>>98677836>The tone in Returns is established in literally the opening scene. It never strays away from that.Because scenes where the Penguin talks about fucking anything that moves and blowing up baby penises and vaginas (yes, that's a real line, go back and watch it) mesh really well with penguins with rockets strapped to their backs, Batman making record scratch rap noises with a CD, and a poodle stealing a batarang on top of the other weird campy slapstick they've got going on.
To be fair, it only gets really ridiculous after the mayor subplot is introduced, but even before that it's a far cry from '89 which stayed pretty consistent.
>People parrot this criticism all the time for Returns and it doesn't make a lick of senseWhat's not to understand? They're badly written characters. Walken's plan makes no fucking sense, Selina has no reason to want to kill Batman or work with the Penguin, and the Penguin himself is just weird and unpleasant for the sake of being weird and unpleasant; there's no real depth to his character aside from being sex crazed and vengeful, and his plan to murder all the kids in Gotham comes pretty left field unless you run with the assumption that he never wanted to find his parents and just wanted census info on all the kids in Gotham, but that still feels like a stretch.
I don't blame the actors at all, especially DeVito who's the real MVP here, but they're just not compelling and their goals feel convoluted.
>Where did you get the idea that Returns was trying to be adult just because it was darker?Gee, it must have been from all the pussy and fucking jokes, who knows?
Again, '89 had a perfect tone. It was mature enough to be for adults while being wild and colorful enough for kids to enjoy it. It has faults but they're nowhere near as bad as Returns.
