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Michael Keaton's Batman from the Burtonverse Earth meets Christian Bale's temping Batman from Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012) from the Nolanverse Parallel Earth in the DC Multiverse. Christian Bale did say "Batman could be anybody" to Joseph Gordon-Levitt's John Blake when he's about to retire and have John Blake replace him in The Dark Knight Rises (2012). www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoXT21…

Nolan fans like to claim that Nolan's trilogy is far far more grown up than Tim Burton's! No, Michael Keaton's Batman and Batman Returns by Tim Burton are far more aimed at grown ups! Those films brought children to loud tears in the theaters. Parents were warned not to bring children to those films. articles.latimes.com/1989-08-0… articles.chicagotribune.com/19… Michael Keaton's Batman is a mysterious killer whom is motivated by vengeance and those film are graphically violent, including violence against women and mutilation, sexually suggestive and adult language, Danny DeVito's Penguin is disgusting looking, decaying black teeth and drools black saliva and is into child murder. Jack Nicholson's Joker is into murdering girls by poisoning women's beauty and hygiene products and had shot dead young Bruce Wayne's parents while the little boy looked on. But Tim Burton's also has a mixture of the light and the dark, the funny and the tragic, the mystery. It's got a mixture of everything. Nolan's wallows in dreary darkness, and almost no fun. It's punchy, all right, but not pleasurable, and hammering you over the head with lecturing lines.
Nolan fans like to claim that Tim Burton missed a trick. Nolan spotted what Burton had missed! No, Nolan's trick didn't even exist until Nolan made it up! That anyone can be Batman, that this is some replaceable symbol that can re-retire once he’s found a replacement instead of the promise to his dead parents to spend the rest of his life warring on crime. Christian Bale's Bruce said he felt guilt over his parents Linus Roache's Thomas Wayne and Sara Stewart's Martha Wayne murder by Richard Brake's homeless Joe Chill in a mugging turned accidental murder, he isn't following an oath to avenge his parents by spending the rest of his life warring on crime, he retires as Batman and then happily re-retires as Batman as soon as he finds a replacement, and Michael Cain's Alfred and Morgan Freeman's Lucius Fox did a lot of the thinking for Bale's Bruce Wayne. Even the Bruce Wayne playboy act was also Cain's Alfred's idea in Nolan's movies. He was secretly Batman: "someone to rattle the cages" he said, with a "Nomex survival suit" from Morgan Freeman's Lucius Fox, the suit, the utility belt, the Tumbler Batmobile, the weapons all came from Freeman's Fox rather than invented by Bale's Bruce Wayne. In Comics Interview #77 (1990) DC writer Jack C. Harris asked Batman (1989) producer Michael Uslan, "How do you answer charges that by making the Joker Batman's creator, and resolving the conflict, motivation for the Dark Knight's life-long vendetta against crime has been removed?" Michael Uslan explained, "In the comics, Batman finally caught up with Joe Chill and Lew Moxon, the man who killed and the man who ordered the killing of the parents [in Batman #47 (1948) "The Origin of Batman" written by Bill Finger, art by Bob Kane and Charles Paris, edited by Whitney Ellsworth and in Detective Comics #235 (1956) "The First Batman" written by Bill Finger, art by Sheldon Moldoff, edited by Jack Schiff]. Did he give up being Batman then? No, of course not. He'd sampled crime on a mass basis. If you remember the Batman story with no dialogue, 'Night of the Stalker' [from Detective Comics #439 (1974) "Night of the Stalker" written by Steve Englehart, art by Sal Amendola, edited by Archie Goodwin], you'll remember how he feels; that no matter who crime happens to, to him or another kid, Batman has taken up the call to arms of the people. I think we're right in tune with the comics, historically." Jack C. Harris asked, "Was the other man in the alley on the night the Wayne's murder suppose to be Joe Chill?" Michael Uslan explained, "Yes. In fact you'll recall that it was Chill who grabbed Bruce's mother's necklace."
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In 2014 Ben Child claimed in his The Guardian article "Why Michael Keaton should watch Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies", "Where Nolan presented a Batman as close to reality as possible, Burton chose to reimagine the mythos as a sort of gothic fairytale world in which the supernatural plays a powerful part. As the first superhero blockbuster since the Superman movies, 1989’s Batman laid the foundations for a decade of sloppy, ill-considered comic-book films from studios that felt comfortable treating superheroes as throwaway kiddie confectionery rather than the powerful totems of 20th-century pop culture imagined by later film-makers. Jack Nicholson’s Joker in Batman is made to look like a camp pantomime villain when viewed in comparison to Heath Ledger’s sociopathic ticking time bomb. Danny DeVito and Michelle Pfeiffer are wonderful as the Penguin and Catwoman in Batman Returns, but the movie’s stagey, pseudo-operatic style means we can never accept them as anything more than supercharged cartoon characters. Where later superhero movies, notably Nolan’s Batman films, played up their widescreen, real-world credentials, Gotham in both Burton movies appears to be a tiny citadel with a population of a few thousand at most, largely because the director shot them at Warner Bros’ studios in Burbank, California, and at Pinewood Studios in London. This is Gotham City, not Norwich City, yet the key early scene in Batman Returns in which Christopher Walken’s Max Schreck speaks at the turning on of the Christmas lights features an audience of no more than a couple hundred people. Gotham’s main square had to be tiny in order to be squeezed on to a studio lot. By comparison, Superman, shot a full decade earlier, always feels as though it is set in the real world because New York doubled for Metropolis. In Batman and Batman Returns, he cheerfully gave us villains brought back from the dead after falling into chemical slime, penguins with nuclear missiles strapped to their backs, and downtrodden secretaries resurrected and given impressive kung fu fighting skills after being licked by a bunch of alley cats. Comic-book movies need a little bit of supernatural razzmatazz from time to time, of course, but we are talking Batman here: a superhero with no real superpowers beyond extreme wealth who could in theory exist in reality. Nolan is rightly hailed as a genuine visionary of the milieu for his fearsome, virile superhero trilogy, and Keaton might do well to sit down and actually watch it some day."
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Nolan did not present Bale's Batman as close to reality as possible. The original 1939 Batman comics mythos was as a sort of gothic fairytale world in which the supernatural plays a part [the vampire villains the Monk and Dala from the 1939 comics]. But neither Batman (1989) nor Batman Returns are really supernatural at all. Ben Child condescendingly belittles Tim Burton's fairy tale description as if it's meaning some kiddie childish nonsense. Tim Burton explained, "I had the impulse for horror movies — that was a very strong thematic thing. I love it. Monster movies are my form of myth, of fairy tale. The purpose of folk tales for me is a kind of extreme, symbolic version of life, of what you’re going through. And I linked those monsters and those Edgar Allan Poe things to direct feelings. I didn’t read fairy tales, I watched them."davidbreskin.com/magazines/1-i…

