You could argue that the modern comic book movie began with 1978’s Superman: The Movie. You could also argue it really began just over a decade later, with the release of 1989’s Batman. It’s a remarkably dark — and weird — blockbuster, though it’s markedly different than the ones that have all but taken over Hollywood. It’s so different that its director thinks it’s not even that dark anymore.
As per Deadline, Tim Burton — who at the time was coming off such eccentric hits as Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and Beetlejuice — was speaking at the Lumière Festival in Lyon, France when he was asked about the genre he helped create. He remarked that, at the time, the 1989 Batman, with its “tortured superhero, weird costumes,” felt “exciting” and “new.”
At the time, he took some flak from execs and critics for how dark the second highest-grossing film of 1989 was. But compared to what followed — the Christopher Nolan trilogy, this year’s even more brooding The Batman — it’s nothing.
“The thing that is funny about it now is, people go ‘What do you think of the new Batman?’ and I start laughing and crying because I go back to a time capsule, where pretty much every day the studios were saying, ‘It’s too dark, it’s too dark,’” he told the crowd. “Now it looks like a lighthearted romp.”
He also pointed out that it helped kick off another major industry trend. “When I first did Batman, I’d never heard of the word ‘franchise’,” Burton said. “After that, it became something else.”
It’s not the first time Burton has discussed the Batman franchise, which he left after only two films (the other being the S&M-heavy Batman Returns). Over the summer he took umbrage with the Joel Schumacher-era Batsuit nipples.
Burton’s latest project isn’t even a movie. It’s Wednesday, the Addams Family spinoff he did for Netflix.
(Via Deadline)
Source: https://uproxx.com/movies/tim-burton-batman-1989-lighthearted-romp/