While Batman was a huge hit in the summer of 1989—against some stiff competition, including Lethal Weapon 2, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Dead Poets Society, Back to the Future Part II, Ghostbusters II, and The Little Mermaid, among others—Batman Returns was considered a box office disappointment, grossing considerably less. Warner Bros. shook things up, asking Tim Burton to step aside (though he still produced the next film) and assigning Joel Schumacher to take over the directorial reins.
Where Burton was at least partly inspired by the darker Batman comics of the 1970s and 1980s, Schumacher went back to the 1950s comics and the 1960s TV show for inspiration, eschewing the dark knight and embracing the caped crusader.
With Burton’s departure, Michael Keaton stepped down, disliking the lighter tone, replaced by Val Kilmer, who took the role without reading the script. Despite the stated disappointment with Returns, which had two villains, they had two villains in this one, too, re-casting Harvey Dent with Tommy Lee Jones, replacing Billy Dee Williams—who’d been cast in the 1989 film for the express purpose of coming back later as Two-Face—and with Jim Carrey as the Riddler. Chris O’Donnell was brought in as Robin.
Batman Forever did well enough to green-light a fourth film almost immediately, but Kilmer and Schumacher apparently did not get along particularly well, plus the accelerated schedule meant a conflict with Kilmer, who had taken the title role in The Saint. Kilmer was replaced by George Clooney, who teamed up with O’Donnell and Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl to face three villains: Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzeneggar), Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman), and Bane (Robert “Jeep” Swenson). This combo proved less than efficacious and this particular series—which were all part of the same continuity, but with only Michael Gough as Alfred and Pat Hingle as Gordon being in all four of them—ended with 1997’s Batman & Robin.
“Was that over the top? I can never tell…”
Batman Forever
Written by Lee Batchler & Janet Scott Batchler and Akiva Goldsman
Directed by Joel Schumacher
Produced by Tim Burton and Peter MacGregor-Scott
Original release date: June 16, 1995
The Bat-signal shines in the night sky, as Two-Face has hit the Second National Bank on the second anniversary of the first time Batman captured him. Gordon has brought in a shrink, Dr. Chase Meridian, and she flirts inappropriately with Batman in the middle of a crime. Two-Face locks a guard in a vault, and uses him as bait for Batman, who tries to rescue the guard. Two-Face then closes the vault door and pulls it out a hole in the wall, intending to carry it off with a helicopter while filling it with the same acid that scarred half of Harvey Dent’s face, turning him into Two-Face.
Using the guard’s hearing aid to help hear the tumblers, Batman opens the vault door. How he heard anything through his cowl is left as an exercise for the viewer. He is able to return the vault and the guard to the bank and then saves himself, though Two-Face escapes.
Later, Bruce Wayne tours one of his scientific facilities, where he meets Edward Nygma, who has developed something that can project images into people’s brainwaves. Nygma hero-worships Wayne, so he’s crestfallen when Wayne decides his research is too dangerous and refuses to continue to fund it. Nygma is devastated, and he not only continues his work, but when his supervisor discovers him continuing it, Nygma kills him—but not until after he absorbs his mental energy into himself, making him cleverer, supposedly.
Nygma alters the security footage and forges a suicide note so everyone thinks he killed himself. Nygma quits, feigning devastation at the loss of a colleague. He then goes on to form “NygmaTech,” using his brainwave doodads to create convincing holographs that are beamed directly into people’s brains. The Nygma Boxes are a huge hit, and Nygma is also using them to absorb brainwaves the way he did with his erstwhile boss, making himself allegedly smarter. Nygma also leaves riddles for Wayne.
Two-Face continues his reign of terror. At one point, the bat-signal goes off and then Two-Face chases the Batmobile. It’s unclear what happened to prompt the bat-signal in the first place, but Batman gets away from Two-Face easily. Meridian also uses the bat-signal to summon Batman so she can flirt with him some more. Wayne decides to consult Meridian about the riddles he’s received, and he also invites her to a charity circus.
At the circus, Two-Face attacks right after the Grayson family do their trapeze act. Two-Face wants Batman to show himself, and he’s put two hundred sticks of TNT in a wrecking ball. Wayne manages to take out some of the thugs in his civvies. Dick Grayson manages to toss the wrecking ball into the river, but his parents and brother are killed by Two-Face in the meantime.
Grayson is devastated. Wayne offers to take him in, and Grayson agrees long enough to satisfy Gordon, but then he plans to leave—right up until he sees Wayne’s car and motorcycle collection and Alfred’s cooking skills…
Nygma, having taken on the persona of “the Riddler,” discovers Two-Face’s lair and shows him the brain-sucking technology. Two-Face is (naturally) of two minds about whether or not he should kill Riddler, but as usual he lets his coin decide, and it comes up heads, so they team up. (For some reason, the coin is a regular coin with tails scratched up. This makes little sense, as the whole point is that Two-Face is two sides of the same coin, which is why he flips a two-headed coin, one of which is scarred. It symbolizes his duality. That the filmmakers don’t even get the basic symbolism of Two-Face is endemic of the issues these two movies have……)
Grayson wants revenge on Two-Face. Wayne refuses to help him. Grayson discovers the Batcave and takes the Batmobile out for a spin, trying and failing to be Batman before the real McCoy shows up. Grayson wants to be Batman’s partner, but Wayne refuses, going so far as to give up being Batman rather than let Grayson risk his life.
Riddler and Two-Face go on a robbery spree that Batman basically ignores. Nygma’s launch of NygmaTech also goes unchallenged, and it’s such a huge financial success that one wonders why he needs to also rob banks and jewelry stores and such.
Wayne talks to Meridian about some suppressed memories he has of his parents’ death, and also flirts with her, but she’s only interested in Batman. Later, when Batman comes to her apartment, she greets him dressed only in a bedsheet, kisses him, and then realizes that she actually is fond of Wayne. When Batman leaves and turns away, he smiles.
