Ohio-based brand Homage asked their fans if Batman Returns was a Christmas movie. DC Comics fans will remember that the setting plays a large part in the plot of the film as Penguin's shenanigans crop up near that time of the year. Every year after Halloween, movie fans decide to ask which movies "really" count as Holiday features. A couple of years ago it was Iron Man 3 getting directed. Everyone remembers the great Die-Hard debate of the last decade where the Internet decided to have this conversation into infinity. Still, by the letter of the law, Batman Returns is technically a Christmas film. It's got the trees, lights, snow, and toys all there. Tim Burton's haunting little personal touches and signature lighting help hammer some of that home as well. (He's got a bit of a thing for marrying Halloween and Christmas after all.)
His successor had to talk about his efforts before his unfortunate passing this year. Joel Schumacher was brought in to redirect the Batman franchise and his movies differed quite a bit tonally from what came before. The director told Vulture what really made Batman Forever stand out to that point in the series.
"You know what I think? I shouldn't have made a sequel, and that's all there is to it," Schumacher explained. "I learned that sequels are only made for one reason. I'm sure that Batman Forever was the cheapest Batman movie ever made because Val didn't get a lot of money, Nicole [Kidman] didn't, Chris O'Donnell didn't, and I didn't. Tommy got a bit of a payday because he'd just won the Oscar for The Fugitive and Jim Carrey had already done Ace Ventura."
You'll actually get to see Michael Keaton's Batman again in Andy Muschietti's The Flash. The director talked about it a little bit earlier this year.
"This movie is a bit of a hinge in the sense that it presents a story that implies a unified universe where all the cinematic iterations that we've seen before are valid," Muschietti elaborated. "It's inclusive in the sense that it is saying all that you've seen exists, and everything that you will see exists, in the same unified multiverse."
Do you think it's a Christmas movie? Let us know in the comments below!