How Gotham City Changed
This piece includes very minor spoilers for The Batman (2022).
From Tim Burton Batman in 1989, we saw Gotham City reimagined on screen by a host of different directors, all with distinct new visions. The 90-degree angles of Adam West and Burt Ward scaling buildings via grappling hook came out, and a legitimately dark, gothic approach that fit the character of a T. With the addition of Matt Reeve The Batmanwe were introduced to a rain Gotham, dreary and sinister. Its sidewalks are soaked with as many crimes as raindrops.
The 1989 screenplay of Batman by Sam Hamm and Warren Skaaren presents the city as such:
The city of tomorrow: sharp angles, creeping shadows, dense, cluttered, airless, random tangle of steel and concrete, self-generating, almost underground in its appearance… as if hell had burst through the sidewalks and kept growing.
Batman and Batman Returns (1989-1992, Dir. Tim Burton)
In two films, that of Tim Burton Gotham was allowed to be dirty. From the beginning of the 89 Batman, we overlook a midnight city with tall vaulted buildings. Smog and fumes pour out of the air vents. Chemical plants are conveniently placed nearby so bad guys can drop into vats. Aesthetically, the Gothamites dress as they resided in the 1940s, with fedoras and long trench coats straight out of a black, while the gangsters sport brash pinstripe suits.
BatmanThe establishment photo of us tells it’s not just New York or Chicago, but “GOTHAM CITY“. Burton’s Gotham immediately revels in its many alleys in which the innocent get lost, and its hidden villains lurking like spiders waiting patiently in their webs. Over the (arguably too frequent) iterations of Batman onscreen, the alleys have become something of a parody now, where someone is doomed to be murdered, raising the question of why anyone in Gotham would even risk doing so. But back then, they were almost part of the architecture, consumed under the tall, suffocating DNA of skyscrapers.
Set designer Anton Furst, along with concept artist Nigel Phelps, created this Gotham at Pinewood Studios, spending $2 million (in 1989) on their booth in New York, and the result is a handful of different designs. Physically, Gotham is made of steel and concrete, while featuring various different familiar designs like an obnoxious mashup (the church steeple in Batman, for example, looks a lot like La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, by Antonio Gaudí). Critically acclaimed for their efforts, Furst and Peter Young (set designer) would win the 1990 Oscar for Best Production Design.
Since Burton had two movies to work on, he could expand that groundwork further, plumb the depths, lean into his weird roots, and add a pretty literal extra level by revealing Gotham’s (and Penguin’s) lair in Return of Batman. Set during Christmas time in the city, the film makes Gotham look physically cold and uncomfortable with its position at this time of year, its buildings even more incredibly tall than before. When Batman, Catwoman, and Penguin overlook the citizens below, they gape like grotesque gargoyles rightfully overlooking the normal life they’ve been denied.
Batman Forever and Batman & Robin (1995-1997, Dir. Joel Schumacher)
Much maligned as they are, Joel Schumacher’s versions of Gotham present something completely different from anything seen elsewhere. Comical in every sense of the word, this city is gargantuan and noisy. Reflecting the director himself, this set is grand, elaborate, authoritative and eerie. The towers are neon-lit in garish reds and greens; muscular statues of Adonis physically hold surrounding buildings aloft, overwhelming them. These two representations of Gotham City are 1990s consumers meeting Greek sensibilities, all billboard ads mixed with six-packs and togas. Schumacher’s Gotham is a city that feels like it did a line of cocaine, with a Viagra chaser.
These towns are the most interactive, as if they were made out of Legos for a bored child to come in and tear themselves apart (which may have inspired batman lego movie). Take one of the chase sequences from these movies and you’ll see just how much of the city’s architecture is really involved. In batman and robin, the Batmobile closes in on Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and his cronies’ getaway vehicles. Thinking quickly, Freeze cuts a shortcut through the head of one of these statues and scales it from shoulder to hand. — successfully leap the chasm through the middle finger of the statue.
Long before Zack Snyder’s muscular allegories about Jesus, batman forever and batman and robin‘s Gotham came up with a landscape that tells its citizens that gods live among us — and you have no choice in the matter.
The Dark Knight Trilogy (2005-2012, Dir. Christopher Nolan)
by Christophe Nolan Batman proposed a billionaire in an (almost) realized world. Nolan’s team asks if crime-ridden Gotham was a real city, which one would it be? Then responds aloud, “Hey! What about Chicago?”
As the only director with a Bat trilogy to his name, Nolan could show a Gotham that evolves, transforms, and then repeats itself. By The black Knight, Nolan would use IMAX cameras, the first of their kind, to display his vision of the city. As a result, Gotham became an expansive landscape that was there to be blown up.
Like our eyes adjusting to a new light, or a grainy version of The Wizard of Oz, The black Knight The trilogy was a take on a character and genre that we had never seen before. Scenes of quieter moments between men and ethical ideas of right and wrong were juxtaposed with intense action segments that filled the screen. With no black bars to stifle our vision of this metropolis, it was a place ripe for being blown up and torn apart by any sort of psychopath crazy enough to take it on.
Christian Bale’s Bruce Wayne is also the ongoing series’ best example of really highlighting the class differences in the city. Bringing his own sensibility to the table again, London-born Nolan presents a class system at war with itself. Outside the super-elite trappings of Bruce Wayne’s mansion (a place that can be burned down and then rebuilt with inherited money, and shot in the very real Wollaton Hall in Nottingham) is a city with structures and all-American configurations: simple, obtuse, and numbered skyscrapers towering above bums crouching over trash cans and criminals preying on women in train stations.
Interestingly, as the weakest addition to the trilogy, The dark knight rises has the most room to show Gotham at its most desperate. Amid drastic climate change, entire football stadiums are reduced to rubble and bridges are blown away. Citizens are reduced to hovels and frozen to death under the rule of a dictator and his lackeys. As the slimy Phillip Stryver (Burn Gorman) admitted, Gotham features a floating wasteland and a moment of walking on water (an escape, well, from this horrible place) that could and will crack at any moment.
The Batman (2022, Dir. Matt Reeves)
Echoing his tone and quasi-thriller approach, Matt Reeve’s Gotham is vile. It looks like weather reports from Se7fr and the blade runnerit’s before. With obnoxious billboards and in your face under skyscrapers with Victorian trim, it’s old meets new.
In such a brilliantly simple aesthetic choice, Gotham looks cold and uninviting, with almost constant rain. The Dark Doors have been specifically observed for far too long, tricking us into believing that something (or someone) is on the other side. Gotham is shot so cold and wet that if it doesn’t rain in the middle of the night, the sun is about to set so the obligatory darkness can then resume.
Subway trains roll with gangs of thugs dressed in cheap make-up who welcome young and impressionable ne’er-do-wells. Seems like the people who live in this town were born here, but never left because their spirits had already been broken. Incel-turned-terrorist Riddler lives in a one-bed squat surrounded by obsessive newspaper clippings. In stark contrast to this, Gotham Manor is never properly revealed outside of the much larger Batcave below.
In a kind of full circle back to Burton, Reeve’s Gotham City again feels naturally grotesque: real and rambling, but with comic book trappings. Unlike Nolan’s city (which feels like a place his Batman is constantly adapting to and reacting to), this Gotham feels like it’s The Batman‘s home, and will shape its structure accordingly.
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