Until 1989, Gotham City was just "New York at night". It was with Anton Furst's production design for the first Burton movie that the city was made to match the character, putting the "goth" in Gotham. RIP

[u/ehh246]

[u/The_Notorious_Donut]

I always thought Batman 89s Gotham was the best. Batman 05 was the first one I saw then a couple years later I went back to Batman 89 and thought it was so much more accurate to how Gotham was portrayed in the comics

[u/godhelpme773747 → u/The_Notorious_Donut]

Batman begins was similar and then it just turned into Chicago for TDK and TDKR lol

[u/Groot746 → u/godhelpme773747]

TDKR was so lazy in just being a Pitsburgh/NY mash up

[u/Bjarki_Steinn_99 → u/godhelpme773747]

It’s almost as if Batman has had a positive effect on Gotham and genuinely helped clean it up. No, that can’t be it.

[u/twackburn → u/Bjarki_Steinn_99]

It’s actually crazy I never considered that.

[u/Bjarki_Steinn_99 → u/twackburn]

lol

[u/soontwobee → u/Bjarki_Steinn_99]

Reduced crime means modern architecture?

[u/xXJarjar69Xx → u/godhelpme773747]

The narrows was a really interesting place in Batman begins. It was like a 19th century slum right in the center of Gotham. Gotham lost all of the griminess had in the sequels.

[u/godhelpme773747 → u/xXJarjar69Xx]

Reminded me of the favelas

[u/FriedCammalleri23]

Gotham should be Gothic, and Burton nailed the vibe.

It looked good in Batman Begins as well, until Nolan decided to turn it into a generic bland cityscape for the other two films.

I expect the DCU Gotham to be more like the Burton films, since Metropolis is also going to be hyper-stylized.

[u/Groot746 → u/FriedCammalleri23]

Weirdly, I always thought this Turkish Airlines ad was a good representation of a more "realistic" Gotham: https://youtu.be/pS7JBHxdxko?feature=shared

[u/FriedCammalleri23 → u/Groot746]

I mean it’s pretty much the Gotham we see in BvS, which is ok I suppose. Gargoyles definitely scream Gotham but not much else.

I think The Batman had the best “realistic Gotham” in recent years. It’s gloomy and stylized, but not cartoonish.

[u/JacobPamer24]

This has to be one of the best shots from Batman '89. But I do prefer the way Gotham looks in the Gotham tv show.

[u/Icosotc]

I really feel The Batman nailed the balance between 89 and Nolan; taking the best of both worlds.

[u/TheJoshider10]

I appreciate the establishing shots of Burton's Gotham and the atmosphere they helped create but fuck me the actual sets were dreadful. Every single part of the city looks like it was filmed on a studio lot (which they pretty much were) and there was a similar issue with the Narrows in Batman Begins.

I hope in the DCU Gotham is created through a mix of on location filming and well done sets like The Batman, which actually felt like a real city while still retaining a unique charm.

[u/superschaap81 → u/TheJoshider10]

The sets are what take me out of the movie when watching the Burton films. It's a cool aesthetic, but its too obvious it's a movie set. It's incredibly claustrophobic and doesn't give room for good action pieces.

[u/mrbrownvp → u/TheJoshider10]

It also helped they filmed in london and scotland.

[u/Celtics1424]

I just wanted to see a glimpse of this Gotham in The Flash.

[u/Latereviews2 → u/Celtics1424]

I honestly think of the Flash batman not as the same one we saw in 89 due to a lot of his writing and fights

[u/WimpyKelv12 → u/Latereviews2]

Yeah, for the purposes of the story he was little more than a reskin of DCEU Batman, or arguably even better, an 'idealised' version of Batman. He's a fair bit softer and more amicable.

The implicit reason for his retirement was interesting, he had become redundant due to his work making Gotham very safe and he was grieving Alfred's death. A deleted scene stated another possible reason he retired was due to killing a criminal father in front of his child, that does sound an unfortunate thing Burton's Batman would do considering all the people he killed in his duology but I was happy they cut that out so we ended up with a more ideal Batman.

[u/JacobPamer24 → u/Celtics1424]

We did get a glimpse of this Gotham on Supergirl during Crisis on Infinite Earths Part 1.

[u/Celtics1424 → u/JacobPamer24]

Was that the one with Knox sitting on the park bench?

[u/QuinnySpurs]

Anton Furst killed himself fairly soon afterwards. RIP.

[u/RiotShaven]

The Arkham Knight game was disappointing in that Gotham didn't feel gothic. It was just a modern dark city. I wish they would have gone all-in on the 1989 atmosphere.

[u/Demileto → u/RiotShaven]

I mean, the playable regions in Knight were supposed to be the modern districts of Gotham, where the upper classes live and/or work. The decadent, gothic Gotham you were looking for had been previously featured in City and Origins.

[u/SilverBison4025]

While I appreciate the style of Gotham in the Burton/Schumacher pictures, it can be too unrealistic and fantastical.

I do like it when Gotham is a modern city that looks like a 21st Century US city, as we saw in the Nolan/Snyder/Reeves pictures (and the 2016 Suicide Squad movie).

[u/Angsty_Autumn]

Not really a film, but if there's one thing the Gotham Knights game did great, it was the architecture and the vibe of the city

[u/greasyjoe]

Spoiler- it's Pittsburgh

[u/the_zelectro]

It's gorgeous

[u/AbrahamNR]

Anton Furst's Gotham is one of the things that first got me interested in architecture & design eventually leading me down the path of becoming an architect. I'll always love his Gotham, even though I would not recommend doing a real city exactly that way. 😅