1992 at the movies: Batman gets weirder and Unforgiven is unsettling

In the end, Batman Returns is a fine sequel. As the number-one movie of the year, it does everything a hero follow-up is expected to do as it multiplies the villains and has a little more fun. I never particularly cared for The Penguin in this movie, and much preferred the Kyle/Shreck dynamic and felt that Cobblepot was shoehorned in. That being said, it allowed for the appearance of Vincent Schiavelli, burgeoning MVP of this project! 

If true that Keaton eventually bowed out of the role partly due to the early scripts of Batman Forever and partly because of his diminishing role, I can see the latter happening in here. It's a very busy movie, and I imagine it might get a little old playing the uptight hero when everyone else is taking a big bite out of the scenes they're in. Bruce Wayne is a little more animated here than in the first one and you can see Keaton's comedy chops paying off, but the writing seemed to be on the wall that Batman was getting pushed to the side in his own movies.

I can still remember the hush that fell over the theatre crowd towards the end of Best Picture winner Unforgiven as Munny exacts his vengeance upon Little Bill and his crew. I even wrote about the effect of the ending of the movie in an English class journal, because it made a real impact on me.

To this point, I had grown up with and enjoyed enough shoot 'em up movies to know that this is when the audience is supposed to hoot, holler, and cheer. Even when it's amoral and gory, gleeful violence in a movie can be fun.

Add to that the fact that Munny wasn't a hero, but had to be counted among the "good guys" of the movie, certainly by comparison to everyone else, so this must be a triumphant ending, right? Except it felt so heartbreaking to watch him succumb to his nature as he betrayed everything his character said, but fed right into everything that others said he was.

I also remember talk of Eastwood's comeback through this movie, which is a funny thing to look back on as he's come back now on several occasions.