Top Five: Christmas Action Movies
5) Batman Returns (1992)
Keaton/Burton created the coolest Batman, and this is the coolest out of the two. Keaton’s Batman wasn’t a grunting, stressed out rich boy like Bale. Keaton was a man’s Batman; cool and reserved, only spoke when he needed to. Plus he looked cooler. His car was cooler. His toys were cooler. Gotham looked cooler, you’d never find Burton trying to rip off Michael Mann’s post modern fetish for a series like this – it just doesn’t belong. In Batman Returns, Batman murders some pissant in an alley way for getting in his way. It also has the best Batman villain ever, not to mention the best score.
This is the antithesis of Nolan’s shitfests. It builds a better backstory for the Penguin without uttering a single word in the opening credits than TDK-R’s Bane, who is practically a mystery despite ten trillion lines of dialogue. I’m not sure why this edges Batman ’89 for me, but it just does. Maybe its Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman. And even better, it has a sweet Christmas theme.
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