This year’s Christmas film with the family was Batman Returns, my first time seeing it. My immediate reaction is that this film feels like a fever dream, or like a piece of fan fiction written by someone who is very enthusiastic about the 1960s Batman TV show and is more than a little insane (which, honestly, I think is probably what it is).

I can’t say I thought it was very good. The characters don’t seem to me to act remotely human. Like, early on mousy Selena Kyle is held hostage by a thug and Batman saves her, at which point she awkwardly flirts with him, then laments how she scared another guy off as she sets about picking up the papers she dropped, sarcastically including the unconscious thug in her ‘conversation’. Who reacts to a near-death experience like that? Or Max Shreck deciding to run the Penguin – here imagined as a deformed sewer monster – for mayor simply because he’s attracted public sympathy, even though he knows Penguin is a feral monster. Or Batman and Catwoman getting heated and flirtatious moments after a hostage fell to her death.

No one here is a person; they’re puppets being moved around so as to look stylish and striking.

Nothing here makes any kind of logical sense, from the villains’ plans to the backstories to the sequence of events. Shreck’s plan is to create a power plant that actually drains the city’s power instead of generating it. Why the heck would anyone want to do that? How does his benefit, especially when he’s already one of the wealthiest men in the city? How could he possibly expect to get away with that? Why is Catwoman’s origin dying and being brought back to life by cats, turning her into, I guess, a literal cat person? Who is also ultra sexualized? I mean, Catwoman is supposed to be a sexy character, but this seems more like a teenager’s hormonal fantasy more than anything else. I don’t know; I thought her ‘mousy’ form was more attractive myself personality wise. Her Catwoman comes across less as if she’s using her looks as a weapon than like she’s genuinely desperate for sexy time.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s often amusing in how utterly mad it gets, like when you have an army of penguins with rocket-launchers strapped to their backs waddling into the city, or just Christopher Walken being Christopher Walken. And of course it looks fabulous with that Burton-esque style. But it’s virtues are all very superficial; as a story it’s an utter mess.

Overall, it adds to my growing impression of Tim Burton that I don’t think he’s really that good of a director. He’s a great stylist, of course, and brilliant visually, and he can handle actors well (an oft-overlooked element), but as a storyteller I find he’s generally shallow and monotonous. He never seems able to stray very far from a ‘weird outsider struggles against the establishment’ framework. I also get a sense of bitterness from him; like he’s still bursting with resentment against the superficial yuppies who didn’t understand him as a teenager. Actually, that’s my overall impression of Burton: that he’s the goth teenager par-excellance and never grew out of it (though on the other side of the scales he showcases a genuine love of the things he likes, which takes some of the edge off his angst). But then, it’s been a long while since I’ve watched most of the classic Burton backlog, so I’ll reserve judgment until I refresh my memory.

In any case, it’s overall entertaining to watch, but not particularly rewarding as a story.