Things Only Adults Notice In 1989's Batman

Though it doesn't try and give us the full origin story treatment for the character, there are many clues in Batman which suggest the Dark Knight hasn't been on the job for very long. With the exception of reporter Alexander Knox, the Gotham media thinks he's a myth, if the cops know he's real, they're not telling anyone, and even the criminals on Gotham City's street are convinced that their friends who say they saw him are either high or crazy. Batman's word of mouth game has not yet spread, in part because it seems he's still perfecting his crimefighting game.

When you're a kid watching this movie, everything Batman does is cool, whether he's ziplining through a museum or driving the Batmobile through Gotham's streets. As an adult, though, you notice certain things he does which indicate that he's still getting the hang of it all. One key example comes right at the beginning of the film, when Batman takes down some crooks after a mugging. An overhead shot shows that he's clearly watching the mugging from a Gotham rooftop, but rather than intervening and stopping the crime before it happens, he's content to hang back and deal with the criminals later. Maybe he's just biding his time before revealing himself, but he does tell the criminals to "tell your friends about me," so maybe he's just not sure exactly what he's doing yet.

Batman's not the only major player working to combat Gotham City's crime, of course. The 1989 film also introduces its own versions of major supporting characters like Commissioner Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent, and it's established very early on that they've got their work cut out for them. Gotham City is, as the film shows and tells us, overrun with crime, and much of the city is in the pocket of gangsters, including some of the cops. Dent's job as the newly elected DA is to clean up all that crime and corruption, and he seems to have the charisma and the determination to do it.

What Dent seems to have less of, though, is a sense of strategy. At a banquet for Gotham's elite, he proclaims his intention to raid various crime family hotspots within the next week. The problem? The event is being broadcast live on local television, so the crime bosses see him announcing his plans even before he's carried them out. Within hours, the Gotham underworld is mobilizing to hide evidence, and even having strategy meetings of their own. If you want to take down high-powered criminals, not telling them when you're coming might be a good start to your plan.

Everything about the version of Gotham City in Batman is heightened, in part because that's just how Tim Burton movies work, but also because the film is trying to show its viewers a strange world that can accommodate an equally strange character like Batman. So we get a bright Gotham 200 banner going up above almost cartoonishly dark old statues. We get an abandoned church with a creepy bell tower in the middle of the city. We get streets that seem to pump steam and smog out of every crevice. And, of course, we get rampant wealth inequality.

The film's characters are constantly talking about how bad the state of Gotham City is. They tell us crime is on the rise, people are terrified, and the regular citizens of the city don't know who to turn to. It's all a shorthand for letting us know that this is a place that needs Batman, but adults watching the film will also know that a lot of rich people in Gotham City just don't care. Yes, some of them turn out for a charity gala at Bruce Wayne's house to presumably do some good, but others just happily seem to go about their lives. When Vicki Vale walks into the Flugenheim Museum, she finds it packed with people in fur coats, oblivious to the troubles of the city, enjoying the benefits of wealth. Gotham has a one percent, and many of them don't seem to care who's in charge.

Batman establishes through a number of contextual clues that the title character is a relatively new figure in Gotham City, therefore some people aren't even sure he's real. The same can't be said of billionaire Bruce Wayne, who the film establishes is both a lifelong resident of Gotham and someone who can fill up his mansion with distinguished guests for a benefit. What the film is less clear about is exactly how famous Bruce Wayne is, despite his billionaire status.

Vicki Vale and Alexander Knox, two professional journalists, go to Wayne Manor for his benefit without having a clue what he actually looks like, which suggests that he either keeps to himself or they just didn't do their research. Later, Vale actually tries to research Wayne more, but finds the file the newspaper keeps on him to be a little light. Still later, Knox goes through the microfiche collection and finds a series of headlines explaining the murder of Bruce Wayne's parents and his subsequent life as an orphan. It's played like a big secret, but wouldn't any Gotham reporter worth their salt know about arguably the most famous crime in the town's history, the one in which its richest citizens were gunned down? Either Bruce Wayne has actively tried to bury his own backstory, or Vicki and Alexander are just slacking.

While the title character doesn't get a full origin story in Burton's film, Batman does devote some time to showing us how the Joker came to be. We get to see Jack Napier as the quick-witted, devious gangster beforehand, get to watch him fall into acid, and even get the story behind his horrific rictus grin. The film doesn't give us an exact timeline, but from the point Joker falls into the acid to the point he becomes the top crime boss in all of Gotham City, a couple of weeks at most seem to have passed.

It's a meteoric rise, and it's made all the more impressive by the fact that Joker has done it not just with wit and brutality, but with a very clear eye toward marketing. In a very short period of time, he not only hatched a plan to take over the Grissom crime family, but also designed his horrible gag gadgets like poison flowers and killer hand buzzers, and he found time to make all of his gang members matching purple jackets. He's even got his own logo, which he stamps on the jackets, on his TV commercials, and on his vehicles. Either Joker got one hell of a design consultant on the phone as soon as he came out of the acid, or he's just really passionate about branding. Either way, it's impressive.