I used to take Karate and often I and the rest of the students in the class would ask our sensei (teacher) who he thought was the greatest martial artist ever, many of us expecting the answer to be consistent with the conventional wisdom - Bruce Lee. He stated that in his opinion Bruce Lee could not make that claim because unlike Chuck Norris (who people often compare him too), Bruce Lee never competed and won a single organized tournament whereas Chuck Norris won numerous ones. Chuck Norris fulfilled the age old saying…”in order to be the man, you have to beat the man!” At the end of the day it is left to one’s opinion but my sensei made an interesting point that by looking deeper than the conventional wisdom you might come up with a different answer. Recently the movie going audience has been reminded about the furor that was leveled against Michael Keaton’s casting as the first Batman in the modern cinema era. The conventional wisdom in this case is that it is held up as proof that audiences should avoid trying to second guess the casting decisions of a director. Given the runaway success the original 1989 Batman film there is no question that audiences embraced Keaton’s Batman…or did they? In fact if we look beyond the superficial there are more than a few reasons to believe that the public that expressed reservations about that casting were in fact correct. How you may wonder...
The argument against Keaton was that he would not make a convincing Batman. The first film was so successful that Keaton went on to make a sequel, Batman Returns. Therein lays the conundrum. Keaton’s second outing as the caped crusader (although a technical box office success) bombed compared to the original Batman making a staggering $144,526,570 LESS than the original (Batman $411,348,924 versus Batman Returns $266,822,354) worldwide. This amounted to a 35% drop in box office receipts which for the sake of this argument means that approximately 1 out of every 3 people who saw the original film did not return for the sequel. So the first conclusion one would come to is that the second movie was just not as good. But that would be incorrect. The second film is highly regarded as the better film and their respective rotten tomatoes critic scores confirm this (Batman 70% versus Batman Returns 81%). OK, maybe people were not that excited to see the next Batman. Again that does not seem to be the case. Based on their opening box office numbers, it seems as though they opened to fairly similar numbers and in fact Batman Returns did slightly better (Batman $40,489,746 versus Batman Returns $45,687,711) so it should have gone on to do as well or better than Batman. Alright then, maybe there was less star power than the first film which featured Jack Nicholson as the Joker and Kim Bassinger as Vicky Vale. Not likely since Batman Returns also featured two very prominent stars as its main villains. Moreso, it was fans that were clamoring for Danny Devito to play the Penguin and Michelle Pfeiffer is routinely voted the best Catwoman ever in online polls. So what was it that caused the film to do poorly relative to its predecessor?
My theory is that audiences never really fully embraced Michael Keaton as Batman as some vocal fans predicted - although a film too late. The reason for his initial success was not because he did such a great job portraying Batman, but rather because it was the first EVER Batman in a modern major motion picture. The novelty of having Batman appear on screen is what drew audiences to - at the time – make it an enormous box office success. Perhaps almost any actor at the time that remotely resembled Bruce Wayne would have accomplished the same feat. But once the novelty had worn off, the success of future films needed to rely on the connection that the stars of the film could establish with an audience and the story. As indicated above it is difficult to think it was the story of Batman Returns which garnered a higher critical reception that made it lose the audience the first film appealed to. Batman Returns was still considered a commercial success only because it did have some momentum from the first movie, but as the final box office tally showed quickly lost steam when compared to Keaton’s first outing as Batman.
Need more proof? Additional confirmation that maybe audiences did not embrace Keaton came with his departure and the subsequent casting of Val Kilmer in the role of the Dark Knight. It further demonstrates that Keaton may have been the issue because despite Batman Forever being generally panned by critics (scoring a miserable 41% on Rotten Tomatoes) and having a recast star actor, the movie taking in a worldwide haul of $336,529,144 performed better at the box office than Batman Returns, which at that time was the highest rated Batman film of the three made. Warner Brothers reasoning for the disappointing numbers of Batman Returns is that it was too “dark”. The problem with that theory is today we have the example of the Dark Knight Trilogy which seems to disprove it. It had to overcome the negative perceptions of the first Batman movies from the 1990’s; it did not have the benefit Keaton enjoyed of being a “first” movie; and the second film in the series was the darkest of the three which (like Batman Returns) was also the most critically acclaimed of the series. But unlike the second movie from the Keaton series which as indicated above saw a 35% loss of support compared to the first film, Christian Bale’s Batman saw a 268% MORE in ticket sales compared to the first film (Batman Begins $374,218,673 versus The Dark Knight $1,004,558,444). Christian Bale clearly connected with the audience as the Caped Crusader and many fans continue to lobby to see him return to the role as Warner Brothers has sought to recast the character. Living through the Keaton period, I personally do not ever recall their being a huge public push to convince him (Keaton) to return the way we have seen with Christian Bale, but I must readily admit it is based on my personal observations and I could very well be wrong.
All in all, when you look beyond the initial success of the 1989 Batman film and put into perspective why it probably was successful, it suggests that despite the conventional wisdom, Michael Keaton did not connect with audiences as a vocal public had predicted. Does it mean they (the public) are always right when it comes to casting decisions? Absolutely not! There is no defense of their wrong call of Heath Ledger’s turn as the Joker in The Dark Knight. But when it comes to Michael Keaton being cast as Batman, those arguing that it is proof of public folly when it comes to casting may in fact be the ones who have misread the situation and it turns out that the public who opposed his casting may have been right all along.