Hello again, dear readers. Uncanny Fox here, continuing my review series on the theatrical Batman films with a look at the first half of 1992’s Batman Returns, the sequel to Tim Burton’s Batman ’89. Now, as I implied at the end of my last review, that particular movie was a massive financial and critical success, with merchandise practically flying off the store shelves and Batmania running wild across the nation, brother. I’m talking Frozen-level hype here. The Bat-symbol was practically everywhere, and people were buzzing about Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson’s performances. Of course, I missed all that, having been born a year after the film came out, but the internet was made for this type of documentation.
Anyway, all this money changing hands was music to Warner Bros’ ears, and it wasn’t long before they decided to try and catch lighting in a bottle a second time with a sequel. To that end, they convinced Tim Burton to return to the director’s chair, promising him full creative control after he expressed his dislike of the executive meddling in the last movie. And trust me, it shows. With a vengeance. We are, after all, talking about the man currently tied with Taika Waititi as the quirkiest man to ever direct a big-budget superhero film. So yeah, this movie is pure Tim Burton in its raw, unfiltered form.
The script had many rewrites, as the writer of the previous movie, Sam Hamm, was replaced by Daniel Waters, who wrote such films as Heathers, Hudson Hawk and Demolition Man. I’ve only seen the last one. As a result, a few ideas were scrapped, such as Harvey Dent (Billy Dee Williams) returning to become Two-Face at the end (instead, he’s off somewhere else while the events of the movie take place, presumably getting the 20 procedures needed to be played by Tommy Lee Jones in the next movie), and Robin making his debut as played by Marlon Wayans, who you’ll probably recognize from his recent sitcom on NBC, which bares his name. This last part went far enough along that he was apparently fitted for a costume (an action figure of him was sold as part of the movie’s toyline, with one slight change in the coloring) and from what I can gather he’s still getting residual checks to this day.
All this led to a rather… divisive film, as parents complained about its dark and violent tone and McDonalds cancelled a planned line of Happy Meal toys. That’s right folks, this movie was deemed too sinister by the company behind the Szechuan Sauce debacle of last year. This controversy would alter the course of the series going forward, but for right now let’s take a look at this movie to see just what all the hubbub is about, and if holds up years later.
The movie begins on Christmas Eve, at a mansion owned by the Cobblepots. The man of the house, Mr. Cobblepot (who oddly enough is played by Pee-Wee Herman), watches the snow falling from a window and smokes a long cigarette as his wife gives birth in another room. Soon, the baby is born, and the man runs into the room only to scream in horror. We then cut to both parents watching the snow as they do what any loving parents would with a child who is somewhat different… lock him in a cage like an animal and watch as he eats the family cat for nourishment. I must have missed that part of Home Ec class.
Later on, they decide to leave him with a pair of kind-hearted relatives who always wanted a child of their own but for some reason couldn’t have one… just kidding, they take him to a bridge and dump him in the river, watching as his baby carriage washes away and falls into a sewer. Geez, Rey’s parents might have sold her into slavery so they could buy booze, but at least they actually left her with somebody. Hey, that movie’s out on DVD now, I think spoilers are fair game at this point.
Anywho, the carriage floats through the sewer as the opening credits play. We get to hear Danny Elfman’s Batman theme, which is always a treat. The baby finally washes ashore and is met by… penguins. Yes, there are penguins in Gotham’s sewers. Not sure if this is more or less plausible than four mutant turtles that practice ninjutsu, but it’s up there. This is only five minutes in folks. And trust me, it gets crazier from here. Buckle up, we’re going for a ride…
We then jump to the present, 33 years later. It’s Christmas time in Gotham (does that mean this is a Christmas movie? I guess if Die Hard counts…), and news is spreading of a mysterious “Penguin Man” living in the sewers. But now’s not the time for that, as Gotham is celebrating its annual Christmas tree lighting. A supermodel hits the switch to light the tree up as the crowd sings “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” and a shadowy figure with shiny flipper hands watches from behind a vent. ‘Cause it wouldn’t be Christmas in Gotham without that last part.
Over at a tower with a head that looks like Felix The Cat, a businessman named Max Shreck, played by Christopher Walken sporting a hairstyle you could buff your car with, discusses his plans for opening a new power plant in Gotham. It’s a tough sell, as the city already has enough energy to get them into the middle of the next century, but Max insists his plant is needed for the future.
