Batman (1989)

    Batman, starring Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson, and Kim Basinger, directed by Tim Burton, was released in 1989. It focuses on  the stories of Bruce Wayne, just starting out as the vigilante known as Batman, Jack Napier, who becomes the villain known as the Joker during the course of the film, and photographer Vicki Vale, who gets caught in the crossfire. Batman’s color pallet is largely dark and gloomy, with an occasional pop of color, whether in Batman’s costume, or the Joker’s various outfits. There’s one color in particular I would like to focus on. In Batman, the color red appears to be linked with death.
    I can’t say the color red is exclusive to death, because the opening of the film features a lot of red, though the family in danger survives. However, from the moment we meet Jack Napier, he is associated with the color red. It starts small, at first. His suit is a navy blue with creme and gray accents, yet his pocket square is red. To be more specific, it’s red with a slight purple undertone. Alicia, also introduced in this scene, has red lipstick on and her nails are done to match. She is announced dead later in the film. 
    Then, during Jack’s meeting with Grissom right before the Axis Chemicals showdown, Jack is dressed from head to toe in a purple suit with orange stripes. And yet, despite how it clashes horribly with his suit, he’s wearing a red tie. Following that, the final time we see Jack Napier is when he is with the surgeon after falling into the vat of acid. This is, ironically, one of the few scenes where Jack is not visibly wearing anything red, though the color is still present in a number of other ways. The window in the background flashes with a red light, there are bloodstained towels and gloves strewn about, and when we are given a closer look at the tools the surgeon used, we see that they are still coated in blood. This is the death of Jack Napier and the birth of the Joker.
    From then on, we hardly ever see the Joker without some trace of red. For starters, his lips are almost always a bright red, and death follows him wherever he goes. The victims might not be wearing red, but he is, if only in his smile. Then there’s the meeting with the mob, where the Joker is wearing makeup to appear normal. Now, he isn’t the source of the red. The red is found around the neck of the man he murders a few moments later. And after he pulls his hand back to reveal the deadly joy buzzer, we see the previously hidden red in the Joker’s palm.
    But what about scenes like when Jack Napier threatens Eckhardt, or when the Joker meets Vicki Vale at the museum? Jack is dressed completely in black when he threatens Eckhardt, with no red in sight. And when the Joker meets Vicki at the museum, he’s wearing makeup and she’s dressed in teal. The only red on either of them is the gas mask from the Joker that Vicki used briefly and then put down. These scenes confused me, until I realized that both Eckhardt and Vicki survive those encounters.
    There’s one more case of red being linked to death in the film, and it’s the roses Bruce leaves for his parents. The roses are one of the brightest and most saturated reds in the entire film, and they stand out from their surroundings like the Joker does against the city of Gotham. The murder of the Waynes doesn’t have very much in the way of red itself, but it is present. The Lettering at the top of the program Bruce’s mom is carrying, as well as her lipstick, and though it isn’t the same bold red as the others, the buildings around them are made of red brick.
    Like I said earlier, the red is not exclusive to death. There are two scenes I can think of off the top of my head where it is just a color and not a symbol. More often than not though, it does seem to have an interesting link to the fate of Jack and his eventual victims.