Nygma holds a party for the launch of NygmaTech, and he uses his tech to scan the brain patterns of the guests, including Wayne. They’re interrupted by Two-Face breaking in and robbing the guests. Afterward, Riddler reveals that Wayne’s brain is completely filled with images of bats.
Meridian and Wayne have dinner, and when they kiss, Meridian realizes that Wayne is Batman. This revelation is interrupted by Two-Face and Riddler attacking Wayne Manor, kidnapping Meridian, shooting Wayne (only a grazing shot to his scalp), and trashing the Batcave. Grayson and Alfred nurse him back to health, and Grayson puts on a costume based on his circus outfit, and calls himself “Robin” after a nickname he had in the circus. Batman and Alfred deduce that Riddler is Nygma, and Batman and Robin head to the island NygmaTech bought, in the Bat-plane and the Bat-boat (the only two vehicles left after Riddler trashed the place).
Robin is captured, but Batman manages to break Riddler’s machine, which overloads his brain, and rescue both Robin and Meridian. Two-Face is about to shoot them when Batman reminds him to flip the coin first. Two-Face thanks him for the reminder, but as he flips it, Batman throws several coins in the air, confusing Two-Face, and as he flails, he falls to his doom.
Batman and Robin continue to fight crime, while Meridian wonders if dating a superhero is such a hot idea.
“This is why Superman works alone…”
Batman & Robin
Written by Akiva Goldsman
Directed by Joel Schumacher
Produced by Peter MacGregor-Scott
Original release date: June 20, 1997
Batman and Robin suit up, with the camera taking in loving closeups of the rubber nipples on both men’s suits, as well as their crotches and asses. They’ve been summoned because there’s a new super-villain in Gotham: Mr. Freeze, who is stealing a very large diamond. Batman and Robin try to stop him, but they keep being sidetracked by Freeze’s thugs, who are numerous and all apparently trained in martial arts. Freeze gets away when he freezes Robin and Batman is forced to stay behind and save his partner rather than chase Freeze.
Some research reveals that Mr. Freeze is, in fact, Dr. Victor Fries, whose wife came down with a rare disease. He froze her cryogenically while he searched for a cure, but he fell into a vat of cryonic fluid which means he only can survive in sub-zero temperatures. It also made him binky bonkers crazy. However, he’s still searching for a cure for his wife, and he spends his spare time watching old movies of their wedding and such.
In South America, Dr. Pamela Isley and Dr. Jason Woodrue are doing experiments for Wayne Enterprises. Isley is trying to make plants robust enough to survive on their own without human help, while Woodrue has been stealing Isley’s work in order to create “venom,” which he uses to create Bane, a not-too-bright superman. Woodrue has also been keeping the fact that Wayne shut down the project from Isley. When Bane goes nuts and trashes the place, Isley threatens to expose Woodrue, so Woodrue kills her—or so he thinks. Instead, the toxins and venoms she’s been working with mix with the soil and the plants and turn her into Poison Ivy. She has pheromones that can ensorcel any man to her will and her lips are coated in poison so a kiss kills. She kills Woodrue, gets Bane to do her bidding, er, somehow, and they fly to Gotham City.
During the opening of a new Gotham Observatory—which will use a large telescope and a network of satellites to not only look into space, but also at places all over the globe—Isley confronts Wayne, who rebuffs her. When she points out that Mother Nature will always prevail and nobody will protect them, the crowd laughs at her and says Batman and Robin will protect Gotham always, prompting Isley to want to take them down.
Alfred’s niece Barbara is visiting from Oxbridge, though it is soon revealed that she got kicked out of the university. Her parents were killed in a car crash, and her way of acting out was to go on underground motorcycle races. Grayson follows her to one of those races and joins it, saving her life when one contestant cheats.
Barbara also knows something Grayson doesn’t, though Wayne has figured it out: Alfred is dying. What’s worse, Fries found a cure for what ails Alfred, but he never published his findings before he went nuts.
In order to lure Freeze into the open, Wayne Enterprises hosts an event that has the Wayne diamond collection as its centerpiece, with Batman and Robin as special guests. But Ivy shows up first, and uses her pheromones to seduce both Batman and Robin, which leads to them fighting over her.
However, the love triangle is interrupted by Freeze, who steals the diamond from Ivy. (Freeze is immune to her pheromones.) Batman and Robin give chase, though Batman stops Robin from doing something particularly dangerous. Batman captures Freeze, who is sent to Arkham Asylum. Ivy and Bane break him out, killing several guards. She retrieves his equipment and unplugs Freeze’s wife’s cryochamber, not interested in the competition, though she later tells Freeze that Batman did it.
Robin is still obsessed with Ivy, convinced that Batman is jealous because she loves Robin and not Batman. Meanwhile, Alfred’s condition is deteriorating. He gives Barbara a CD with instructions for his brother Wilfred, but Barbara goes ahead and reads the CD herself, discovering that Wayne and Grayson are really Batman and Robin. Alfred anticipated her doing so, and created a bat-suit for her. She puts it on, and we get loving views of her boobs, crotch, and ass as she does so.
Wayne convinces Grayson to trust him that Ivy is dangerous and only wants to kiss him to kill him. So he goes to her when she summons him, but wears rubber lips to protect himself. Sure enough, she announces that the kiss she just gave him will result in death, making Robin realize that their love is a sham. He and Batman attack Ivy, but her plants imprison both of them. However, Barbara—in costume and calling herself Batgirl—attacks Ivy and takes care of her. Ivy revealed to Robin that Freeze plans to put the entirety of Gotham on ice from the observatory. Batman isn’t thrilled that Barbara has forced herself onto the team, but he gives in, and the three of them change into polar uniforms and try to stop Freeze—while the villain succeeds in freezing all of Gotham, our heroes are able to reverse the process by using the telescope and the satellites to, basically, beam sunlight from the other side of the world onto Gotham.
