FILM 1725: BATMAN RETURNS
TRIVIA: Michael Keaton was
alleged to have earned eleven million dollars for reprising his role as the
Caped Crusader. The Warner Brothers executives were very uneasy with this.
However, Director Tim Burton stated that he personally believed Keaton
deserved it.
Michelle Pfeiffer went
through sixty catsuits during the six month shoot, at a cost of one thousand
dollars a piece.
The first film made in Dolby
Digital.
The production wanted to use King
Penguins, but the only tame ones in captivity were at a bird sanctuary in the
Cotswolds, deep in the English countryside. So the birds were flown over to the
States in the refrigerated hold of a plane, they were given their own
refrigerated trailer, their own swimming pool, with half a ton of fresh ice
every day, and had fresh fish delivered daily straight from the docks. Even
though the temperature outside frequently topped one hundred degrees, the
entire set was refrigerated down to thirty-five degrees. The birds also had an
around-the-clock bodyguard. Clearly the birds enjoyed the experience as,
following their stint in Hollywood, most of them had mated and produced eggs,
the sure sign of a contented penguin.
Burgess Meredith,
who played The Penguin on Batman (1966), and in Batman: The Movie (1966), was asked
to play the Penguin's father in the opening of the film, but illness prevented
him from it.
Warner Brothers had to constantly
submit new Catwoman posters for various cities, as many of the bus stop ads
were being stolen. It got so bad, that police officers had to patrol bus stops
in order to catch perpetrators before they could break the Plexiglas containers.
Today, the large scale Catwoman bus ads are worth a great deal of money.
When asked during a 2007 talk show
appearance if she ever felt nostalgic and put on the cat suit to amuse her
husband, Michelle Pfeiffer stated that once filming was over, she
never wanted to see the costume again for as long as she lived.
Annette Bening was
cast as Catwoman, but was replaced by Michelle Pfeiffer when
she became pregnant. Pfeiffer's three million dollar salary was two million
dollars more than was offered to Bening.
The final Christmas ball scene is
quite symbolic: since it is a masquerade party all the guests are in disguise.
The only two guests there who actually aren't wearing masks are Bruce Wayne and
Selina Kyle. This implies that their real personalities are Batman and Catwoman
respectively, and that their public appearance without a costume is just a disguise
for society.
When Bruce Wayne meets Selina Kyle
for the first time at Schreck's office, he says that they've met. When Selina
asks how they met, he says "I'm sorry. I mistook me for someone
else", in which she corrects him by saying "You mean you mistook
me". Despite Selina's correction, Bruce is actually referring to the night
he saved her from the clown with the stun gun as Batman, and was referring to
his superhero ego. That's why he told her that they've already met, but mistook
himself for somebody else (Batman) instead of her.
