Go Behind The Scenes Of ‘Batman’ ’89 With ‘The Making Of A Hero’ [Video]

ComicsAlliance's official position on Tim Burton's 1989 Batman movie may be a little more harsh than other people's, but even I can't deny its importance in bringing superheroes to life in movies. To this day, it remains a pretty fascinating film, and one of the biggest touchstones that comic books have to mass media, even when we're seeing movies like The Dark Knight and Avengers make a billion dollars at the box office.

So if you're holed up avoiding the snow -- or just looking for a way to kill time on your lunch break -- you could do a lot worse than to take 25 minutes and check out The Making of a Hero. Originally produced in the UK during the filming of Batman '89, it's a behind-the-scenes look at how the movie was made, featuring crew members like Tim Burton himself and designer Anton Furst, along with Michael Keaton, Kim Basinger and Robert Wuhl. Give it a watch below, but be warned: That jerk Bob Kane shows up to ruin everything.

If you can get past the inevitable stomach-churning that you're going to feel when Arli$$ introduces Bob Kane, there's a lot of interesting stuff to be found here. And really, even that part is pretty interesting, if only as a handy checklist of Kane's various lies. To start with, Wuhl repeats the lie about Kane (and Kane alone, naturally) created Batman when he was a "teenager." This, of course, is something Kane told his editors at DC so that he could renegotiate the contract, keeping co-creator Bill Finger's name off the character for the rest of time while also helping to screw Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster out of their chances of renegotiating their deal with Superman.

Also, he talks about being inspired by Da Vinci, and probably continued with a lot of other stuff that he put into his entirely fictional (and ghostwritten) autobiography. You know, the one where he falsified some sketches of Batman to convince people he'd (solely) created the character in 1935, instead of rushing to capitalize on the wave of superheroes that appeared after Superman?

Sorry, everybody. I just really hate Bob Kane.

[Editor's Note: Bob Kane sucks]

Beyond that, though, there is a lot of interesting stuff. I'm particularly fond of Tim Burton saying that he likes Batman primarily because the stories "take place at night," which is the Tim Burton-est reason anyone has ever had for liking anything. It's fun to see Michael Keaton, too, if only as a reminder that he was basically the same guy in real life that he was playing as Bruce Wayne. Furst is interesting to see, especially since his designs were so influential on the comics, to the point where there was an entire story based around reshaping Gotham City to look like what he'd created with the movie. The best part, though, is likely the bit where a cheerful guy who actually sounds like Michael Caine's Alfred explains how the Batmobile works. That's pretty awesome, even if it was the Batmobile that, you know, killed a bunch of dudes with guns and bombs in that movie.

Also fun: The scene where someone who worked on this movie reveals that he's not sure whether it's Kim Bah-singer or Kim Bay-singer.

[Via io9]