Batman is a 1989 superhero film based on the DC Comics character of the same name. Tim Burton directed the film, which stars Michael Keaton as Batman, as well as Jack Nicholson, Kim Basinger, Robert Wuhl, Pat Hingle, Billy Dee Williams, Michael Gough, and Jack Palance. The film is primarily known for depicting a darker and more serious version of the character rather than the more acknowledged Batman TV series from the 1960s. It takes inspirations seen by the work of Bill Finger and Bob Kane's stories from 1939.

Development phase for the film initially started as far back as the late 1970s, though due to creative differences on the project, it took roughly ten years to make the film. The film was mostly shot entirely at Pinewood Studios and relied upon traditional stunts and miniatures for visual effects. Batman was both critically and commercially successful and garnered the sequel Batman Returns, as well as Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, though the last two were directed by Joel Schumacher rather than Burton. The film series would eventually be rebooted with Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins.

Gotham City, a resting place for criminal activity and political corruption has found itself being introduced to Batman (Michael Keaton), a mysterious and dark vigilante stalking criminals and fighting crime. Newspaper reporter Alexander Knox (Robert Wuhl) is attempting to investigate, though only finds no answers from police Lieutenant Eckhardt (William Hootkins), one of many corrupt officers taking payoffs from Carl Grissom (Jack Palance), and his accomplice Jack Napier (Jack Nicholson). Police Commissioner James Gordon (Pat Hingle) and District Attorney Harvey Dent (Billy Dee Williams) are brought in solely by Mayor Borg (Lee Wallace) to fight the high level of criminal activity. Grissom, on discovering that his mistress is involved with Napier, sets him up to be killed by Eckhardt in a raid on Axis Chemicals. The plot is foiled by the arrival of James Gordon and Batman. In the act Napier kills Eckhardt and tries to shoot Batman, though Batman manages to deflects his shot, sending shrapnel and glass into his face. Napier falls over a railing into a vat of chemicals, presumably to his death. Although surrounded by the police, Batman escapes the scene.

Batman, as we discover, is actually billionaire industrialist Bruce Wayne, an orphan who lives alone in the large mansion Wayne Manor, with only his butler Alfred Pennyworth (Michael Gough) in attendance. At a fundraising party, Bruce meets and falls for famous photojournalist Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger), recently arrived in town to cover the "Bat Man phenomenon" with Knox. In the meantime Napier emerges horribly disfigured with white skin, green hair, and a permanent grin. Already unstable, the trauma drives him completely insane, calling himself "The Joker." He kills Grissom, and creates his criminal empire. This includes poisoning various hygiene products killing various citizens, though the crime wave is infiltrated by Batman, and The Joker vows to eliminate the vigilante for interfering with his plans. Vicki's apartment is then the scene of a confrontation between the Joker, who has come to woo her, and Bruce, who has come to try and confess about his double life. After Bruce challenges the Joker to a fight, the Joker pulls a gun and asks him: "Tell me something, friend. Have you ever danced with the devil by the pale moonlight?" He then shoots Bruce and leaves while Vicki is shocked seeing that Bruce has disappeared, leaving behind only a metal platter which he used as an impromptu bulletproof vest.

That confrontation confirmed for Bruce that the Joker is actually the man who murdered his parents many, many years ago in Gotham. As Bruce grapples with this memory, he is shocked by the sudden appearance of Vicki in the Bat Cave, Alfred having decided that she deserved to know the truth. After a morbid conversation with Vale, Bruce tells her "it's time to go to work," and stop the Joker's terror. Deep in downtown Gotham, the Joker has put his own plans in motion to upstage the city's canceled anniversary celebrations with a grand spectacle: a nighttime parade at which he will dispense $20 million in free cash. Vicki and Knox are there to cover the pandemonium, and they notice strange tanks on the balloons.

