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Batman Research Info

Batman Research Info Batman: (Danny Elfman) This was Elfman's breakthrough score, catapulting him into the mainstream scoring business. Many traditionally classical composers may find fault with Elfman's dark and uniquely strange score for Batman (or, for that matter, any of Elfman's scores), but it doesn't change the fact that Batman was one of the highpoints for soundtracks of the 1980's. Even without the same training as many of the other top composers of this era, tributes to such classical masters as Holst, Orff, Strauss, Wagner, and others are inserted by Elfman, along with his own Gothic and operatic style. With Batman, Elfman first showed a talent of composing for large orchestras that wasn't widely known up to that time. The main theme is the best Batman theme ever conceived --and it is a great shame, with due respect to Elliot Goldenthal, that the Batman series abandoned the great theme halfway through. Throw in the multitude of secondary themes in Batman and you get a remarkably complete score. The Joker's tinkering little magic box theme is zany enough to parallel Jack Nicholson's idiotic grin, and the mysterious cello theme is brooding enough to make the audience curious and yet fearful of learning more about Bruce Wayne's past. The love theme is likewise dark, and although it didn't work completely with Kim Basinger's persona, it suffices. The main Batman fanfare dominates the screen during a few key points of the movie, and really enhances the depth of the film: specifically, the drumroll when Bruce Wayne opens up his costume closet to get into his armour and fight the Joker one last time, and the finale, in which the camera pulls up from the city street to reveal Batman and the spotlight on the sky --the buildup with bells and brass is enormously fun. Never again would Elfman or Elliot Goldenthal capture the same momentum, though Goldenthal's main theme for the third and fourth sequels were a creative mutation of Elfman's original theme. Perhaps the best testament to the effectiveness of Elfman's conception of the theme is its continual use in the trailers for even the most recent Batman films. Most interestingly, Elfman first thought up the tune on an airplane ride, and went to the toilet so he could hum the tune into a tape recorder in private... And I suppose "fun" would be a good way to describe the entire score. It is so reminiscent of the overtures that a person would hear from a European symphony 200 years ago; like the film, Batman a timeless composition. A considerable team of composers and orchestrators, conductors worked on this score, and the effort shows. It's mixed well with the film and the percussion never drowns out the rest of the orchestra. This CD is a classic and I recommend it to everyone. In sales, it has rivaled Prince's song album for the film even ten years after the initial release of both albums. And even though Elfman employed the same theme a few years later in Batman Returns, that sequel (as well as Goldenthal's contributions for the other sequels) fails to come even close to the original ***** Tim Burton is an imaginative filmmaker with an obsession for the visual aspects of films, especially the darker motifs. After his quirky 1988 movie BEETLEJUICE starring Michael Keaton, in 1989 he resurrected the BATMAN series, which was last seen in the 1960s TV series with Adam West and Burt Ward. As the lead, Burton again cast Keaton, but the script by Sam Hamm and Warren Skaaren has a Robin who is AWOL. When reviving a series or a movie, there should be an idea of what new can be said. Burton's vision was that he wanted a dark Gotham City and little more. Anton Furst's Academy Award winning sets are massive monuments to nothingness. They are ugly without form or purpose, but they do create just the right mood of hopelessness and despair that Burton wanted. (An experiment worth making would be to turn off the sound and see if the movie has just about as much impact, which it probably would.) BATMAN is a celebration of form over story. Keaton's Batman is serious and broody. His would-be girlfriend, Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger), provides a plastic beauty. The chemistry between Keaton and Basinger never becomes believable. Batman is too cerebral to care, and Vale too untouchable to really get involved. Regardless of what transpires, their love appears like little more than unconvincing flirting. The show drags along until Jack Napier, played by Jack Nicholson in one of his lesser performances, tangles with Batman and loses. The resulting accident destroys Napier's looks so he comes back as The Joker, a guy with a clown's make-up. ("Wait 'til they get a load of me," he brags.) The Joker gets most of the film's few good lines. "The pen is truly mightier than the sword," he proclaims after killing someone by throwing a pen into his throat. Other than the comic book story and the sets, the only other things else worth seeing are Batman's toys. Chief among these is his gadget laden Batmobile. If Franz Kafka had ever made a comic book, it would undoubtedly resemble this version of BATMAN - dark and depressing, but holding a certain undeniable fascination nevertheless. BATMAN runs too long at 2:06. It is rated PG-13 for its cartoonish violence. My son Jeffrey, age 8, liked it, but not nearly as much as his favorite, BATMAN FOREVER. As much as I admire the technical details of the film, I cannot recommend the movie, but I do give it ** for its visual impact. The Gotham City created in "Batman" is one of the most distinctive and atmospheric places I've seen in the movies. It's a shame something more memorable doesn't happen there. "Batman" is a triumph of design over story, style over substance - a great-looking movie with a plot you can't care much about. All of the big moments in the movie are pounded home with ear-shattering sound effects and a jackhammer cutting style, but that just serves to underline the movie's problem, which is a curious lack of suspense and