Robin and Batgirl are able to stop Bane by knocking his hoses out. Batman is able to save the two scientists working the telescope, whom Freeze froze, and then convinces Freeze that Ivy was the one who pulled the plug on his wife—but also that she’s still alive, as they were able to restore her cryochamber. Batman promises to let him work on his wife’s condition in Arkham Asylum in exchange for the cure to Alfred’s disease. Freeze agrees. As an added bonus, Ivy is his cell mate, and he intends to torment the hell out of her for trying to kill his wife.
Alfred is cured. Wayne reluctantly lets Batgirl join the team. Alfred opines that they’re going to need a bigger cave.
“If I must suffer, humanity will suffer with me!”
I was on WBAI-FM’s Hour of the Wolf radio show recently, and a bunch of us were discussing Star Trek Discovery. Akiva Goldsman is one of the executive producers of the show, and he cowrote the first episode and directed the third. One of the other panelists, movie critic Dan Persons (who had only seen “The Vulcan Hello,” and was not impressed), opined that Goldsman might well kill Star Trek the way he killed Batman.
While I disagree with the larger point, Goldsman did the dark knight no favors. These two movies didn’t actually kill Batman. For starters, the character has continued unabated in his original form of comic books. Batman has appeared in at least one, and often two or three, comics per month consistently since 1939. And while Goldsman’s awful scripts for these two movies helped kill this particular series of movies (a planned fifth film, Batman Unchained, was scrapped due to the overwhelmingly negative response to Batman & Robin), the next Bat-film would come along eight years later and be one of the most popular and impressive screen adaptations of the character ever done.
So no, Goldsman didn’t kill Batman.
But man, did he and Joel Schumacher do some serious damage.
My impression upon rewatching these two movies is the same one I had in the mid-1990s when I saw them the first time: these two movies have absolutely no relationship to the human condition. There are no people in this movie, only cackling caricatures. Goldsman’s dialogue is uniformly awful, the plots are overstuffed, overcrowded, and incoherent, the lines meant to be funny are groan-inducing, and the attempts at in-depth characterization are half-hearted and lame. In Tim Burton’s movies, Batman was a mysterious vigilante who was needed to keep a corrupt town in order. In Schumacher’s, he’s the celebrity hero that we saw Adam West play—he’s even got an American Express card! (Quite possibly the stupidest moment in any superhero film is when Batman declares that he never leaves the cave without it.)
With every single villain—Two-Face, Riddler, Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy, Bane—they took a complex character from the comics (or from the animated series in Freeze’s case, as they used the Victor Fries backstory Paul Dini & Bruce Timm came up with for the “Heart of Ice” episode) and made him or her significantly less interesting.
Bane was an intelligent, clever adversary who actually defeated Batman so thoroughly that someone else had to take his place. (Tom Hardy’s version in The Dark Knight Rises was much closer to the source material, albeit with whitewashed casting.) Goldsman & Schumacher turned him into Universal’s Frankenstein monster, a barely sentient thug.
Poison Ivy was a plant-lover who took that love to its criminal extreme, but who actually had some depth to her passions. In the hands of Uma Thurman—who can act, though you’d never know it from this film—she’s turned into a broad cartoon, a low-rent version of Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman only without the gravitas or the depth.
Riddler is utterly unrecognizable here, as there’s no interest in doing the character from the comics, instead doing Ace Riddlura, Bat Detective—the character was suborned to Jim Carrey doing his OTT goofball act.
Mr. Freeze winds up being this weird combination of the wisecracking loons we saw in the 1966 series (particularly Otto Preminger’s interpretation) and Michael Ansara’s version in the animated series. But Freeze’s awful cold puns (and they’re simply endless) and the absurdity of his entire setup (how does he pay for this? why is he smoking a cigar in sub-zero temperatures? an ascot? seriously?) ruin the pathos of his love for his dying wife.
But the worst, the absolute worst, sin committed by any Bat-film in history is the travesty done to Two-Face.
First of all, what a friggin waste of Tommy Lee Jones! Here we have an actor who truly could successfully portray the duality of Two-Face, the constant war between his good and bad halves. But instead, he’s doing Joker lite, pure goofball mugging for the camera, and while it’s more effective than Nicholson’s turn in the 1989 film, Jones just can’t keep up with Carrey’s rubber-faced antics.
And we know Jones could pull off a more complex portrayal of Harvey Dent because he does it for about half a second at the very end of the film. The bit at the end when Batman reminds him to flip the coin and Harvey thanks him for being a good friend—that’s the only time in the entire damn movie that we see Harvey Dent as opposed to Two-Face (inexplicably referred to as “Harvey Two-Face” throughout), and we have to sit through an entire movie of Carrey and Jones cackling at each other endlessly before we get the character we were promised.
Our two new leading men are perfectly fine. Neither of them does enough to differentiate Batman from Bruce Wayne. Val Kilmer is completely adequate, but his calm hero persona is a letdown after the more nuanced performance Michael Keaton attempted.
As for George Clooney, he has very generously taken all the blame for Batman & Robin‘s failure, and he has taken a lot of heat for his work here, but honestly? Aside from Michael Gough, who is his usual superb self, he’s the only person actually acting in this movie. Everyone else is posturing or posing or overacting or just being very bad at their jobs. Clooney at least creates a convincing persona, particularly when he’s Wayne. Back in 1995, during promotional interviews for Batman Forever, Schumacher said that with actors this good, he didn’t have to direct anyone. Well, Joel, we can tell, as you’ve presented us with some of the worst performances of the careers of Jones, Thurman, John Glover (dementedly awful as Woodrue), Alicia Silverstone (completely pointless as Batgirl), Drew Barrymore, and Debi Mazar (the latter as Two-Face’s light and dark molls, both dreadful).
I didn’t include Chris O’Donnell in that list, because I’m still waiting for a good performance from O’Donnell. (He’s the main reason why I find NCIS: Los Angeles to be unwatchable.) His Robin is abominable. Worse, the character serves absolutely no function. If you remove Robin from either film, not a single significant thing changes. He’s utterly superfluous.
