20 Things You Somehow Missed In Batman Returns
5. Max Shreck Is Really The Key Villain
In a film where the primary characters all wear funny costumes, it is easy to forget that not all villains wear funny costumes.
Walken’s Max Shreck may look a bit “out there” with his wild wig, his zoot suit and his passion for always wearing black leather gloves but he is, at the end of day, a businessman. He is, however, not a very nice businessman. As we see during the course of the film, he is planning to build a power station to drain Gotham’s power supply purely so that his son can grow even wealthier in the future, he has murdered his partner’s body and had the body dismembered, he owns half of the firetraps in the city, and he is making a bid to supplant the Mayor. Moreover, he is responsible, in varying degrees, for creating the film’s villains.
Admittedly, The Penguin’s plan all along seemed to be to rise up from the sewers and kill the first born sons of Gotham. However, Max purely makes matters worse by seeing an opportunity in the overwhelming public sympathy surrounding Oswald’s emergence from the sewers and back into society to place The Penguin in the Mayor’s office; a plan that backfires big time when The Blackbird of Prey becomes drunk with power and unwittingly sets the people of Gotham against him. Escalating his plans, The Penguin spearheads his plan to kidnap and kill the first born sons of Gotham and things just spiral out of control from there, really.
In Selina Kyle’s case, Shreck is directly responsible for creating Catwoman when he pushes Selina out of a top storey window to her supposed death. He creates a powerhouse who is both chaotic and vulnerable in equal parts. Determined to exact her revenge against him, Catwoman can ultimately only bring down Shreck by apparently destroying herself as well.
It all contributes to the beautiful poignancy behind Catwoman’s character arc and the “will they, won’t they” romance of Batman and Catwoman. Still, when old “Max-a-millions” sees a heavily bandaged Selina walking back into the office the day after he supposedly killed her, the look on his face is priceless!