Batman must battle former district attorney Harvey Dent, who is now Two-Face and Edward Nygma, The Riddler with help from an amorous psychologist and a young circus acrobat who becomes his sidekick, Robin.
Superman agrees to sacrifice his powers to start a relationship with Lois Lane, unaware that three Kryptonian criminals he inadvertently released are conquering Earth.
Directors:
Richard Lester,
Richard Donner
Stars:
Gene Hackman,
Christopher Reeve,
Margot Kidder
An artificial man, who was incompletely constructed and has scissors for hands, leads a solitary life. Then one day, a suburban lady meets him and introduces him to her world.
Superman returns to Earth after spending five years in space examining his homeworld Krypton. But he finds things have changed while he was gone, and he must once again prove himself important to the world.
Gotham City. Crime boss Carl Grissom (Jack Palance) effectively runs the town but there's a new crime fighter in town - Batman (Michael Keaton). Grissom's right-hand man is Jack Napier (Jack Nicholson), a brutal man who is not entirely sane... After falling out between the two Grissom has Napier set up with the Police and Napier falls to his apparent death in a vat of chemicals. However, he soon reappears as The Joker and starts a reign of terror in Gotham City. Meanwhile, reporter Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger) is in the city to do an article on Batman. She soon starts a relationship with Batman's everyday persona, billionaire Bruce Wayne.Written by
grantss
When the Joker is viewing the photos that Bob took at City Hall, the picture of Vale he sees is taken from her left side. However, from where Bob was taking the pictures at the time, it should have been from her right side. See more »
Quotes
[first lines]
Passenger:
Excuse me.
Tourist Dad:
I'm sorry, this is my cab.
Passenger:
Sorry.
Tourist Dad:
Listen, I was here first!
[as the cab drives away]
Tourist Dad:
Oh, God! Oh, taxi? Taxi!
See more »
Crazy Credits
The opening credits appear as the camera goes through/around a giant Batman symbol. See more »
Alternate Versions
The 4K remaster has an altered color palette, and a sound mix done in Dolby Atmos with new sound FX replacing old ones and changes to volumes in certain lines. See more »
After the recent press storm and domination at the box office of The Dark Knight I tried to get my head around comparing the two films. I'll be clear, I disregard films 3 and 4 of the original franchise,(ie. Val Kilmer and George Clooney as Batman), these were terrible films which pale next to Michael Keatons portrayal.
Everyone went a little crazy about Heath Ledger's posthumous portrayal of the Joker, however now that I've seen the film, I really can't agree. He looks out of his depth and just doesn't carry it off. Jack Nicholson was born to play that role, he lives and breathes that part in his daily life, so all they had to do was add some makeup and a facial prosthetic to increase the size of that already huge grin and he was ready to go.
To start with thats where the Burton films have an edge, beyond that there's Batman himself. Just like the Bond series, where there has been a reinvention and the casting of a young talent, Connery, for me and like many others, is the original and best Bond. The same goes for Batman, in terms of film adaptations, Keaton is the most versatile and adept at playing Bruce Wayne and Batman. For starters you just have to reference Beetlejuice and you'' see a screen stealing performance. Upon its release in 1989, Burton and Keaton, in that order, took Batman to a darker place in the conscious of the general non-comic reading public. Keatons Bruce Wayne, was shy, yet outspoken and slyly comedic at the same time. Current less observant Dark Knight fans will fail to notice this, as its something called depth, which current Batman(Christian Bale) only barely captures. As Batman, Keaton is hard and to the point with shades of Bruce coming through when he interacts. All Bale can muster is a silly lower and throaty voice. Given, the gadgets and cars have come along in technology, and thats great, we'd all love material that reacts to electricity and allows us to have a cape, which becomes a hand glider....but it doesn't hide some cinematic flaws.
Before I draw a close on the bad points of the new film, I'd like to honourably mention Aaron Eckhart's portrayal of Harvey Dent. It was awfully scripted, and post burning of the face scene, where his injured eye is moving around like something from 'The Mummy', that was just hard to watch, after seeing a potentially great film, move into the 'good' category.
The better points of the film are many, and in particular Michael Caine(as Alfred) and Morgan Freeman(as Lucius Fox). The original Alfred(Michael Gough), was excellent, but Caine produces some of the best one liners available. They really should have used more of him, as he brought the air of a master with him.
I read a review which compared the Dark Knight with 'Empire Strikes Back', 'Jaws', 'The Godfather', that person, who was English, should really sit with the stereotype middle American, ie stupid. Those films are cinematic reference points, in breaking new ground. The Dark Knight really isn't, its on a bandwagon of the new action genre, ie the one that the Bourne series really brought into the mainstream.
Both films are great, in many ways, but for me, the 1989 version is the winner.
41 of 54 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful to you?
| Report this
After the recent press storm and domination at the box office of The Dark Knight I tried to get my head around comparing the two films. I'll be clear, I disregard films 3 and 4 of the original franchise,(ie. Val Kilmer and George Clooney as Batman), these were terrible films which pale next to Michael Keatons portrayal.
Everyone went a little crazy about Heath Ledger's posthumous portrayal of the Joker, however now that I've seen the film, I really can't agree. He looks out of his depth and just doesn't carry it off. Jack Nicholson was born to play that role, he lives and breathes that part in his daily life, so all they had to do was add some makeup and a facial prosthetic to increase the size of that already huge grin and he was ready to go.
To start with thats where the Burton films have an edge, beyond that there's Batman himself. Just like the Bond series, where there has been a reinvention and the casting of a young talent, Connery, for me and like many others, is the original and best Bond. The same goes for Batman, in terms of film adaptations, Keaton is the most versatile and adept at playing Bruce Wayne and Batman. For starters you just have to reference Beetlejuice and you'' see a screen stealing performance. Upon its release in 1989, Burton and Keaton, in that order, took Batman to a darker place in the conscious of the general non-comic reading public. Keatons Bruce Wayne, was shy, yet outspoken and slyly comedic at the same time. Current less observant Dark Knight fans will fail to notice this, as its something called depth, which current Batman(Christian Bale) only barely captures. As Batman, Keaton is hard and to the point with shades of Bruce coming through when he interacts. All Bale can muster is a silly lower and throaty voice. Given, the gadgets and cars have come along in technology, and thats great, we'd all love material that reacts to electricity and allows us to have a cape, which becomes a hand glider....but it doesn't hide some cinematic flaws.
Before I draw a close on the bad points of the new film, I'd like to honourably mention Aaron Eckhart's portrayal of Harvey Dent. It was awfully scripted, and post burning of the face scene, where his injured eye is moving around like something from 'The Mummy', that was just hard to watch, after seeing a potentially great film, move into the 'good' category.
The better points of the film are many, and in particular Michael Caine(as Alfred) and Morgan Freeman(as Lucius Fox). The original Alfred(Michael Gough), was excellent, but Caine produces some of the best one liners available. They really should have used more of him, as he brought the air of a master with him.
I read a review which compared the Dark Knight with 'Empire Strikes Back', 'Jaws', 'The Godfather', that person, who was English, should really sit with the stereotype middle American, ie stupid. Those films are cinematic reference points, in breaking new ground. The Dark Knight really isn't, its on a bandwagon of the new action genre, ie the one that the Bourne series really brought into the mainstream.
Both films are great, in many ways, but for me, the 1989 version is the winner.