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Hamm's script lured director Tim Burton to the project. Burton, 30, had only two features to his credit: Pee-Wee's Big Adventure and Beetlejuice, both revealing an outlandishly precise design sense and an eccentric comic touch that audiences loved. "Warner's was a complete, total freak-out," Peters recalls, "scared to death shooting a $30 million film with a third-time director whose first two films cost about a dollar and a half. But they were very supportive." Burton's background as a Disney animator helped him with the special effects, says Peters. "As an artist, he storyboarded every frame."
Burton was stirred by the challenge: "I got into the operatic quality of the story -- big, wild and strong. I wanted it psychological but flamboyant. An action comedy with a dramatic twist. Funny but not jokey." To make a fantasy film grounded in emotional reality, he would create a city that had never been but had to be: believable unreality. Says designer Anton Furst: "We imagined what New York might have become without a planning commission. A city run by crime, with a riot of architectural styles. An essay in ugliness. As Tim says, 'It looks like hell erupted through the pavement and kept on going.' "
More hell would erupt when Keaton was announced as Bruce Wayne. Fresh from his frenetic triumph in Beetlejuice but no one's idea of a superhunk, Keaton fit Peters' demands for a "comedian who had an insane streak -- funny, charming, with that all-important dark side." At first Kane was apprehensive, "but then Michael put on the mask and uniform, and he had that swagger, that air. Suddenly he was six foot four." Batmaniacs remained to be convinced. Fearful that Keaton and Burton might make a derisive parody, they inundated Warner's with petitions. Keaton says he was astonished that the "DC fundamentalists" could take the casting of Batman so seriously. "After all, it's only a movie. I am a little nervous, though, about the scene where I fantasize making love to Mary Magdalene."
Basinger, who sees Batman as a modern Phantom of the Opera -- "two men in black and a woman in white who shows them the light" -- signed on as Vicki, replacing the injured actress Sean Young. As for the Joker, everyone agreed it should be Nicholson. At the outset, Kane had sent the studio a photo of him in The Shining, coloring it in with green hair and white skin. The star was also attracted: "Metaphysically, the Joker was dipped in chemicals and lost his mind -- not unlike the rest of society. He has had his identity melted into his brain. He flows with the corrosion, so to speak." The character's extravagant evil appealed to Nicholson: "I always try to see how far I can go, and I've never hit my head on top. Most actors are afraid to go as dark as they might, but I always say, 'Let's really get black.' " The Los Angeles Lakers' most famous fan even liked the story. "Like basketball, it occurs at night."
As in all megaprojects, the Batman people were just happy to have survived. "Tim is a pale guy," his friend Keaton says. "Put him in England and add the demands of the shoot, and he becomes transparent." But Burton soldiered on, and now offers a cautious commendation of his own work: "Given the scale, the number of people involved and how quickly we did it, it still has a personality, which big movies often lose. It doesn't feel like a cardboard clone."