intrinsic interest. "Batman" discards the recent cultural history of the Batman character - the camp 1960s TV series, the in-joke comic books - and returns to the mood of the 1940s, the decade of film noir and fascism. The movie is set at the present moment, more or less, but looks as if little has happened in architecture or city planning since the classic DC comic books created that architectural style you could call Comic Book Moderne. The streets of Gotham City are lined with bizarre skyscrapers that climb cancerously toward the sky, held up (or apart) by sky bridges and stresswork that look like webs against the night sky. At street level, gray and anonymous people scurry fearfully through the shadows, and the city cancels its 200th anniversary celebration because the streets are not safe enough to hold it. Gotham is in the midst of a wave of crime and murder orchestrated by The Joker (Jack Nicholson), and civilization is defended only by Batman (Michael Keaton). The screenplay takes a bow in the direction of the origin of the Batman story (young Bruce Wayne saw his parents murdered by a thug and vowed to use their fortune to dedicate his life to crime-fighting), and it also explains how The Joker got his fearsome grimace. Then it turns into a gloomy showdown between the two bizarre characters. Nicholson's Joker is really the most important character in the movie - in impact and screen time - and Keaton's Batman and Bruce Wayne characters are so monosyllabic and impenetrable that we have to remind ourselves to cheer for them. Kim Basinger strides in as Vicky Vale, a famous photographer assigned to the Gotham City crime wave, but although she and Wayne carry on a courtship and Batman rescues her from certain death more than once, there's no chemistry and little eroticism. The strangest scene in the movie may be the one where Vicky is brought into the Batcave by Alfred, the faithful valet, and realizes for the first time that Bruce Wayne and Batman are the same person. How does she react? She doesn't react. The movie forgets to allow her to be astonished. Remembering the movie, I find that the visuals remain strong in my mind, but I have trouble caring about what happened in front of them. I remember an astonishing special effects shot that travels up, up to the penthouse of a towering, ugly skyscraper, and I remember the armor slamming shut on the Batmobile as if it were a hightech armadillo. I remember The Joker grinning beneath a hideous giant balloon as he dispenses free cash in his own travesty of the Macy's parade, and I remember a really vile scene in which he defaces art masterpieces in the local museum before Batman crashes in through the skylight. But did I care about the relationship between these two caricatures? Did either one have the depth of even a comic book character? Not really. And there was something off-putting about the anger beneath the movie's violence. This is a hostile, mean-spirited movie about ugly, evil people, and it doesn't generate the liberating euphoria of the Superman or Indiana Jones pictures. It's classified PG-13, but it's not for kids. Should it be seen, anyway? Probably. Director Tim Burton and his special effects team have created a visual place that has some of the same strength as Fritz Lang's Metropolis or Ridley Scott's futuristic Los Angeles in "Blade Runner." The gloominess of the visuals has a haunting power. Nicholson has one or two of his patented moments of inspiration, although not as many as I would have expected. And the music by Prince, intercut with classics, is effectively joined in the images. The movie's problem is that no one seemed to have any fun making it, and it's hard to have much fun watching it. It's a depressing experience. Is the opposite of comic book "tragic book"? A truly over-the-top score from Danny Elfman, dominated by a brassy theme, with many moments of eccentric madness and dark humour, just like the visuals of the film. The score takes some effort to love, as you certainly have to be in the mood to sit down, listen intently, to get the most out of the compositions. All the same, a landmark score for action films, that works well for the film, and still remains lively when heard independently. The performance by The Sinfonia Of London Orchestra is among their best. Trav's Track : [18] Waltz To The Death : Elfman scores the most memorable musical moment of the film, with this comically, devilish waltz that sparkles with classical style. Batman marks a pinnacle in Danny Elfman's colorful career. The theme itself standing aside as one of the most recognizable and classic themes written. Utilizing every section of the orchestra, Eflman created a dark, humorous, and thrilling score to Burton's comic masterpiece. Though the tracks are curiously out of order. It doesn't harm your listening experience. "Kitchen, Surgery, Face-Off" shows off some of The Joker's twisted humor with a mock sounding circus motif near the close of the track. The hilarity is carried on into "Flowers" and "Clown Attack". One of the most intriguing and impressive tracks, "Decent Into Mystery" though sadly short, employs a very impressive chorus under the weight of the theme.* The closing tracks feature full hard-hitting action. "Attack Of The Batwing", "Up The Cathedral" and the very enjoyable mock waltz "Waltz To The Death". Nicely wrapping up with a powerful "Finale" and a reprise of the Batman theme. Easily one of Elfman's finest scores, it packs a punch with great thematic drive and that unique Elfman sound. Performed by THE SINFONIA OF LONDON ORCHESTRA Additional Orchestrations by SHIRLEY WALKER and STEVEN SCOTT SMALLEY Music Editors: BOB BADAMI, ROBIN CLARKE Second Engineers: "YOUNG" JONATHAN MORTON and STEVE PRICE Digital Editing and Mastering: BRUCE BOTNICK at DIGITAL MAGNETICS Executive Album Producers: JON PETERS, PETER GUBER Executive in Charge for Warner Bros: GARY LeMEL Bibliography: Pearson, Roberta E. and William Uricchio, eds. 1991. The Many Lives of the Batman. New York: Routledge.

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