Why Tim Burton told Joel Schumacher to “go f**k yourself”
Before Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, Tim Burton’s Batman was regarded as the darkest incarnation of the DC Superhero. Using every tool in his gothic toolbelt, Burton sought to steer the famously adaptable bruce Wayne way from the campness of those original 1960s productions and towards something a little more oddball. How successful he was in that quest is open to debate, but Burton remains confident that his approach was the correct one, despite standing in stark contrast to the one Matt Reeves pursued with his post-Nolan noir, The Batman.
Batman Returns introduced Danny Devito as the Penguin, the franchise’s latest villain. Emerging from the sewers, the pallid criminal mastermind joins forces with businessman Max Shreck – played by Christopher Walken – in an effort to destroy Batman. On discovering Shreck’s plot, his assistant Selina Kyle is pushed out of a window and left for dead, only to be reborn as the dominatrix-looking Catwoman.
On release, the film recieved mixed reviews, with many criticising Burton’s over-indulgent use of fantasy. During an interview with Empire for the 30th anniversary of Batman Forever, Burton was asked to look back on his work: “It is funny to see this now, because all these memories come back of, ‘It’s too dark’,” he said.“So, it makes me laugh a little bit.”
Batman Returns certainly looks a bit overblown compared to the hard-boiled grit of The Dark Knight and The Batman, but it also foreshadowed those movies by demonstrating that the franchise could be more than a camp family romp. The studios were suspicious of Burton’s unflinchingly dark and distinctly kinky approach, eventually turning to director Joel Schumacher for Batman Forever.
In Schumacher’s hands, Batman was reborn as a live-action kid’s cartoon. Burton’s gothic tones were stripped away and replaced with the technicolour palette of an American theme park. The approach stunned Burton. “[Back then] they went the other way,” he said of Batman Forever.
“That’s the funny thing about it. But then I was like, ‘Wait a minute. Okay. Hold on a second here. You complain about me, I’m too weird, I’m too dark, and then you put nipples on the costume? Go fuck yourself.’ Seriously. So yeah, I think that’s why I didn’t end up [doing a third film]”.
