In Praise of 'Batman Forever'

by Matt Ealer

The first time I heard Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds was on the soundtrack for Joel Schumacher’s 1995 Warner Brothers superhero blockbuster and subsequent cultural whipping-boy Batman Forever. Ol’ Nick the Stripper has famously donned the hair shirt for his involvement in the album, calling it a cynical cash-grab. I think that’s pretty stupid, given that the song he contributed to the record encapsulates, in just a few minutes, all the things I think are important about Batman. This is far better than director Christopher Nolan would later do with six whole hours.

Here we have Nick in the character of a burnt-out former hep cat, like a Steely Dan song run through a meat-grinder, looking at his mates in The Big City and being disgusted by them; the greed, the depravity, the lack of bottom. The lack of soul. Priests with blood on their chins, God too pissed up in heaven to bring down the Armageddon. And there’s these kids standing around. What are these fucking kids gonna do, man?

Well, they’re looking to the sky, Daddio. They’re looking to the sky because there’s a motherfucking Bat-signal shining against the dirty gray clouds. This is the thing. Sure Batman is about the dirt and the grit and the evils of the suspicious and cowardly lot. But it’s also about a man who decides to rise above that-who literally becomes that light shining in the sky.

If you forget for a second that Batman is supposed to be salvation in a blue cowl and light gray tights, if you keep him down in the muck, then you’ve lost the soul of Batman. You’ve missed the point. This song-it’s called There Is A Light, after all-contains the point in it!

Producer Peter MacGregor-Scott filled the record with songs that were not of but “inspired by” the movie in an attempt to make the movie “more pop.” Which is also kind of silly, in that the songs that were added were kind of less pop — U2 and Seal were in it, the great Lenny Kravitz penned/produced/played track with Brandy emitting a smokey slow burn over tight but unobtrusive funk was too. On the other hand, I wouldn’t call Jeremy Enigk bellowing non-words to serrated post-hardcore riffs “pop.”

Also, the movie itself was already plenty pop! All the movie references in the costumes, the pop psychology in the dialogue, Chris O’Donnell playing Dick Grayson like the hip, eventually decimated Jason Todd, explosions and a light-up Batmobile facing off with stylized ’40s gangster rides.

This movie, for me, feels more like the first third of Glamorama, when Victor Ward is still in New York being glitzily fabulous amongst the ruin of America’s soul, than any other film explicitly made under the guise of being a Bret Easton Ellis film has felt like Bret Easton Ellis. It’s all the best parts of Warhol and Lichtenstein turned inside out and devoured.

As such, a thing the movie and the soundtrack both do with excellent aplomb is dole out sugary, true religion pop with a biting undercurrent of darkness. Sure, Tommy Lee Jones’ Two-Face is hacky and ridiculous. But he’s also a Demented Elvis Impersonator in a way that Kurt and Kevin could only have hoped to be in that movie about the Demented Elvis Impersonators.

And half his face is explicitly a big purple, festering bruise! The shitty one-liners start to take on this cosmic resonance that no Big Important Speech issuing from pretty, pretty Aaron Eckhart, later in the same role, ever could. Because really, if you were Two-Face, would you take long monologues about The Nature of Evil, or would you cackle along to your own horrid jokes? I think you would cackle, cackler!

The film and soundtrack are all like this. Bits of pop culture turning inward and eating themselves because, at base, we are all complete wackos. (That’s a technical term.) Billowing clouds of black, soot and shadows both, shot through with neon green. (Fuck the orange/blue contrast!) Towers of Greek Adoni given to fascism next to circus freaks and tribal native cultural tourism. A dazzling playground that will kill you.

And Batman has to sort this out. He becomes both Bruce Wayne and Batman — maybe because he wants to, but also because we need him to. People with this idea that Batman has to stay in a Bat-olescence, a teen constantly crying over his fucking parents, seem pretty childish to me. Batman has to grow up eventually. Because if not, we’re left with that dick Superman as the undisputed head of the DC Universe, and NOBODY WANTS THAT.

