20 Things You Somehow Missed In Batman Returns
18. The Media Presence
Who can forget the gleefully malicious televised threats that Jack Nicholson’s The Joker espoused in Batman?
The media presence was something that the makers of the 1989 Batman film lifted directly from Frank Miller’s seminal 1986 graphic novel, The Dark Knight Returns and Burton seemed happy to bring them back for Batman Returns. Most notably, Danny DeVito’s The Penguin actively romances Gotham and challenges both Michael Murphy’s Mayor and Batman via the tube, whilst key events such as the kidnapping of Cristi Conaway’s Ice Princess are reported both in newspapers and on television.
Kim Basinger’s Vicki Vale and Robert Wuhl’s Alexander Knox represented the human side of the media in Batman. In Batman Returns, Erik Oñate portrayed “Aggressive Reporter”, who closely recalled Wuhl’s Knox, maybe even more so as he vehemently defended the freedom of the press to Shreck and, not unlike Knox’s Bat-chasing, gathered all he could on Gotham’s “penguin man”.
Whilst everyone in Gotham seems consumed
by the media circus created by the presence of Michael Keaton’s Batman and Danny
DeVito’s The Penguin (and later Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman as well), it seems
that only Alfred has the rational point of view when he says to Sean Whalen’s
persistent paperboy that “it’s a diversion to read such rubbish. Most of the time, it’s a waste of time”.