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Batman (1989) More at IMDbPro »

The following FAQ entries may contain spoilers. Only the biggest ones (if any) will be covered with spoiler tags. Spoiler tags have been used sparingly in order to make the page more readable.

For detailed information about the amounts and types of (a) sex and nudity, (b) violence and gore, (c) profanity, (d) alcohol, drugs, and smoking, and (e) frightening and intense scenes in this movie, consult the IMDb Parents Guide for this movie. The Parents Guide for Batman can be found here.

Because in this film he dies. Warner Brothers originally intended to use the Joker in other Batman sequels. One original script for Batman Returns involved a newspaper story claiming the Joker's body had mysteriously disappeared. Later, when producers believed George Clooney would return as Batman in the 5th movie, ideas were generated involving Scarecrow applying his hallucinatory formula to Batman, who would see Nicholson as the Joker in his nightmarish visions. After Batman & Robin did poorly at the box office, and George Clooney vowed never to wear the cape and cowl again, those plans were scrapped, though Scarecrow and his hallucinogen were eventually used in Batman Begins. Prior to the Batman Begins reboot, Warner Brothers considered doing a Batman Beyond live action film. Nicholson was in talks to reprise his role as the Joker.

How the young Bruce Wayne grew up into a martial artist vigilante named Batman is explained more clearly in Batman Begins, the series reboot. His anger clearly drives his obsession to prevent such an event from happening to anyone else. Based on his own scarred psyche, he pledges to stop what happened to him from repeating.

This is the question that, oddly enough, doesn't get answered until Batman Forever. The source of Bruce choosing to become a 6-foot bat comes from his fear of bats when he was younger and his decision to use that fear against his enemies. This is also discussed in the comic version, in Detective Comics #33, and further evolved in Batman #47, where Bruce was sitting in his den, trying to figure out what symbol he could take. "Criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot," Wayne remarks, "so my disguise must be able to strike terror into their hearts. I must be a creature of the night, black, terrible..." As if responding to his desires, a bat suddenly flies through the window, inspiring Bruce to assume the persona of Batman. This scene also occurs in Frank Miller's Batman: Year One.

She screamed a total of 21 times.

The Batwing.

The front cover of the DVD case, the Batwing, and the Bat Signal all have an image of the traditional Bat insignia. However, on his chest, it looks different because there are two additional spikes at the bottom.

Contrary to what some may think, Batman '89 is actually a very faithful representation of the original Golden Age Batman comics written by Bob Kane. In these early stories, Batman was more cynical than in later depictions, and his zero-tolerance approach to crime often saw him killing his adversaries without hesitation. This violent depiction of the character was gradually modified over time by writers such as Dick Sprang and Denny O'Neil in order to implement the "no kills" policy which has remained in effect ever since. Thus, the incongruities between the Michael Keaton Batman and the one played by Christian Bale are indicative of the differences between the original Earth-Two Batman and the one seen in the current Post-Crisis canon. The characterisation of Batman/Bruce Wayne in this film was also influenced by Frank Miller's 'The Dark Knight Returns' (1986), the primary text that Michael Keaton used as a reference for his performance.

The first act of Sam Hamm's script was largely based on the very first Batman story ever printed: 'The Case of the Chemical Syndicate' (Detective Comics #27, 1939). Consequently, Batman's first two onscreen appearances correspond with his first two comic book appearances: he is first seen fighting two thugs on a rooftop (this was also referenced in the opening credits of Bruce Timm's Batman: The Animated Series), then he appears a second time when confronting a group of mobsters in a chemical plant.

The climax of 'The Case of the Chemical Syndicate' saw Batman knocking the villain Stryker into a vat of chemicals, whereas the Axis chemical plant sequence in Batman '89 culminates in Batman failing to prevent Jack Napier from falling into a vat of some unknown chemical substance. This is a reference to 'The Man Behind the Red Hood' (Detective Comics #168, 1951), a story in which the Joker was revealed to have formerly been a small-time criminal known as the Red Hood. According to this story, the Red Hood was confronted by Batman during a robbery and attempted to evade capture by jumping into a chemical waste basin. He then emerged from the chemicals with bleached white skin, bright red lips and green hair. This story was later revised by Alan Moore in his classic graphic novel 'The Killing Joke' (1988), which Tim Burton has cited as the primary comic book influence on Batman '89.

