Follow up on Batman 89 (and the rest of the movies)
By Scott Keith on 11 June 2024
On the suggestion of one of your commenters, I decided to listen to the Kevin Smith commentary on each of the first four Batman movies.
– The observations were overall pretty eye opening. I had never truly comprehended how little fighting/action there is in the Tim Burton Batman movies. And while it's pretty well known that the villains are the focal point of the movies, I didn't fully realize how much of an afterthought Batman is in Batman Returns.
– Some of the complaints are pretty petty and come across as “just looking for something to complain about.” In Batman Returns, he constantly talks about how dark and twisted the movie is, and how the movie was attached to a Happy Meal campaign. Then in Batman and Robin, he ridicules the movie for not impaling anybody with Freeze's spikey vehicle. I understand there's a middle ground between the two movies, but when watching the commentary in such close succession of each other, it definitely came across as “you were JUST complaining about how dark it was.”
– He's also a little intellectually dishonest with some of his criticism. Like, he'll say in the commentary “why is the entire town of Gotham coming together for this? And why are there only a dozen people?” when in many cases, it's pretty clearly specifically a press conference.
– I also get we're listening to a sign of the times, and Kevin Smith is famously sophomoric, but a lot of his jokes were cringeworthy and bordering on homophobic. Like, two male characters will be speaking to each other and he'll be like “what, is he going to suck his dick now?”
Having said that, he was spot on about the odd decision to make Robin so old, given his story. It was also interesting remembering a time when comic book movies didn't feel any obligation to stay true to the comic story.
I haven’t listened to those. Are they on the normal Blu Ray releases or is there a special edition out there? Granted I think my copies are all the very original releases so I might be way behind in special features.