Joel Schumacher Taking On Batman Was A Huge Relief To Tim Burton

Bat-fans everywhere usually hold the two Tim Burton-directed "Batman" movies in higher regard than the following two films, both helmed by Joel Schumacher. The negative reception to "Batman & Robin" is credited as the reason why the Batman franchise needed a reboot. The irony is that Schumacher actually had a much greater appreciation for Batman than Burton did.

Tim Burton is not a comic book fan, which is clear from how his "Batman" movies disregard comic canon: Batman kills, the Joker has a real name, Catwoman is an unhinged vigilante who literally has nine lives instead of being a suave burglar, etc. "Batman Returns" is a great movie, but not one a Batman fan would ever make: it's a Christmas-set Gothic melodrama in the vein of "Edward Scissorhands," that just happens to take place in Gotham City.

According to Schumacher, it didn't take much at all for Burton to bail on the franchise. In a 2015 interview with Forbes, Schumacher recounted his history with Batman. When he was first asked to direct what became "Batman Forever," he wouldn't do it without Burton's approval:

"I said, 'Well Tim Burton is a friend of mine, so I have to go and ask Tim first.' Because if he doesn't want me to do it I'm not going to do it, because this is his franchise. I had lunch with Tim and he said, 'Oh take it, take it please!'"

Schumacher notes the backlash "Batman Returns" got for being too extreme for a family film; Danny DeVito's Penguin scarfing down raw fish and greeting Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman with, "Just the pussy I was looking for" isn't what parents were expecting. Schumacher suggested that this killed Burton's mood to direct a follow-up. However, his own Bat-flicks wound up earning backlash for the opposite reason.

While speaking to Forbes, Schumacher described Batman as a childhood favorite of his. Indeed, he was born in 1939, the same year Batman debuted in "Detective Comics #27." Schumacher preferred Batman to Superman, as, "[he] was always since childhood a little on the dark side." He also notes he grew up reading the comics themselves, not watching Batman on television; he was 26 when Adam West made his small-screen debut as the Caped Crusader.

Schumacher's childhood love of Batman comics meant he was naturally interested in the offer to direct a movie. Rather than approaching the material with an auteur's lens like Burton had, Schumacher would put the stories of his youth on the big screen. He recounts: "Comic books were like storyboards, as you know [...] So to me it was kind of, 'Oh my God, I could get to make a Batman comic. Are you kidding me? This is so cool!'" Too bad Schumacher and Batman fans had different types of comics in mind.

The comics Schumacher read as a child would've been part of "The Silver Age of Comics," which stretched roughly from the 1950s to the early 1970s. As a result of the censorious Comics Code Authority, the stories of superheroes at the time were sanitized and outlandish. The following "Bronze Age" is when comics got darker because the fans were growing up.

Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns" was published in 1986 and reimagined Batman as Dirty Harry in a cowl. It was also a hit and afterward, Batman fans had no appetite for that sort of camp. That's why they responded to Burton's dark take, but not Schumacher's lighthearted one. Mix in some homophobia thanks to the sculpted physique of the Bat-suits and the queer subtext of an adult Robin living with Bruce Wayne, and Schumacher was out after two movies like Burton.

Still, watching both Burton and Schumacher's "Batman" movies, it's clear which one of them is a fan. "Batman Forever" is the first "Batman" movie that explores Bruce Wayne as a character, while "Batman & Robin" is about just that, the relationship between hero and sidekick. Neither of them approaches the character depth of, say, "Mask of the Phantasm," but Schumacher cared about unmasking who Batman is; Burton wanted to keep him in the shadows. While Burton's Batman had a dark tone, that's because of his Gothic filmmaking style, not because he worshipped Frank Miller.

Over the years, the Schumacher movies have picked up their defenders. While Batman movies continue to go darker and darker, Schumacher showed you can be lighthearted and honor the comics' spirit.