‘Batman Forever' and ‘Batman Begins' share an anniversary week — and a surprising Oscar connection
Holy double anniversary, Batman! Two Dark Knight features are celebrating milestone dates this week, as 1995's Batman Forever hits the big 3-0, while 2005's Batman Begins turns one year shy of legal drinking age.
At first glance, it's tough to see what thses two very different Bat-movies might have in common apart from their summertime release dates and, of course, that masked vigilante with a lot of wonderful toys. But zoom out for a minute and the riddle of how the films connect becomes less difficult to solve.
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For starters, each movie famously placed a new actor under the cowl. Val Kilmer proved that Michael Keaton wouldn't be Batman forever, while Christian Bale provided the character with a new beginning after George Clooney botched his big Bat moment.
Both films are also odd-numbered entries designed to undo the real and/or perceived errors of their even-numbered predecessors. Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever (released on June 16, 1995) followed Tim Burton's Batman Returns, a sequel that was considered 'too dark' upon its 1992 release, but arguably holds up as the best of the bunch.
Warner Bros./courtesy Everett Collection
Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins (released on June 15, 2005), meanwhile, was a course correction after Schumacher careened into day-glo nightmare territory with 1997's Batman & Robin, the fourth and final entry in the original Bat-cycle. (Not to be confused with that other Batcycle.)
And here's a cinematographic connection you may have forgotten about: the two films were nominated for the same Oscar — Best Cinematography — exactly ten years apart.
Batman Forever's director of photography, Stephen Goldblatt, received the second of his two nominations for the 68th Academy Awards. A decade later, the 78th Academy Awards brought Nolan's then-regular D.P. Wally Pfister the first of his four nominations.
While neither cinematographer ended up taking home the statue, both nominations were significant notches on the utility belt for the Batman film franchise, not to mention comic book movies in general.
Warner Bros./courtesy Everett Collection
To date, only six comics-derived movies have been recognized in that category, and four of them are Caped Crusader-affiliated; The Dark Knight and Joker were later nominated in 2009 and 2020, respectively. (Dick Tracy and Road to Perdition round out that particular justice league.)
In honor of this unique Bat-iversary, here's our rundown on how each movie earned — and lost — its shot at a Best Cinematography award.
In Goldblatt's Gotham City, the night is dark and full of… colors. Primary reds, neon greens and deep purples abound in Batman Forever, which embraces both Silver Age comics and super-saturated '90s music videos. The embrace of Dick Tracy five years earlier showed that Academy voters at the time clearly preferred their comic book characters to inhabit a more colorful universe, and that's what Goldblatt delivered.
'Joel wanted to literally make it comic book looking …. For the lights, I didn't use normal rigging. It was all rock 'n' roll rigging. I had a concert lighting guy and his crew. I could adjust the color and the intensity, the direction and the diffusion of each lamp without having to go to each lamp. They were all fed down to consoles on the stage floor. We could move very, very quickly. The conventional way could have taken days. It gave it that rock 'n' roll comic book look' — as told to The Hollywood Reporter
'Schumacher's Batman Forever returns the story to its pop origins. It may be dark, but it ain't heavy.' — Hal Hinson, The Washington Post
'Batman Forever is a sound-and-light show that jumps from the screen and spreads itself out to every corner of the house.' — Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle
'The visuals seem less like images than like a light show. Quick cutting, garish costumes and visual special effects are not thrilling; they're numbing.' — Barbara Shulgasser, San Francisco Examiner
Michael Coulter, Sense and Sensibility
Emmanuel Lubezki, A Little Princess
John Toll, Braveheart
Lü Yue, Shanghai Triad
In a devilish twist, Batman Forever's resident Riddler Jim Carrey was enlisted to present the Best Cinematography statue at that year's ceremony. Bringing a set of Toy Story action figures onstage with him, Carrey characteristically clowned around for a bit before getting to the nominees — and notably declined to mention his specific connection to Goldblatt. Ultimately, Toll took home the "lord of all knick-knacks" for his work on Mel Gibson's Best Picture-winning Scottish epic.
Post-loss, Goldblatt reunited with Schumacher for Batman & Robin... a Bat-assignment that didn't return him to Oscar contention. Later credits included Closer, The Help and Red, White & Royal Blue; in recent years, he's stepped away from the film industry to focus on his photography.
Relaunching a franchise is a monumental task, and Nolan constructed a monumental production that employed an army of skilled artisans committed to his vision of a grounded real-world take on a vintage comic character. In that way, Batman Begins was a notable contrast not just to previous Batman movies, but also ascendent superhero spectacles like Sam Raimi's Spider-Man and Bryan Singer's X-Men, which occupied heightened realities. Through Pfister's lens, Gotham resembled a real city... even if it had a big Bat problem.
'Tim Burton's Batman came from a very visionary and idiosyncratic view of the character… [and] they created an environment for Batman that was as exotic and extraordinary as Batman himself. That worked very well, but Batman has never had a film that portrayed him as an extraordinary figure [amid] a relatively ordinary and recognizable world. That was the thrill I've been seeking—the thrill of being amazed and of seeing the ordinary citizens of Gotham be as amazed about Batman as we are.' — as told to American Cinematographer
'Unlike the earlier films, which delighted in extravagant special-effects action, Batman Begins is shrouded in shadow; instead of high-detail, sharp-edged special effects, we get obscure developments in fog and smoke, reinforced by a superb sound-effects design.' Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
'Half the time Batman stalks his criminal quarry unseen, or as a barely glimpsed, utterly ominous shadow; there are echoes of Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse series, not to mention Metropolis, and the cinematography by Nolan regular Wally Pfister is noir and then some.' Marc Savlov, Austin Chronicle
'The film accurately, and refreshingly, refuses to shy away from the slightly deranged madness of its titular hero. Such harshness is reflected in Wally Pfister's night-swathed cinematography and Nathan Crowley's production design, which casts Gotham as an open urban sore in which poverty, crime, and squalor co-exist in virulent symbiosis,' Nick Schager, Slant
Dion Beebe, Memoirs of a Geisha
Robert Elswit, Good Night, and Good Luck
Emmauel Lubezki, The New World
Rodrigo Prieto, Brokeback Mountain
As the lone contemporary blockbuster among the nominees, Batman Begins found itself in a pitched battle with four period pieces. And the past ended up triumphing over the present. John Travolta presented the Oscar to Beebe, who transported audiences back to pre-World War II era Japan in Memoirs of a Geisha, directed by Rob Marshall. (Another cool coincidence: Emmanuel Lubezki was a repeat Bat-foe, nominated for A Little Princess in 1995 and The New World in 2005.)
Unlike Goldblatt, Pfister's Batman follow-up awarded him a repeat trip to the Oscars. Released in 2008, The Dark Knight built on the promise of Batman Begins and remains the most-nominated Batman-centric movie to date—although it controversially missed out on a Best Picture nod, inspiring a category expansion that continues to this day. Pfister eventually won an Oscar for Inception and collaborated with Nolan on the trilogy-capper The Dark Knight Rises before striking out on his own as a director.Best of GoldDerby
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