Hol­ly­wood could still learn a thing or two from Tim Burton’s Batman

In the 30 years since the release of Tim Burton’s Bat­man, there have been a num­ber of dif­fer­ent iter­a­tions of the Dark Knight on screen, from Christo­pher Nolan’s crime epics to Joel Schumacher’s camp, neon-soaked night­mares. Yet even now Burton’s vision of Bat­man remains the most dis­tinc­tive, the direc­tor hav­ing marked a seis­mic shift in Hol­ly­wood film­mak­ing while remain­ing true to his goth­ic weirdo charm.

Though mar­ket­ed by Warn­er Bros as a world-chang­ing event on its release, the film begins with remark­ably lit­tle fan­fare com­pared to what you’d expect from a super­hero film today. It’s imme­di­ate­ly a more som­bre affair, open­ing with a mon­tage of close ups of twist­ed stone arch­es that are even­tu­al­ly revealed to be the Bat­man logo – all set to Dan­ny Elfman’s excel­lent score. After the open­ing cred­its, the first image we see is the Gotham City sky­line, a shad­owy clus­ter of impos­ing spires reach­ing towards the heav­ens. But the film shies away from high-fly­ing action, shift­ing the action to the streets below. Despite his reser­va­tions about the film Roger Ebert called Burton’s Gotham one of cinema’s great­est cre­ations, and it’s not hard to see why.

Work­ing with Anton Furst, who won the Oscar for Art Direc­tion for his con­tri­bu­tion to the film, Burton’s Gotham wears its influ­ences on its sleeve. It’s a night­mar­ish, Frankenstein’s mon­ster of a city com­prised of a mish­mash of clash­ing visu­al influ­ences, with goth­ic expres­sion­ism meet­ing the style of 1920s Art Deco New York and even the wild dystopia of Ter­ry Gilliam’s Brazil. Twist­ing pipes and strange, angu­lar inte­ri­ors right out of The Cab­i­net of Dr Cali­gari, clash with gar­gan­tu­an stone arch­es; the Gotham City Town Hall is an impos­ing mono­lith that could eas­i­ly fit into the sur­round­ings of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.

The char­ac­ters who inhab­it the film them­selves look out of time, many of those we meet look and talk like they’ve been plucked right out of a ​’40s Hol­ly­wood dra­ma. It’s exact­ly the kind of city that would need defend­ing by a lunatic in a rub­ber bat cos­tume – with com­plete­ly anar­chic city plan­ning to match the streets lying below its hap­haz­ard web of sky­scrap­ers. This image of Gotham was so strik­ing that Bruce Timm and Paul Dini’s Bat­man: The Ani­mat­ed Series ran with it, (even inher­it­ing the film’s design of the Bat­mo­bile and Elfman’s theme) when it began air­ing in 1992, and found great suc­cess itself for this. Even Bob Kane, who cre­at­ed Bat­man 80 years ago, said that when he pic­tured Gotham, he pic­tured the ver­sion that Bur­ton created.

It’s a sharp con­trast to the super­hero films that have now become a Hol­ly­wood norm. Though cos­mic wack­i­ness and camp has to an extent found its way back into the genre (we did see a sin­cere Aqua­man movie and a talk­ing rac­coon hold a promi­nent role in this year’s biggest block­buster, after all), with the excep­tion of a cer­tain ani­mat­ed mul­ti­ver­sal super­hero movie there’s a con­cern­ing lack of inno­va­tion when it comes to world build­ing or visu­al expression.

In the case of the Mar­vel Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse, Kevin Fiege and co have built a com­plex machine that emu­lates the sto­ry­telling struc­ture and edi­to­r­i­al pri­or­i­ties of main­stream super­hero comics – but it often feels like it’s miss­ing a vital piece. Com­ic books are defined by their art as much as their writ­ing; the best ones can speak vol­umes through their pen­cilling and colour­ing alone (one such exam­ple can be found in David Aja and Matt Hollingsworth’s work with writer Matt Frac­tion on Hawk­eye). While Mar­vel Stu­dios has loos­ened its grip in some instances, the con­stant puz­zle piec­ing of the fran­chise hasn’t allowed all that much room for exper­i­men­ta­tion – at least noth­ing as out there as Bat­man or Bat­man Returns (although Spi­der-Man: Into The Spi­der-Verse man­ages this and more).