1989’s Batman and Batman Returns were not responsible for the other comic-book films in the '90s, and there were a lot of low-budget crappy comic-book movies but they were not ALL a bunch of sloppy, ill-considered throwaway kiddie films not ALL made only for little children and most of them had nothing at all in common with Michael Keaton's Batman (1989) nor Batman Returns by Tim Burton.
The other comic-book films in the '90s: Archie: To Riverdale and Back Again (1990), The Death of the Incredible Hulk (1990), Captain America (1990), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990), The Rocketeer (1991), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze (1991), Two-Fisted Tales (1992), Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993), The Mask (1994), The Crow (1994), Timecop (1994), the unreleased Fantastic Four (1994), Batman Forever (1995), Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995), Tank Girl (1995), Judge Dredd (1995), The Crow: City of Angels (1996), Barb Wire (1996), Tales from the Crypt: Bordello of Blood (1996), Vampirella (1996), Generation X (1996), Men in Black (1997), Spawn (1997), Batman & Robin (1997), Steel (1997), Blade (1998), Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero (1998), Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (1998), Virus (1999) and Mystery Men (1999).
Jack Nicholson’s Joker is not made to look like a camp pantomime villain when viewed in comparison to Heath Ledger’s sociopathic ticking time bomb. It was Jack Nicholson’s The Shining (1980) horror movie that inspired Jack Nicholson's Joker casting. Producer Michael Uslan explained, "I saw Jack Nicholson's 'Here's Johnny' picture from The Shining [(1980)] in The New York Post—I immediately realized what I was looking at. Voila! He was the only actor then who could play the Joker! No, he was the Joker."
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In Newsweek [June 26th 1989] Jack Nicholson explained, "I had a metaphor in my mind for the character. The shorthand name I came up with was Velvet Death."
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Jack Nicholson’s Joker is into murdering girls by poisoning women's beauty and hygiene products and had shot dead young Bruce Wayne's parents while the little boy looked on, etc. Danny DeVito's Penguin and Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman are not mere cartoon characters. In Fantazone #26 (1992) Batman Returns scriptwriter Daniel Waters explained, "We made the character's [Penguin's] personality contours more epic. He's a real tragic Phantom of the Opera-style character as opposed to just a criminal."
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Danny DeVito explained in Starlog #183 (1992), "Tim [Burton] presented a real visual and psychological image of the Penguin. He wasn't just a comic-book character. There was a duality of character - the idea of a human being dealt less than a perfect hand by life. He made the Penguin sound exciting and challenging, and a character I wanted to explore. His mother and father hated him and threw him out like a piece of garbage."
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Danny DeVito explained, "The Penguin's really two people. In one sense, he's a super-intelligent guy who just wants to be accepted. On the other hand, he's enraged because people find him so revolting they turn away in horror. He could have been well educated like his parents and become a leader, but instead he's been exposed to a bunch of dishonorable characters. It's kind of a tragedy, but we're all the result of our treatment by other people."
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In the book Batman Returns: The Official Movie Book (1992) by Michael Singer, Tim Burton explained, "I feel like a real kindred spirit with Danny [DeVito], and I think we're really creating something that people will see and enjoy as a natural expansion of the comic book character."
In Fantazone #26 (1992) Batman Returns scriptwriter Daniel Waters explained about Catwoman, "My interest stems from the fact that they told me were going to be doing the Catwoman character and she was not going to be the Julie Newmar prototype of the [Adam West Batman] TV series or the hooker of the comic books. She starts off as this sort of harassed secretary. When she becomes Catwoman it's not the kind of Catwoman we're used to seeing. It's not like she's curled up on a couch in a penthouse. There's a lot wider degrees of emotions that she goes through. It's an incredible performance."
In Prevue [August 1992] Michelle Pfeiffer explained, "In fact, the characters dual personality probably makes her the most complex part I've ever encountered."
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Gotham in both Burton movies does not appear to be a tiny citadel. The areas we see of Gotham City in Batman (1989) designed by production designer Anton Furst was built into five-city-blocks. In Starburst #132 (1989) Michael Gough explained, "Gotham City is fantastic. One of the American actors said to me, 'I don't think we'll ever see a set like this again as long as we live.' They couldn't get it into a stage. It's all outdoors, with streets, lamps, shops, a cathedral and a city hall. Incredible! Batman's sets are wonderful. Your imagination soars when you get on sets like that."

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Gotham’s main square is not tiny. For Batman Returns the areas we see of Gotham City designed by production designer Bo Welch had to be built not only inside Warners largest sound stage just to fit parts of Gotham City but also inside Universal Studios largest just to fit the Penguin's lair in Gotham City.
In the book Batman Returns: The Official Movie Book (1992) by Michael Singer, Batman Returns production designer Bo Welch explained, "You never see any set or any piece in this movie in it's entirety. You see a piece of the city here [in Batman Returns] and another piece there [in Batman (1989)]. It allows your mind to fill in the rest and use your own imagination." Bo Welch explained that Gotham Plaza is, "a deliberate caricature of Rockefeller Center [with the Atlas statue from 1937 and the giant Rockefeller Center Christmas tree tradition] in New York - something like a weirder twin." The Gotham Plaza statues are called Misery, Grief, Ecstasy and Victory.
By comparison, Christopher Reeve's Superman always feels as though it is set in just '70s New York instead of Metropolis. Jack Nicholson’s Joker is not literally brought back from the dead after falling into the vat of chemicals, the Penguin's zombie-like penguin Commando Bombers have a large bazooka strapped to each ones back, wearing headgear on which is controlling them like zombies on remote control by the Penguin, not nuclear missiles strapped to their backs, and Michelle Pfeiffer's Selina Kyle is not given kung fu fighting skills after being licked by a bunch of alley cats. In the Batman Returns script written by Daniel Waters it is explained that Michelle Pfeiffer's Selina Kyle had taken karate lessons. "SELINA: 'I won some karate lessons. Radio thing. I'd been calling for Grateful Dead tix... anyway, I take the course. I was a most serious failure. The instructor kept chanting 'Your mind isn't clear, your mind isn't...' (disturbingly) It is now...'"
And "GRUFF WOMAN: 'Selina ... We've missed you at the rape prevention class ... It's not enough to master martial arts. Hey, Elvis knew those moves, and he died fat. You must stop seeing yourself as a victim--'"
When Michelle Pfeiffer's Selina Kyle is pushed out the window by Christopher Walken's Max Shreck, she falls through awnings which slows her fall and lands on snow and cats revive her by biting her fingers. She suffers from loss of consciousness, a temporary catatonic state [coma], and temporary post-traumatic amnesia, which are concussion symptoms of brain injury.
Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman origin in Batman Returns actually harks back to the original Catwoman origin from Batman #62 (1950) "The Secret Life of the Catwoman" written by Bill Finger, art by Bob Kane and Lew Schwartz [reprinted in The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told #2 (1992)], in which Selina Kyle was an introvert, then survived a crash, but suffered from amnesia. Thereafter she became Catwoman by releasing her formerly repressed inner-self, and all her inhibitions. The version of Catwoman's origin involving the crash (a death and resurrection motif) and amnesia has psychological depth. This origin suggests that Kyle had a dual personality, and that her amnesia released her repressed side, utilize her karate skills, and leading her not only to turn criminal, but to heighten her sexuality as well.

In 2018 Ryan Arey's ScreenCrush decided to post a video on YouTube called "Why 'Dark Knight' is Better Than 'Batman' - Scene vs. Scene" described as "Everyone loves The Dark Knight." Praising Christian Bale's The Dark Knight (2008) by Christopher Nolan as "a masterpiece, the greatest superhero movie of all time. It elevated the genre and won Heath Ledger an academy award" and trash talking Michael Keaton's Batman (1989) by Tim Burton as "a straight forward action movie, often played for laughs. A flaw of Jack Nicholson's Joker is he acts on sexual desires. He has the needs of a typical villain: power, approval and sex. All Heath Ledger's Joker wanted was just watch the world burn. [Micheal Keaton's] Batman steps in with this one-liner 'You ever dance with the devil in the pale moon light?' Then he says to [Jack Nicholson's] the Joker, 'I'm going to kill you.' This is the major problem with this literature of Batman: he kills people. A lot of people. From then on [Micheal Keaton's] Batman is unstoppable. [Jack Nicholson's] Joker is no match for him physically and he can only try to distract him with sight gags. You never doubt for a second that [Micheal Keaton's] Batman is going to kill [Jack Nicholson's] the Joker. This feels like the moment of righteous vengeance. [Micheal Keaton's] Bruce Wayne doesn't forgive [Jack Nicholson's] the Joker for his parents death and then grow as a person. Like a lot of conflict in action movies, the problem can only be solved with the villains death. All throughout the movie [Jack Nicholson's Joker] expresses his desire to kill and humiliate [Micheal Keaton's] Batman. But when his helicopter comes he's ready to take off and fight another day. He gives Batman ample time to murder the man who killed his parents. I think this is lazy writing [by Batman: Blind Justice comic book writer Sam Hamm] emulating superior action movies like [Bruce Willis'] Die Hard [(1988) by John McTiernan].

Lets compare this to the masterful final confrontation between [Christian Bale's] Batman and [Heathcliff Ledger's] the Joker in The Dark Knight [(2008) movie]: like in the first movie [meaning Michael Keaton's Batman (1989) by Tim Burton], there are personal stakes, but instead of [Heathcliff Ledger's] the Joker killing [Christian Bale's] Bruce Wayne's parents decades ago, he's recently killed the love of his life: [Maggie Gyllenhaal's] Rachel Dawes [replacing Katie Holmes' Rachel Dawes], [Christian Bale's] Batman has every reason to want him dead, the stakes are further raised before the fight even begins: [Heathcliff Ledger's] the Joker has rigged two fairy boats with bombs: hundreds of people on either [fairy] boat can blow the explosives on the opposite fairy, thereby saving their own lives by becoming murderers. The fight in inter-cut with people forced into an impossible decision: 'do I sacrifice hundreds of lives to save my own.' One [fairy] boat is filled with felons, further raising the moral stakes. So [Christian Bale's] Batman is not fighting only to catch [Heathcliff Ledger's] the Joker but to save all of these people from making a horrible choice.

