Tim Burton, who directed at least two of the four Batman films from 1989 to 1997, told Variety that he has no plans to direct a superhero movie anytime soon.
Tim Burton pioneered comic book blockbusters early in his career, directing Michael Keaton in both Warner Bros.’ Batman and Batman Returns, but the filmmaker says he’s not interested in returning to superhero movies in today’s industry, where there’s a focus on long-term continuity and cinematic universes.
Now, here I must disagree. I point out that before Batman there were the Christopher Reeve Superman movies, two of the four of which were successful and foreshadowed the outcome of the Batman movies that followed. However, while the third movie with Val Kilmer may have been more successful than the third Superman movie, the fourth Batman movie at the time was the least successful and was directed by the obviously overrated Joel Schumacher. Hmm, are they trying to obscure and dilute how the Reeve Superman movies influenced the Batman movies? That’s not polite, and it’s certainly not accurate to not take Reeve’s movies into account.
“At this point, I would say no,” Burton told Variety in a new interview. “I look at things from different perspectives, so I never say no to anything, but at this point, it’s not something I’m interested in.”
The filmmaker, who is promoting his upcoming sequel, “Beetlejuice: The Next Generation,” said that when “Batman” was made in Britain in 1988, he was given a certain amount of creative freedom and relatively low-key studio oversight.
“I was lucky because the word ‘franchise’ didn’t exist back then,” Burton says. “Batman felt a little bit experimental at the time. … It was [of a superhero movie] “Maybe so. So we didn’t hear any of that kind of studio feedback and being in England it was even more distant. We really had to focus on the film and not think too much about the sort of pre-shooting stuff that they think about now.”
In this regard, he is on to something. If I remember correctly, the Masked Manhunter, played by Michael Keaton, used lethal force once on one of the Joker’s minions and once on the Clown Prince of Crime himself, entangling a heavy rock around his leg and causing the Joker to fall to his death as he tried to escape in a helicopter. It’s odd that in comics, Batman has not been allowed to depict murder even in self-defense for so long (sometimes there’s a story where the villain dies in one of the traps he sets for Batman, leaving the hero to ponder why the criminal tripped over his sword). But Burton’s films allow him a great deal of creative freedom in how he portrays Bruce Wayne. Of course, even if comics editors were to change their methods today, it would be too late, because they’re all likely to be writing according to PC dictates. Marvel’s Daredevil will undoubtedly make the same modern mistake.
That said, Burton is right to distance himself from the modern mainstream superhero adaptations, because it’s likely that Burton will be sabotaging creative freedom when you remember that in this film, which he co-wrote/directed with Robert Pattison, the villains were not even allowed to be shown smoking cigarettes. Obviously, it’s a huge hypocrisy to say that smoking cigarettes, even in a bad way, is not allowed, but unpleasant violence is. Since creative freedom is mentioned here, let’s take a closer look at what is said in the extended interview.
Batman Returns was your first film completely free from budget or studio interference. How willing were you to push the envelope? How much of its idiosyncrasies were a natural expression of your creativity?
For me it was the latter. I wasn’t really interested in doing a sequel, but I loved Penguin and Catwoman, so I got re-energized by this one. And then when we started hearing about franchises, studios started saying, “What’s that black thing coming out of Penguin’s mouth?” For me, that was the first time the cold winds of that stuff blew through my head.
The strange thing about the second film is that it was heavily criticized for being more violent than its predecessors, which led to changes in pacing and direction for the third. At the time, this was coming from people who were preaching family values in a film that could also be aimed at adults, but in hindsight, the film was mediocre and hardly worth the effort. Burton also talks about his disillusionment with Disney.
You started out as an animator at Disney, and they’ve been home to a lot of film projects throughout your career. I’ve read that you never expected or thought you’d be able to work with them again.
I’ve been at Disney a few times. When I was there the first time as an animator and designer, I think Disney went through three different regimes at that point. Each regime had its own thing going on, and it was like I was dealing with a different studio every time. But I remember looking out the window from my desk in animation. I could see the hospital where I was born, and then I could see Forest Lawn, the cemetery where my parents are buried. It felt like a weird Bermuda Triangle that started a long time ago. Then all the ups and downs at Disney, having my wisdom teeth removed, bleeding in the hallways at Disney, badly drawing foxes on the various movies I made with Disney, etc. Now I feel like I’m a teenager whose time has come to leave home.
To what extent does that perception of Disney reflect your view of the industry as a whole?
Back in the ’80s, the Animation Building was designed for artists. By 1986, I was the last artist there, because they kicked all the artists out and put them in a warehouse in Glendale, and then it was all taken over by the executives. I’ve been watching this change for a long time, and now the franchises are getting bigger and the little ones are getting less. I don’t like it, but that’s the way it is.
This has certainly become a problem in Hollywood in general. As the higher-ups say, everything is commoditized. If you think about it, maybe “franchising” has become similar to the problem crossovers have had in comics for almost 40 years now across companies. Everything is tied to an “event” that publishers brag about, but it’s not going to work. The same problem has certainly arisen with movie franchises, and it was the same problem with Reeve’s Superman movies. And it’s definitely led to their creative collapse. Franchises have obviously, in their own way, created a situation where writers and directors have very little creative freedom. And as far as we can tell, it’s definitely impacting independent studios as well.
At the end of the interview, Burton says:
Is someone knocking on your door?
I’m in a remote, no man’s land, so no one’s knocking on my door. But I’ve been there enough. I remember Batman actually got greenlit after Beetlejuice came out. So even though they say, “We love you,” you’ll only find out how much they love you later.
I get that he got the job thanks to the success of Beetlejuice, which has now been spun into a sequel, and Burton’s obsession with weird fantasy no doubt led to him being given the Batman job shortly thereafter, but he’s also the kind of entertainment producer who is way too obsessed with dark themes, and maybe he should acknowledge that he’s contributed to getting movies, comics, and other entertainment into the sad state they are in today. Comics and movies will likely not change much unless we get some decent filmmaker to advocate for a more optimistic view.
Originally published in full here.