Max Shreck (Batman Returns)



Maximillian "Max" Shreck is a fictional character created for the 1992 film Batman Returns, portrayed by Christopher Walken. He was likely named after the famed actor Max Schreck. [Spoiler warningSpoiler warning]: Plot and/or ending details follow.Shreck was a corrupt businessman who owned a large department store in Gotham City. Although the department store was his claim to fame, his legacy to his son Chip was a proposed new power plant for Gotham. Secretly, the power plant was actually a nefarious construction that would suck power from other resources, hoarding it and making the Shrecks the most powerful family in the city. In opposition to the "power plant" was the Mayor and another wealthy Gothamite, industrialist Bruce Wayne. Shreck was abducted by the Penguin and his Red Triangle Circus Gang. Living in the sewers his entire life, the Penguin had been collecting dirt on Shreck for several years; among other things, he knew Shreck had murdered his business partner. The Penguin blackmailed Shreck into help him integrate into the world above. Privately, the Penguin wanted an excuse to access Gotham's Hall of Records to get the names of every first born son in the city and kill them (in a sick scheme that the Penguin saw as revenge for his own parents throwing him in the sewer as a child). Shreck had private ambitions for the Penguin as well. When returning to his office after being captured, he found his secretary Selina Kyle rummaging through his files. Kyle had inadvertently discovered the true nature of the power plant scheme, forcing Shreck to push her from the window to the concrete below. Amazingly, Kyle didn't die. "Reawakened" by the bites of alley cats, Kyle donned a vinyl cat costume, dubbing herself Catwoman. Shreck, the Penguin, and the Red Triangle Circus Gang staged an event at a speech by the Mayor where a Circus Gang member nabbed the Mayor's baby right from his wife's hands. The Circus Gang member escaped into the sewer, where the Penguin "attacked" him, retrieved the baby, and came to the surface with the child in his arms. This made the Penguin a sympathetic figure to the public, and under the guise of finding his birth parents, the Penguin was granted exclusive access to the Hall of Records. Bruce Wayne, however, was suspicious of his true motives. Shreck used the Penguin's newfound popularity to get him to run for Mayor in a recount election. Shreck hoped to remove the only obstacle in his path for the power plant by putting the Penguin in office. Meanwhile, Catwoman was making waves in Gotham as the feminist alternative to Batman, sticking up for all the meek, helpless women in the city (as she once saw herself). Her main target was, of course, Shreck, and in an act of terrorism, blew up an entire floor of his department store. Shreck was too busy with the Penguin's campaign to become distracted with the Catwoman, but his political aspirations were trashed by the Penguin's fixation with killing Batman. Hijacking the Batmobile one evening, the Penguin took Batman for a wild ride through the streets of Gotham, cursing him and the entire city out on the Batmobile's television monitor as he tried to kill him. Batman escaped the death trap, but made off with the recording of the Penguin's anti-Gotham tirade. At a rally the next day, Bruce Wayne and his butler, Alfred Pennyworth, piped in the audio from the previous night. The crowd believed the Penguin to be saying those things in real-time, and started pelting him with rotten tomatoes. Shreck quietly escaped and abandoned his Penguin scheme. The Penguin's own scheme, however, was just beginning. As the Circus Gang began abducting the first-born children of Gotham, Shreck held a holiday costume ball in his department store. Among the guests were Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle (ironically, or actually metaphorically, as their faces are the masks covering the secret of Batman and Catowman, both weren't wearing costumes). Kyle had shown up to kill Max, and as Bruce tried to talk her out of it, they both figured out their dual identities. Suddenly, the Penguin crashed the party, coming to personally escort first-born son Chip Shreck with him to the sewers. His father intervened, begging the Penguin to take him instead (in a rare display of humanity). The Penguin, still angry over being used in Shreck's plan, accepted and lowered his captive down on a giant yellow duck. Batman took off to rescue the children, while Catwoman prepared to go into the sewer and prepare for a final confrontation with Shreck. After the Penguin's plan of child abduction failed (as well as a backup plan involving penguins shooting missiles into Gotham), Batman and Penguin fought in the Arctic World wing of the Gotham Zoo (which was directly above the Penguin's sewer lair). Penguin fell through an opening to his death in the freezing water below, while a caged Shreck managed to escape. He was stopped by Catwoman (as well as Batman). The three had a showdown. Batman begged Selina to come with him, and even tore off his mask as an offering of peace. Shreck shot Selina point blank three times, but nothing would stop her goal of killing him (after being revived by the alley cats, it would appear that Selina had also gained '9 lives', she is seen surviving several otherwise fatal accidents throughout the film, such a falling from a skyscraper into a truck full of kitty litter). Sticking a taser in her mouth and leaning Max against a power generator, Selina delivered the kiss of death ("How about a kiss, Anti-Claus?"). The electricity caused an explosion of the generator, frying Max to nothing but a burned, skeletal corpse. Selina, however, was nowhere to be found. Max Shreck has never appeared in any other Batman medium besides the comic book adaptation of Batman Returns. Even if he did, his role in the origin of the Penguin and Catwoman couldn't co-exist with established continuity. Shreck was also considered to appear in the Batman Returns-inspired, but as he had suffered a gruesome fate, the idea was scrapped and a new character, Roland Daggett, was created. Reportedly, the character of Max Shreck was originally written to be Harvey Dent. The explosion at the end of the movie was only supposed to scar Dent, which would lead to his becoming the villain Two-Face in the third movie. (Most of Shreck's political aspirations would make more sense coming from Gotham City's District Attorney than a department store mogul.)