This [Heathcliff Ledger] Joker is a physical match for Batman. He's ferocious, much like the dogs he sics on [Christian Bale's] Batman on the start of the fight. [Christian Bale's] Batman becomes blinded and confused and like in [Michael Keaton's] Batman '89 [by Tim Burton] [Heathcliff Ledger's] Joker ends up pinning him on a ledge.

Now, however, [Heathcliff Ledger's] the Joker has a reason to keep him alive. He wants [Christian Bale's] Batman to hear ordinary people murdering innocents to save themselves. This is the question at the center of every Christopher Nolan Batman film: are the people of [the Nolanverse Parallel Earth in the DC Multiverse] Gotham City actually worthy of survival. The audience expects the felons to riot and seize the detonator, one of them [Tommy Tiny Lister] has a tense conversation with [Nigel Carrington] the warden where he claims he has the courage to do what the warden doesn't, but instead of killing, he removes the choice to kill, these men know that taking a life weighs on you, but taking hundreds condemns you. The real tension comes from the [fairy] boat filled with ordinary people who all get together to vote to blow up the other [fairy] boat, and [Heathcliff Ledger's] the Joker alludes to this earlier. People think that murder is okay when it is sanctioned by a democrat body. The camera frequently cuts to this [Helene Maksoud] doe eyed mother trying to protect her children. There's [Doug Ballard] an old white guy in a suit who is ready to pull the trigger but ultimately he can't do it. The people on the [fairy] boat decide it's better to die then to live for years with murder on your conscious. Now these [Nolanverse] Gothamites have proven they're worth saving.

[Christian Bale's] Batman is their only hope. He throws [Heathcliff Ledger's] the Joker off a building but still catches him with his grappling hook. He wins a moral battle against [Heathcliff Ledger's] the Joker by sparing his life. This is a crucial difference between the two films: [Michael Keaton's] Batman '89 [by Tim Burton] is a fun '80s action film where as [Christian Bale's] The Dark Knight [(2008) by Christopher Nolan] is a film with strong post-9/11 themes. Nicholson's Joker is a gangster but Ledger's Joker is often called a terrorist and like terrorists he seeks to stoke fear and make society collapse from the inside. [Christian Bale's] The Dark Knight [(2008) by Christopher Nolan] centers on the philosophical battle between [Christian Bale's] Batman and [Heathcliff Ledger's] the Joker and deliberately avoids the easy ending of the climatic battle. So what's the philosophical battle? [Christian Bale's] the Batman and [Heathcliff Ledger's] Joker symbolize order and anarchy. Anarchy is the breaking down of social order. But when too much order is exerted on a society it becomes a fascist state. [Christian Bale's] Batman operates much like a fascist state. He ignores international law to unilaterally invade Hong Kong, he uses violence to strike fear into the people, he monitors citizens against their will, and [Aaron Eckhart's] Harvey Dent even voices support for temporary fascist rule, but [Christian Bale's] Batman never succumbs to fascism because he refuses to kill. The biggest difference is the way these films end: In [Michael Keaton's] Batman '89 [by Tim Burton] [Michael Keaton's] Bruce Wayne gets everything he ever wanted: revenge for his parents, true love and he gets to continue being Batman. In [Christian Bale's] The Dark Knight [(2008) by Christopher Nolan] [Christian Bale's] Bruce Wayne fails: he loses everything: [Maggie Gyllenhaal's] Rachel, his reputation, and [Aaron Eckhart's] Harvey Dent: the [Nolanverse] city's white knight, he's ultimate victory was won by the people of [Nolanverse] Gotham who proved that even when they're faced with death they will sacrifice themselves for the greater good. In weaving this victory in between the final fight between [Christian Bale's] Batman and [Heathcliff Ledger's] the Joker was a masterstroke and the reason [Christian Bale's] The Dark Knight [(2008) by Christopher Nolan] is by far the superior film. But what do you think? Who had the better Joker? Nicholson or Ledger? For ScreenCrush I'm Ryan Arey."

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It's in fashion to love and praise Christian Bale's The Dark Knight (2008) by Christopher Nolan. I'm anti-fashion, I urge people to be anti-fashion, look it up in the dictionary, the word fashion is right next to the word fascist, it's the same case: there's a small elite group telling you what to wear, what to eat, what to drive around in, and eventually what to see, what to think. Christian Bale's The Dark Knight (2008) by Christopher Nolan wallows in dreary darkness, and almost no humor. It hurt the superhero genre because Warners then thought that all their superhero movies had to wallow in dreary darkness, and almost no humor, in order to make a lot of money.
Michael Keaton's Batman (1989) by Tim Burton is not a straight forward action movie, it is a film noir with gothic horror movie imagery and German expressionistic style imagery, and the humor wasn't humor that was making fun of the characters. Tim Burton allowed people to say funny things as people do in real life, not at the expense of the characters. Tim Burton's aim with the characters was as he described about Batman in the Batman (1989) DVD commentary, "Batman has it's roots in horror movie imagery more than a lot of comics and that's what drew me to it."

Jack Nicholson's Joker is not acting on sexual desires. He hasn't the needs of a typical villain: power, approval and sex.
He was not "romantically" obsessed with Vicki Vale. She was a nobody who he picked as his victim. He clearly delighted in frightening her, messing with her mind, and obviously wanted to sadistically torture her and eventually kill her. This is evident when he tried to burn her face with acid at the art museum. It's pretty obvious that his true intent was to kill her, but not immediately, because he's a sadistic bastard. Picking victims and frightening, conning, wanting ridiculously vain things like his face on the one dollar bill (which is similar to wanting to copyright fish that look like his face), poisoning products, torturing and murdering are not out of character for the Joker. That "Beauty and the Beast" line was just another one of his jokes. He was referring to himself as the beauty. The punchline was "And if anyone else calls you beast, I'll rip their lungs out." You can't take most of what he says and does seriously and sincerely. The Joker is a compulsive lair. He wasn't seriously trying to romantically woo her. He certainly wouldn't give her dead roses if he was seriously being romantic. It's a big joke to him. When she started acting like she was into him, he was just stand there with a puzzled look on his face. He just stands there with his jaw dropped looking puzzled and surprised. He doesn't even give a grin at that moment. Obviously he tried to burn her face with acid, and narrowly missed her as she moved so it only hit the wall. I see her duck her head down and scream as the acid is hitting the wall. "Have a little whiff of my posy." And he tried to kill her when he pretended like he was going to help her up and used a fake hand so she would fall to her death. I don't believe he was seriously trying to woo her. He obviously didn't want to kill her immediately, because he's a sadistic bastard, he does attempt to kill her. "Here, let me lend you a hand." The Joker does pick victims at random. The Joker picking random victims is summed up perfectly in "The Laughing Fish!" from Detective Comics #475 (1978), written by Steve Englehart (who also wrote treatments of the plot of the film. He says in the introduction to Strange Apparitions, "In 1986 I was asked to return to Batman. I wrote two treatments (plots) and argued (unsuccessfully, I thought at the time) against including Robin and the Penguin. Three years later a nice amalgam of these stories and treatments enhanced by Sam Hamm and Tim Burton, hit the screen.") G. Carl Francis was just an ordinary bureaucrat who has done nothing to get himself into trouble, but then the Joker, a man who pushes his own henchmen in front of a truck on a whim, picks him out as a victim. Batman explains "If not you, then someone else, Mr. Francis!" And describes the Joker as a "time-bomb--And every so often, he just has to explode!" G. Carl Francis was just an ordinary bureaucrat who has done nothing to get himself into trouble. Of course he couldn't copyright fish. That's ridiculous. Nobody can. They're a natural resource. Joker is intelligent enough to realize that. The Joker randomly picked him out as his victim and then fixates on him with plans to kill him. Batman explains "If not you, then someone else, Mr. Francis!" And describes the Joker as a "time-bomb--And every so often, he just has to explode!" He picked them both out as victims, made demands "You will take pictures and record my work. You will join me in the avant-garde of the new aesthetic." All Heath Ledger's Joker wanted was just watch the world burn. [Micheal Keaton's] Batman steps and turns Jack Nicholson's Joker's saying against him "You ever dance with the devil in the pale moon light?"

Then he says to Jack Nicholson's Joker, 'I'm going to kill you.' This is a major point with this literature of Batman: he kills people. A lot of people. The original comics Batman had no "no-gun rule, no-kill rule." He didn't have any rules. He was a mysterious vigilante, based on the gun-totting Shadow and lethal Zorro. It was editorial censorship by Whitney Ellsworth that forced a "no-gun rule, no-kill rule" upon the creators of Batman in 1941 with the creation of an editorial advisory board code of conduct that all DC writers and artists were suppose to follow.
As former Timely/Atlas/Marvel editor Stan Lee said in the documentary Comic Book Superheroes Unmasked (2003) about National/DC/All-American's classic characters and Timely/Atlas/Marvel's classic characters, "The publishers began to feel that they were in charge of these characters. The characters became cooperate characters controlled more by the cooperation."

