Esquire is looking at the lasting genius of 1989’s Batman. The first of what could be called the modern Comic Book Movies, directed by Tim Burton, saw a much darker version of Bruce Wayne and Batman.
They propose that what truly makes this version of the billionaire orphan so incredible is that he was “weird, darkly obsessive, and deeply flawed man.”
The magazine compares the 1989 Caped Crusader to Christopher Nolan’s version:
“By contrast, Christopher Nolan's Wayne is a narcissistic Boy Scout and a paragon of virtue, just like his do-no-wrong dad. There's no catharsis there. In '89 Batman, the stakes are that Bruce Wayne might be cuckoo. In 2005 Batman, the stakes are that Bruce Wayne might make Katie Holmes sniffle. Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale stripped Bruce Wayne of his dark side and turned him into a spoiled billionaire, like Tony Stark. Their movies suffer for it.”
The mag also discusses Iron Man, which is the only other CBM that “holds a candle to '89 Batman” and addresses so many other issues we know about within the world of CBMs.
Full Esquire.com article here.
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