Slightly darker. Slightly better. It still has Tim Burton’s expected absurdity. The development of Penguin and Catwoman take the focus. Batman is given even less time than in the 1989 movie to explore his inner conflict and how he does what he does. The fight scenes are ok, but not all that thrilling. Batman does have some new gadgets. The glider is awesome. The programmable bat-arang that is caught by a poodle, not so much. Media is represented by a few TV reporters at press conferences, so the newspaper reporters are pretty much scrapped. The cops are scrapped too. The mayor (Murphy) is as useless as the DA was in the previous picture. Then we have power hungry billionaire Max Shreck (Walken) in this one using the mayor, mistreating his secretary (Pfeiffer) who happens to become Catwoman, and manipulating the media sensation of Penguin (DeVito). Pfeiffer is sexy, complex, and dangerous with her whip or claws. Penguin is not the type of sophisticated gentleman of business like most comics portray. Sure he has various umbrellas at his disposal and has an affinity for birds, but the back story created here is much more nightmarish. He is deformed, has been living in the sewers, and oddly, since it suggests the Joker’s minions more, has been working with a gang of sideshow clowns and a pack of not so ferocious penguins. Danny DeVito himself though and the way he plays this villain who doesn’t have much humanity left is so much scarier than Nicholson as the Joker in the other Batman film.