George Harrison Contrasted The Beatles’ ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ With Tim Burton’s ‘Batman’
The Beatles‘ A Hard Day’s Night and Tim Burton’s Batman are both classic films. George Harrison contrasted A Hard Day’s Night with Batman. In addition, John Lennon said one of The Beatles’ movies was a precursor to the 1960s Batman television series starring Adam West.
Why George Harrison felt The Beatles’ ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ was ‘magic’
The book George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters includes an interview from 1989. In it, George discussed A Hard Day’s Night. “A Hard Day’s Night was just, I suppose in retrospect, it was just magic because of the timing — and because we were so rough, and at the same time, [director] Dick Lester being the person to do it,” he said.
George contrasted the movie with Tim Burton’s Batman. “So it was just one of them little packages that wasn’t really like these days when they say ‘How are we going to package Batman, we’ll get Jack [Nicholson]’ — it wasn’t really like that kind of thing,” he added. “Like the [Traveling] Wilburys, it just more or less was there, and it just happened itself, and it just happened to be a good combination.”
What John Lennon thought about the ‘Batman’ series starring Adam West
According to the book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, George wasn’t the only Beatle to comment on the Batman franchise. In 1980, John mentioned the 1960s Batman show and the movie Help! “Well, it was 1965,” John said. “The movie [Help!] was out of our control. With Hard Day’s Night, we pretty much had a lot of input, and it was semi-realistic.”
John praised Help! “But with Help!, Dick didn’t tell us what it was about, though I realize, looking back, how advanced it was,” he said. “It was a precursor for the Batman ‘Pow! Wow!’ on TV — that kind of stuff.”
How the soundtracks for The Beatles ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ and Tim Burton’s ‘Batman’ performed in the United States
A Hard Day’s Night and Burton’s Batman both produced massive soundtracks. The soundtrack for A Hard Day’s Night reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for 14 weeks, remaining on the chart for 56 weeks in total. Two singles from the album topped the Billboard Hot 100: “Can’t Buy Me Love” and “A Hard Day’s Night.”
The soundtrack for Batman was popular as well. For six of its 36 weeks on the Billboard 200, the album was No. 1. One of the singles from the album reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100: Prince’s “Batdance.”
A Hard Day’s Night and Batman are both iconic movies — even if George thought Batman was “packaged.”