Back in 1995, I wondered why the movie was called Batman Forever, and upon watching it, I discovered the reason: that’s how long it takes. Both these movies are horrendously paced, seemingly taking ages and ages so that you’re squirming in your seat wondering when the nightmare will finally end.
Burton’s movies were flawed, but they were Citizen Kane compared to these two misbegotten disasters.
Next week, we’ll go back to the 1970s and the two TV-movies that kicked off Marvel’s biggest 20th-century success in the world of adaptation: The Incredible Hulk.
Keith R.A. DeCandido is working on a project that involves Poison Ivy. But it’s the comics version, thank goodness…
I liked Batman Forever, and although I saw many of the power nerds cringing at the comicky campy look I loved it. I love camp and I’m not ashamed to say I love it. I don’t know why so many of the powernerds are.
Batman and Robin, I didn’t like so much. It wasn’t the campiness of it that put me off, it was that it was just a bit dull. I can’t put my finger on it, but it just seemed a bit boring. Maybe if it had been more campy.
I quite liked Batman Forever, too, when I first watched it. I was 14 back then, which probably explains it. It couldn’t beat Tim Burton’s Batman films, but I enjoyed the campiness.
Batman & Robin is cringeworthy, but good for drinking games.
When I first saw Batman Forever, I thought it was a distinct improvement on the Burton films. It was sillier, sure, but it actually portrayed Batman as a character I recognized as Batman. The moment in the opening fight where Batman caught a henchman teetering on the edge of an elevator shaft and saved his life made me cheer. Keaton’s “Batman” would’ve pushed the guy off and thrown a stick of dynamite after him.
But in subsequent viewings, with that initial sense of relief worn off, I was able to see how deeply flawed it is. Tommy Lee Jones, as you say, is totally wasted as Two-Face, and Two-Face as a character is totally wasted by the script. Jim Carrey is all wrong for the Riddler, because the Riddler is not just the Joker lite. Jokes are about laughing; riddles are about thinking and solving problems. The Riddler should be an intellectual, calculating foe, a chess player to rival Batman’s intellect. The movie makes an effort at that — they actually got New York Times crossword editor and NPR “Puzzle Master” Will Shortz to create Nygma’s riddles — but it doesn’t really work because it’s subsumed beneath all the wacky mugging and lunacy.
Also, Chris O’Donnell was too old to be Robin. I get why having a preteen boy wonder or even a teenager wouldn’t seem appropriate in this day and age, but O’Donnell just didn’t work in the role. And why do people today have to concoct convoluted bird-based excuses for the name “Robin?” The comics told us in the very first panel where The Sensational Character Find of 1940 appeared that he was “a laughing, fighting young daredevil who scoffs at danger like the legendary Robin Hood whose name and spirit he has adopted.”
As for Batman and Robin (which is ironically titled, since “Robin” is basically wearing a Nightwing costume throughout), it’s certainly dumb and goofy, but there are things I like about it, mainly the cast. George Clooney is immensely more convincing as Bruce and Batman than either Keaton or Kilmer — or even Bale, come to that. With a better script, he would’ve been superb in the role. (Full disclosure: My father was friends with his father Nick Clooney, who was also my favorite TV news anchor when I was young.) And Uma Thurman’s Mae West-ish Ivy is enormously fun and sexy. But its attempt to meld the tragic Mr. Freeze story with ’66-style goofery is bizarre, and its reinvention of Batgirl is terrible.
By the way, the Batgirl costume that Dina Meyer would wear in the Birds of Prey TV series a few years later was a repaint of the Batgirl costume from Batman and Robin. So it did eventually get worn by Barbara Gordon instead of Barbara Wilson or whatever.
“…this particular series—which were all part of the same continuity, but with only Michael Gough as Alfred and Pat Hingle as Gordon being in all four of them…”
Are the Schumacher movies really in the same continuity as the Burton movies, though? Sure, they reuse Gough and Hingle, but the rebooted James Bond movies kept Judi Dench as M, and most of the Highlander movies star Christopher Lambert even though no two of the sequels are in continuity with each other. So common casting doesn’t necessarily prove a common universe. Is there anything else besides casting that overtly links the Schumacher films to the Burton ones? Are the events of the Burton movies ever directly referenced in the Schumacher ones? I’ve never been quite clear on that.
@3 It’s ambiguous whether or not the Burton and Schumacher films are in the same continuity. The part that connects the two directors’ work the most is a reference to Catwoman’s clothing and whip by Chase Meridian in Batman Forever.
As Brandon says, Meridian makes a direct reference to Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman in Batman Forever.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
One good thing came out of Batman Forever: Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me – one of the better U2 songs from the mid-90s. The film that I cobbled together in my head from the clips in the HMTMKMKM music video is vastly superior to the real thing, probably because the music video doesn’t use any of the dialogue!
From the same source, I also got the impression that Jim Carrey wasn’t so much doing Ace Riddler as attempting a Frank Gorshin impersonation. Clearly, he didn’t pull that off – but without the dialogue, it didn’t look so bad.
(FTR I have actually seen the whole film but it left virtually no impression on me – unlike the music video. And if that isn’t a damning indictment, I’m not sure what is!)
It was a lot more Ace Ventura (and the Mask) than it was Frank Gorshin, IMO…………..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@6/Athersgeo: I don’t remember that song, but I always kinda liked “Kiss from a Rose.”
And the best impression of Frank Gorshin’s Riddler is Mark Hamill’s Joker.
Unpopular opinion: I’d still rather watch these two than any of the Christopher Nolan films ever again. That said, this franchise definitely needed time off after these. I keep hoping we’ll get a Batman film that does justice to the character the way The Animated Series did, though it is entirely unlikely at this point, I think.
Also, I remember a rumor during the casting for Forever that Robin Williams was being considered for The Riddler. If the film would have done the character any justice, I think that would’ve been a great choice.
