Re-watching the film after seeing Chris Nolan's THE DARK KNIGHT is quite an experience.
Nicholson's performance now seems hammy and dated-- the songs by Prince seem oddly out of place and the sets and effects seem cheap and definitely set like-- there's no mistaking that you're watching a film shot in a studio when you watch this.
Robert Wuhl as reporter Alexander Knox is as close to annoying as you can get with his comedy relief and story wise-- its really a pretty simple straightforward film. It's only after seeing the depth of characters and relationships in Nolan's film that one can appreciate the lack of same in this earlier interpretation of Batman.
Keep in mind that before this we had the Adam West TV Batman-- so this was indeed a grim departure from that show twenty years earlier-- but now 20 years later this is definitely Batman-lite when you hold it up against BATMAN BEGINS or THE DARK KNIGHT.
It's not a bad movie by any stretch of the word-- but it's limitations are readily apparent with age.
I think it speaks volumes in terms of how comic book characters are perceived and presented by Hollywood since this blockbuster film took the summer of June 1989 by storm.
