Batman seems destined to be the blockbuster of this decade of blockbusters. It recouped its $50-million production costs in its very first week and set records for biggest opening day, biggest first weekend, biggest seven days, and biggest second weekend. We are clearly looking at a phenomenon that will outstrip the Star Wars saga, Jaws, Ghostbusters, the Indiana Jones movies, and even the biggest of them all, E.T It is fair to ask, then, why the fifty-year-old vigilante of Gotham City is so extraordinarily popular with the American people, and so unpopular with liberal intellectuals.
Well, the public loves the movie for all the same reasons liberals hate it. [For a dissenting view from our side, see John Simon’s review in the August 18 issue.] This Batman is a criminologist in the Pat Buchanan mode. He does not attempt to “understand” evildoers—he throws them off skyscraper roofs. This is a Batman who believes in the death penalty and practices it. We are left in no doubt as to what he would have done to Willie Horton.
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