I think in a (more nearly) perfect cinematic universe, we could have a new Batman adventure every couple of years or so with new director/actor pairings creating their own “takes” on the character like new writer-artist teams do in the comics. Imagine what John Carpenter/Kurt Russell, David Lynch/Kyle Maclachlan, or Steven Soderbergh/George Clooney could have done in their respective primes.
@10/shiznatikus: I can’t agree. Robin Williams would’ve made an enormously better Joker than Jack Nicholson did, but as I said before, the Riddler is not the Joker. He’s not a comedian, he’s a master of puzzles and brainteasers, an intellectual challenger for the world’s greatest detective. The original comics character was physically modeled on Fred Astaire — who did appear in a number of comedies, but who was known mainly as a dancer and an exemplar of elegance and precision rather than madcap silliness. Gorshin, a comedian/impressionist, did bring more humor to the character, and gave him that cackling laugh, but he also gave the Riddler a sense of poise, dignity, and undeniable menace.
Batman: The Animated Series made the superb casting choice of John Glover as the Riddler — the same John Glover so totally wasted as Jason Woodrue in B&R, and later so effective as Lionel Luthor on Smallville — but unfortunately the show didn’t write the character all that well, trying to modernize him as a computer-game creator and concocting utterly dumb riddles for him in his first couple of appearances. The later animated series The Batman had an interesting alternate take on him as a more cold and sinister figure, voiced by Robert “Freddy Krueger” Englund.
Gotham‘s take on the Riddler is just as wrong as Batman Forever‘s, in a different way — they made him insane, like Carrey’s Riddler, but gave him a murderous split personality that was more like Two-Face. Either way, the Riddler should not be insane. He should be as canny and clever as Batman, able to be an effective challenge for his genius detective skills, like Moriarty (or at least Irene Adler) to Sherlock Holmes. True, he’s long been portrayed as having an irrational compulsion to leave clues to his crimes, even though he’s aware it makes him more likely to get caught; but that’s a personality disorder, not insanity. And he could certainly be portrayed as just cocky enough to believe nobody could outsmart him.
Batman Forever is shit, and Carey’s Riddler (Ace Riddlura, lol!) is awful, but I liked Batman throwing multiple coins in the air to confuse Two-Face.
I’ve never seen Batman & Robin, I’ve always refused to.
@6 – Athersgeo: Agreed on the song and the music video. And yes, Carey was trying to do a Gorshin impersonation, but failed miserably.
When I first saw “Batman and Robin”, I was in high school and didn’t exactly have the most robust knowledge of actors. But, I distinctly remember walking out of the theatre thinking that if only they had cast the guy from “The Fugitive” as Two-Face, it would have been a better film.
I still suspect I’m right because I can’t see TLJ in this even now. My brain refuses to accept it.
If we did a modern recast, I’d love Hugo Weaving as Two-Face. But who would make a good Riddler? Maybe Tom Felton would be an interesting take…
Joe: I assume you mean Batman Forever, since that’s the one Two-Face was in. :)
MaGnUs: You’ve missed nothing by never seeing B&R.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Whatever you might say about the bat-nipples, the more geometric costume Kilmer-Bat wore in Forever (seen in the top image) is still one of my favourite bat-suits. I can imagine it as the kind of high-tech (lighter, more flexible, but still armoured) gear a more established Batman would wear (compared to the heavy tactical combat armour Nolan’s Batman uses).
There’s fanart drifting around of David Tennant as the Riddler, which I love. Tennant’s Doctor shows a similar range between quiet sincerity, Machiavellian genius, and self-aware scenery-chewing bombast.
Batman and Robin does have one thing going for it– the interactions between Clooney’s Bruce and Michael Gough’s Alfred are legitimately great, a perfect encapsulation of the relationship between those two characters, and Alfred’s speech asking “what is Batman if not an attempt to control death itself?” was the best understanding of the character any of the first four movies showed. Unfortunately it’s buried under everything else. I will admit that my friends nad I often like to watch Batman and Robin as part of our “so-bad-they’re-good-” movie nights along with classics like Battlefield Earth.
I know I haven’t missed anything, that’s why I keep avoiding seeing it. :)
I’ve also seen fanart of Neil Patrick Harris as the Riddler, which strikes me as a reasonable choice.
@19:
I don’t think NPH can bring the gravitas necessary to the role. Tennant, on the other hand, would be fantastic.
@15 You are right! The titles are so meaningless and interchangeable, I can’t keep them straight.
@12/ChristopherLBennett: No, please, don’t misunderstand; I would never want The Riddler to be the manic portrayal of Carey, or even Gorshin, or what I imagine you’re thinking when I say Williams. Steeped as I was in The Animated Series at the time, I was picturing a live action version of what was portrayed there, though I concede the riddles would need a lot of work for an adult audience. I honestly thought back then that Williams could’ve done well with that character, given his range, but clearly that isn’t what the producers wanted.
I’m not sure I agree that Williams would’ve made a better Joker. Physically, he’s all wrong. I’m not really sure who, in each of these release years, anyone could suggest would be better casting choices. I was 8, 11, 14, and 16 when each of these were released, so my knowledge of actors at the time was minimal.
@22/Shiznatikus: I don’t see how Robin Williams would’ve been any more physically wrong for the Joker than Jack Nicholson. And Williams was surely just as physically wrong for the Riddler as for the Joker, since they’re both lean and lanky with narrow faces. If you want a physical match for the Joker’s comics appearance, then we’re moving into Jeff Goldblum or Ed Begley, Jr. territory. Now, Goldblum could’ve done an unusual but interesting Joker.
But any thoughts of casting based on physical resemblance were rendered moot the moment Tim Burton cast a 5’9″, non-muscular comedy actor as Batman — not to mention Billy Dee Williams as Harvey Dent. So I was thinking more in terms of Robin Williams’s persona and acting ability. He could deliver the manic comedy but also convey genuine menace and madness and maybe a degree of poignancy.
