Who knew the Dark Knight would be used as a weapon against responsible parenting and to strip filmmaker Tim Burton of his grasp on the franchise which made his career...After the incredible success of Batman in 1989, it was easy to see why Tim Burton would be handed the reigns for a sequel, but it would be this sequel that studio execs would use to take the franchise from him and stop his third installment.
Not only was this going on, but the film was also used by certain special interest groups to attack the film industry and fast food franchises for marketing to children, to the point an entire episode of a talk show was done about it.
Parents were "angry" that the 2nd Batman film was so dark and thought that it scared their children, to the point that these obviously coached kids were drug out and used as props on Jenny Jones talk show, an entire episode attacking Batman. They were also attacking McDonalds and toy companies for making toys from this film to market to children.
Instead of telling their children "NO, that's too mature for you." they attacked everything else, they didn't want to be parents anymore, they wanted to lay the blame elsewhere, rather than say "no" to their whining brats, and it's only gotten worse from there. Since then, good parenting is considered a crime by some and poor parenting is rewarded & glorified.
At the same time the studio was angry with Burton's vision because they didn't sell enough toys from the second film, they thought it was too dark and too far from the campy, colorful comic book version they wanted ... so they could sell toys.
Burton has always been one of my favorite filmmakers because he doesn't give a crap about selling toys, just making the best film he can from his own vision of the story and characters and I thought his vision for Batman was outstanding and awesome. Very gothic, tragic, moody, as the best stories from the comics have been for the Bat, it's what makes The Bat unique to the other heroes who are bright and positive (yet now, we've seen how miserable a fail it is when you try to make the other heroes dark like the Bat, it does not work).
So, this film was taking a strong attack from two different sources, neither should have ever happened, they should have let Burton have that 3rd film. If they wanted toys about Batman, concentrate more on, the Animated Series.
Burton had a vision of Billy Dee Williams as Two-Face, of Robin Williams as The Riddler, of Patrick Stewart as the dark and VERY cold, Mr Freeze, it would have been epic, but now we just have to sit and wonder how good it could have been.
Another example of how outsiders can destroy an industry they know nothing about, because the only vision they have is their own greed for money and power, rather than what is best for that industry.
