Tim Burton is attracted to weirdos and outsiders and so his explanation for Batman’s war on crime is very simple: Bruce Wayne was a little nuts. Keaton’s Wayne is reclusive and eccentric. He has trouble interacting with people and comes off strangely in ordinary social situations. Only in his hideout (the Batcave) is he relaxed and calm, in control and confident. For him, dressing up as Batman satisfies a deep need, or compulsion. Although it’s not sexual, I would say it’s almost like a fetish. Batman is who he really is.
Christian Bale’s Batman is quite different. Both his playboy persona and his role as Batman (including the fake voice) are carefully constructed performances. Neither one is “really him.” He acts like a playboy to hide his identity and he dresses up as Batman according to a carefully thought-out plan. But what rational plan could involve dressing up as a bat? To answer that question, we need to consider why people stopped getting mugged in large North American cities, particularly New York.
There are a lot of different theories for what caused the crime rate in NYC to plummet, but the one that has captured the most public attention is “broken windows” policing. Picture an abandoned building. Now imagine someone has broken one of its windows. If the window is not repaired, it signals to everyone that no one cares about this building. This means that hooligans are more likely to throw rocks at the windows. The more windows are broken, the more clear it becomes that no one cares. And so on. In response, the New York police started cracking down on small offenses, such as graffiti or failing to pay subway fares, instead of just big offenses. The idea was to create a culture where people obeyed the law.
This theory has been interpreted in a lot of different ways, and it is just a theory (there are lots of reasons why crime might have gone down). Its real insight is that it understands the importance of social signaling. If people feel like they are in a “wild west” environment, they’ll act like cowboys. If they feel like they’re in a library, they’ll keep their voices down. And whether you believe in the “broken windows” theory or not, I think it’s undeniable that the general level of tolerance of crime in a society is a cause, as well as an effect, of high crime rates. Crime rates are high, so we get accustomed to crime. And crime rates stay high because everyone is accustomed to it. This vicious cycle explains why, for instance, it is so hard to get people in Greece to pay their taxes. How do you break the cycle?
Bruce Wayne believes he can more easily change the Gotham’s culture as a symbol than as a man. There were already loads of honest people in Gotham City trying to change the culture. But none of them could generate headlines, or interest, or hope, like a mysterious costumed vigilante. Wayne was attempting convince people that they live in a city where there are consequences for breaking the rules.
(As an aside, the eventual tragedy of Batman (in the Nolan films, and in the excellent graphic novel trilogy Batman: Year One, The Long Halloween and Dark Victory) is he changes Gotham’s culture in ways he does not expect. Although he defeats the mobsters led by Carmine Falcone, he inspires criminals to put on masks. A city that was ruled by Falcone instead becomes terrorized by the Joker. Things don't get better, they just get different).
Most people, these days, prefer Nolan’s approach to Batman than Burton's. Nolan's Batman seems to make more sense: he provides at least a semi-plausible reason for Wayne’s actions, and avoids the sticky issue of why billionaire Bruce Wayne chooses to beat up muggers with his fists in a costume rather than, say, fighting AIDS in Africa or attacking the supposed “root causes” of crime.
However, we should keep in mind that the two Batman films are both products of their particular times. And because of that, I think we need to be careful before deciding that the Nolan films are better. Maybe they are, but maybe they're just more in vogue with the current climate, and when that changes, they will go out of style.
I am, in fact, not sure that Nolan’s films are better than the first Burton movie. I think the need to make Batman plausible weighs down the Nolan's films. They have a certain clocklike precision that always reminds me I’m watching a movie. There’s not a line of dialogue in the Nolan films that doesn’t have a purpose. This is, in some sense, an artistic virtue. If a gun is on the mantel piece in the first act, it should go off in the third, and vice versa. But it can grow wearisome after a time, when you know that everything that happens in the first part of the movie, no matter how seemingly trivial, is there for a purpose and will eventually resurface. It is also not much like real life, where stuff is always either getting started and not finishing or coming out of nowhere without prior warning.
Burton’s Batman is full of little asides that don’t really go anywhere (like Kim Basinger’s admission that she just … likes bats) and scenes that seem to come out of nowhere and don’t make sense (“Now you wanna get nuts? C’mon! Let’s get nuts.”) In one sense, these oddities are an artistic flaw. In another, they make the movie seem less constructed.
But most importantly, I think Nolan’s strategy is fundamentally flawed. His basic problem is that Batman is totally implausible, and there’s no real way around that. You can have the characters stand next to each other and deliver as much expositionary dialogue explaining Wayne’s motivation and tactics as you like (just like the characters in Inception spend so much time talking about the mechanics of dreaming). At the end of the day, Batman is still running around with a cape and it still is totally ridiculous. There is a reason we don't have a Batman in real life, and it's not because being a superhero wouldn't be badass.
In fact, in some ways, Nolan’s Batman feels less plausible than Burton’s. It’s similar to the concept of the "uncanny valley" in robotics and computer animations. As a robot (or a cartoon) has a more human appearance, we feel more empathy towards them. But when they look almost (but not quite) human, our empathy drops significantly. We start focusing on the differences between the human and the simulacrum, and not the similarities. I think movies have the same issue. We enjoy realism, to a point. But when we get too close, but not quite close enough, some of the enjoyment can be lost. We all appreciate Batman swinging from rooftops and punching the Joker. And we appreciate it when he does so in a more “realistic” fashion. But eventually you’ll butt up against the fundamental implausibility of the character. In the end, you have to let Batman be Batman. I’m not sure if Nolan really does that.
Burton made Batman in a time where it was acceptable to have Batman beating up muggers. Nolan had to make his films connect with audiences in a time where we didn’t want to see a vigilante brutalize petty criminals. Why does a man dress up like a bat and act as a vigilante if he isn’t acting out our fantasy? Nolan looked to the “broken windows” theory to provide an answer. But that decision (along with the others; it is safe to say that Burton is more content to simply be weird that Nolan) means that Nolan’s films have to fundamentally move away from the basic nature of the character.
If (as unfortunately seems possible) the economy continues to worsen, and we see the return of high crime rates, then the Nolan films may seems talky and strained, and we will once again be able simply enjoy Batman for what he is, without any explanations or excuses.
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