It's explained in Bob Kane's autobiography Batman & Me (1990): "I never had complete control over the Batman [comic book] strip, and the editors placed increasing limitations on what Bill [Finger] and I could do. In the first year, Batman had been a grim vigilante who operated outside of the law. In several early issues of Detective [Comics] he even carried a gun. We had our first brush with censorship over Batman's use of a gun in BATMAN #1. In one story in that issue he had a machine gun mounted on his Batplane and used it. We didn't think anything was wrong with Batman carrying guns because the Shadow used guns. Bill Finger was called on to the carpet by Whitney Ellsworth. He said 'Never let Batman carry a gun again!' The editors thought that making Batman a 'murderer' would taint his character, and mothers would object. The new editorial policy was to get away from Batman's vigilantism and bring him over to the side of the law. So he was remade as an honorary member of the police. The whole moral climate changed in the 1940-1941 period. You couldn't kill or shot villains anymore. DC prepared it's own comics code which every artist and writer had to follow. He wasn't the Dark Knight anymore with all the censorship."
In Cinefex #41 (1989) Tim Burton explained, "I had looked at the Batman encyclopedia [The Encyclopedia of Comic Book Heroes: Batman (1976) by Michael Fleisher about the Golden Age '39 and '40s era Batman comics and the Silver Age '50s and '60s era Batman comics] and found that the mythology contradicts itself - it changes it's own history and has gone through many alterations over the years. So early on, I realized that even if I wanted to be true to the 'real' Batman, there could be substantial argument as to what that really was. We were drawing from the original [Golden Age era Bill Finger and Bob Kane 1939-1940] DC comics strip for inspiration - there was bound to be a certain '40s feeling to it."

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From then on Micheal Keaton's Batman is unstoppable. Jack Nicholson's Joker is no match for him physically [nor was the Joker a match for Batman physically in the classic comics] and he can only try to distract him with sight gags as he's ran out of his weapons. You never doubt for a second that Micheal Keaton's Batman is going to try to kill Jack Nicholson's Joker. This feels like the moment of righteous vengeance. Micheal Keaton's Bruce Wayne doesn't forgive Jack Nicholson's Joker for his parents death and then grow as a person. In Starlog #145 (1989) Tim Burton explained about Michael Keaton's Batman, "It's a guy who has internal scars as opposed to external."

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Like a lot of conflict in early 1939-1940 Batman comics, the problem can only be solved with the villains death. All throughout the movie Jack Nicholson's Joker expresses his desire to kill and humiliate Micheal Keaton's Batman. But when his helicopter comes he's ready to escape and fight another day because he's been brutally beaten up by Batman and he's ran out of weapons. He unintentionally gives Batman enough time to tie down the escaping Joker to the gargoyle on the cathedral and prevent his escape and the Joker falls seemingly to his death. This is spot on writing [by Batman: Blind Justice comic book writer Sam Hamm] emulating the classic comics.

In Christian Bale's The Dark Knight (2008) by Christopher Nolan Heathcliff Ledger's Joker rigged fairy boats with bombs showed that the hundreds of Nolanverse Gothamites on both, even convicted felons in the Nolanverse have pure hearts, they are such saintly people that they wont even sacrifice convicted felons to save themselves. That's really not very realistic. The Burtonverse Gothamites are no saints, if you want saints go look at the Catholics - they believe in saints, I don't even believe in 'em. The Burtonverse Gothamites are selfish, greedy people, and gullible, and those that have been positions of power that we've seen: cops like William Hootkins' Lieutenant Eckhardt, businessmen like Christopher Walken's Max Shreck, politicians like Danny DeVito's Oswald Cobblepot have been corrupt in the Burtonverse dystopian Gotham City. As Jack Nicholson's Jack Napier notes, "decent people shouldn't live here." If Jack Nicholson's Joker had rigged fairy boats with bombs with hundreds of Burtonverse greedy Gothamites on both, including convicted felons in the Burtonverse, both of those fairy boats would have exploded unless Michael Keaton's Batman was homing in on the bombs coordinates and jammed the frequency of the bombs, preventing the remote detonation. As in Batman Returns by Tim Burton, Michael Keaton's Batman was homing in on the Danny DeVito Penguin's remote controlled zombie-like headgear penguin Commando Bombers signal's origin, Michael Gough's Alfred is poised at the same console at which he'd jammed Penguin's speech. The last of the coordinates crackles over Alfred's headset and it is Alfred that jammed the frequency of the Penguin's penguin Commando Bombers with a large bazooka strapped to each ones back, wearing headgear on which is controlling them like zombies on remote control by the Penguin in the Arctic World area underground, angling their bazookas for maximum destruction at the Gotham Plaza area, but after Alfred jammed the Penguin's frequency Alfred then controlled the penguins and made them turn around away from the heavily populated Gotham Plaza area, and return to the Arctic World where the Penguin and the Red Triangle Circus Gang were hiding out.
Michael Keaton's Batman is their only hope. He doesn't try to catch Jack Nicholson's Joker with his grappling hook. He isn't trying to win some saintly moral battle against Jack Nicholson's Joker by sparing his life. Tim Burton explained, "If Batman got [integrative] therapy, he probably wouldn’t be doing this, he wouldn’t be putting on this Batsuit, and we wouldn’t have this weird guy running around in a cape. It’s about depression, and it’s about lack of [psychological] integration [harmonious]. It’s about a character.... I always see it being about those things, not about some kind of 'hero' who is saving the city from [the 'bad guys'] blah-blah-blah."

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This is a crucial difference between the two films: Michael Keaton's Batman '89 by Tim Burton is a fun '80s action film and goes beyond that, where as Christian Bale's The Dark Knight [(2008) by Christopher Nolan is a film wallowing in dreary darkness, and almost no humor. Nicholson's Joker is more than a gangster, Michael Keaton's Batman is called a terrorist by the Gotham Globe "Winged Freak Terrorizes" and Nicholson's Joker called Jack Palance's Carl Grissom a terrorist, Nicholson's Joker is a terrorist and like terrorists he seeks to stoke fear and make society collapse from the inside. Nicholson's Joker said, "Let's run this city into the ground." He assumes fascistic control of the Grissom operation and begins a reign of bizarre terror. Jack Nicholson's Joker terrorizes Gotham with his deadly Smilex toxin in poisoned women's beauty products. Michael Keaton's Batman (1989) by Tim Burton centers on the philosophical battle between Michael Keaton's Batman and Jack Nicholson's Joker and deliberately avoids the conventional superhero movie ending of the climatic battle. So what's the philosophical battle? Michael Keaton's Batman and Jack Nicholson's Joker symbolize anti-fascism and fascism.

As John Kenneth Muir explained, "[Jack Nicholson's] Joker's base of operations is called Axis Chemicals. Axis is the name of the military alliance between Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and Japan. The [Jack Nicholson] Joker's journey in the Burton film actually mirrors Nazi Germany's. Jack Napier meets his Waterloo (or Versailles) at Axis Chemicals, and is resurrected from the toxic (primordial?) goop as the Joker...only to ascend to greater power and tremendous madness. Like Nazi Germany, he nearly wins his battle for domination too. And at the Art Museum, he defaces works representing mainstream Europe (the Allies, essentially). All these incidents suggest that the Joker is a grotesque, fascist threat to the Art Deco order."

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Jack Nicholson's Joker operates much like a fascist state. Michael Keaton's Batman is a mysterious anti-fascist vigilante that also ignores all law, he uses violence to strike fear into the people, he stakes citizens from the shadows against their will, he kills, but Michael Keaton's Batman never succumbs to fascism.
The biggest difference is the way these films end: In Michael Keaton's Batman '89 by Tim Burton Michael Keaton's Bruce Wayne seems to get everything he ever wanted: revenge for his parents, true love and he gets to continue being Batman. He's ultimate victory was won despite the people of the Burtonverse dystopian Gotham's greed who proved that even when they're faced with a reported serial killer they will turn out for the selfish capitalistic greed of the almighty dollar. In weaving dystopian Gotham's greed in between the final fight between Michael Keaton's Batman and Jack Nicholson's Joker was a masterstroke and the reason Michael Keaton's Batman (1989) by Tim Burton is by far the superior film.

