burton says:

Are people knocking on your door?

I’m far away in a land where there’s no people around, so no one knocks on my door. But I’ve been through enough of this before. I remember “Batman” wasn’t really given the green light until after “Beetlejuice” came out. So, much as they say “we love you,” we’ll see how much they love you later on.

I get it, he got the job thanks to the success of Beetlejuice, which now has a sequel, and no doubt, Burton's obsession with bizarre fantasy is exactly why he got the Batman task soon after. But he's also the kind of entertainment producer who's much too attached to the theme of darkness, and maybe he ought to consider he played a part in bringing movies, comics and other forms of entertainment down to the sorry state we're at today. Unless there's decent auteurs out there who're willing to advocate for more optimism, little will change, if at all, for comics and films.

Labels: animation, Batman, dc comics, history, msm propaganda