Written by Mr. Mouseburger 30th Sep 2005
Following a failed attempt to poison the street parade with his noxious gas, The Joker takes Vicky Vale up to the top of Gotham Cathedral. Batman follows, but for added dramatic tension, has to fight his way through a few of The Joker's henchmen in order to get to the big showdown.
We then have a "you created me", "no, you created me" moment, before Batman repeatedly punches The Joker in the face, each punch sending him reeling closer to the edge of the cathedral. A final punch from Batman sends The Joker flying over, supposedly to his death.
Batman and Vale both lean over to see, but have their hands grabbed by The Joker, who drags them over the ledge. Our hero and his eye candy are now left dangling precariously below The Joker, who is climbing up a rope ladder attached to his helicopter.
Batman does have one more useful device on his utility belt though, and fires a harpoon at The Joker. The harpoon wraps itself around The Joker's leg and, rather unbelievably, the other end of the rope manages to wrap itself around a rather weighty stone gargoyle.
Batman's utility belt comes to the rescue once again...
The gargoyle breaks off from the cathedral and the weight slowly, rung by rung, drags The Joker back down the ladder.
We get a moment of desperation as he tries to hold on to the last rung, before finally he loses his grip and plunges into the darkness below.
This was an extremely good movie compared to Joel SChumachers versions of Batman. Jack Nicholson was superb as the Jokerexcept that it was an old movie so the death looked extremely fake. If it was realistic I would have bought this movie in a second.
I agree, i do think that Tim Burton really adds a nice edge to the entire film, which the later sequels seemed to either miss or parody.
I suppose it was not a bad effect for 1989 (when it was made) but compared to todays CGI effects, it really does look dated. I have not seen the special edition version of Batman that has just been released. Does anyone know if they revisited this death and tidied it up??
Mouseburger
Out of the Four origionals (Not the new Batman begins) This is the best. even though Christian Bale was great as Bruce Wayne, Michael keaton is just superb
Eh, I liked Returns better.
A bit of trivia, (perhaps Alternate Death Scene?) In the Mexican version (I think), the fight ends with the "you wouldn't hit a guy with glasses" line, Batman hits the Joker, and then cuts to the falling bit. I dunno, but I kind of prefer that
Why "Not Quite Dead"? He was dead!
What would happen if he lived?The movie would have been more faithful to the comics.
Mr. Briggs Incorporated Wrote:
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> A bit of trivia, (perhaps Alternate Death Scene?)
> In the Mexican version (I think), the fight ends
> with the "you wouldn't hit a guy with glasses"
> line, Batman hits the Joker, and then cuts to the
> falling bit. I dunno, but I kind of prefer that .
Reportedly (I say that because IMDb isn't most accurate thing on the earth), that's a bootleg version that was shown on TV once. You'd pretty much have to eliminate everything up to the "Gordon inspects the body" scene in order to make it work. Plus, it's a really abrupt ending.
The only thing I really disliked about this movie was the fact Batman had no problem with killing criminals. In the comics Batman has a strict code against killing, one that even clouds his judgement to the point that killing a crook would actually be necessary if he really wanted to save more lives...
But it's still a firm part of the modern character (He was indeed very violent and cared little for human life in his original appearances though). The Joker's death was actually accidental to my knowledge (he only meant to stop the Joker and didn't expect the gargoyle to become detached), but it's a bit stupid considering he's had no problem killing people so far in the movie...
[quote Eno]The Joker's death was actually accidental to my knowledge (he only meant to stop the Joker and didn't expect the gargoyle to become detached), but it's a bit stupid considering he's had no problem killing people so far in the movie...[/quote]It could swing either way. Batman might have wanted vengeance for the death of his parents. And he knew the church wasn't very sound, as Joker shown him when he kicked off the tiles. It's a bit ambiguous.
How about an unsatisfying category
How about an unsatisfying category because his death was appalling
Not Quite Dead is like, you think they die, but they survive, and then they die later. The "Not Quite Dead" refers to Batman knocking the Joker over the edge, but he survives, however he later falls to his death after the gargoyle thing.
How unsatisfying can any death scene for the Joker be? I seem to remember him being immortal in the animated series, even if they do kill him off in Batman Beyond (I guess almost immortal).
I found this to be a great death for the Joker. Quite frankly normally I don't really like a villain dying via falling but there's just so much drama in this scene I found it spectacular.
Also to Mr. Briggs Inc., that "glasses" scene I think is also in the original release. I just rented it and just before Batman sends that final punch that sends the Joker rocketing over the edge he puts them on and remarks, "You wouldn't hit a guy with glasses would ya?" (If I made the movie I would've had Batman retort: "No, actually I would.")
Also to the writer of this death what do you mean by a few of Joker's thugs? I only remember him fighting one guy. This sunglasses-wearing Japanese thug whom he throws down the bell shaft after a brutal fistfight that the Joker could only dream of even putting up.
Flashpenny Wrote:
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>
> Also to the writer of this death what do you mean
> by a few of Joker's thugs? I only remember him
> fighting one guy. This sunglasses-wearing Japanese
> thug whom he throws down the bell shaft after a
> brutal fistfight that the Joker could only dream
> of even putting up.
The henchman was actually black and he was the third henchman in the belltower. The first one has knives on his shoes and Batman punches him in the crotch and knocks him out. The second is the big bald guy who always carried the Joker's boombox; this guy mistimes a jump and goes through the floor.
I'm kind of thinking revenge for killing batman's parents
After the third joker thug who beats batman badly and throws of the bell tower batman comes back wraping his legs around the guy's
neck and smacks his head of the bell and throwing him down the bell tower.
And come on all those punches he gave batman couldn't off hurt him I mean batman can't feel that
with all that armour on but it must of hurt when he whacked batman around the head maybe not there's probably armour around batman's
head as well in case he gets shot in the head by a bad guy any after fighting three bell tower joker thugs he's into the main showdown and
he has to battle the joker the main villain of the movie batman gives the joker a few beatings throwing him through wooden walls
and the joker gets come uppings and gets only one punch to batman's stomach witch bounches back hurting the joker's hand batman hits
him back knocking him off gotham cathedral.
I think that ending is superb, but I did always wonder what the feeling of the film might be like the joker had fell to his death laughing. For example, in "the dark knight" the moment we think Heath Ledger is going to fall to his death, he falls laughing, and it adds a very scary element to the character. However, i think this is where the original Batman has an equally dark side, because even as Nicholsons joker falls to his death screaming he still has time to turn on his bag of laughs.
You can see that modern day representation pays respect to the jokers immortality within the world of Batman Comic Books; where as the initial Batman film shows it's age with "bad guy's die in the end". Tim burton took batman INTO film, where as modern day creators live to emulate comic book within the medium of film, while still paying huge heritage to comic book ideals.
I dont think there should be an unsatisfactory category on this simply because it wasn't unsatisfactory.
Bye Jack
GRAB BAG? Batman improvised by using the gargoyle.
IRONIC? The last words the joker said were "Sometime I Just [i]kill[i] myself!"
Plz reply
EmpororD9
Actually in the original Batman comics(before Robin was introduced in 1940)Batman did cause the death as well as had no remorse over the death of a criminal. He even had a gun he was going to use once. Robin somewhat started the taming of Batman, however even in the first few issues with Robin Batman still caused deaths, just not as directly
I agree with you, EmpororD9 about the Ironic thing.
From the deaths I have written, I have never used Ironic, but always on the look out.