Description

Michael Keaton's Batman from the Burtonverse Earth meets Christian Bale's temping Batman from Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012) from the Nolanverse Parallel Earth in the DC Multiverse. Christian Bale did say "Batman could be anybody" to Joseph Gordon-Levitt's John Blake when he's about to retire and have John Blake replace him in The Dark Knight Rises (2012). www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoXT21…

Nolan fans like to claim that Nolan's trilogy is far far more grown up than Tim Burton's! No, Michael Keaton's Batman and Batman Returns by Tim Burton are far more aimed at grown ups! Those films brought children to loud tears in the theaters. Parents were warned not to bring children to those films. articles.latimes.com/1989-08-0… articles.chicagotribune.com/19… Michael Keaton's Batman is a mysterious killer whom is motivated by vengeance and those film are graphically violent, including violence against women and mutilation, sexually suggestive and adult language, Danny DeVito's Penguin is disgusting looking, decaying black teeth and drools black saliva and is into child murder. Jack Nicholson's Joker is into murdering girls by poisoning women's beauty and hygiene products and had shot dead young Bruce Wayne's parents while the little boy looked on. But Tim Burton's also has a mixture of the light and the dark, the funny and the tragic, the mystery. It's got a mixture of everything. Nolan's wallows in dreary darkness, and almost no fun. It's punchy, all right, but not pleasurable, and hammering you over the head with lecturing lines.
Nolan fans like to claim that Tim Burton missed a trick. Nolan spotted what Burton had missed! No, Nolan's trick didn't even exist until Nolan made it up! That anyone can be Batman, that this is some replaceable symbol that can re-retire once he’s found a replacement instead of the promise to his dead parents to spend the rest of his life warring on crime. Christian Bale's Bruce said he felt guilt over his parents Linus Roache's Thomas Wayne and Sara Stewart's Martha Wayne murder by Richard Brake's homeless Joe Chill in a mugging turned accidental murder, he isn't following an oath to avenge his parents by spending the rest of his life warring on crime, he retires as Batman and then happily re-retires as Batman as soon as he finds a replacement, and Michael Cain's Alfred and Morgan Freeman's Lucius Fox did a lot of the thinking for Bale's Bruce Wayne. Even the Bruce Wayne playboy act was also Cain's Alfred's idea in Nolan's movies. He was secretly Batman: "someone to rattle the cages" he said, with a "Nomex survival suit" from Morgan Freeman's Lucius Fox, the suit, the utility belt, the Tumbler Batmobile, the weapons all came from Freeman's Fox rather than invented by Bale's Bruce Wayne. In Comics Interview #77 (1990) DC writer Jack C. Harris asked Batman (1989) producer Michael Uslan, "How do you answer charges that by making the Joker Batman's creator, and resolving the conflict, motivation for the Dark Knight's life-long vendetta against crime has been removed?" Michael Uslan explained, "In the comics, Batman finally caught up with Joe Chill and Lew Moxon, the man who killed and the man who ordered the killing of the parents [in Batman #47 (1948) "The Origin of Batman" written by Bill Finger, art by Bob Kane and Charles Paris, edited by Whitney Ellsworth and in Detective Comics #235 (1956) "The First Batman" written by Bill Finger, art by Sheldon Moldoff, edited by Jack Schiff]. Did he give up being Batman then? No, of course not. He'd sampled crime on a mass basis. If you remember the Batman story with no dialogue, 'Night of the Stalker' [from Detective Comics #439 (1974) "Night of the Stalker" written by Steve Englehart, art by Sal Amendola, edited by Archie Goodwin], you'll remember how he feels; that no matter who crime happens to, to him or another kid, Batman has taken up the call to arms of the people. I think we're right in tune with the comics, historically." Jack C. Harris asked, "Was the other man in the alley on the night the Wayne's murder suppose to be Joe Chill?" Michael Uslan explained, "Yes. In fact you'll recall that it was Chill who grabbed Bruce's mother's necklace."
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In 2014 Ben Child claimed in his The Guardian article "Why Michael Keaton should watch Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies", "Where Nolan presented a Batman as close to reality as possible, Burton chose to reimagine the mythos as a sort of gothic fairytale world in which the supernatural plays a powerful part. As the first superhero blockbuster since the Superman movies, 1989’s Batman laid the foundations for a decade of sloppy, ill-considered comic-book films from studios that felt comfortable treating superheroes as throwaway kiddie confectionery rather than the powerful totems of 20th-century pop culture imagined by later film-makers. Jack Nicholson’s Joker in Batman is made to look like a camp pantomime villain when viewed in comparison to Heath Ledger’s sociopathic ticking time bomb. Danny DeVito and Michelle Pfeiffer are wonderful as the Penguin and Catwoman in Batman Returns, but the movie’s stagey, pseudo-operatic style means we can never accept them as anything more than supercharged cartoon characters. Where later superhero movies, notably Nolan’s Batman films, played up their widescreen, real-world credentials, Gotham in both Burton movies appears to be a tiny citadel with a population of a few thousand at most, largely because the director shot them at Warner Bros’ studios in Burbank, California, and at Pinewood Studios in London. This is Gotham City, not Norwich City, yet the key early scene in Batman Returns in which Christopher Walken’s Max Schreck speaks at the turning on of the Christmas lights features an audience of no more than a couple hundred people. Gotham’s main square had to be tiny in order to be squeezed on to a studio lot. By comparison, Superman, shot a full decade earlier, always feels as though it is set in the real world because New York doubled for Metropolis. In Batman and Batman Returns, he cheerfully gave us villains brought back from the dead after falling into chemical slime, penguins with nuclear missiles strapped to their backs, and downtrodden secretaries resurrected and given impressive kung fu fighting skills after being licked by a bunch of alley cats. Comic-book movies need a little bit of supernatural razzmatazz from time to time, of course, but we are talking Batman here: a superhero with no real superpowers beyond extreme wealth who could in theory exist in reality. Nolan is rightly hailed as a genuine visionary of the milieu for his fearsome, virile superhero trilogy, and Keaton might do well to sit down and actually watch it some day."
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Nolan did not present Bale's Batman as close to reality as possible. The original 1939 Batman comics mythos was as a sort of gothic fairytale world in which the supernatural plays a part [the vampire villains the Monk and Dala from the 1939 comics]. But neither Batman (1989) nor Batman Returns are really supernatural at all. Ben Child condescendingly belittles Tim Burton's fairy tale description as if it's meaning some kiddie childish nonsense. Tim Burton explained, "I had the impulse for horror movies — that was a very strong thematic thing. I love it. Monster movies are my form of myth, of fairy tale. The purpose of folk tales for me is a kind of extreme, symbolic version of life, of what you’re going through. And I linked those monsters and those Edgar Allan Poe things to direct feelings. I didn’t read fairy tales, I watched them."davidbreskin.com/magazines/1-i…