In the middle of his generosity, the Joker begins gassing the crowd. Batman arrives in his Batwing and snatches the balloons away to carry them out of the city and into the stratosphere. Furious, the Joker shoots Bob the Goon, his number one thug, in frustration. Batman returns to make a strafing run on the Joker, who responds by shooting down the jet. Vicki approaches the downed craft but is captured by the Joker, who leads her to the top of Gotham Cathedral. Dazed but not finished, Batman pursues as this ensues into a showdown with The Joker's minions. As Batman confronts the Clown Prince of Crime, he admits that he murdered Wayne's parents, shrugging off the slaying as youthful arrogance. In a moment of opportunity, the Joker pulls Batman and Vicki off the belfry, where they cling to the ledge for their lives. The Joker's helicopter appears and he grabs hold of a dangling ladder. Batman shoots a wire around the Joker's leg, connecting it to a stone gargoyle on the ledge. As the Joker is lifted away, the wire pulls the gargoyle loose, weighting down the Joker and causing him to plummet to his death. The film ends with Commissioner Gordon announcing that the Gotham police have arrested the rest of the Joker's gang and unveiling the Bat-Signal.

When Tim Burton was hired as director in 1987, Tom Mankiewicz script was being used by Warner Bros.' to guide the project. Burton was personally dissatisfied with the script, calling it "too jokey and cynical." Burton then hired long time collaborator Julie Hickson to write a 30-page treatment. Elements seen from Hickson's treatment are unknown, though WB was less willing to move forward on production. In due time, Burton went to work on Beetlejuice, while Batman labored into development. The studio then enlisted the aid of Steve Englehart to write a basic story treatment in March 1986. Englehart was primarily known as the author of Dark Detective, which the film was supposedly to be based upon. The studio then told him the plot would be in the manner that another writer could work from into a full fledged screenplay. Englehart asked if he could write the screenplay himself, though he was denied, and thus he settled for the treatment. To this day Englehart claims, "Between the original comics and the treatments, about 70 percent of what ended up on screen originated with me."

Englehart quoted on the experience, "When I got involved I was told that the Joker and the Penguin and Robin were all going to be in the picture. I argued that that was several characters too many, but was overruled, so my first treatment went that route. The Powers That Be not only liked it, but for the first time saw the Batman "picture" clearly enough to realize that two villains and a boy wonder were masking (so to speak) the Batman story, which is what it should be all about. So I got to do the second treatment with just the characters that eventually hit the screen: Bruce Wayne, the Batman, Silver St. Cloud, and the Joker." Englehart finished writing the story treatments in May 1986.

Meanwhile Burton settled to hire a writer to work the screenplay. Sam Hamm claims at the time he was still a "low-ranking" writer for Warner Brothers. He desperately wanted to write the new Batman movie as he was a fan of the character. He finally got his chance when he accidentally collided with Burton. The two then ended up in conversation, to which Burton was impressed with Hamm's knowledge of the character, and hired him to write the script. The two opted not to do a complete origin story as Hamm stated, "You totally destroy your credibility if you show the literal process by which Bruce Wayne becomes Batman and "You had to wade through 20 years just to get to the first shot of the guy in the costume that we've all come to see." Silver St. Cloud and Rupert Thorne, who appeared in the various scripts and treatments over the years, were deleted in favor of Vicki Vale and the newly created character Carl Grissom. The filmmakers apparently felt they weren't as popular as they were ten years ago in Englehart's Dark Detective series. Englehart claims he was mildly disappointed.

Robin appeared in Hamm's script, but was deleted because Burton and Hamm felt he was irrelevant to the plot. Burton also cited that "Batman is a loner, and it should stay that way." Fortunately for them, Warner Brothers also agreed, and saved the character for a second installment. Bob Kane supported the decision as well. Hamm turned in his script just days before the infamous writer's strike of 1988 began, and was unable to write further drafts due to his involvement. Burton and others liked the script, but thought "something" was missing. As such he brought in Beetlejuice co-writers Warren Skaaren and Charles McKeown for rewrite work. Jonathan Gems did a few weeks worth of rewriting as well. All three were British as just about every single writer in America was on strike. Their draft introduced the Joker's role as the killer of Bruce Wayne's parents, a revelation Burton wanted from the beginning. Hamm, staying true to the source material, had refused to use the idea. One of the primary reasons as to why the filmmakers brought in McKeown was that they felt he could come up with more creative jokes for The Joker.

