I would, however, have expected this when the week before a colleague of mine told me that she wasn't going to allow her kids to see it. She has heard that it was too dark and violent a film for children - even though they wanted to see it very much. This could only have been a bad omen for the financial success of the Batman sequel. If the kids didn't go to see a Batman movie, then who would? Definitely not the "adults" who weren't supposed to take mere "comic" books seriously. (Or at least that's what my dad tells me every time he sees his 29-year-old son with one of those comic books . . .) Comic book readership (along with literacy) has been changing in the past decade or so. People don't read much anymore. It simply isn't cool, there isn't time, it's easier to go rent the video instead. More fun to play CD-ROM games. Whatever. The demographics of comic book readers have also changed. Although kids still make up the largest chunk of comic book consumers, comics readers have become older. Why? Because kids aren't interested anymore and few new readers have come into the fold while the existing fans. Well, they just turned 29, that's all . . .

This explains why Marvel Comics (which mostly prints juvenile titles such as X-Men) has to scale down while the Vertigo branch of DC Comics which caters for more "mature" tastes actually recently expanded its canon of printed titles. Comic readers have become an older (if not wiser) bunch. Yet they remain a small sub-culture within a small sub-culture. After all, it's easier to watch the latest episode of The X-Men on television on Saturday mornings than going out and buying the latest edition of the said title . . .

Basing the viewership of a multi-million dollar Hollywood production on that particular tiny sub-culture could only spell financial disaster. Because that is what Batman Returns was aimed at: the "mature" comic book readers. It had more in common with the dark brooding graphic novels that saw the light (?) after Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns than the pure comic book stuff that appears on the shop shelves every month. When my colleague felt that Batman Returns wasn't really for kids, she was probably right. When the film was criticised by critics for being too psychopathic, too tormented, too brutal for children they were probably right too.

However, when Ebert complained that Batman Returns denies us (the audience) what "we more or less deserve from a Batman story," he was wrong. When he wrote that "no matter how hard you try, superheroes and film noir don't go together; the very essence of noir is that there are no more heroes" one could clearly see that he hasn't exactly been in on what has been happening in the comic scene since Frank Miller re-invented (or rather re-interpreted) the Batman character for modern audiences. Perhaps he should take a look at those graphic novels or at Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum.

Yeah, I probably do take my comics too seriously. The fact remains that when one compares the first two Batman films, it is obvious that following the commercial success of Batman, director Tim Burton was given free rein with its sequel. Batman Returns is more malignant in its style, atmosphere and feeling. Like one critic remarked: "It . . . is probably one of the only live action movies to date that successfully converts from its comic origins. Batman Returns captured the comic hero's manic depressive state of mind as well as the comic book's Gothic intentions." But the game was over for director Burton.