Max’s secretary, Selina Kyle, played by Michelle Pfeiffer in a feeble attempt to make Michelle Pfeiffer look homely, speaks up with a question only to be chuckled at before we can hear what it is. Max’s son Chip walks in and tells both him and Gotham’s mayor that it’s time to go down for the festival. He doesn’t really have much of a role in this movie besides a small part at the end, and the only interesting thing I have to say about him is his acting is terrible. Oh, and his actor went on to play Leatherface. You know, a guy who doesn’t talk.
Max heads out to face the public, talking with the mayor and threatening to have him recalled if he doesn’t cave on the power plant. Yeah, you remember how I said Harvey Dent was going to be in this movie? Well, Max was created to fill his role in the story after he was cut. Having this knowledge while watching Max’s whole “recalling the mayor” arc puts things into perspective, as this type of political move would fit a District Attorney a lot better than a businessman. I will say though, having Shreck do this makes it look like Gotham’s government is so corrupt that a corporate C.E.O. can threaten an elected official out in public, and actually back up that threat later on.
The mayor (who I noticed isn’t the same one from the last movie, just how long has it been since?) then takes the podium and introduces Max as “Gotham’s own Santa Claus”… even though he looks and acts more like Ebenezer Scrooge. Seriously, what does it take for the people of this city to realize you’re a douchebag? I know poisoning everyone with tainted shampoo wasn’t enough. Max throws some gifts at the crowd, then tries to give a speech, but he forgot his notes. He decides to take it out on Selina later, but for right now he just wings it, going on about how he wants to give back to the community and wishes he could hand out world peace wrapped in a big bow. Yeah, sure you would big guy. All the while, the creepy figure whispers ominously from behind the grate and checks his watch…
All of the sudden, a big red present rolls up and out pops a gang full of circus freaks. Wait, I thought we already dealt with the Joker… They proceed to wreck terror on the party-goers, smashing windows, breathing fire, and to top it all off a guy with a monkey whips out a jack-in-the-box machine gun and opens fire at the tree. Man, Panic! At The Disco really took a dark turn… Commissioner Gordon (still played by Pat Hingle in an even smaller role than last time) rolls up in his police car and calls for the signal…
The Bat Signal, that is. At Wayne Manor, Bruce Wayne, played once again by Michal Keaton, is just sitting in the dark, thinking, when the signal flashes into his study via a system of strategically-placed spotlights in the roof. No, they’re not mirrors, they’re actually little Bat Signals shining at each other until one goes into Bruce’s window. I really don’t get how this is supposed to work, it’s not like they’re reflecting the signal or anything, they’re just making their own. And there’s two of them. You only need one…
In any case, it isn’t long before the Batmobile is racing through Gotham to save the day. Batman trips some stilt-walkers, knocks out a pair of motorcycle-riding bobble-head skeleton men, and runs down a couple of machine-gun-toting clowns. He then responds to a fire-breather by rotating the Batmobile with some weird turning pedestal thing that also doesn’t make any practical sense, then… activating the car’s afterburners… and burning the man alive. Remember how Batman’s big thing is that he doesn’t kill his enemies, least he end up no better than them? Well…
Selina gets grabbed by a clown with a Taser, having ran out to give Max his speech notes and walked straight into the ongoing riot. Batman jumps out of the car and rescues her by using his grappling hook to knock out the goon with part of the wall behind him. Selina is a bit enamored by her rescuer, but Batman silently walks off to fight more crooks, as he does. She keeps the clown’s Taser for herself, even testing it out on him briefly. I guess this is some foreshadowing to what happens with her later on, as she really seems to enjoy shocking the guy.
Gordon thanks Batman for saving the day, the two now in the mists of their classic working partnership, and we learn that the group that attacked is called the “Circus Gang,” later the Red Triangle Gang. The mayor points out that the gang was trying to kidnap Max (indeed, the guy with the machine gun box asked for him earlier), leading him to wonder where the not-so-esteemed businessman is at the moment.
As it turns out, Max is hiding in a dark alleyway, having bailed from the attack once he realized he was the target. He falls through a convenient trapdoor (that’s why we don’t stand on sewer grates, kids) and lands in the sewer. To be more specific, the sewer beneath the “Arctic World” exhibit at the Gotham Zoo, which has got to be the creepiest, most Tim Burton-iest zoo in the history of film. Seriously, there’s a giant freaking crab statue in the middle for no assumable reason other than to be creepy. Apparently it was closed down years ago due to a lack of funding, which would explain the penguins from before if not for the question of why the people in charge just left them there.
