Prince's Alter Ego For 1989's Batman Took On A Life Of His Own

Tim Burton's "Batman" was designed to look timeless. Burton made his Gotham City look like a German expressionist film from the 1920s, using impossible, elongated structures and eerie shadows to construct a bizarre, artificial world. Burton figured that outsize characters like Batman (Michael Keaton) and the Joker (Jack Nicholson) couldn't exist in the real world, so he constructed a fake world they would logically live in. The resulting Gotham City looks like it could be 1939, but video screens and video tech make it look like the near future. The actual era of "Batman" was meant to be elusive. 

Of course, the soundtrack betrays the film's timelessness. Warner Bros. hired Prince to write a soundtrack for "Batman," and his royal badness was equal to the task. Prince's "Batman" featured hit singles like "Batdance," "Partyman," "Trust," and "The Arms of Orion," which he sang with Sheena Easton. The presence of Prince in "Batman" feels out-of-place to this day. The rest of the film (with a Danny Elfman score) is orchestral and operatic, while Prince is squarely late-'80s pop. It's a clash of aesthetics that is horrid or daring, depending on your response to it. 

The Prince album was just as enormous a hit as the movie, though, and it went double-platinum. Prince also got really into making "Batman," hooking into the superhero's dual nature, and how all heroes are multilayered characters living double and triple lives. As pointed out in an article for the Ringer, Prince credited certain songs to Batman, Bruce Wayne, Vicki Vale, and the Joker, as if they were his collaborators. Also credited in the "Batman" album's liner notes is a mysterious songwriter named Gemini. It seems that Gemini was Prince's own alter-ego that he affected for the writing of the album. Gemini can be seen in the "Batdance" and "Partyman" music videos. Gemini is, essentially, Two-Face, bifurcated down the middle, with Batman/Prince on the right and the Joker on the left.

"Batdance" in particular was a juggernaut from the "Batman" soundtrack, and it received a lot of radio play. Of the singles from "Batman," it was the only one to chart at #1. It was accompanied by a wild music video directed by longtime Prince collaborator Albert Magnoli, who also helmed "Purple Rain." The video features dancers dressed in Batman and Joker costumes, with Prince in the middle as Gemini. One wouldn't know that Gemini was a full-blown alter-ego from the video, but it was well-known to both Prince and Batman fans, as the album's liner notes were pored over frequently. Prince sang a sample, and a piece of dialogue from the "Batman" work print was mixed in. Prince also included a few musical references to Neal Hefti's 1966 "Batman" TV theme song. 

Musically, "Batman" was something of a pop experiment for Prince. He wanted to musically express what Batman meant to him, but moreso, wanted to delve into the remix-heavy, electronic pop that he was into at the time. Although "Batman" is one of Prince's more popular studio albums, it also bears the whiff of a side project. Prince liked to play with alter-egos a lot as is, so creating the "Gemini" character likely allowed him to feel more creatively comfortable writing superhero music. 

Gemini was, for many years, a curio of Prince's work on Tim Burton's films, but he would eventually make his way into actual comic lore. In 1991, Piranha Music put out the comic one-shot "Prince: Alter Ego," which saw the Purple One facing off against a very Joker-like villain called Gemini. Gemini, who is an evil twin, can turn music into a force for evil. It's up to Prince to save music and let it remain something constructive. 

Then, in 2021, DC Comics also paid homage to Gemini by including him in a panel of Sam Hamm's miniseries "Batman '89." Gemini isn't a major villain in the book, but the late Prince was now an official part of Batman comics lore.