(By the way, I realized a while back that if they’d done a Batman movie or serial in the ’40s featuring the original, dark and sadistic comics version of the Joker, the ideal actor for the role would’ve been Vincent Price. He eventually did play a Batman villain, Egghead on the ’66 series, though he was underutilized in the role.)
The only thing that makes the existence of Batman & Robin bearable is “The End Is the Beginning Is the End” by Smashing Pumpkins.
Batman’s american express card made someone named the Nostalgia Critic ticked off.
The Nolan films are a reaction to B & R campy style
If a Bat serial was made in the ’40s featuring the original, dark and sadistic comics version of the Joker, the ideal actor for the role would’ve been Conrad Veidt
I think one problem here is, aside from the weak writing, these movies look too expensive for the material. Camp tends to work better when effects and costumes look like they’re on the cheap side of things. See the Adam West Batman and the 1980 Flash Gordon for example. The Schumacher Batman universe tries for big budget camp, and it just ends up looking like decadent trash, like rich people rolling around in money. Fun if you’re in the money pile. Not as fun to watch.
@26/templarsteel: “If a Bat serial was made in the ’40s featuring the original, dark and sadistic comics version of the Joker, the ideal actor for the role would’ve been Conrad Veidt”
Except Veidt died a few months before the first Batman serial came out. He also had a German accent that might not have been right for the character. Yes, the Joker’s appearance was based on a role Veidt played in a 1928 silent film, but that doesn’t mean Veidt would’ve had the right personality or vocal delivery for the role, even if he’d lived long enough. He was also 50 years old at the time of his death, probably past the point where he could’ve played a character like the Joker who was able to hold his own in a fistfight or chase with the Batman. Vincent Price was born in 1911, so he would’ve been in his prime in the ’40s.
@27/88Keys: “Camp tends to work better when effects and costumes look like they’re on the cheap side of things. See the Adam West Batman and the 1980 Flash Gordon for example.”
Oh, I don’t agree. For one thing, I feel the best works of parody are those that are made with just as much care and quality as the things they’re parodying — for instance, Spaceballs featured sophisticated, big-budget visual effects of the same level of quality as the more serious sci-fi films of the era, and Young Frankenstein lovingly recreated the cinematography and production style of the 1930s Frankenstein movies.
For another thing, I don’t agree that either Batman ’66 or Flash Gordon was deliberately cheap or cheesy by the standards of its time. Batman was actually a remarkably elaborate production for a 1960s television sitcom, at least in its first two seasons before budget cuts took their toll. It had impressive sets (the Batcave was amazing), all sorts of custom vehicles and props and costumes, and regular fight scenes so complex that they took the majority of the shooting schedule to create. As for Flash Gordon, it was anything but a cheap production. Its budget was on a par with The Empire Strikes Back, which came out in the same year, and its visual effects and sets were extremely ambitious. I’m not a fan of the film overall, but it did a remarkable job creating a fully immersive alien environment.
The problem with the Schumacher films isn’t that they spend a lot of money, it’s that they’re too self-indulgent in how they spend it. Schumacher was just too much in love with the grandiose fantasy cityscapes and neon lighting and fetish outfits and so forth. He also couldn’t make up his mind whether he wanted to really commit to the camp or to tell a more serious, dramatic story, and his attempts to do both at once resulted in tonal incoherence.
BTW, I meant to mention this in the article: the reason why I chose the quote I chose for the headline? Is that that line — that stupid, offensive, idiotic line — is in both movies. And it’s delivered terribly both times, by Val Kilmer in Forever and by Chris O’Donnell in B&R.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I saw both of these in theaters and haven’t since. I was 12 and 14 at the time. I remember liking forever and liking it especially for Carry’s portrayal of Riddler. In fairness I was the right age to enjoy his humor and wasn’t well versed in the source material at that point. I also remember being refreshed by the lighter tone, since the animated series and reruns of the West show were what I was most familiar with and I distinctly remember disliking Returns for its darkness and weirdness (which I was even younger for so I guess that might explain that). Since my opinion is so in the minority on this, I’ve thought of going back and rewatching, but I think I’ll just keep the nostalgia memory for now. B &R I recognized as garbage, even at 14. Kiss From a Rose is still a great song though.
Back when Batman Forever was in the casting stage, Entertainment Weekly ran a feature article on John Malkovich in which it was mentioned that he was considering an offer to play The Riddler. Ever since the day I read that piece, part of my brain has been living in an alternate universe in which that actually happened.
And I totally disagree that the Schumacher films look too expensive. In fact, I’ve always marveled at how cheap they seem giving their budgets. Part of that is due to their reliance on 90s CGI, which appears hopelessly dated now, especially compared to the evergreen charm of practical effects and miniatures like the ones Burton favored. But even when it comes to physical sets, the Schumacher flicks often look really shoddy. I mean, does any of that stuff on the Riddler’s island in the last act of BF convince you that it’s taking place anywhere but in a cramped corner of an undressed and intentionally underlit shooting stage?
@28 – Now I’m imaging a Joker or Riddler with Vincent Price’s voice, and it is glorious…
#28 — Sorry, by cheap I didn’t mean of poor quality and low budget. I should’ve said ‘hokey.’ The Adam West Batman and Flash Gordon look hokey, and it works with camp, satire, broad comedy, etc. The new series The Orville does this too. The writing isn’t great either, but the effects are appropriately ’80s and ’90s hokey in a lot scenes, and wonderful to watch. Gets me a bit misty eyed for a time when space ships and backgrounds weren’t always perfectly composited. Much like Spaceballs.
The Schumacher Batman was just trying too hard to look slick and impressive, like a music video.
@33/88Keys: I don’t think Dino de Laurentiis was trying to make Flash Gordon look hokey. You don’t spend $20 million in 1980 dollars to make a hokey-looking movie. It’s just that FX technology has advanced so quickly that what looked state-of-the-art when it was new will look hokey a decade or three later.
