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.