Why Bat­man Returns is per­fect Christ­mas view­ing for 2016

Chaos in the streets! Sew­er mutants run­ning for office! Zom­bie sec­re­taries in skin-tight vinyl out for revenge! Crush­ing lone­li­ness! In 1992, Tim Bur­ton unleashed a sequel to Bat­man and left audi­ences with a bad taste in their mouths. The film is an ice-cold explo­ration of dam­aged human­i­ty, and inad­ver­tent­ly serves as the per­fect Christ­mas movie for the sick, sad year that is 2016. It’s Bur­ton at his most fetishis­tic, throw­ing out the source mate­r­i­al and lay­ing his id bare on the screen, con­jur­ing up a nasty, nihilis­tic Christ­mas movie where peace on earth and good­will toward men (and women) is in short supply.

After the block­bust­ing exploits of 1989’s Bat­man, a fol­low-up was inevitable, but Bur­ton had his doubts. He was dumb­found­ed at the con­cept of mak­ing a sequel. Warn­er Bros, des­per­ate to bring Bur­ton back for more bat adven­tures, gave the direc­tor an offer too good to pass up: he could go wild and give the film his own per­son­al stamp of weirdness.

Burton’s first for­ay into the super­hero genre found the direc­tor doing his best to put his own spin on the sto­ry, but there’s a stiff­ness to Bat­man that’s only ele­vat­ed by Jack Nicholson’s over-the-top Jok­er. What­ev­er Bat­man does right, one can’t help but sense that Bur­ton doesn’t tru­ly have a grasp, or even under­stand­ing, on any of his char­ac­ters. That’s the com­plete oppo­site with Bat­man Returns: free to do as he pleas­es, Bur­ton thrives by mak­ing all of his main char­ac­ters as freak­ish and dam­aged as pos­si­ble. And for all their trag­ic flaws, it’s clear that Bur­ton cares about and under­stands his three main leads, the ani­mal­is­tic trio of Bat­man, Cat­woman and the Penguin.

The set-up: it’s Christ­mas time in Gotham. The expres­sion­is­tic archi­tec­ture looms, the snow swirls, the cit­i­zens go about their shop­ping, and chaos is on the cusp of boil­ing over. The only hope the city has is its morose, man­ic-depres­sive defend­er. In Burton’s hands, Bruce Wayne, alias Bat­man (Michael Keaton), is a man who only comes to life when he’s dressed up in black rub­ber and beat­ing the piss out of peo­ple. When he’s not at his vig­i­lante work, Bruce Wayne sits in the dark in his cav­ernous man­sion, semi-comatose until the bat sym­bol blazes through his win­dows and revives him.

In the 1989 film, Bruce Wayne was depict­ed as an enig­ma: a trau­ma­tised orphan seek­ing jus­tice and vengeance. In Bat­man Returns, Bur­ton and Keaton give the char­ac­ter a dif­fer­ent spin. For starters, Bat­man actu­al­ly smiles here – and he does so while dis­patch­ing bad guys. As a char­ac­ter Bat­man may have become defined by his strict rule against killing, but here the Caped Cru­sad­er has no qualms about strap­ping a tick­ing time bomb on a burly thug and flash­ing a grin before kick­ing him into a hole. Here is a Bat­man who non­cha­lant­ly spins his Bat­mo­bile around in order to belch fire at a crook and set him ablaze. He’s also a Bat­man with a sex dri­ve. Through most of the Bat-files, the Dark Knight, for all the girl­friends he’s had, seems bor­der­line asex­u­al. In this film, he finds out­right lust when con­front­ed with the stitched-up vis­age of Cat­woman. The ghost of a grin cross­es his face as she feels along his sculpt­ed tor­so, look­ing for a weak spot to dig in her claws.

Christo­pher Nolan’s Dark Knight tril­o­gy may lay claim to being the first ​“real­is­tic” take on the Bat­man mythol­o­gy, but as this dump­ster fire of a year draws to a close and the hol­i­day sea­son chills its way into everyone’s bones, it’s pret­ty clear that Bat­man Returns is the most true-to-life take on super­heroes and supervil­lains. At the cen­tre of this action movie about a man dressed up as a bat is a polit­i­cal cam­paign put-up job – a sub­plot involv­ing a cor­rupt mil­lion­aire with weird hair attempt­ing to break into pol­i­tics (sound famil­iar?). While Dan­ny DeVito’s grotesque, black-goo Pen­guin and Michelle Pfeiffer’s slinky, pos­si­bly super­nat­ur­al Cat­woman are on hand to be the then-lat­est entries in Batman’s rogues gallery, the true vil­lain of Bat­man Returns is Christo­pher Walken as Max Shreck.

A thug with a New York accent and a pen­chant for erect­ing tall build­ings that bear his name, Shreck has cor­rupt busi­ness deal­ings and a mur­der­ous tem­pera­ment. When his sec­re­tary Seli­na Kyle acci­den­tal­ly uncov­ers his ille­gal activ­i­ties, he push­es her out of a sky­scraper win­dow – an event that back­fires when Sele­nia is res­ur­rect­ed from death as Cat­woman after a horde of fer­al cats swarm over her life­less body. Shreck, mean­while, hatch­es a plot to take over Gotham by putting The Pen­guin into the mayor’s office. Aban­doned as a child for his defor­mi­ties, The Pen­guin has spent his life in Gotham’s sew­ers. Once The Pen­guin steps out of the shad­ows and into the lime­light, Shreck sees oppor­tu­ni­ty. He con­cocts a smoke-and-mir­rors polit­i­cal cam­paign where­in the Pen­guin struts out before the elec­torate and essen­tial­ly promis­es to Make Gotham Great Again, with­out giv­ing any real insight into how he plans to do this.

Bat­man Returns’ tone is steeped in dark­ness and cyn­i­cism, but it has more faith in the pop­u­lace than per­haps war­rant­ed. After Bat­man records, and then leaks, damming audio reveal­ing how cor­rupt and vile the Pen­guin is, the cit­i­zens turn on the can­di­date and pelt him with rot­ten toma­toes. It’s a nice thought – that once con­front­ed with the truth, the vot­ers will wise up. But as 2016 painful­ly proved, this notion is more fan­tas­ti­cal than that of a man dressed up like a crime-fight­ing bat. Per­haps even more unre­al­is­tic: a glim­mer of good things to come. Because when the dust set­tles and Bat­man Returns draws to a close on a snowy Christ­mas Day, there’s a mod­icum of hope. ​“Well, come what may. Mer­ry Christ­mas, Mis­ter Wayne,” says Batman’s trust­ed but­ler Alfred. ​“Mer­ry Christ­mas, Alfred,” replies the haunt­ed, scarred Bruce Wayne. ​“Good will toward men…and women.” We should all be so lucky.