The question is, do the visuals serve the story? Spaceballs had lots of high-quality visual effects, but they existed to support the plot, characters, and comedy. But the visuals in the Schumacher Batman films did more to distract from the story and characters than to support them. They were too much of an end in themselves rather than a means to an end, and that was the problem.
I think they were going for a classic MGM musical level of design with Flash Gordon, playing up the colors and general ridiculousness of the concept. Coming a year after Alien and the first Star Trek, there was a definite stylistic choice there. They could’ve gone more realistic but went retro instead. Perhaps the comedic beats in the script steered them this way. I can’t be sure.
Yeah, the Schumacher films are confused, and confusing. Watching them on release, I spent most of the time distracted. What are these things supposed to be?
@35/88Keys: And that’s why I never cared for the De Laurentiis Flash Gordon much — that lack of respect for the premise. I much preferred Filmation’s 1979 animated version, which played it straight and serious and faithfully recreated the look and approach of the original comics. I also resent that the De Laurentiis movie essentially bullied the Filmation feature film into oblivion — while it was made in ’79 and restructured into the more kid-friendly episodes of the weekly series from that same year, the original, more adult-oriented feature version was only aired once in 1982 and never got a US video release, even though it’s an immensely better Flash Gordon movie than the 1980 one.
It’s worth noting that Star Wars was essentially George Lucas’s attempt to do a Flash Gordon-style movie after he failed to get the rights to Flash Gordon itself. So we already have an idea of what a less campy live-action version would have looked like.
Apropos of nothing, these two movies resulted in several roller coasters at various Six Flags parks. Batman Forever got us “Riddler’s Revenge” at Six Flags Magic Mountain. It’s a Bolliger & Mabillard stand-up coaster, one of the largest of its type. Stand-up coasters have proved to be mostly a fad, but that particular one is pretty good.
Batman & Robin resulted in “Batman & Robin: The Chiller,” which was a pair of launched coasters that ran parallel to each other at Six Flags Great Adventure. Like many launched coasters, they suffered frequent breakdowns, and were horribly rough, although removing the over-the-shoulder restraints helped that some. The ride also included a large replica of the observatory from the movie, which was kept even after the coasters were torn down. I believe it’s been incorporated into the Justice League dark ride that opened this year.
“Mister Freeze: Reverse Blast” is the name of two identical coasters at Six Flags St. Louis and Six Flags Over Texas. They’re also launched two-track coasters, but I haven’t ridden either. They’re generally well-regarded by the coaster community.
Anyone familiar with Dino’s reputation would be shocked if all $20 million of that budget went into the movie. Some of his budgets and uses of company resources were known to be… creative. Just saying.
You know? I really love both these movies. I saw them both when they were first released and I’ve seen them once since. And I think for what they are – basically light-hearted movies with decent character arcs buried in there somewhere – they work. I didn’t know much about Two-Face other than the name so didn’t care how accurate it was. (I did notice that Harvey Dent was a black guy two movies earlier though…) I didn’t even know Bane was a character from the comics until people started grumbling about it and I was only there for Mister Freeze anyway. Maybe these films are the equivalent of the late 80s Doctor Who stories, derided by serious fans for not being serious and not taking them and the character they take seriously…seriously.
This seems to be a phrase I use a lot but the plot summary of Forever leaves out possibly an important element: Robin doesn’t just turn up in costume in the last act (okay, he does but bear with me), he first becomes Robin after Two-Face’s assault on the NygmaTech launch, turning up to save Batman. Robin’s there to mirror Bruce’s early days: Alfred knows, but Bruce takes a long time getting there, that you don’t stop a young man given a reason to seek justice or revenge by telling him not to. He’s going to do it anyway and it’s whether or not they teach him to do it the right way or leave him isolated. It’s a lesson Batman’s still learning in B&R but when he learns it, there’s no reluctance to accept Batgirl. Aside from the fact that Commissioner Gordon’s not an important enough character to stick slavishly to the origin from the ’66 series just to please those who consider that the “true” Batgirl origin (as opposed to all the other Batgirl origins from the comics), and that no-one ever went wrong giving Michael Gough a major role…The phrase “Bat Family” gets thrown around a lot as a catch-all term for anyone wearing a costume who hangs out around Batman. But throughout these two movies, that’s what Bruce, Dick, Barbara and Alfred become. And it’s why it’s a shame we never got to see them again. That and the fact I fell instantly in love with Alicia Silverstone and was hanging out for the sequel she was already signed up to…
Look under the goofiness of Jim Carrey doing his Jim Carrey thing because that’s what he thinks he’s there for (and he’s probably right), and the Riddler is a man for whom the robberies and the successful businesses are just window dressing. Basically, he’s a man who just wants to prove that he’s cleverer that Bruce Wayne and Batman, the two men (one man) that he both admires and hates. And Mister Freeze being a sympathetic villain was an interesting take on the character.
Nicole Kidman, on the other hand, is the definition of pointless, just there because someone thinks a film like this needs a love interest and/or an actress’ name on the credits. She’s just there to look nice in dresses and get taken hostage. You almost have to wonder if the sequel is parodying it by giving Bruce a girlfriend who really is completely forgettable and completely pointless. I will say though that on second viewing the only thing that disappointed me about B&R is that John Glover, who’s been absolutely superb in everything else I’ve seen him in, was absolutely terrible. Possibly a case of an actor seeing what everyone else is doing and, instead of actually acting, just copying them.
As for continuity, I think the path of least resistance is to assume it’s a direct continuation. There’s no new Batman origin a la Casino Royale, there’s no incompatible back story a la the Highlander movies (in fact, the Christopher Reeve Superman films seem more guilty of ignoring previous films than these). As for continuity references…I’m sure someone will tell me if I’m wrong, but I think in Forever Bruce says or implies that he caught up with his parents’ killer and didn’t get any closure?
