The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture by Glen Weldon

The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture by Glen Weldon

Author:Glen Weldon [Weldon, Glen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2016-03-22T06:00:00+00:00


ONSET OF ON-SET TENSIONS

Filming began in October on a huge ninety-five-acre lot at Pinewood Studios, near London. A harried Jon Peters became a familiar presence on the set, having insisted that Hamm’s script needed further rewrites. Hamm, who had already taken the script through five revisions, begged off, citing a Writers Guild strike. Peters brought in Warren Skaaren to up the film’s emotional punch.

Skaaren began by excising Robin. Burton agreed with the decision not to introduce yet another origin to the mix. “It was too much psychology to throw in one movie,” he said later.

Hamm’s script had ended with the death of Vicki Vale, but Skaaren let her live. In fact, he felt the film needed to honor the Bruce-Vicki relationship more deeply, as well as establish Alfred’s fatherly concern for Bruce’s well-being. He addressed both issues by adding one of the most reviled scenes in Batman’s cinematic history, in which Alfred, worried that Bruce is shutting out his one chance at romance, ushers Vicki into the Batcave, exposing Batman’s secret identity.

Years later, Burton would castigate himself for acceding to that particular change, though he knew it would upset hard-core fans. “That was the one thing I got killed for,” he said, referring to the nerd outcry over the scene. “It was rough. I said to myself, Fuck this bullshit! This is comic book material. I thought, you know, who really cares? But it was a mistake. It went too far.”

But the decision that would earn the film its harshest and most enduring criticism from the nerd community came next. Skaaren, who spent a significant amount of time on set with Jack Nicholson looking for ways to expand the role, reintroduced Burton’s previous idea that it was the Joker who’d murdered Bruce Wayne’s parents.

When Hamm learned of the change, he called it grotesque and vulgar. It might simplify the storytelling, he argued, but it would complicate the ending, as it would introduce a new question: once the Joker is dealt with, why doesn’t Batman hang up his cape?

As far as Burton was concerned, the script answered that question: because he’s nuts.

While filming the movie’s climax, set in a cathedral’s bell tower, an annoyed Nicholson confronted Burton, demanding to know why the Joker would climb to the top of the bell tower in the first place. Burton, physically and mentally exhausted by the grueling schedule, had no answer and acquiesced to changes. Tensions on the set increased as Peters halted production and brought in screenwriter Charles McKeown to tinker with the film’s final scene.

McKeown also spent a day brainstorming with the actors and Burton to completely rewrite a scene in which the Joker confronts Bruce Wayne in Vicki Vale’s apartment. The result, which stops the film dead as Keaton’s Bruce struggles to explain himself to Basinger’s Vicki, stands out as the film’s oddest scene, as it radiates the elliptical and tortuous feel of the acting class exercise it essentially was.

Just as the end of the twelve-week shoot was finally in sight,



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