1989’s Batman and Batman Returns were not responsible for the other comic-book films in the '90s, and there were a lot of low-budget crappy comic-book movies but they were not ALL a bunch of sloppy, ill-considered throwaway kiddie films not ALL made only for little children and most of them had nothing at all in common with Michael Keaton's Batman (1989) nor Batman Returns by Tim Burton.
The other comic-book films in the '90s: Archie: To Riverdale and Back Again (1990), The Death of the Incredible Hulk (1990), Captain America (1990), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990), The Rocketeer (1991), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze (1991), Two-Fisted Tales (1992), Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993), The Mask (1994), The Crow (1994), Timecop (1994), the unreleased Fantastic Four (1994), Batman Forever (1995), Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995), Tank Girl (1995), Judge Dredd (1995), The Crow: City of Angels (1996), Barb Wire (1996), Tales from the Crypt: Bordello of Blood (1996), Vampirella (1996), Generation X (1996), Men in Black (1997), Spawn (1997), Batman & Robin (1997), Steel (1997), Blade (1998), Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero (1998), Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (1998), Virus (1999) and Mystery Men (1999).
Jack Nicholson’s Joker is not made to look like a camp pantomime villain when viewed in comparison to Heath Ledger’s sociopathic ticking time bomb. It was Jack Nicholson’s The Shining (1980) horror movie that inspired Jack Nicholson's Joker casting. Producer Michael Uslan explained, "I saw Jack Nicholson's 'Here's Johnny' picture from The Shining [(1980)] in The New York Post—I immediately realized what I was looking at. Voila! He was the only actor then who could play the Joker! No, he was the Joker."
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In Newsweek [June 26th 1989] Jack Nicholson explained, "I had a metaphor in my mind for the character. The shorthand name I came up with was Velvet Death."
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Jack Nicholson’s Joker is into murdering girls by poisoning women's beauty and hygiene products and had shot dead young Bruce Wayne's parents while the little boy looked on, etc. Danny DeVito's Penguin and Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman are not mere cartoon characters. In Fantazone #26 (1992) Batman Returns scriptwriter Daniel Waters explained, "We made the character's [Penguin's] personality contours more epic. He's a real tragic Phantom of the Opera-style character as opposed to just a criminal."
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Danny DeVito explained in Starlog #183 (1992), "Tim [Burton] presented a real visual and psychological image of the Penguin. He wasn't just a comic-book character. There was a duality of character - the idea of a human being dealt less than a perfect hand by life. He made the Penguin sound exciting and challenging, and a character I wanted to explore. His mother and father hated him and threw him out like a piece of garbage."
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Danny DeVito explained, "The Penguin's really two people. In one sense, he's a super-intelligent guy who just wants to be accepted. On the other hand, he's enraged because people find him so revolting they turn away in horror. He could have been well educated like his parents and become a leader, but instead he's been exposed to a bunch of dishonorable characters. It's kind of a tragedy, but we're all the result of our treatment by other people."
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In the book Batman Returns: The Official Movie Book (1992) by Michael Singer, Tim Burton explained, "I feel like a real kindred spirit with Danny [DeVito], and I think we're really creating something that people will see and enjoy as a natural expansion of the comic book character."
In Fantazone #26 (1992) Batman Returns scriptwriter Daniel Waters explained about Catwoman, "My interest stems from the fact that they told me were going to be doing the Catwoman character and she was not going to be the Julie Newmar prototype of the [Adam West Batman] TV series or the hooker of the comic books. She starts off as this sort of harassed secretary. When she becomes Catwoman it's not the kind of Catwoman we're used to seeing. It's not like she's curled up on a couch in a penthouse. There's a lot wider degrees of emotions that she goes through. It's an incredible performance."
In Prevue [August 1992] Michelle Pfeiffer explained, "In fact, the characters dual personality probably makes her the most complex part I've ever encountered."
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Gotham in both Burton movies does not appear to be a tiny citadel. The areas we see of Gotham City in Batman (1989) designed by production designer Anton Furst was built into five-city-blocks. In Starburst #132 (1989) Michael Gough explained, "Gotham City is fantastic. One of the American actors said to me, 'I don't think we'll ever see a set like this again as long as we live.' They couldn't get it into a stage. It's all outdoors, with streets, lamps, shops, a cathedral and a city hall. Incredible! Batman's sets are wonderful. Your imagination soars when you get on sets like that."

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Gotham’s main square is not tiny. For Batman Returns the areas we see of Gotham City designed by production designer Bo Welch had to be built not only inside Warners largest sound stage just to fit parts of Gotham City but also inside Universal Studios largest just to fit the Penguin's lair in Gotham City.
In the book Batman Returns: The Official Movie Book (1992) by Michael Singer, Batman Returns production designer Bo Welch explained, "You never see any set or any piece in this movie in it's entirety. You see a piece of the city here [in Batman Returns] and another piece there [in Batman (1989)]. It allows your mind to fill in the rest and use your own imagination." Bo Welch explained that Gotham Plaza is, "a deliberate caricature of Rockefeller Center [with the Atlas statue from 1937 and the giant Rockefeller Center Christmas tree tradition] in New York - something like a weirder twin." The Gotham Plaza statues are called Misery, Grief, Ecstasy and Victory.
By comparison, Christopher Reeve's Superman always feels as though it is set in just '70s New York instead of Metropolis. Jack Nicholson’s Joker is not literally brought back from the dead after falling into the vat of chemicals, the Penguin's zombie-like penguin Commando Bombers have a large bazooka strapped to each ones back, wearing headgear on which is controlling them like zombies on remote control by the Penguin, not nuclear missiles strapped to their backs, and Michelle Pfeiffer's Selina Kyle is not given kung fu fighting skills after being licked by a bunch of alley cats. In the Batman Returns script written by Daniel Waters it is explained that Michelle Pfeiffer's Selina Kyle had taken karate lessons. "SELINA: 'I won some karate lessons. Radio thing. I'd been calling for Grateful Dead tix... anyway, I take the course. I was a most serious failure. The instructor kept chanting 'Your mind isn't clear, your mind isn't...' (disturbingly) It is now...'"
And "GRUFF WOMAN: 'Selina ... We've missed you at the rape prevention class ... It's not enough to master martial arts. Hey, Elvis knew those moves, and he died fat. You must stop seeing yourself as a victim--'"
When Michelle Pfeiffer's Selina Kyle is pushed out the window by Christopher Walken's Max Shreck, she falls through awnings which slows her fall and lands on snow and cats revive her by biting her fingers. She suffers from loss of consciousness, a temporary catatonic state [coma], and temporary post-traumatic amnesia, which are concussion symptoms of brain injury.
Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman origin in Batman Returns actually harks back to the original Catwoman origin from Batman #62 (1950) "The Secret Life of the Catwoman" written by Bill Finger, art by Bob Kane and Lew Schwartz [reprinted in The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told #2 (1992)], in which Selina Kyle was an introvert, then survived a crash, but suffered from amnesia. Thereafter she became Catwoman by releasing her formerly repressed inner-self, and all her inhibitions. The version of Catwoman's origin involving the crash (a death and resurrection motif) and amnesia has psychological depth. This origin suggests that Kyle had a dual personality, and that her amnesia released her repressed side, utilize her karate skills, and leading her not only to turn criminal, but to heighten her sexuality as well.

In 2018 Ryan Arey's ScreenCrush decided to post a video on YouTube called "Why 'Dark Knight' is Better Than 'Batman' - Scene vs. Scene" described as "Everyone loves The Dark Knight." Praising Christian Bale's The Dark Knight (2008) by Christopher Nolan as "a masterpiece, the greatest superhero movie of all time. It elevated the genre and won Heath Ledger an academy award" and trash talking Michael Keaton's Batman (1989) by Tim Burton as "a straight forward action movie, often played for laughs. A flaw of Jack Nicholson's Joker is he acts on sexual desires. He has the needs of a typical villain: power, approval and sex. All Heath Ledger's Joker wanted was just watch the world burn. [Micheal Keaton's] Batman steps in with this one-liner 'You ever dance with the devil in the pale moon light?' Then he says to [Jack Nicholson's] the Joker, 'I'm going to kill you.' This is the major problem with this literature of Batman: he kills people. A lot of people. From then on [Micheal Keaton's] Batman is unstoppable. [Jack Nicholson's] Joker is no match for him physically and he can only try to distract him with sight gags. You never doubt for a second that [Micheal Keaton's] Batman is going to kill [Jack Nicholson's] the Joker. This feels like the moment of righteous vengeance. [Micheal Keaton's] Bruce Wayne doesn't forgive [Jack Nicholson's] the Joker for his parents death and then grow as a person. Like a lot of conflict in action movies, the problem can only be solved with the villains death. All throughout the movie [Jack Nicholson's Joker] expresses his desire to kill and humiliate [Micheal Keaton's] Batman. But when his helicopter comes he's ready to take off and fight another day. He gives Batman ample time to murder the man who killed his parents. I think this is lazy writing [by Batman: Blind Justice comic book writer Sam Hamm] emulating superior action movies like [Bruce Willis'] Die Hard [(1988) by John McTiernan].

Lets compare this to the masterful final confrontation between [Christian Bale's] Batman and [Heathcliff Ledger's] the Joker in The Dark Knight [(2008) movie]: like in the first movie [meaning Michael Keaton's Batman (1989) by Tim Burton], there are personal stakes, but instead of [Heathcliff Ledger's] the Joker killing [Christian Bale's] Bruce Wayne's parents decades ago, he's recently killed the love of his life: [Maggie Gyllenhaal's] Rachel Dawes [replacing Katie Holmes' Rachel Dawes], [Christian Bale's] Batman has every reason to want him dead, the stakes are further raised before the fight even begins: [Heathcliff Ledger's] the Joker has rigged two fairy boats with bombs: hundreds of people on either [fairy] boat can blow the explosives on the opposite fairy, thereby saving their own lives by becoming murderers. The fight in inter-cut with people forced into an impossible decision: 'do I sacrifice hundreds of lives to save my own.' One [fairy] boat is filled with felons, further raising the moral stakes. So [Christian Bale's] Batman is not fighting only to catch [Heathcliff Ledger's] the Joker but to save all of these people from making a horrible choice.

