20 Things You Somehow Missed In Batman Returns
9. The Art
The production designer of Batman, Anton Furst and his set decorator, Peter Young won an Academy Award for Best Art Direction for Batman. The sequel had to have a rich artistic basis to be able to compete, but Anton Furst had tragically taken his own life in 1991. Apparently, at the time, he was in talks to reprise his role as production designer for Batman Returns.
Instead, Tim Burton’s frequent collaborator, Bo Welch took on that role and, as much as it is a departure from Furst’s more locomotive designs for Batman, Batman Returns is also a celebration of Furst’s work, as the seedy element of the city and the lack of planning regulations meaning that a new layer is added onto a decaying base was retained.
Welch and Burton heightened the Art Deco aspects of Gotham for the sequel, starting to give the city a hint of beauty that is otherwise choked by the crime and corruption clogging its streets.
The glorious metropolis that Gotham could be (and perhaps once was) is seen almost everywhere, from the glamorous normality of Shreck’s Department Store to a striking mural that fronts Gotham City Hall, which emphasises a golden statue of the Greek god, Atlas, which artistically indicates to Gothamites that, despite the struggle of getting there, they will be able to retake their city from the criminals and the corrupt at some point.
Gotham is also bedecked in massive statues (sorry, fans, that was not actually one of Joel Schumacher’s ideas originally) from machinist figures that hint to Gotham’s industrial nature, to older Greco-Roman figures that are woven into the city’s architecture and, even more strikingly, appear to be half buried beneath the city’s streets.
Another important thing to note is that the film’s artistic cues were mandated by Warner Brothers to appear in Batman: The Animated Series with the looks of both The Penguin and Catwoman influencing their animated counterparts. If you look closely, you can also see how the revised Gotham City created by Burton and Welch also dictated the look of Gotham in the animated series, from the establishing shots of the city to the dark and mysterious depths of the Batcave.