WILL BATMAN FLY?

By Susan Spillman

From USA Today, 06.19.1989, Final Edition

After months of headlines, hype and curiosity, Hollywood's most-awaited gamble of the year is finally here.

Batman finally unfurls his cape tonight at a star-studded premiere here. Eager fans will surely pack theaters when it opens nationwide Friday.

While audiences debate whether Michael Keaton is hunky enough as the Caped Crusader, or if Jack Nicholson's Joker will win an Oscar nomination, Hollywood insiders will be wondering: Will the film's unprecedented advance publicity pay off? Or, when the summer box office is tallied, could it prove to have been too much Batmania, too soon?

Early verdicts are mixed. Time and Daily Variety don't like it. Rolling Stone and The Hollywood Reporter do. The latest review, Newsweek's, calls it "half-brilliant." "I'm nervous," admits director Tim Burton, whose only other features are Pee-wee's Big Adventure and Beetlejuice.

That's mainly because no one is viewing Batman as just a summer movie. "It's amazing. This isn't a film, it's an event," says Kim Basinger, who plays the Batbabe, photojournalist Vicki Vale.

Adds Keaton: The pre-opening hype is "unwieldy and getting stupid."

With a price tag of about $40 million, plus about $10 million for marketing and millions more for tie-in merchandise, Warner Bros. is banking on a Bat smash.

The gamble: Will audiences embrace a Batman so different from the campy caped hero popularized by Adam West in the '60s TV series--still in syndication?

Keaton's hero is dark, mysterious and melancholy--"the way I created Batman in 1939," says Bob Kane, comic creator and a consultant on the film.

Robin the Boy Wonder is absent from the film version. The Caped Crusader goes it alone when he takes on the evil Joker, who's contaminating cosmetics with a formula that melts victims' faces.

The movie played well at a recent industry screening, where the entrance of the sleek, high-tech Batmobile drew the biggest applause. The stylish look won more raves than the story, which some found thin.

"There'll be people who like it and people who don't," says director Burton. "You just hope there's more who do."

The movie behind the mania hasn't come to the screen easily. It passed through a handful of writers and directors (including Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman) over a 10-year period.

"People laughed at the idea in the beginning. They thought Batman was just a comic character in tights," says co-producer Jon Peters of Rain Man fame, who obtained Batman movie rights with partner Peter Guber in 1979.

Even with the elements in place, the mammoth production hit snags.

Turning London's Pinewood Studios into mythical Gotham City wasn't a problem. But screenwriter Sam Hamm's story had to be reworked by several hands last year when he refused to do it himself during the writers' strike.

Then actress Sean Young, originally cast as Vicki Vale, pulled out after a horseback riding injury. "I was hired on a Friday and on a plane to London on Sunday," recalls Basinger.

The biggest challenge, says Burton: creating a convincing Batman character.

"The toughest thing was making him look good. We'd try all sorts of movements. Then we'd say, 'How about changing your voice.' Sometimes Michael really looked like a kid with a towel around his neck. The outtakes from this film look like a bad Italian gladiator movie."

Keaton, best known for the comedies Mr. Mom, Beetlejuice and The Dream Team, was reluctant to take the role. He chose not to bone up on the comics. Instead, he says, "I went to the source and read about bats."

Perfecting the Batsuit was no easier. In keeping with the film's somber look, it's black instead of the traditional blue and gray. It was created by casting a soft rubber mold over Keaton's body. "It's black and gooey and I had it all over my face and hair," Basinger says.

The ears presented a dilemma. "Making them look sexy was extremely hard," says costume designer Bob Ringwood. "We had to make 10 prototypes just to get them the perfect shape and size."

In all, 28 Batsuits (cost: $250,000) see the hero through the various stunts. Some have a seam up the front, for rear shots; those for front shots have a back seam.

If Batman isn't a blockbuster, it won't be for lack of public awareness.

The movie made headlines--including the front page of The Wall Street Journal--a year ago when die-hard comic buffs protested Keaton's casting.

They feared that meant the movie would depict the hero as a camp clown, just as the '60s TV series did, and flooded Warner Bros. with 50,000 protest letters.

That Bat barometer bounced the other way when Jack Nicholson signed on as Batman's archrival.

"It created a groundswell just as casting Marlon Brando in Superman had, and the headlines started again," says Alex Ben Block, editor of Show Biz News. "With Nicholson part of the package, it raised it to a new level." By January, the movie's spectacular teaser trailer had created such a sensation that teens at one Northern California multiplex were buying movie tickets just to see it. Since May, more than 1,000 Batman posters have been snatched from subways and bus shelters.

A mall's worth of tie-in merchandise--from toy Batmobiles to Batman miniskirts--has been selling for months. Judging from demand for Bat T-shirts in his 200 franchise stores, Larry Meyer, president of T-Shirts Plus, predicts each outlet will sell up to 500 Bat shirts daily through September.

Bat saturation is so massive even Burton admits, "There's nobody more tired of seeing the stuff than me. I'm very afraid of this kind of marketing stuff. It kind of destroys the movie sometimes."

Perhaps trying to tame the hype, Warner Bros. has scaled down plans for tonight's premiere, which originally involved turning L.A.'s Westwood Village into a mini-Gotham City.

Says Rob Friedman, Warner Bros. president for publicity: "Too much hype can be potentially negative to any product. We've tried to manage the publicity flow to preclude that ... but to some extent it's become a feeding frenzy."

Still, he isn't worried. "The film does deliver, so we have no real concerns."

Burton is more philosophical. "There is a backlash. But usually backlashes start with the critics and with the jaded industry types, and then it filters down. So I hope it only remains up there."