This [Heathcliff Ledger] Joker is a physical match for Batman. He's ferocious, much like the dogs he sics on [Christian Bale's] Batman on the start of the fight. [Christian Bale's] Batman becomes blinded and confused and like in [Michael Keaton's] Batman '89 [by Tim Burton] [Heathcliff Ledger's] Joker ends up pinning him on a ledge.

Now, however, [Heathcliff Ledger's] the Joker has a reason to keep him alive. He wants [Christian Bale's] Batman to hear ordinary people murdering innocents to save themselves. This is the question at the center of every Christopher Nolan Batman film: are the people of [the Nolanverse Parallel Earth in the DC Multiverse] Gotham City actually worthy of survival. The audience expects the felons to riot and seize the detonator, one of them [Tommy Tiny Lister] has a tense conversation with [Nigel Carrington] the warden where he claims he has the courage to do what the warden doesn't, but instead of killing, he removes the choice to kill, these men know that taking a life weighs on you, but taking hundreds condemns you. The real tension comes from the [fairy] boat filled with ordinary people who all get together to vote to blow up the other [fairy] boat, and [Heathcliff Ledger's] the Joker alludes to this earlier. People think that murder is okay when it is sanctioned by a democrat body. The camera frequently cuts to this [Helene Maksoud] doe eyed mother trying to protect her children. There's [Doug Ballard] an old white guy in a suit who is ready to pull the trigger but ultimately he can't do it. The people on the [fairy] boat decide it's better to die then to live for years with murder on your conscious. Now these [Nolanverse] Gothamites have proven they're worth saving.

[Christian Bale's] Batman is their only hope. He throws [Heathcliff Ledger's] the Joker off a building but still catches him with his grappling hook. He wins a moral battle against [Heathcliff Ledger's] the Joker by sparing his life. This is a crucial difference between the two films: [Michael Keaton's] Batman '89 [by Tim Burton] is a fun '80s action film where as [Christian Bale's] The Dark Knight [(2008) by Christopher Nolan] is a film with strong post-9/11 themes. Nicholson's Joker is a gangster but Ledger's Joker is often called a terrorist and like terrorists he seeks to stoke fear and make society collapse from the inside. [Christian Bale's] The Dark Knight [(2008) by Christopher Nolan] centers on the philosophical battle between [Christian Bale's] Batman and [Heathcliff Ledger's] the Joker and deliberately avoids the easy ending of the climatic battle. So what's the philosophical battle? [Christian Bale's] the Batman and [Heathcliff Ledger's] Joker symbolize order and anarchy. Anarchy is the breaking down of social order. But when too much order is exerted on a society it becomes a fascist state. [Christian Bale's] Batman operates much like a fascist state. He ignores international law to unilaterally invade Hong Kong, he uses violence to strike fear into the people, he monitors citizens against their will, and [Aaron Eckhart's] Harvey Dent even voices support for temporary fascist rule, but [Christian Bale's] Batman never succumbs to fascism because he refuses to kill. The biggest difference is the way these films end: In [Michael Keaton's] Batman '89 [by Tim Burton] [Michael Keaton's] Bruce Wayne gets everything he ever wanted: revenge for his parents, true love and he gets to continue being Batman. In [Christian Bale's] The Dark Knight [(2008) by Christopher Nolan] [Christian Bale's] Bruce Wayne fails: he loses everything: [Maggie Gyllenhaal's] Rachel, his reputation, and [Aaron Eckhart's] Harvey Dent: the [Nolanverse] city's white knight, he's ultimate victory was won by the people of [Nolanverse] Gotham who proved that even when they're faced with death they will sacrifice themselves for the greater good. In weaving this victory in between the final fight between [Christian Bale's] Batman and [Heathcliff Ledger's] the Joker was a masterstroke and the reason [Christian Bale's] The Dark Knight [(2008) by Christopher Nolan] is by far the superior film. But what do you think? Who had the better Joker? Nicholson or Ledger? For ScreenCrush I'm Ryan Arey."

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twitter.com/ryanarey

It's in fashion to love and praise Christian Bale's The Dark Knight (2008) by Christopher Nolan. I'm anti-fashion, I urge people to be anti-fashion, look it up in the dictionary, the word fashion is right next to the word fascist, it's the same case: there's a small elite group telling you what to wear, what to eat, what to drive around in, and eventually what to see, what to think. Christian Bale's The Dark Knight (2008) by Christopher Nolan wallows in dreary darkness, and almost no humor. It hurt the superhero genre because Warners then thought that all their superhero movies had to wallow in dreary darkness, and almost no humor, in order to make a lot of money.
Michael Keaton's Batman (1989) by Tim Burton is not a straight forward action movie, it is a film noir with gothic horror movie imagery and German expressionistic style imagery, and the humor wasn't humor that was making fun of the characters. Tim Burton allowed people to say funny things as people do in real life, not at the expense of the characters. Tim Burton's aim with the characters was as he described about Batman in the Batman (1989) DVD commentary, "Batman has it's roots in horror movie imagery more than a lot of comics and that's what drew me to it."

Jack Nicholson's Joker is not acting on sexual desires. He hasn't the needs of a typical villain: power, approval and sex.
He was not "romantically" obsessed with Vicki Vale. She was a nobody who he picked as his victim. He clearly delighted in frightening her, messing with her mind, and obviously wanted to sadistically torture her and eventually kill her. This is evident when he tried to burn her face with acid at the art museum. It's pretty obvious that his true intent was to kill her, but not immediately, because he's a sadistic bastard. Picking victims and frightening, conning, wanting ridiculously vain things like his face on the one dollar bill (which is similar to wanting to copyright fish that look like his face), poisoning products, torturing and murdering are not out of character for the Joker. That "Beauty and the Beast" line was just another one of his jokes. He was referring to himself as the beauty. The punchline was "And if anyone else calls you beast, I'll rip their lungs out." You can't take most of what he says and does seriously and sincerely. The Joker is a compulsive lair. He wasn't seriously trying to romantically woo her. He certainly wouldn't give her dead roses if he was seriously being romantic. It's a big joke to him. When she started acting like she was into him, he was just stand there with a puzzled look on his face. He just stands there with his jaw dropped looking puzzled and surprised. He doesn't even give a grin at that moment. Obviously he tried to burn her face with acid, and narrowly missed her as she moved so it only hit the wall. I see her duck her head down and scream as the acid is hitting the wall. "Have a little whiff of my posy." And he tried to kill her when he pretended like he was going to help her up and used a fake hand so she would fall to her death. I don't believe he was seriously trying to woo her. He obviously didn't want to kill her immediately, because he's a sadistic bastard, he does attempt to kill her. "Here, let me lend you a hand." The Joker does pick victims at random. The Joker picking random victims is summed up perfectly in "The Laughing Fish!" from Detective Comics #475 (1978), written by Steve Englehart (who also wrote treatments of the plot of the film. He says in the introduction to Strange Apparitions, "In 1986 I was asked to return to Batman. I wrote two treatments (plots) and argued (unsuccessfully, I thought at the time) against including Robin and the Penguin. Three years later a nice amalgam of these stories and treatments enhanced by Sam Hamm and Tim Burton, hit the screen.") G. Carl Francis was just an ordinary bureaucrat who has done nothing to get himself into trouble, but then the Joker, a man who pushes his own henchmen in front of a truck on a whim, picks him out as a victim. Batman explains "If not you, then someone else, Mr. Francis!" And describes the Joker as a "time-bomb--And every so often, he just has to explode!" G. Carl Francis was just an ordinary bureaucrat who has done nothing to get himself into trouble. Of course he couldn't copyright fish. That's ridiculous. Nobody can. They're a natural resource. Joker is intelligent enough to realize that. The Joker randomly picked him out as his victim and then fixates on him with plans to kill him. Batman explains "If not you, then someone else, Mr. Francis!" And describes the Joker as a "time-bomb--And every so often, he just has to explode!" He picked them both out as victims, made demands "You will take pictures and record my work. You will join me in the avant-garde of the new aesthetic." All Heath Ledger's Joker wanted was just watch the world burn. [Micheal Keaton's] Batman steps and turns Jack Nicholson's Joker's saying against him "You ever dance with the devil in the pale moon light?"

Then he says to Jack Nicholson's Joker, 'I'm going to kill you.' This is a major point with this literature of Batman: he kills people. A lot of people. The original comics Batman had no "no-gun rule, no-kill rule." He didn't have any rules. He was a mysterious vigilante, based on the gun-totting Shadow and lethal Zorro. It was editorial censorship by Whitney Ellsworth that forced a "no-gun rule, no-kill rule" upon the creators of Batman in 1941 with the creation of an editorial advisory board code of conduct that all DC writers and artists were suppose to follow.
As former Timely/Atlas/Marvel editor Stan Lee said in the documentary Comic Book Superheroes Unmasked (2003) about National/DC/All-American's classic characters and Timely/Atlas/Marvel's classic characters, "The publishers began to feel that they were in charge of these characters. The characters became cooperate characters controlled more by the cooperation."

