Movies I Grew Up On: Batman

This movie is a strange, but fond Christmas memory of mine.  I remember my family had went up to Canada to visit my grandparents and other family on my dad's side and someone got the VHS of Batman, so we watched that together.  This was the first Batman movie in 23 years and decidedly darker than the so very awesome Adam West Batman.  Unlike the even darker and more "realistic" Christopher Nolan, Tim Burton still embraced the comic book source material and kept the characters fairly faithful (e.g. Joker wasn't just a crazy killer, but wanted everyone to die laughing/smiling).  It stars Michael Keaton as Batman, who in my mind is the best Batman, but not a fantastic Bruce Wayne.  It's also the the only Batman movie to only have a single villain (which really should be the norm for comic book movies, not the exception).

If you haven't seen it, this movie serves as both an origin for Batman and the Joker.  Jack Napier, second in command to Gotham's current crime lord, is set up to take a fall during a crime at the Axis Chemical factory.  While trying to stop the criminals, Jack falls into a vat of chemicals, partly due to Batman.  Instead of dying from the chemicals, Jack Napier is instead transformed into a deranged killer who uses chemicals in every day hygiene products to cause people to laugh to death.  Things escalate to a very climactic fight up at the top of a cathedral bell tower.

Unfortunately, this movie starts the trend of comic book movie villains dying in their first (and only) movie appearance.  I'm not talking about random villains created specifically for that movie (like the Superman movies), but one of the villains from the hero's gallery of villains.  I've never quite understood this since not only do the heroes only have a small number of villains that could actually hold up a movie by themselves, but usually the villains they do kill (like The Joker) have so many more stories that could be explored and character depth that could be done.  This can only lead to more future reboots that (for some reason) must retell the hero's origin story again and again.