The truism that all press is good press was tested early, and relentlessly, during the production of Tim Burton’s Batman. In an era before the internet, or even superhero domination of the box office, getting your quirky action movie hyped on the front page and above the fold of The Wall Street Journal should seem like a gift. But with a headline reading “Batman Fans Fear The Joke’s on Them in Hollywood Epic,” no producer was exactly laughing eight months before the launch of the then-third most expensive movie ever made.

Such was the painful birth of Batman into the world. While hardly the original big budgeted superhero movie, it would go on to become one of the most influential. As the first of its kind to forego an origin story at its inception, and to expressly target an adult audience over the demands of strictly being seen as a “family picture,” Batman deserves as much credit as Richard Donner’s Superman: The Movie for providing a foundational basis to its genre. Between these diametrically opposed poles, a new type of movie that would come to define 21st century cinema would emerge. Yet there will never be another superhero movie quite like Batman, a fidgety and even transgressive blockbuster that still stands apart (and above most) of its descendants.

Which brings us back to why those fans’ vitriol became front page news in The Journal: Michael Keaton cast as Batman. Folks getting upset at the casting of beloved characters is as old as the movies—and will continue to be—but this intentional departure from square jawed, forthright heroism heralded something new and different, including from the most beloved superhero movies that followed. Burton and his fellow filmmakers weren’t trying to please the fans with fidelity; they were ignoring them in order to craft an eccentric vision so compelling that, like a Bat-signal in the sky, it changed the way folks thought of Batman, his world, and even their own fandom ever after its image was first projected.

Out of the Funny Pages

Three decades after it became the then highest-grossing movie ever, it’s easy to forget what the world was like before Keaton hissed, “I’m Batman.” In the 1980s, Batman comics were in the midst of of a gritty aesthetic shift that would redefine the character. But when Sam Hamm began writing his first draft of Batman, Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns had only published two issues for the most enthusiastic of adult comic book readers. For everyone else, the character’s popular image remained the campy crime fighter from Adam West’s Batman 1966 TV series.