When Tim Burton was approached to direct a Batman movie, the most ubiquitous image of the Caped Crusader in pop culture was Adam West’s gloriously campy TV show from the 1960s. But by then, comics like The Dark Knight Returns and The Killing Joke had pushed back against that colorful, lighthearted portrayal of the character and gone back to the dark, gritty roots of Bob Kane and Bill Finger’s original vision. Burton set out to inject some of that Frank Miller/Alan Moore grimness into the character without sacrificing any of the fun, and he couldn’t have done a better job.

As soon as Batman swooped into theaters in 1989, West’s zany turn as the Bat was vanquished from the cultural consciousness and Michael Keaton took his place. Keaton captured all the universal truths about this character: his tortured soul, his effortless coolness, his fearlessness in the face of life-or-death stakes, and above all, the fact that billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne is the real mask he puts on, not the black cowl.

Keaton’s performance is full of little moments that perfectly encapsulate Bruce as a character, much like Christopher Reeve’s definitive turn as Clark Kent. When Bruce is having dinner with Vicki Vale in an elegant dining hall in his lavish mansion, he tells her, “I don’t think I’ve ever been in this room before.” That line tells us everything we need to know about the character: he’s down-to-earth, he’s refreshingly frank, and he doesn’t care about the frills of his riches.

Tim Burton Injects A Hefty Dose Of Darkness Into The Comic-Booky Camp Of The Adam West Batman Series

Burton Reuses The Dutch Angles, But Borrows From The Visuals Of German Expressionism

Burton doesn’t abandon the comic-booky camp of the Adam West series entirely — the art gallery sequence set to Prince’s “Partyman” is a perfect example of that — but he did inject a hefty dose of darkness. He reused the series’ signature goofy Dutch angles, but used them more to unsettle the audience than to heighten the reality. With detectives in trench coats and gangsters in fedoras, the costumes are ripped straight out of an old-school noir. But Burton’s visual style also borrows heavily from German Expressionism, with shadowy figures, a gloomy color palette, extravagant set design, and a gothic, almost steampunk vision of Gotham City.

Jack Nicholson has a ton of fun with the Joker’s blend of sadism and buffoonery, playing him essentially as Jack Torrance in clown makeup. He strikes the perfect middle ground between the cackling vaudevillian theatricality of Cesar Romero and Mark Hamill, and the genuine menace of Heath Ledger. The transformation scene, in which Jack Napier first sees his disfigured face in a mirror and laughs hysterically, is pure nightmare fuel.

Danny Elfman’s theme is as synonymous with the Bat as John Williams’ Superman theme is with the Man of Steel; it captures the atmosphere of the character so perfectly that it’s since been reused in everything from Batman: The Animated Series to the Lego Batman video games to Batman the Ride at Six Flags.

Batman ’89 Isn’t Quite A Perfect Movie

But The Flaws Are Easy To Overlook

It’s not quite a flawless movie. I understand why Prince is on the soundtrack — at the height of The Artist’s popularity, if you could get him to contribute a song, you got him to contribute a song — but his music feels out of place in the film. Prince’s songs interrupt Elfman’s brooding, theatrical score for a couple of poppy ballads. Plus, the coincidental twist that the Joker is the one who murdered Bruce’s parents is almost as contrived as James Bond being Blofeld’s long-lost brother.

But other than that, this is a perfect cinematic adaptation of one of the world’s most iconic superheroes. The dark tone, the gothic visual style, Elfman’s moody music, and Keaton’s cool but tortured performance all come together to create the quintessential Batman movie. Christopher Nolan and Matt Reeves have come up with their own beloved takes on the Dark Knight, but they’re all standing on the shoulders of Burton’s Batman.