Welcome to The Twelve Ways of Christmas, where we unpack weird and overlooked holiday films. And let’s face it, the blog roll could use the attention.
With little rhyme or reason, check in from now until The Day That Must Not Be Named for a new entry.
The Dark Knight Rises concluded Christopher Nolan’s trilogy of Batman films by tossing the Caped Crusader into the dead of winter. Snow-crested urban landscapes exaggerate Gotham City’s slow decay at the hands of Bane and the League of Shadows while an icy river handed out “death by exile” to civil servants and prisoners alike at the hands of the crazed and corrupt.
But Nolan’s final chapter wasn’t the first Batman film set during the worst season of the year. That honor goes to Batman Returns, Tim Burton’s follow-up to his 1989 smash hit. Set some time after Jack Nicholson’s Joker played Gotham’s citizens like a fiddle, Burton’s grim and bizarre 1992 sequel throws a new challenge at Michael Keaton’s Batman: commercialism. As Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman carries out anarchic vengeance on shopping malls and in dark alleyways and Danny DeVito’s grotesque Penguin dupes the city into electing him mayor, it’s Max Shreck’s dirty businessman (Christopher Walken) pulling all the strings. With his shock of white hair and ornate, stuffy suits (and the fact that “Max Shreck” is a not-so-subtle hat tip to Nosferatu‘s leading man), Shreck is Burton’s riff on Ebenezer Scrooge, swapping out the Dickensian figure’s icy miser for a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
It’s thanks to Shreck’s smooth-talking and superficial philanthropy that Penguin has any shot as a mayoral candidate. As Oswald Cobblepot, DeVito waddles out from the depths of the sewers to the city’s embrace, a kind of post hoc apology for Mr. and Mrs. Cobblepot chucking their first born son down the river many Christmas Eves ago. Gotham’s acceptance of Penguin, with his tar-colored spittle and crude “French flipper” jokes, feels patronizing and self-medicating even at the peak of his political campaign, so there’s little love lost when Cobbleplot turns on Shreck and reveals his ultimate plan: to kill the firstborn son of every family in Gotham. A Faustian bargain struck between two uneasy business partners shatters leaving Shreck and the rest of Gotham to contend with the devil and his dirty dealings.
Penguin’s revenge plot is extreme and a big reason why Burton’s second effort alienated viewers and marketers alike. In this gothic vision of a Gotham covered in the trappings of Christmas, killing the eldest son of every family crystallizes into a reverse nativity story — and it works, even in a climax where rockets are strapped to the backs of penguin commandos. Both of Burton’s Batman films have always been personal ones, with the director’s interests imbued in each and every design element. In Burton’s world, Catwoman’s a stitched-together mirror of cushy gender norms, and Gotham itself often resembles a macabre Dickens Village rather than a bustling metropolis. Even the vigilante sacrifices of Bruce Wayne take on a Christ-like selflessness. Batman Returns isn’t an amazing Batman story; it works much better as a precursor to Burton’s involvement with The Nightmare Before Christmas. What would be Burton’s final Batman story however incisively turns the charity of the most wonderful time of the year on its head where Bruce Wayne’s final wish for “Goodwill toward men… and women” feels more like a plea for Gotham’s soul than a seasonal pleasantry.