Max comes to, only to be met with the Red Triangle Gang and their leader, the Penguin, played by Danny DeVito in what has got to be some of the most spot on casting I’ve seen in one of these movies. He looks pretty creepy, with his pale skin and deformed, flipper-like hands, but I wouldn’t say he’s scary unless you’re really young. Also, this whole “living in the sewers” thing is a bit of a departure from how the character is usually depicted, as a wannabe socialite and crime boss trying to gain the respect of Gotham’s 1%. Though there is a bit of that here as well.
Penguin shows off his collection of umbrella weapons as he tells Max that he wants to go up to the surface world, re-join society and find his parents (as he was the abandoned baby in the beginning), and that Max can help him. When Max asks why he would do that, Penguin reveals that he’s been keeping evidence of Max’s various “business deals,” such as toxic waste from his textile plant, shredded documents that show him owning compromised apartment buildings, and the severed hand of his old partner, who I’m assuming he had killed. And apparently hacked to pieces and flushed down the toilet, however that was supposed to work. Faced with all this incriminating material, Max reluctantly agrees to help Penguin arrange a “Welcome Home” party.
We then cut to Selina’s apartment, where she talks to herself about how her job’s a joke, she’s broke and her love life’s D.O.A. Nobody told her life was gonna be this way… *clap-clap, clap-clap-clap* She’s so lonely that she’s resorted to feeding a stray black cat named “Miss Kitty” that wonders into the place for company. You know, we used to have a cat like that at my house: same name, roughly same color, always coming and going as she pleased. Only we never let it in the house, it was just outside. We ended up giving her away when she started doing her business a little too close to the house.
Back to the movie, Selina checks her messages, only to find out she left herself a reminder that she needs to go back to the office for a file on Bruce Wayne, something about a meeting on Wednesday with Max. She gets to Shreck’s place, only for the boss himself to catch her in the act of digging through the files. It turns out she’s guessed his computer’s password (it’s the name of his dead Chihuahua, who he keeps stuffed and mounted in his office. Okaaaayyyy…) and stumbled onto another one of Max’s dirty little secrets: the power plant he’s trying to build doesn’t make electricity, but steals it. I’m assuming he’s then going to sell it back to everyone at jacked-up prices, then use the money to buy a rare and expensive Wu-Tang album. Maybe call himself “the Power Bro” or something stupid like that.
After Selina finally sticks up for herself for once in her life, Max decides to give her a 50% raise in exchange for her silence… just kidding, he pushes her out a window from about six stories up, through several cloth awnings and onto the cold, snow-covered streets below. But she’s not out of the movie yet, as several alley cats come and… lick her face… and bite her fingers… and breathe on her… and this brings her back to life? Uh, are these magic cats? Can they use their magic powers to bring anyone back from the dead, or just disgruntled secretaries who’s bosses throw them out of windows? Are all cats like this or just the strays crawling around in alleys? Just what the heck is going on here, Tim Burton? And this isn’t the last time this scenario happens, believe you me…
Selina heads back to her apartment in a trance. She goes through the same routine she did before, only this time she’s knocking things over and drinking the milk she feeds to the cat. She plays her messages, and once she hears mention of Max, she… snaps. She throws her milk carton, throws her answering machine, stuffs her stuffed animals in the garbage disposal and stabs them, and pretty much gives an impression of what Michelle Pfeiffer probably did after she watched the ’04 Catwoman movie. In all seriousness though, this one scene is much more unsettling than anything Penguin does throughout this whole movie.
After she’s done wrecking her apartment, she goes to work making a costume for herself out of an old latex outfit she had laying around in the closet, and soon Selina Kyle completes her transformation into Catwoman, albeit in a vastly different and much weirder way that usual.
Next day at City Hall, the mayor gives a speech about how crime in Gotham needs to stop. News at 11. As he goes on about how the incident the previous night won’t happen again, a clown flips up from out of nowhere and steals the mayor’s baby. Like literally out of nowhere. He practically flips into the picture. And no one in the security department saw him beforehand…
The clown somersaults his way down a conveniently open manhole, where he meets up with Penguin and puts on a show about Penguin taking the baby. Penguin then rises from the sewer though the same conveniently open manhole with the baby in hand, and the crowd falls for this act, hook, line and sinker. Seriously, not a single person in attendance questions how easy it was for the Penguin to show up in the same sewer the baby-stealing clown went into to escape. You know, because he lives there? Like the Penguin does? And you don’t slightly wonder if they’re associated? Then again, this is the same city that fell for the Joker’s free money trap last week. And are going to fall for the Riddler’s mind-scanner thing in the next movie, but I digress.