Producer Jon Peters had at one point visioned the film as "Death Wish in a batsuit." The studio gave Burton more creative control than Peters once Beetlejuice took more than $70 million at the box office (a substantial profit compared to Beetlejuice's $7 million budget). This also helped greenlight the film. By the end of production, the film had cost $30 million to make, and a further $15 million was spent on advertising.

Batman was filmed at Pinewood Studios from October 1988 to January 1989. Anton Furst was given a $5.5 million budget for the production design and construction process. Tim Burton opted not to film at Warner Brothers studios in California, as he wanted to film in England to escape American press. Michael Keaton quoted, "When you're overseas, you can concentrate on making the movie and not think about the external things. That turned out to be a blessing." Production was highly secretive. The unit publicist was offered and refused £10,000 for the first pictures of Jack Nicholson as The Joker. The police were later called in when two reels of footage (about 20 minutes worth) were copied in an attempt to make a pirate video. Nicholson was very supportive of Burton, going as far as yelling at Jon Peters and Peter Guber (as well as various Warner Brothers executives) simply in favor of the director.

Nicholson was originally suppose to only be on the set for three weeks, though due to various difficulties during filming, this strangled into 106 days. Vicki Vale was originally to have been killed by The Joker, sending Batman into a vengeful fury. Peters decided that audiences wouldn't accept "Batman beating up a 50-year-old man," and so without telling Burton, he reworked it: the Joker would take Vale captive, and drag her up to the top of Gotham cathedral's bell tower. Peters was inspired for this action upon viewing The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway. He was most impressed with the climax of Erik carrying Christine up a tower (though, ironically, the play's actual climax takes place in a sewer). It would require an additional 38-foot model of the cathedral, costing $100,000, when they were already well over budget. Burton disliked the idea, having no clue how the scene would end. Burton stated, "Here was Jack Nicholson and Kim Basinger walking up this cathedral, and halfway up Jack turns around and says, 'Why am I walking up all these stairs? Where am I going?' We'll talk about it when you get to the top! I had to tell him that I didn't know." After a fierce argument with Peters and Guber over the rewrite situation, Nicholson went to Basinger and stated, "Tell that guy whose cock you've been sucking for the past six months that he's an asshole."

Burton had the common cold and The Flu every single day during filming.

Tim Burton had wanted to hire Anton Furst for Beetlejuice, after being impressed with his work on The Company of Wolves, though at the time, Furst was too committed on High Spirits. They finally got a chance to collaborate on Batman. Furst and Burton deliberately mixed clashing architectural styles to make Gotham City the ugliest and bleakest metropolis imaginable. No computer-generated imagery was used for the sets, and instead the filmmakers depended on matte paintings and the buildings themselves (which stood at 40 feet high). The Art Department talks about how it was easy to communicate with Burton, as they cited him as "visually stunning film director." Furst quoted on Burton, "I don't think I've ever felt so naturally in tune with a director. Conceptually, spiritually, visually, or artistically. There was never any problem because we never fought over anything. I often wanted his advice, but when I came up with four ideas in four different directions, he'd always choose the one I liked most." For influences of the design for the film, Burton and Furst studied Terry Gilliam's Brazil, Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and original Bob Kane sketches of Gotham City in the late 1930s. Furst quoted, "I thought we'd go back to the turn of the century; and imagine what New York might have become had there been no planning permission, and no concern about the quality of life for people in the city." While examining the sets Kane quoted "I envisaged Gotham the way I see it now at Pinewood. They've got it, every building, every ash can, every brick."