The char­ac­ters of these films exist in iso­la­tion – even the Thor movies feel detached from Asgard and its inhab­i­tants, restrict­ed to the palace, a por­tal and lit­tle else. Both Burton’s Gotham and Wakan­da ben­e­fit from a ded­i­ca­tion to world build­ing and a sense of place, cre­at­ing some famil­iar­i­ty with the loca­tion the heroes are meant to be pro­tect­ing. The New York City of Sam Raimi’s Spi­der-Man, Wakan­da, Bur­ton and Furst’s Gotham – all have a dis­tinc­tive tone. For the most part, the mem­bers of the Avengers aren’t real­ly anchored to any­where, they’re glo­be­trot­ting movies to the point where even your friend­ly neigh­bour­hood Spi­der-Man from Queens is going abroad for his next adventure.

As the MCU estab­lished its tem­plate for super­hero block­busters, there has been a ten­den­cy of its films to all meet in the mid­dle visu­al­ly. While it’s unclear how much say the direc­tors have had in trans­lat­ing their visu­al style into these adap­ta­tions, the palette is often dom­i­nat­ed by greys and mild oranges and blues. There are excep­tions: Joe Johnston’s Cap­tain Amer­i­ca: The First Avenger leans into a ​’40s adven­ture ser­i­al vibe, James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy embraces Marvel’s poten­tial for cos­mic weird­ness. The visu­al­i­sa­tion of Wakan­da, the tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced afro­fu­tur­ist par­adise of Ryan Coogler’s Black Pan­ther is the clos­est any of Mar­vel Studio’s efforts have come to match­ing Burton’s loopy vision of Gotham, heav­i­ly draw­ing on cin­e­mat­ic influ­ences to build worlds that feel unique to the char­ac­ters that inhab­it them.

It doesn’t help that Mar­vel Studio’s more out­landish visions are most­ly con­struct­ed dig­i­tal­ly (to be fair, a lot of this is out of neces­si­ty), the pre-vis nature that dom­i­nates both the action sequences and their visu­al world-build­ing adds a sense of intan­gi­bil­i­ty that’s hard to shake. Bur­ton and Furst’s use of char­coal back­grounds and minia­tures and ded­i­ca­tion to explor­ing the city at street lev­el may seem rudi­men­ta­ry, but this gave their films a tex­ture that often escapes oth­er super­hero movies – and it exist­ed almost entire­ly on a Pinewood Stu­dios backlot.

Mod­ern super­hero films (and in fair­ness, Bur­ton him­self, con­sid­er­ing his recent track record) could stand to adopt more of the ethos of Furst’s pro­duc­tion design on Bat­man and Bo Welch’s sub­se­quent work on Bat­man Returns, which embraced the sort of intense, fan­tas­ti­cal styl­i­sa­tion found in com­ic books. The most excit­ing and mem­o­rable super­hero movies have leant into the goofy, pulpy styl­i­sa­tion that Bur­ton and Furst and lat­er Sam Rai­mi lead with. It would be nice if, instead of the self-ref­er­enc­ing that we’ve become used to from the MCU, the stu­dio looked out­ward, using cin­e­mat­ic his­to­ry oth­er than their own as build­ing blocks.

Per­haps now that Marvel’s bur­den of build­ing ​‘The Infin­i­ty Saga’ is over, there will be more room to exper­i­ment – and there are few exam­ples bet­ter to fol­low than the one that Bur­ton set. It’s the feel­ing and tex­ture of Gotham that peo­ple still talk about the most in rela­tion to Bat­man, even more so than Jack Nicholson’s per­for­mance. Its mood and atmos­phere has endured more than the sto­ry, which is where the focus of mod­ern super­hero films seems to have shift­ed, at the expense of the excit­ing visu­als that are so intrin­si­cal­ly impor­tant to the best super­hero comics.