At Wayne Manor, Bruce watches the new report of the “rescue” as Alfred trims the tree. On screen, Penguin asks for help finding his parents, playing up the fact that they abandoned him for being different. I’m going to go thorough how this doesn’t work as well as he thinks it does in a little bit, but for now, Bruce tells Alfred he hopes Penguin finds them, while getting a sinking feeling about all this. But even as he has his suspicions, there’s a part of Bruce that feels for Penguin, as he himself is, as you know, an orphan. This is actually a pretty good humanizing moment for Bruce, showing that he’s not just the cold cypher we saw in the previous film. Too bad about what happens next…
Penguin then heads over to the Hall of Records, where he digs through Gotham’s birth certificates and suspiciously writes down some names. This will play into the plot later on, but I wouldn’t say it pays off. More on that next week…
Down in the Batcave, Bruce is doing some digging of his own, looking up old newspaper articles on the Red Triangle Circus, where they briefly displayed an “aquatic bird boy.” One guess who that is. This explains why he speaks English and knows about human government despite supposedly being raised by penguins in a sewer. Bruce then reads about how the circus closed down after some children went missing during a return trip to Gotham, with one freakshow performer vanishing before questioning. Another guess who that is. Alfred asks if Bruce feels better now, but Bruce comments that he feels worse, and after patrolling the Hall Of Records in the Batmobile, tells him that he thinks Penguin is up to something.
And this is a quite fitting representation of how most people watching this movie react to the Penguin. At first you want to feel bad for him, what with the whole parental abandonment thing, but then you watch him and all sympathy evaporates. Thing is, for as sad as his backstory might be, Penguin spends the entire time he’s on screen being an objectively horrible person. Cruel, misogynistic, and a killer to boot, there isn’t a single moment that he displays anything remotely resembling a human side. It’s like Linkara said in his History Of Power Rangers review for Time Force, there’s a difference between having a sympathetic backstory and actually being sympathetic.
And the weirdest thing is, the movie wants to have its cake and eat it too, playing up Penguin’s tragic past while at the same time showing him as an absolute monster without any redeeming qualities. We’re not sure if we’re supposed to cheer for his inevitable defeat or feel pity for him. Now, don’t get me wrong, you can have villains with tragic backstories and sympathetic qualities, while at the same time being ultimately in the wrong. Take Magneto, for instance. Sure, he’s the bad guy, but deep down he has noble goals, however warped they might be. He wants to protect mutant kind, stemming from his personal experiences as a Holocaust survivor, but it’s his methods that make him a villain. That’s a good example of someone who has a sympathetic backstory, is sympathetic, but at the end of the day is still the bad guy.
Penguin, on the other hand, has no noble goals or redeeming points to add to his sympathetic backstory. Sure, he wants to find his parents now, but as soon as he reaches that goal he acts purely interested in power and spite. His objectives stop being justifiable about 20 minutes or so into the movie, but it still has moments where we’re meant to see him as a misunderstood loner, but he’s not. The message of this movie feels less “don’t judge people who are different” and more “go ahead, he’s probably an a-hole anyway.” Which I’m not sure Tim Burton was going for…
Penguin finally finds his parents… at the Gotham Cemetery. He also discovers his birth name: Oswald Cobblepot. He leaves a rose by each of his parents’ tombstones, and tells the press that he forgives them for what had happened. As we see later in the movie, however, old wounds don’t heal that easily… Needless to say, the people of Gotham are soon tripping over themselves with praise for the creepy guy they just met yesterday, saying he has heart and is “a frog who became a prince.” No, Prince was last week, now we have Siouxsie and the Banshees. And we’re getting Seal in a few weeks…
Meanwhile, Catwoman finally reveals herself, taking down an attempted rapist by slashing a Tic-Tac-Toe pattern on his face. She then turns to the would-be victim, calling her out for always waiting for Batman to save her. And I gotta say, Michelle Pfeiffer just nails it in her villainous role. Sexy and seductive, but menacing when the moment calls for it, she remains my favorite actress for the role (although given the competition…) The costume is pretty good too, a simple number that keeps the cat motif front and center. While I still prefer the Arkham City and Injustice 1 outfits, this one still holds up. Plus, its early-90’s era Michelle Pfeiffer in skin-tight latex. Pretty hard to screw that up. Although they did manage to screw up mid-2000’s era Halle Berry in skin-tight leather, so you never know…
Bruce meets up with Max as Selina had mentioned earlier, wanting to talk about his planned power plant. You know, the one that actually steals electricity. Bruce grills Max about it, pointing out that Gotham already has an energy surplus. Max responds to this by giving his life’s philosophy that “one can never have too much power.” And I don’t think he means the kind that fuels your lights. Regardless, Bruce intends to fight him on building the plant, and has the mayor backing him up. Max counters by saying that mayors come and go, then goes all tough guy by unironically calling himself “Muhammad Shreck.” He floats like a butterfly, looks like a live-action Mr. Burns. Bruce then asks about Max’s connections to Penguin, mentioning that he controls the Red Triangle Gang. Max fires back, accusing Bruce of being jealous of Oswald’s newfound fame.