The Joker's origin story given in Batman '89 is more or less the same as the one from Detective Comics #168, with the only significant differences being the absence of the Red Hood persona and the fact that the Joker has a real name: Jack Napier. The Joker's true name has never been revealed in the comics and he has only ever been referred to by his famous moniker. Although the Jack Napier identity was later incorporated into the Bruce Timm animated series, it has never been used in the official comic book canon.

The plot twist exposing the Joker as the murderer of Bruce Wayne's parents has no basis in the comics whatsoever. The comics have always either depicted the Waynes' killer as Joe Chill, or else not disclosed his identity at all. The decision to make the Joker the killer was Tim Burton's and did not meet with the approval of screenwriter Sam Hamm. The plot twist was actually approved by Bob Kane himself, and Michael Uslan has quoted Kane in his introduction to 'Batman in the Fifties' as saying that he would have made the Joker the killer of Batman's parents in the comics had he invented the character when he first wrote Batman's origin story.

Bruce Wayne's friendships with both Commissioner Gordon and Harvey Dent are mostly glossed over in this film, whereas they are much more important in the comics. The movie does suggest that these characters are friends, but does so in a fairly obscure manner: Bruce Wayne's place was reserved beside Gordon at Dent's campaign dinner and later in the film we see both Gordon and Dent in attendance at Wayne's dinner party. However, we never see Wayne interacting with them in person.

Actor Pat Hingle elaborates on Gordon's back-story on the DVD extras, revealing that the figure holding Bruce Wayne's hand in the photograph of him as a child was in fact Gordon, and that since he had comforted the young boy on the night of his parents' murder the two had struck up a longstanding friendship. This reflects the chummy relationship between the two characters in the early Bob Kane stories. Oddly enough, Jim Gordon in the series reboot Batman Begins comforts the young Bruce Wayne as well.

The sequence in which Batman uses the Batwing's armaments to take down the Joker's snipers during the parade has its basis in a very similar scene from 'The Giants of Hugo Strange' (Batman #1, 1940) in which Batman uses the machine gun aboard the Batplane to gun down a group of mobsters who were attempting to attack the city. Interestingly, it was this story that prompted comic editor Whitney Ellsworth to create the "no kills" policy. The Keaton-Batman does not adopt this rule until he meets Catwoman in the sequel, Batman Returns (1992).

The final showdown between Batman and the Joker seems to have been inspired by their climatic fight in The Riddle of the Missing Card (Batman #5, 1941). This story, like the movie, ends with Batman pursuing the Joker up a winding staircase within a large gothic building. In The Riddle of the Missing Card it is a lighthouse, whereas in the movie it is a cathedral. In both versions the two characters end up fighting on a balcony and the Joker manages to knock Batman over the railing so that he is forced to hang on by his fingertips. The Joker then attempts to make his opponent fall by stamping on his fingers. The Joker's fate is the same in both 'The Riddle of the Missing Card' and Batman '89, although the outcome in the comic is influenced by the involvement of Robin, who does not feature in this film.

Kim Basinger's character was actually based on Silver St. Cloud rather than the Vicki Vale of the comics. Silver's creator, Steve Englehart, had worked on an early draft of the script for Batman '89 and had written the character into the storyline as the central love interest. Owing to this character's relative obscurity at the time of the film's production, the script was rewritten to amalgamate Silver with the better known character of Vicki Vale. While Basinger's character bears a superficial resemblance to Vale (her name and background in journalism), her actual characterisation retains strong similarities with the Silver St. Cloud character. The Vicki Vale in this movie discovers Batman's true identity, something that her comic book equivalent never became aware of. Silver St. Cloud, on the other hand, found out that Bruce Wayne was Batman, and this knowledge ultimately placed a strain on their relationship that resulted in them splitting up. We find out in Batman Returns (1992) that Bruce and Vicki's relationship came to a similar conclusion.

The Batsuit in the comics has traditionally been depicted as grey and black/blue, whereas in this film it was just plain black. The Batsuit in the film was designed in such a way as to exaggerate the musculature of the actor playing Batman in order to better resemble the way the character is drawn in the comics. It was also designed to increase Michael Keaton's height, as in real life he is four inches shorter than the 6'2 height given in the comics. To date, the only actor to have played Batman whose height matched the comic book version was Adam West.

In this particular film, the Bat-emblem on Batman's chest is not the same as the one from the comics. It has two additional points, which strangely enough did not feature on the movie poster or any of the merchandising. In Batman Returns (1992) the new costume would sport the traditional emblem.