Batman creator Bob Kane wrote a wild treatment for Tim Burton’s 1989 movie

Batman has gone through a lot of revivals over the years. There was the campy Adam West Batman from the ’60s, Christopher Nolan’s lauded Dark Knight trilogy in the mid-2000s, Ben Affleck’s super-serious gritty Batman, and whatever Robert Pattinson is about to bring us. But the modern era of big screen Batman really got started with Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman movie, with Michael Keaton as the Caped Crusader and Jack Nicholson as the Joker.

That movie had original Batman co-creator Bob Kane on staff as a creative consultant — all four of the movies from that cycle did, in fact. But it doesn’t look like the people at Warner Bros. took very many ideas for how the story should go. You see, while looking for distraction in coronavirus-mandated captivity, ScreenCrush writer Matt Singer flipped through his copy of the book Batman: The Definitive History of the Dark Knight in Comics, Film, and Beyond by Andrew Farago and Gina McIntyre. That book includes a copy of a 30-page treatment of a movie called The Return of Batman that Kane wrote to help guide Burton and screenwriter Sam Hamm, and it is…out there.

Okay, so first we have to establish that Kane wrote in a letter to Warner Bros. executive Lisa Henson that the new Batman movie should avoid the campy feeling of the 1960s show. With that in mind, here’s a sampling of things from Kane’s treatment:

• To start, while the final version of Batman told us the Joker’s origin story, in The Return of Batman, both Batman and the Joker are years into their rivalry. The movie opens with a chase scene that ends with the Joker falling off a bridge, apparently to his death.
• After that, Batman returns to Wayne Manor, where he’s served “coffee and cake” by his loyal butler Alfred, who soon goes to bed. He sits by himself and thinks on the past, all while smoking a pipe. I assume a smoking jacket is also involved but I can’t prove it. “My, my, how quickly time passes,” he says to no one. “I remember another stormy night such as this about twenty-five years ago…” And then we get a flashback to the night his parents are murdered. Elegant, no?
• Of course, the Joker isn’t dead. His plan for revenge against Batman — and this is where things get really weird — involves kidnapping a Russian athlete, Ivan Stanovich, on the eve of the Olympics, which are going to be held in Gotham City that year. The pair of them hide out — brace yourself — in the Statute of Liberty, which apparently is undergoing restorations at the time. Batman and Joker’s final confrontation happens on the statue’s crown.

And yes, the Statue of Liberty is in New York City, not Gotham. What of it?

There are also Batman legacy characters included in Kane’s treatment who weren’t in the movie. Robin is away at collage at the start of the film, but comes back in time for the climax. Catwoman is also around, working with the Joker and carrying on a love affair with Bruce Wayne, who doesn’t realize who she is. She doesn’t realize who he is, either, or at least not until Bruce invites her to spend the night at Wayne Manor (in her own room) and she goes snooping and finds the Bat Cave. But it’s okay, because Batman hypnotizes her with an ancient Egyptian medallion and makes her forget everything.

Remember: not campy. I think we can all agree that we were robbed of this movie.

All that said, even though the plot details are a little hokey, it does look like Burton took Kane’s not on the tone of the film. He wanted a mood that was “ominous, with a fog-laden atmosphere not unlike Dracula whereby a foreboding atmosphere prevails with long, dark shadows and an apprehensive sense of danger permeating the entire mood of the picture.” That sounds like Burton’s Gotham all over. He also recommended that the new Bat-suit have pointy ears and that “the cowl and the cape should be jet black,” all notes Burton apparently took.

Kane passed in 1998, which was more than enough time to see his creation come back to the forefront of pop culture. I hope it enjoyed it; I certainly enjoyed reading about his ideas.

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