The Classic Superhero Movie That (Accidentally) Influenced Nosferatu

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This post contains spoilers for "Nosferatu."

What better way to celebrate the festive season of 2024 than with a supernatural horror nightmare. With "Nosferatu," director Robert Eggers resurrected a vampire classic in the form of a scary fever dream just in time for Christmas of last year, reimagining the original 1922 film as a stylish horror with a sort of perverse fairy tale at its center. In Eggers' film, the titular vamp, played by Bill Skarsgård, lusts after Lily-Rose Depp's Ellen Hutter, eventually traveling from his decaying castle in the mountains of Transylvania to her hometown of Wisburg, Germany. There, he feeds on her blood in a pseudo-sexual embrace that ultimately results in his death when the sunlight interrupts the pair's perverse tryst.

If upsetting vampire love affairs aren't your thing, Eggers made sure to do what he does best by constructing a world that absorbs you so fully, you genuinely forget you're watching a fictional tale play out. The director accomplished that feat most effectively when he realized what had been a life-long dream in the form of his visceral Viking epic "The Northman." But that same immersiveness is at the heart of "Nosferatu," with production designer Craig Lathrop erecting a seriously impressive series of 60 sets across several soundstages at Barrandov Studios in Prague. While several scenes were shot on location, the film remains a marvel for the way in which Lathrop and Eggers crafted the town of Wisburg from scratch, with the production designer telling Condé Nast that his version of the locale was envisioned as "a collage of places."

Even if you weren't all that taken in by the story, then, you have to marvel at Eggers' film for its all-enveloping atmosphere, transporting tone, and striking production design. What might come as a surprise, however, is how all of those things were influenced by a classic superhero movie without Eggers even realizing it.

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In an interview with Happy Sad Confused, Robert Eggers was asked which filmmakers and films he was "obsessed with" as a 14-year-old. Without missing a beat, the director names Tim Burton before revealing that he had recently re-watched 1992's "Batman Returns" and was surprised to learn how similar the film was to "Nosferatu." After noting how the "snowy Gothic atmosphere" of Burton's superhero blockbuster was "shockingly similar" to much of his vampire horror film, Eggers claims that this influence was something he "never really considered at all" when making the movie.

This revelation becomes more striking the more you think about it, as the similarities between "Returns" and "Nosferatu" are far more numerous than you might realize at first. Burton truly let his freak flag fly with "Batman Returns," crafting his own snow-laden Christmastime nightmare fairytale which sees Danny DeVito's Penguin descending upon Gotham much like Nosferatu upon Wisburg. Production designer Bo Welch's Gotham is, to use Craig Lathrop's phrasing, a "collage of places," matching Art Deco design with Fascist architecture and a marked expressionist style that makes "Batman Returns" easily the most immersive Batman film ever made. What's more, much like Wisburg in "Nosferatu," the Gotham of "Returns" was created entirely on soundstages at Warner Bros. studios in Burbank.

If that's not enough to convince you of Burton's influence on Eggers, this is just the start of the parallels, which in total reveal a clear and significant lineage from the original 1922 "Nosferatu" all the way through "Batman Returns" to Eggers' modern film.

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In his Happy Sad Confused interview, Eggers points to specific visual similarities between "Nosferatu" and "Batman Returns," highlighting how Tim Burton's version of Wayne Manor looks very similar to his version of Grünewald Manor, the dilapidated home in Wisburg purchased by Count Orlok. Not only are the exteriors similar, the first time we see Keaton's Bruce Wayne in "Returns," he's shown sitting alone in a darkened room, very much recalling the figure of Count Orlok languishing in his sepulchral, dilapidated castle, waiting for the time of his ascendence to arrive. Keaton's Wayne also stands up to meet the light of the Bat Signal shining through a window in a moment that is vaguely reminiscent of the way in which Ellen Hutter herself is drawn to her window by Nosferatu's shadow.

The parallels just go on from there. The German Expressionist style that so heavily influenced Tim Burton was also an integral part of the film which defined vampire movies: the original 1922 "Nosferatu." What's more, Burton himself made no secret of being fan of that very film, to the extent that he named one of the villains of "Returns" after the actor that portrayed the titular monster in that original movie. Christopher Walken's Max Shreck is a direct reference to the German actor of the same name, who first played Nosferatu.

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In a more general sense, "Batman Returns" and "Nosferatu" share a devotion to atmosphere and tone that makes them intrinsically linked as part of a lineage that champions such immersive filmmaking. For me, the most striking thing about "Returns" was that sense of being entirely enveloped by the world of the movie. As a kid, I always thought I loved the film because it was a Batman movie — and I did. But as I've grown up, I've realized that Burton was surreptitiously showing me and an entire generation of kids what it looks like to fully realize an artistic vision, and teaching us something about our own sense of aesthetics in the process. Much like Robert Eggers, I became lost in the world created by Burton and Bo Welch, to the extent that it helped shape my understanding of aesthetics and my artistic sensibilities — something clearly true of Eggers, who apparently made a movie indebted to "Returns" without even realizing it.

This all speaks to the fact that "Returns" was never really a superhero movie. Indeed, Burton has taken some flack over the years for making a "Tim Burton film" and not a "Batman" film — one which caused no shortage of controversy for its dark tone when it debuted. But that's also what makes it such a miracle of a movie. Burton's "Batman" made Warner Bros. (and Joker star Jack Nicholson) so much money that he was essentially given free rein to create whatever twisted nightmare vision he wanted for the sequel. That hasn't really happened in superhero movies since, especially in the age of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which Marvel Studios is currently in the process of trying to fix before it's too late. But "Nosferatu" is arguably a spiritual sequel to "Returns" in the sense it uses its horror foundation to similarly realize an artistic vision entirely unimpeded.

Now, the question becomes will Robert Eggers ever get to make a Batman film, because that's one film which seems as though it could single-handedly save comic book movies. For fans of Batman who have yet to see the character rendered as a cryptid — something at which Eggers would no doubt excel — such a movie seems like a no-brainer. With James Gunn gearing up for the launch of his new DC universe, he might do well to at least consider the idea...