Selina then walks into the room, surprising everyone. Most of all Max, who looks like he’s seen a ghost. Selina playfully flirts with Bruce, who’s instantly lovestruck. Vicky? Vicky who? Bruce asks about the bandage on her head as Max tries to scramble together a cover story about how she bumped her head while skiing, hence why she cut her vacation short. Selina says she doesn’t remember any of that, due to it… you know… not happening, but she does remember the time she forgot her underwear and the name of the boy who noticed. Not sure why you’d relate that story in a boardroom at work… Sweating bullets, Max asks Selina to escort Bruce out, and the two engage in more flirty banter in the hallway. Afterwards, Max tells his son that he’ll just drop her out a higher window if she tries to tell what really happened. Meantime, he has badder fish to fry…
And speaking of those badder fish, Max checks up on Penguin at one of Max’s compromised apartments, who’s hard at work writing more names down from the phone book. Max lures Penguin downstairs with a dead fish, where he drops a major surprise: he has entered Penguin to run for mayor, presumably so Penguin can help him build his power plant. This is most likely another carry-over from when Max was supposed to be Harvey Dent, like I mentioned before when he threatened the mayor. It does beg the question of why Max didn’t run himself, but I guess there’s that rule about people in office not being allowed to profit off outside companies. But it’s not like that’s ever stopped anyone before…
Penguin points out that it’s not election time, but Max reassures him that he’ll take care of it. He introduces Penguin to his image consultants, which doesn’t end well. One of the consultants makes fun of Penguin’s looks, and then Penguin bites his nose, causing it to gush blood everywhere. Anyone else craving McDonalds? Max pulls him aside and explains his plan to get the mayor recalled, while Penguin leers creepily at the female consultant. Our tragic villain, ladies and gentlemen. Cry for him as he maims interns and acts like a total pervert. Anywho, he likes the idea of being mayor, but first he’ll need a good old fashioned crime spree to make the current mayor look bad. A quick side-note: the 60’s TV show actually used this basic premise as a two-parter, minus the bloody nose biting.
Penguin’s gang wastes no time wreaking havoc on the city, blowing up various stores and causing untold mayhem. And Batman wastes no time trying to stop them. He arrives to halt one of their rampages, taking down a number of clowns in typical Batman fashion, but he still can’t fight in that rubber suit. At least he’s not constantly getting shot in this one. He soon finds himself surrounded by a number of goons, including one lady with a small poodle. Bats whips out a tracker Batarang and sets it to take them out, while they just… stand there. Seriously, they just stand there as he programs it. What, is he in VATS mode or something? Did he hit the spacebar to pause? You have the numbers game, just jump him! And why does Batman even bother with that thing anyway, when he can just use a bunch of normal Batarangs to take them out. It would be much quicker.
The seeker Batarang knocks each thug out, one by one, except for the poodle lady, as the dog catches it. Batman’s greatest enemy, a toy poodle. Strangely enough, Bats doesn’t bother to go after the dog to get his weapon back, which surely won’t come back to bite him later on…
Meanwhile, Catwoman is looking to do some damage of her own. She sneaks her way into one of Max’s department stores and proceeds to vandalize the place, knocking off mannequin heads with her whip and smashing display cases. A pair of security guards find her, only to turn chicken and run when she threatens them. Gotham’s finest, folks. The best a take-home pay of less than 300 can buy. No wonder the crime rate is so high. In any case, Catwoman proceeds to break open a gas line and stuff some bug spray into a microwave…
Back outside, Batman comes across another of Penguin’s minions, a mountain of a man who just shrugs off his hits. Batman responds to this by… strapping a bomb he pulled off one of the other goons to him… and blowing him up while grinning like a maniac. What?
