June 23, 1989: The science fiction comedy film Honey, I Shrunk the Kids premieres. Unfortunately for everyone involved, it premieres on the same day as another film, resulting in, "Honey, Batman shrunk our box office receipts."
Because Tim Burton's Batman also premieres, starring Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne, Kim Basinger as his love interest Vicki Vale, Robert Wuhl as newspaper photographer Alexander Knox, who works with Vale, Jack Nicholson as the Joker, and a very Burtonesque model as Gotham City, permanently entrenching its reputation as a dark, foreboding place.
Keaton, a native of the Pittsburgh area, was born Michael John Douglas. After becoming famous, he told both singer turned talk-show host Mike Douglas and actor Michael Douglas that he had to change his name because of him. He didn't choose his stage name out of admiration for actors Buster Keaton or Diane Keaton: He flipped through a phone book, opened it to "K," and chose "Keaton" because, "it sounded reasonable and inoffensive."
The hype for the film reached Star Wars levels. The Batlogo was everywhere. Prince had already released his song "Batdance," which ended up being cut from the film, but went on to hit Number 1 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100, anyway. (His song "Partyman" was kept as the soundtrack for a Joker caper, and Danny Elfman's score was widely praised.)
The hype got to be a bit much. A week before the film premiered at my local mall, I saw a man walking past the mall's theater, where the poster was already on the wall, wearing a T-shirt saying "BATMAN SUCKS." He was, like many of us, already sick of it all.
And many of us were very skeptical of Keaton, at this point better known for comedies like Mr. Mom and Gung Ho. Although, in hindsight, 2 movies he starred in the year before were foreshadowing: The horror comedy Beetlejuice showed he could carry a big-budget fantasy film, and Heath Ledger's 2008 version of the Joker looked more like Keaton's Beetlejuice than like any previous version o the villain; while, in Clean and Sober, his ranting in a rehab center made him look like Nicholson did in the psych ward in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest -- which was produced and directed by Michael Douglas.
But... Michael Keaton? As Batman? A character who, following DC's 1986 reboot following Crisis On Infinite Earths, had gone back to his original, gritty, 1939 "Dark Knight" roots?
Keaton probably benefited a little from the last live-action version being Adam West, who played the character on the 1966-68 ABC TV series, and in NBC's even campier 1979 special Legends of the Superheroes. Since hardly anybody remembered the 1940s movie serials with Lewis Wilson and Robert Lowery, West would be the standard for him. But could it possibly live up to the hype?
It did, and, in spite of my low expectations, Keaton did a great job as Batman: It would be years before West's take on the character could again be taken seriously as the Caped Crusader. (Eventually, all his seemingly silly Bat-gadgets would feed into the myth of "Batman and prep time.") Nor could Cesar Romero's take on the Joker be considered definitive any longer: With all his previous crazy-man roles, Nicholson was the only legitimate choice at the time, and he knocked it out of the park. It reminded people who only knew the 1960s series that Batman is no joke, and that the Joker is a homicidal maniac first and a guy with a clown theme second.
Michael Gough played butler Alfred Pennyworth, Pat Hingle played Police Commissioner James Gordon, and Billy Dee Williams played District Attorney Harvey Dent -- who ends the film not yet having faced the attack that would turn him into the gangster Two-Face.
Burton directed Keaton again in 1992, in Batman Returns, with Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman, Danny DeVito as the Penguin, and Christopher Walken as secondary villain Max Schreck. Gough and Hingle returned, but Williams did not.
But intra-studio chaos changed things, and Burton dropped out of the franchise, replaced by Joel Schumacher, and he looked like he was trying to combine the Gothicness and serious take of the Burtonverse with the bright colors and silliness of the Sixties series. And it just didn't work.
In 1995, Batman Forever featured Val Kilmer, introduced Chris O'Donnell as a way-too-old Robin, Nicole Kidman as psychologist and love interest Chase Meridian, Jim Carrey as the Riddler, and Tommy Lee Jones, who looked nothing like Williams, taking over as a Harvey Dent who had fully become Two-Face. Gough and Hingle returned.
In 1997, again with Schumacher directing, Batman & Robin kept O'Donnell, Gough and Hingle. But Batman was now played by George Clooney, who looked more like the comics' version of Bruce than any actor ever has, but fell a bit flat in the Batsuit. Alicia Silverstone is introduced as Batgirl, but, instead of being Barbara Gordon, the Commissioner's daughter, as the character usually is, in this film, she's Barbara Wilson, Alfred's niece.
Arnold Schwarzenegger played Mr. Freeze, Uma Thurman played botanist turned supervillain Pamela Isley, a.k.a. Poison Ivy, and Robert Swenson plays Bane. John Glover plays Jason Woodrue, a botanist who becomes the villain Floronic Man in the comics, but, here, is killed by Ivy as revenge for his perverse experiments before he can take on a villain identity.
