Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman went into production in the wake of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One as well as Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s The Killing Joke, all signature events in the lives of ’80s comics fans who wanted superheroes to be taken more seriously by the culture at large. For the most devoutly humorless among them, the news that Michael Keaton—an actor best known for his comedy roles—would be donning the cowl in collaboration with Tim Burton—the director who had just guided him through a sustained ghoulish fit of a performance in Beetlejuice—sent up a red flag. Batfans took the casting as a sign that the movie would be a camp comedy along the lines of the ’60s TV show. Purists also murmured that Mr. Keaton’s jawline was nothing to write home about. In the end, Keaton surprised audiences with a haunted, deeply felt performance, which would come in handy 24 years later, when those fans’ descendants pointed to him as an example of the ideal screen version of their hero that Ben Affleck could never measure up to.