Okay, we need to have a discussion. All the other times Batman has killed in this movie and the other, you could rationalize as self-defense or him stopping his enemies’ plans. But this, this is cold blooded murder! He literally straps a bomb to a man, smiles, and knocks him into a sewer drain to die. I mean… wow…
Look, I get that Batman has killed in the past, and has killed since, whether that was in the 40’s or Batman V Superman. But it felt wrong then, and it feels wrong here. Batman’s whole philosophy is that he leers dangerously close to the edge of being just another monster terrorizing Gotham. He keeps himself from falling over that edge by not taking lives, bringing his enemies to justice rather than administer that justice himself. He’s not a judge, he’s not a jury, and he knows that. He respects the rule of law, and only wishes to aide in that process, not enact his own. That’s why he fights against Rajs Al Gual and that Lockdown guy from the cartoon. They’re killers trying to assert their will on the populace, while Batman just wants to protect the city. He’s trying to prevent the death that took his parents, not cause it himself.
But here, he smirks like the Joker himself and blows a human being to smithereens. It’s especially bad when you take into account what happened in the previous movie, as Batman has already avenged his parents, and seems to be continuing his job for the heck of it. And the most damning part of this isn’t the act itself, but something that happens later in the movie. But we’ll pick up on that next week…
In the present, Batman finally comes face-to-face with the Penguin. The crime boss claims to just be scouting the devastation befalling the city like a good mayor, while Batman makes it clear Penguin will never have that job as long as he has something to say about it. This conversation is actually pretty good, and I always love when a movie starts a hero-villain rivalry with a quite, tense, verbal confrontation like this. It feels like a press meeting or an interview before a boxing match or a wrestling main event. The fighting will come later, but for right now I’m staring you down and telling you how it’s going to be.
The two are interrupted by Catwoman, who somersaults her way out of the store just in time to strike a pose before it blows up. Batman spots her climbing up a wall ahead of him- wait, how’d she get over there so fast? Batman literally takes his eyes off her for a split second to shield himself from the blast, and next thing he knows, she’s far up the wall ahead. What is she, a teleporter or something? While Batman goes off after her, Penguin leaves the scene by flying off with a helicopter umbrella. He’s Mary Poppins, y’all.
Batman follows Catwoman up to the rooftops, where the two engage in an actually pretty decent fight, considering one of them can’t move and the other had never been in a fight scene before. There is this one scene where Catwoman cracks her whip around while Batman just watches, which is kinda weird, other than that there’s no real complaints on my end. Catwoman gains the upper hand when Bats falls for the old “how can you hit a woman” trick, and knocks him over the ledge. Batman grabs onto her whip, and counters by tossing a vat of some blue… stuff at her, causing her to fall onto another roof. Bats swings over there and lifts her up.
Catwoman asks who the “man behind the bat” is, and is he can help her find “the woman behind the cat.” But it’s all a trick, though. She’s just looking for his suit’s weak spot, which is his… colon, I guess. Hey, I’ve had colon problems myself, when that sucker hurts, it hurts. She strikes him, causing Batman to knock her over the roof and into an open truck full of kitty-litter. Get it, ‘cause she’s a cat? He sure got over that “hitting girls” thing quick, didn’t he? Not that I’d ever condone the striking of women in usual real life instances, but if you ever find yourself in a life-threating battle against an opponent of equal or greater ability to kill you, you’re well within your rights to defend yourself. And that is the only time that is acceptable. Just then. If you’re hitting her because you had to “repeat yourself,” you deserve the restraining order and the time in prison because you’re too dumb to follow the restraining order. But yeah, Batman’s in the clear here.
Which concludes Part 1 of our review. So far, I have… mixed feelings about this movie. Sure, it’s better than the first one, and I would go so far as to call it the best of this particular film series, but it cuts both ways. The good parts of Burton’s first movie are enhanced here, as are the bad. Like that first one, there are some fundamental issues with certain characters’ portrayals, and that will only worsen as we move forward next week. That said, this movie is more entertaining than the first one…
So, what happens next? Will the Penguin be elected mayor? What is Catwoman’s plans to Gotham? And just how did Bruce manage to have that system of Bat-Signals on his roof without anyone noticing? Find out next week, as we continue our review with Part Two. ‘Till then, I’ve been The Uncanny Fox. Live long, stay gold, and remember: It may always be sunny in Philadelphia, but never in Gotham.
The Uncanny Fox 
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