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List Price: $26.98 | | Label: Warner Home Video
Salesrank: 12895
Released: February 10, 2009 |
| Our Price: $13.00 |
| Used Price: $6.00 |
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MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Jack Nicholson is the Joker, who emerged from a horrible accident as a maniacal criminal. Michael Keaton is the Caped Crusader, who emerged from a childhood trauma to become a masked crimefighter. Kim Basinger is Vicki Vale, the talented photojournalist desired by both men. And Batman is the movie, the all-out spectacular directed by Tim Burton, set to songs by Prince and a music score by Danny Elfman, and an Academy AwardO winner* for Best Art Direction/Set Decoration (Anton Furst and Peter Young).
DVD Features:
Audio Commentary:Commentary by director Tim Burton
Documentaries:Legends of the Dark Knight Shadows of the Bat: The Cinematic Saga of the Dark Knight Parts 1-3 Beyond Batman Documentary Gallery
Featurette:On the Set with Bob Kane Shadows of the Bat Pts. 1-3 Batman: The Heroes and Villains Gallery
Music Video:Partyman by Prince Batdance by Prince Scandalous by Prince
Theatrical Trailer
Description of Batman (Two-Disc Special Edition):
Thanks to the ambitious vision of director Tim Burton, the blockbuster hit of 1989 delivers the goods despite an occasionally spotty script, giving the caped crusader a thorough overhaul in keeping with the crime fighter's evolution in DC Comics. Michael Keaton strikes just the right mood as the brooding "Dark Knight" of Gotham City; Kim Basinger plays Gotham's intrepid reporter Vicki Vale; and Jack Nicholson goes wild as the maniacal and scene-stealing Joker, who plots a takeover of the city with his lethal Smilex gas. Triumphant Oscar-winning production design by the late Anton Furst turns Batman into a visual feast, and Burton brilliantly establishes a darkly mythic approach to Batman's legacy. Danny Elfman's now-classic score propels the action with bold, muscular verve. --Jeff Shannon
Batman (Two-Disc Special Edition) Reviews:
Great Blu ray! 
2009-10-21 - Very pleased with this blu-ray. The cover art is great and the features are many. The quality is also superb on my 32 inch lcd. This is a must have for any Batman fan. Now onto Batman Returns on Blu ray!
Very Good Batman Movie
2009-10-01 - This is and was the best Batman movie until the new ones hit the screens. A must see and own for Batman fans. Enjoy!!!
A Classic
2009-09-23 - Now that the hype of The Dark Knight has died down, it's time to remember the original Tim Burton film. Now I know I previously praised that film but the original is undoubtedly the best. Michael Keaton is my favorite of all the movie incarnations. Kilmer was OK and Clooney was just a joke. Bale does a good job and I commend him on actually using two different voices for Bruce and Batman but not in this manner. Sounds like he has lung cancer or something. Now Keaton does use a different voice; he subtly lowers his voice. And when Bale is in his Bruce Wayne persona, he acts to hard to through people off. When Keaton was cast as Batman, there was a public outcry as people couldn't picture him as Batman. Isn't that how it's supposed to be? You shouldn't suspect him at all. The suit in this film is way better than in the films to follow (except Returns as that was pretty much the same suit with minor alterations). It's classic Batman. Keaton handles the action well and the quiet moments are standout (there aren't really any quiet moments [except in Returns] in any of the sequels). Kim Basinger is good as Vicki, noting that she's essentially a knockoff of Lois Lane back in the 50s. And she's a much better actress than Holmes/Gyllenhal (or however you spell her name) in the newer films. They look like clueless teens who somehow ended up in a big superhero film. And Nicholson is my favorite modern live-action Joker. Not to knock Heath Ledger, he was good too, but the way Nicholson played him is actually the way the Joker should be played; a psychopathic clown who commits his crimes with a flair for the theatrical. If he's gonna kill ya, he's gonna do it in style. Billy Dee Williams should've had more screen time as Harvey Dent and he was contracted to play Two-Face but he was paid out and we got...over-the-top Tommy Lee Jones. Michael Gough's Alfred is good but I prefer the Michael Caine version as he's more involved with things. Pat Hingle's Commissioner Gordon is hardly in the film to really critique so Gary Oldman's version is better. Danny Elfman delivers with the music, providing a theme for Batman that rivals John Williams' Superman, but the actual person conducting the orchestra is none other than Shirley Walker, the woman who would provide the music for Batman: The Animated Series and most of its subsequent spin-offs.
