| Well, I think the consensus, which I also happen to agree with, seeing as Tim Burton IS my all-time favourite director, is as such: Burton and Nolan, both incredibly talented directors, have both made Batman movies, where each director's vision is so completely different from the other's that it's literally impossible to compare them as films in the same franchise. Burton's vision, in step with the visual style of pretty much all of his films, is dark, gothic and highly stylized, though not in the campy sense as the old comics/TV show/Joel Schumacher movies but rather stylized in that unique Burtonesque, Expressionist style. If anything, his Batman movies are amazing achivements in fantasy production design, and the musical score by Danny Elfman is divine. But really, the movies themselves are totally brilliant in Burton's highly stylized way - his vision of Batman/Bruce Wayne as a quirky, geeky, reclusive, rejected outsider out for revenge but also out to fight villains that seem to be drawn to him because they themselves are quirky, reclusive, rejected outsiders. Nolan, on the other hand, decided to take Batman in the completely opposite direction as the highly stylized Burton version and make a movie as close to reality as the fantastical subject material allows, sort of like Bryan Singer's X-Men movies. The film is rooted in realism, both in the plot devices and character development but mainly in the production design, which really gives the movies not a sense of fantasy but rather the sense of a serious crime drama that happens to have fantasy elements in it. Nolan's Batman isn't a quirky, Burtonesque weirdo but rather a focused, devoted person whose main flaw is that he is utterly blinded by revenge. The two styles have both produced equally brilliant films but for totally different reasons, although you have to give Burton credit because if it weren't for his films, we wouldn't have movies like Spider-Man, X-Men, Iron Man or naturally Batman Begins in the first place. |