The Batmobile took 14 weeks to construct, though the builders forgot to add a door, thus the reason why the entire cockpit opens in a similar manner to jets. Two browning machine guns were installed, and the costume design team had build a new cowl for Michael Keaton, as it didn't fit in the car. The car stood 20 feet long with a 141-inch wheelbase. Furst quoted, "We didn't want to put it into any particular period of time. We looked at jet aircraft components, we looked at war machines, we looked at all sorts of things. In the end, we went into pure expressionism, taking the Salt Flat Racers of the 30s and the Stingray macho machines of the 50s." The car was built upon from a Chevrolet Impala.

Make-up Designer Nick Dudman had met Tim Burton and Anton Furst at a time when nobody knew whether Batman would be greenlighted. For his role, Jack Nicholson had what was known as an "off-the-clock" agreement. His contract specified the number of hours he was entitled to have off each day, from the time he left the studio to the time he reported back for filming. Dudman quoted "Nicholson had to leave at a certain point each night, allowing time for us to clean him up, for it to be worth bringing him in the next day. Anything over two and a half hours in the makeup chair was silly because he would only be on the floor for four hours. Although it was a crippling schedule, we got it down to two hours in all-90 minutes to get everything on and colored up, 20 minutes for the wig placement, and 10 minutes to re-touch and finish."

Dudman was specifically chosen by Nicholson, who had approved of his resume. Burton had warned Dudman that Nicholson would have contractually have total make-up control. Dudman went to the Dorchester Hotel to meet Nicholson; though not being familiar with Nicholson's work and fearing he would be an "over hyped celebrity," Dudman found him "fascinating, pleasant, polite, and relaxed," the complete opposite of what he had expected. Dudman then prepared a series of sketches and paintings of his proposed make-up designs for The Joker, which were submitted for Nicholson's approval before he agreed to sign for the role.

Dudman made a life-cast of the actor after Nicholson accepted the designs and the part. Dudman's concept was to design a prosthetic make-up based on a life-cast of Nicholson smiling as broadly as he could. Dudman recalled, "The first thing Jack said to me was, 'I never wear make-up in movies, apart from when I'm injured.' He hates it! That filled me with enormous confidence." Dudman sculpted six Joker designs, and selected two with Burton to submit to Nicholson for final approval. Apparently it was the design the crew and Burton liked the most. With two weeks until the start of filming, Dudman prepared a set of appliances for test shooting, making sure the lighting would be formidable with the makeup. For prosthetics Dudman used a nose tip, two upper lips, a chin, and two lower lips with cheeks. For The Joker's white face, Dudman used Pax Paint, a mixture of adhesive and acrylic paint plasticized so it wouldn't crack. Dudman shaded the design with gunmetal grey powdered eye shadow, dissolved in alcohol. When brushed onto the Pax base, the alcohol bonded the shading to the makeup which wouldn't rub off. That feature came in handy for the scene where The Joker's flesh-colored disguise gets washed off by a bucket of water to the face.

Burton opted to hire Danny Elfman, his long time collaborator and in return, Burton handed him Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns for inspiration on musical notes. Jon Peters and Peter Guber originally had in mind for Prince to write the Joker theme while Michael Jackson would write the love theme, and Danny Elfman would then combine the style of the two songs together for the entire film score. Burton protested the ideas, citing "my movies aren't like Top Gun." Burton won the argument and was happy with the outcome stating, "Danny was able to write a dark, orchestral piece." Elfman also helped himself out by simply walking and visiting the Anton Furst sets of Gotham City for the mood of the music. Elfman was worried to helm the film score, as he never had worked on a project this large in budget. Peters was cautious in hiring Elfman feeling that he simply "couldn't achieve it." During rehearsals with the orchestra, Peters literally started dancing around to the main theme, and took back his words. Peters was so impressed with Elfman's film score that he would put his cell phone up to the speakers to send to all of his fellow friends. When asked what music he enjoyed writing most for the film, Elfman commented on "anything that had do to with The Joker."