....wait'll they getta load of me.......
2009-08-27 - I've been waiting forever for my all time favorite film to get the proper dvd treatment & at long last here it is!! We finally get commentary from Tim Burton plus numerous & exhaustive documentaries covering everything from behind the scenes of the film to the Batman mythology, new interviews w/ the cast & crew, & the long & grueling road it took to get Batman on the big screen. And last but not least, the blockbuster that it was. I can't recommend this edition enough to all Batman devotees!!
Hello Vinny, it's your Uncle Bingo. 
2009-08-18 -
THE FILM:
It may be only the third-best Batman movie of all time, but every superhero film that has come after it owes something to Batman '89. By now you've read a lot of reviews of this film and you know what's good about it, so I won't bore you with that here. Instead I'll balance them, and not with vitriol or hatred but with a cold dose of reality.
Jack Nicholson is really the star of the show, and he's far more exciting than Batman is in this movie. There are elements of the Joker that seem a bit too cartoony here, but nevertheless he's unquestionably evil and undeniably insane. It's one of Nicholson's favorite roles and deservedly so. Billy Dee Williams is a great Harvey Dent, but he's given nothing to do. That one will bug me forever.
Michael Keaton and Kim Basinger are wonderful in their roles despite being woefully miscast. Keaton looks as much like Batman as Kim Basinger does, but the guy really sells the character and while I would have preferred another actor in the role, I definitely like his work here. Burton said he didn't know how to put a big tough guy in a batsuit and not have it come off cheesy. In a lot of ways he was probably the wrong director for this film, but on the other hand in 1989 there were still a lot of people who could only think of Adam West when somebody said Batman, so Burton's job was to demolish and then rebuild the public perception of the character and his mythos. Despite his lack of experience and technical expertise, Burton may well have been the only guy in 1989 who could have accomplished that. I may prefer Christopher Nolan's Batman films, but I also recognize that without this movie, the ones I like more would never exist.
In some respects, the film hasn't aged well. It's plagued by badly-lit matte paintings, obvious miniatures, and mostly lackluster cinematography. Anton Furst's beautiful set design is mostly responsible for making the movie as visually striking as it is, a feat made more remarkable by the fact that Burton has no idea how to shoot it. And that is, really, at the core of the film's weaknesses. Burton was young, relatively inexperienced, and didn't really know how to make this kind of movie: what passes for action sort of plods along, the matte work is dodgy and at least one shot early in the movie marks some of the worst post-production ever seen in a major motion picture. Danny Elfman's now-classic score is really all that propels the film. It's a great score and arguably Elfman's best work. I think it would be a completely different film without that music.
THE BLU-RAY:
I bought this blu-ray because I don't have the two-disc DVD set, and my old single-disc, snapper-case edition is almost unwatchable - not for the film itself but the presentation was that bad. As I said above, the film's visuals are striking on the one hand and poorly executed on the other, making for a frustrating experience, and while the blu-ray edition finds the colors more vibrant and the picture much clearer, it can't fix the problems inherent to the movie itself. Still, this edition looks at least as good as the film did onscreen in 1989 and I haven't seen it this way in twenty years.
If you already own the two-disc collector's edition that Warner's put out a few years ago I'm not sure you need to bother with this edition, unless you really love this movie and want to have the booklet, or are trying to update your entire collection to blu-ray. If you don't have that 2-disc DVD, this blu-ray is definitely worth the money. Its best selling point is the extensive catalogue of special features, and since I don't own the 2-disc DVD set, this blu-ray was a treat for me if only for that. And nostalgia. There was definitely nostalgia involved.
THE VERDICT:
It's a really great blu-ray release of a pretty good movie. The film, however, has a strong place in the history of cinema and is largely responsible for all the superhero movies that come out every summer. It's for that reason that it deserves this release. Someone else said you won't use it to show off your hi-def TV. I second that. But if you're like me, you'll put the thing in to see how it looks and end up watching the whole movie. It's still the best of the 90's Batman movies; the only one that's still watchable. Not a masterpiece by any means, but a flawed classic.