Batman & Robin came closer than any villain has ever done to "killing Batman." Over the next few years, the WB Network series Birds of Prey and the standalone film Catwoman with Halle Berry were Batman-themed projects with no Batman in them, and they flopped. It took a complete reboot in the next decade, under director Christopher Nolan, to bring the character back to where he was under Burton.
In 2014, Keaton won an Academy Award for Birdman, playing an aging actor trying to be taken seriously onstage, years after having played a superhero in movies.
(UPDATE: Keaton returned as an older Bruce Wayne, having eliminated crime in Gotham, but called out of retirement to help save the world, in the 2023 film The Flash.)
*
June 23, 1989 was a Friday. These Major League Baseball games were played:
* The New York Yankees lost to the Kansas City Royals, 3-0 at Royals Stadium (now Kauffman Stadium) in Kansas City. Mark Gubicza allowed 8 hits, but went the distance on a shutout, outpitching Dave Eiland. George Brett went 0-for-3, but had an RBI on a sacrifice fly. Don Mattingly went 1-for-4. Dave Winfield missed the entire season with a back injury.
* The New York Mets beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 9-3 at Shea Stadium. Bob Ojeda got the win, while Ken Howell didn't make it out of the 4th inning. Dave Magadan went 3-for-4 with a walk and an RBI, while Lee Mazzilli, Mookie Wilson and Kevin McReynolds each got 2 hits.
* The Minnesota Twins beat the Boston Red Sox, 10-0 at Fenway Park in Boston. Frank Viola pitched 8 innings of 6-hit shutout ball, and Randy St. Claire pitched a perfect 9th. Gary Gaetti went 3-for-5 with 2 home runs and 5 RBIs. Dan Gladden went 3-for-5 with 2 RBIs. Kirby Puckett went 0-for-4 with a walk.
* The Houston Astros beat the Atlanta Braves, 5-2 at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium.
* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Pittsburgh Penguins, 3-2 at Three Rivers Stadium. Barry Bonds went 0-for-4.
* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 3-1 at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati.
* The Montreal Expos beat the Chicago Cubs, 5-1 at Wrigley Field in Chicago.
* A doubleheader was split at Milwaukee County Stadium. The Milwaukee Brewers won the opener, 17-5. The Chicago White Sox won the nightcap, 6-4. Unlike Bears vs. Packers, and Bulls vs. Blackhawks, White Sox vs. Brewers was never much of a rivalry, mainly because they were only in the same Division in 1970 and 1971, and the Brewers were moved to the National League in 1998.
Over the 2 games, for the Brew Crew, Rob Deer went 3-for-6 with 3 solo home runs, Robin Yount went 4-for-10 with 5 RBIs, Paul Molitor went 3-for-10 with an RBI, Glenn Braggs went 4-for-8 with a walk, and Gary Sheffield went 2-for-9 with an RBI.
For the Pale Hose, Steve Lyons went 4-for-10, Iván Calderón went 2-for-9 with a home run and 2 RBIs, Daryl Boston went 4-for-8 with an RBI, Ozzie Guillén went 3-for-8, Carlton Fisk went 2-for-6; and Dan Pasqua went 2-for-7 with 2 home runs and 3 RBIs, having replaced Harold Baines had to leave the opener early due to being hit by a pitch, and did not appear in the nightcap.
* The Texas Rangers beat the Cleveland Indians, 4-0 at Arlington Stadium in the Dallas suburb of Arlington, Texas. Mike Jeffcoat pitched a 4-hit shutout.
* The San Francisco Giants beat the San Diego Padres, 8-7 at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego. Will Clark went 2-for-3 with a home run, 2 walks and 2 RBIs. Tony Gwynn went 1-for-3.
* The California Angels beat the Baltimore Orioles, 5-1 at Anaheim Stadium (now Angel Stadium of Anaheim). Mike Witt outpitched Dave Schmidt. Claudell Washington and Jack Howell homered for the Halos. Cal Ripken went 2-for-4, but the rest of the O's combined only got 4 hits.
* The Toronto Blue Jays beat the Oakland Athletics, 10-8 at the Oakland Coliseum. Junior Félix went 4-for-5 with 2 RBIs. Kelly Gruber went 3-for-5 with 3 RBIs. For the A's, Rickey Henderson went 1-for-4 with a walk.
* And the Detroit Tigers beat the Seattle Mariners, 5-4 at the Kingdome in Seattle. Jay Buhner, Jeffrey Leonard, and a 19-year-old rookie named Ken Griffey Jr. hit home runs for the M's. But it wasn't enough, because the Tigers scored 2 runs in the top of the 9th inning to win it.
No comments:
Post a Comment