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In Tim Burton's Batman Returns, Max Shreck throws Selena out a high story window where she plunges to the ground. It's not quite clear to me if she dies upon landing or just knocking at death's door.
Regardless, cats come out of nowhere and start licking her and nipping at her fingers:
Next thing you know, she's more assertive, confident and has quite the spring in her step (the back-flips and whatnot).
What role did the cats play making Catwoman?
The way I've always read that scene is that she fell, but did not die. She did however suffer severe trauma. The larger part of that trauma was to her psyche. An oft used story telling instrument in movies is the personality switching trauma. This happened to Selena when she fell, it changed her into a more assertive character. Having the cats around her when she woke up as the new Selena "impressed" on her mind a more feline personality. Not only is she more aggressive and independent, she also moves and acts more like a cat. You could say that the trauma to her head made her more than a little bit 'insane'.
What of her "other" lives when she fights Batman, Penguin and Max Schreck later in the movie? - in each case there is at least a little seed of doubt as to whether the result would necessarily be fatal ("Hee hee hee! Saved by kitty litter!")
I have not watched Batman Returns but if it is like Catwoman; Patience (the Catwoman incarnation of this movie) died and cats make her alive again.
It is told by the old woman (who is slightly implied to be Selena Kyle) that cats have magical powers and revived her from the dead and gave her abilities.
Of course cats have magic!
It's funny, I saw Catwoman before this one and thought the 'licked back to life by magic cats' thing was the stupidest thing in a hilariously bad movie. Turns out that was the one thing she had in common with the actual Catwoman from the Batman movies? Mind: blown! XD
However, someone (I can't find it now) pointed out that Selina hit several things on the way down and so never fell constantly for an unsurvivable distance, and that she wasn't immediately skilled, struggling a lot at first. Maybe she wasn't 100% dead and brought back to life with superpowers by magical cats after all, but just had a personality shift via head injury like Phineas Gage.
She doesn't die in Batman Returns. Nothing in the film expresses her death, which would have been a plot hole in and of itself seeing as there are no other cat magic resurrections happening anywhere else in the entire history of DC characters. Nothing about the entire movie is Paranormal in any sort of way. Hokey and unrealistic, yes, but not paranormal.
The cats play the same role for her as batman's bats did. Just the thing they needed at the time they decided to become vigilantes. An icon to fear and or respect.