It's explained in Bob Kane's autobiography Batman & Me (1990): "I never had complete control over the Batman [comic book] strip, and the editors placed increasing limitations on what Bill [Finger] and I could do. In the first year, Batman had been a grim vigilante who operated outside of the law. In several early issues of Detective [Comics] he even carried a gun. We had our first brush with censorship over Batman's use of a gun in BATMAN #1. In one story in that issue he had a machine gun mounted on his Batplane and used it. We didn't think anything was wrong with Batman carrying guns because the Shadow used guns. Bill Finger was called on to the carpet by Whitney Ellsworth. He said 'Never let Batman carry a gun again!' The editors thought that making Batman a 'murderer' would taint his character, and mothers would object. The new editorial policy was to get away from Batman's vigilantism and bring him over to the side of the law. So he was remade as an honorary member of the police. The whole moral climate changed in the 1940-1941 period. You couldn't kill or shot villains anymore. DC prepared it's own comics code which every artist and writer had to follow. He wasn't the Dark Knight anymore with all the censorship."
In Cinefex #41 (1989) Tim Burton explained, "I had looked at the Batman encyclopedia [The Encyclopedia of Comic Book Heroes: Batman (1976) by Michael Fleisher about the Golden Age '39 and '40s era Batman comics and the Silver Age '50s and '60s era Batman comics] and found that the mythology contradicts itself - it changes it's own history and has gone through many alterations over the years. So early on, I realized that even if I wanted to be true to the 'real' Batman, there could be substantial argument as to what that really was. We were drawing from the original [Golden Age era Bill Finger and Bob Kane 1939-1940] DC comics strip for inspiration - there was bound to be a certain '40s feeling to it."

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From then on Micheal Keaton's Batman is unstoppable. Jack Nicholson's Joker is no match for him physically [nor was the Joker a match for Batman physically in the classic comics] and he can only try to distract him with sight gags as he's ran out of his weapons. You never doubt for a second that Micheal Keaton's Batman is going to try to kill Jack Nicholson's Joker. This feels like the moment of righteous vengeance. Micheal Keaton's Bruce Wayne doesn't forgive Jack Nicholson's Joker for his parents death and then grow as a person. In Starlog #145 (1989) Tim Burton explained about Michael Keaton's Batman, "It's a guy who has internal scars as opposed to external."

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Like a lot of conflict in early 1939-1940 Batman comics, the problem can only be solved with the villains death. All throughout the movie Jack Nicholson's Joker expresses his desire to kill and humiliate Micheal Keaton's Batman. But when his helicopter comes he's ready to escape and fight another day because he's been brutally beaten up by Batman and he's ran out of weapons. He unintentionally gives Batman enough time to tie down the escaping Joker to the gargoyle on the cathedral and prevent his escape and the Joker falls seemingly to his death. This is spot on writing [by Batman: Blind Justice comic book writer Sam Hamm] emulating the classic comics.

In Christian Bale's The Dark Knight (2008) by Christopher Nolan Heathcliff Ledger's Joker rigged fairy boats with bombs showed that the hundreds of Nolanverse Gothamites on both, even convicted felons in the Nolanverse have pure hearts, they are such saintly people that they wont even sacrifice convicted felons to save themselves. That's really not very realistic. The Burtonverse Gothamites are no saints, if you want saints go look at the Catholics - they believe in saints, I don't even believe in 'em. The Burtonverse Gothamites are selfish, greedy people, and gullible, and those that have been positions of power that we've seen: cops like William Hootkins' Lieutenant Eckhardt, businessmen like Christopher Walken's Max Shreck, politicians like Danny DeVito's Oswald Cobblepot have been corrupt in the Burtonverse dystopian Gotham City. As Jack Nicholson's Jack Napier notes, "decent people shouldn't live here." If Jack Nicholson's Joker had rigged fairy boats with bombs with hundreds of Burtonverse greedy Gothamites on both, including convicted felons in the Burtonverse, both of those fairy boats would have exploded unless Michael Keaton's Batman was homing in on the bombs coordinates and jammed the frequency of the bombs, preventing the remote detonation. As in Batman Returns by Tim Burton, Michael Keaton's Batman was homing in on the Danny DeVito Penguin's remote controlled zombie-like headgear penguin Commando Bombers signal's origin, Michael Gough's Alfred is poised at the same console at which he'd jammed Penguin's speech. The last of the coordinates crackles over Alfred's headset and it is Alfred that jammed the frequency of the Penguin's penguin Commando Bombers with a large bazooka strapped to each ones back, wearing headgear on which is controlling them like zombies on remote control by the Penguin in the Arctic World area underground, angling their bazookas for maximum destruction at the Gotham Plaza area, but after Alfred jammed the Penguin's frequency Alfred then controlled the penguins and made them turn around away from the heavily populated Gotham Plaza area, and return to the Arctic World where the Penguin and the Red Triangle Circus Gang were hiding out.
Michael Keaton's Batman is their only hope. He doesn't try to catch Jack Nicholson's Joker with his grappling hook. He isn't trying to win some saintly moral battle against Jack Nicholson's Joker by sparing his life. Tim Burton explained, "If Batman got [integrative] therapy, he probably wouldn’t be doing this, he wouldn’t be putting on this Batsuit, and we wouldn’t have this weird guy running around in a cape. It’s about depression, and it’s about lack of [psychological] integration [harmonious]. It’s about a character.... I always see it being about those things, not about some kind of 'hero' who is saving the city from [the 'bad guys'] blah-blah-blah."

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This is a crucial difference between the two films: Michael Keaton's Batman '89 by Tim Burton is a fun '80s action film and goes beyond that, where as Christian Bale's The Dark Knight [(2008) by Christopher Nolan is a film wallowing in dreary darkness, and almost no humor. Nicholson's Joker is more than a gangster, Michael Keaton's Batman is called a terrorist by the Gotham Globe "Winged Freak Terrorizes" and Nicholson's Joker called Jack Palance's Carl Grissom a terrorist, Nicholson's Joker is a terrorist and like terrorists he seeks to stoke fear and make society collapse from the inside. Nicholson's Joker said, "Let's run this city into the ground." He assumes fascistic control of the Grissom operation and begins a reign of bizarre terror. Jack Nicholson's Joker terrorizes Gotham with his deadly Smilex toxin in poisoned women's beauty products. Michael Keaton's Batman (1989) by Tim Burton centers on the philosophical battle between Michael Keaton's Batman and Jack Nicholson's Joker and deliberately avoids the conventional superhero movie ending of the climatic battle. So what's the philosophical battle? Michael Keaton's Batman and Jack Nicholson's Joker symbolize anti-fascism and fascism.

As John Kenneth Muir explained, "[Jack Nicholson's] Joker's base of operations is called Axis Chemicals. Axis is the name of the military alliance between Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and Japan. The [Jack Nicholson] Joker's journey in the Burton film actually mirrors Nazi Germany's. Jack Napier meets his Waterloo (or Versailles) at Axis Chemicals, and is resurrected from the toxic (primordial?) goop as the Joker...only to ascend to greater power and tremendous madness. Like Nazi Germany, he nearly wins his battle for domination too. And at the Art Museum, he defaces works representing mainstream Europe (the Allies, essentially). All these incidents suggest that the Joker is a grotesque, fascist threat to the Art Deco order."

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Jack Nicholson's Joker operates much like a fascist state. Michael Keaton's Batman is a mysterious anti-fascist vigilante that also ignores all law, he uses violence to strike fear into the people, he stakes citizens from the shadows against their will, he kills, but Michael Keaton's Batman never succumbs to fascism.
The biggest difference is the way these films end: In Michael Keaton's Batman '89 by Tim Burton Michael Keaton's Bruce Wayne seems to get everything he ever wanted: revenge for his parents, true love and he gets to continue being Batman. He's ultimate victory was won despite the people of the Burtonverse dystopian Gotham's greed who proved that even when they're faced with a reported serial killer they will turn out for the selfish capitalistic greed of the almighty dollar. In weaving dystopian Gotham's greed in between the final fight between Michael Keaton's Batman and Jack Nicholson's Joker was a masterstroke and the reason Michael Keaton's Batman (1989) by Tim Burton is by far the superior film.