So why the animosity? Why the Razzies and hatred? Well, the given reason is crass commercialism, that the movie was more a toy ad than a film. Some will just reply, “Nicole Kidman,” but they say that about Eyes Wide Shut too so I don’t pay them no mind.

Surely no one’s winning an Oscar here, but the idea that Ledger’s disjointed and weirdly ham-handed take on the Joker deserved one is a bit of a fluke anyway. This is a genre film, and while I think the best of them can rise above that (Superman: The Movie, Batman Returns, and uh, yeah), we’re looking for symbols and signifiers, not immortal reincarnations of the Bard.

So let’s step back a bit to Two-Face. Here we have a sociopath that actually plays out the Madonna-whore complex in his villain lair; lending a sociopathic air to the Madonna-whore construct itself and foreshadowing the expert deconstruction of heteronormativity in general that will come in Batman and Robin. (Oh yes, it will.)

Okay, I’m not going to turn this into a Batman and Robin defense, that is for another day. But there was a good deal of gender politics put into these two mainstream Hollywood superhero blockbusters aimed at moving action figures and Happy Meals, and I don’t think that gets dealt with enough. I mean, Batman is approached for a make-out session by a Dr. Chase Meridian, naked but for a virginal pure white sheet, who then tells him to buzz off in favor Bruce Wayne. (AND, I MEAN, POISON IVY IS A WALKING VAGINA DENTATA.)

Comics scribe and zen drug guru Grant Morrison was right to call these movies “the gay Batman” (I don’t think he was quite right to tell you to “switch off your brain,” but I’ll take what I can get). I think a lot of the critical reaction against these movies, from a fanboy (and oh do I mean BOY!) perspective, comes from a deeply homophobic place. The fanboys recognized these threads and were frightened by an openly gay director putting nipples on the Batsuit, challenging heteronormative relationships by making them look dull as death on one hand and psychosis-inducing on the other.

Remember, this is from a creative milieu that overreacted to the certain perceptions of nature of Bruce and Dick’s relationship by making it an ironclad part of Dick’s character that he has slept with EVERY SINGLE FEMALE CHARACTER in the entire DC Universe. Don’t even get me started on the atrocious gender politics of the Nolan films, notable for the great feat of making even the superhero genre more retrograde. (No seriously, just let me stop here. I am not kidding.)

But hey, maybe I’m totally off base here and should quit harshing on bros in my style. Fine! I think the cries of commercialism look a little different now in the midst of a crumbled music industry and a crumbling movie industry hanging on by its 3-D glasses. Batman Forever is a perfect product — the film and the album work perfectly together and complement each other. Toys are toys and any mainstream superhero film will have them. (Your thousand-dollar Dark Knight mini-statue is a toy, nerd.) But these two things that actually may be considered and criticized as art work a wonderful balance between the light and dark, the camp and grit that is Batman.

Look, I don’t even necessarily agree with the Batman/Bruce Wayne conceit as set up in this film. (I’m much more of the belief that there is a third persona, Batman with his mask off in the Batcave, the one that only Alfred and Dick Grayson and maybe Superman know, the one played so convincingly by the incomparable Michael Keaton chewing on his glasses thinking over Jack Napier or Oswald Cobblepot or pulling a Cat-claw out of himself with a forlorn but not loveless sigh.)

But it provides a great place to start. And, again to Morrison, I’m a big believer in the contention that those who care about this character should care about Bob Haney’s groovy social justice Masked Manhunter the same amount they should care about Frank Miller’s keening, petulant Dark Knight.

And no one has ever shot the Batman-falling-through-space scene the way Schumacher did — hurling himself after a bound and gagged Robin and Chase rushing to a watery grave, the blast and *chink* as the Bat-grapple clings to the hard surface, Elliot Goldenthal’s triumphant, awe-struck score pushing down with the rushing winds then rising up from the tide below like a chorus of angels to lift our hero up. It’s an iconic element of the Batman lore, that he — just a man — can do this thing. And no one has even gotten it more correct. It still gives me goosebumps.

So mainly what I’m saying is, your entrance was good; his was better. The difference? Showmanship.

Matt Ealer can see your bat signal.