In Batman, solitary billionaire Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton – Birdman) was inspired to become the famous vigilante crime-fighter after the unavenged death of his parents. After terrorising the criminal underworld, he ended up dropping their killer, Jack Napier (Jack Nicholson – A Few Good Men) into a vat of chemicals. The Joker was born along with a new type of villain. The super villain. Eventually he was defeated (AKA killed), and a relative peace returned to Gotham City.
If you didn’t catch my last review (and why didn’t you?), Demolition Man pits badass cop John Spartan (Sylvester Stallone – Escape Plan) against meniacal bastard Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes – Passenger 57). Their old-school rivalry is played out on the streets of future LA, where everyone is too sanitized and pussy-whipped to intervene. But while you may write off Demolition Man as your prototypical 90’s sci-fi actioner, you’d best think again. Because like one of those M Night Shyamalan films, there’s a twist. See, Simon Phoenix isn’t the real bad guy.
In previous editions of Bastards, I’ve gone to great lengths to demonstrate how important villains are. They (should) offer resistance to the hero, and through this conflict, drama, excitement and entertainment is created. But not every film has to have a total clusterbastard like Darth Vader or the Joker to be great. Some films work just as well with just some little bastards, sprinkled here and there. One such film is Crocodile Dundee. Let’s find out why.
It’s Batman Month, so we’ve been looking at all the individual Bat-movies over the last 25 years. This series of articles will focus on the Bastards, the bad-guys and the scumbags of each film, and today we’ll be looking at Tim Burton’s Batman.
The Movie Bastards 