I’ve seen the David-Tennant-as-Riddler fanart; I’ve also seen fanart for Hugh-Laurie-as-Riddler. I think either one of them would be excellent for the role. For that matter, I think Vincent Price would’ve made a better Riddler than Joker. I’d have been interested to see Nolan’s take on the character.
@33: I’ve only seen one episode of The Orville so far, but I was struck by how well it nailed the aesthetic of Star Trek: TNG. Thing is, TNG wasn’t going for a “hokey” look at the time — it only seems that way in hindsight, as special effects have continued to improve, and science fiction TV has trended towards a grittier aesthetic due to the influence of Babylon 5 and BSG.
@36: Filmation’s Flash Gordon has always been my favorite version too.
@29 – krad: As mentioned, I wouldn’t have known that the line was in B&R.
@33 – 88Keys: The effects on The Orville are 80s/90s hokey? I had not noticed that at all. And I agree with Chris, Flash Gordon is not hokey-looking by the era’s standards.
I do have a soft spot for the Flash Gordon movie; but I’m also a huge fan of the Flash Gordon animated series. Well, of the first season of the animated series, at least.
(Edited to add: And I’d agree that the Flash Gordon movie wasn’t hokey-looking by the standards of the time, but it certainly was a lot more … stylized than, say, the Star Wars movies.)
Re “Oxbridge”: I once received months of abuse online for deriding the film’s claim that Oxbridge is the name of a university in London. A lot of people claimed that it was a deliberately fictional place a la Gotham. I’m not entirely convinced.
@39 cap-mjb: – Really enjoyed your well-thought out comments on these two underrated (and frankly, demonized) films. I thought the idea of the Riddler as an obsessive stalker infatuated with Bruce was really interesting and wish the film had gone further with it. Particularly since Bruce contemplating his privilege, and that others might envy it, is almost never dealt with in Batman stories, even in Nolan’s, which are supposedly more for “adults” than Joel’s movies.
I also thought Nicole Kidman’s character was completely unnecessary. The erotic tension between Bruce and Dick was scintillating enough. And I *loved* the idea of a feminist Batgirl with a big butt and thick thighs coming between them in the fourth one. Bad enough Alicia had to deal with bodyshaming from the tabloids at the time, she has to deal with the never-ending resentment from fanboys that she isn’t their precious Barbara Gordon…who they made into an insecure teenager in the post-Crisis era, anyway (as opposed to Yvonne Craig, who was always the smartest one in the room.)
I’d rather watch either of Joel’s movies than the any of Nolan’s boring pseudo intellectual bro-fests, which I’m sure will be showered in cis male praise in the coming weeks.
@43/cap-mjb: “Oxbridge” is actually a portmanteau nickname of Oxford and Cambridge, England’s two great universities. It’s used when speaking of the two universities collectively, and it’s often used in fiction to refer to imaginary universities inspired by them. In fact, that was its very first recorded use, as a fictional university in an 1849 William Thackeray novel.
So it’s in the same vein as the name Gotham City, which is based on a well-known nickname of New York City.
Charlotte: I’m going in a vague chronological sequence here, so it’ll be a while before I hit the Nolan films, but I’m only actually fond of the middle one.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
That’s the one I like the least.
I didn’t particularly care for any of them. I loved the ’89 Batman, but I was 11. I loved Anne Hathaway as Selina in The Dark Knight Rises, but that’s about it. I never have rewatched them, unlike most of the recent Marvel movies.
I’m with MaGnUs; I prefer the Nolan films in general to the Burton/Schumacher films, but The Dark Knight is my least favorite of the three because it’s so dark. Though I did like Heath Ledger’s Joker better than Bane — nothing against Tom Hardy, I just have very little interest in Bane generally (not having read the comics, I’d never even heard of the character before Batman & Robin). I also agree that Anne Hathaway is the best part of the third movie.
In my case, it’s not the darkness, but the dryness. I think The Dark Knight is the least superhero-ey of the three films.
Reading your reviews of Batman Forever always make me feel a bit guilty as I quite like this movie. I feel like I should defend myself – I was 12 when it came out, so basically just the right age for Jim Carrey’s rubber faced antics, and I also had a mild crush on Chris O’Donnell at the time. I also had no knowledge of the comics or shows (or really even the other two movies), so I had no context or source to compare the materials to. You and other commenters actually make a really good point about how both the Riddler and Two Face just end up as ‘Joker Lite’ with all their cackling and hamming it up without any of the depth their actual incarnations have. Two Face, for example, doesn’t really seem to ever have two sides at war – instead his ‘gimmick’ just seems to be using the coin at various moments to help him make decisions, which isn’t really the same thing. But at the time, that all went over my head, and I actually really enjoyed the performances.
And I still do like Carrey’s Riddler (and his Nygma) so …oh well. While he’s definitely a really over the top, frenetic character (because Jim Carrey – although even he has shown that he CAN do more than that) I always really enjoyed his first scenes in the lab (I also really loved the Flaming Lips song Bad Days as that pretty much summed up my life at the time) and all the riddles. Regarding your question about why he robs the banks, I assumed it was just for the thrill of it, because he wants to prove that he’s the smartest/best, etc. In a small way this take on Riddler reminds me a bit of Syndrome from the Incredibles – an insecure guy who was spurned by his hero and let that fester into rage and hatred.
Regarding Robin I am not sure I would say he’s totally superfluous to the third movie since he does help get rid of the bomb at the circus and part of the plot is Batman accepting him into his home (although these movies don’t really focus much on Batman’s isolation). Even in Batman and Robin, it seems like they are TRYING to come up with some kind of plot that involves conflict between the two of them having to learn to work together, trust each other, etc.
Anyway – that’s my take on it. I still quite like Batman Forever even though I can read through your review and be like, “Yup, I can’t objectively argue with that.”
Batman and Robin though, I make no defense, lol. My son actually really enjoys this movie (he’s 6) but it IS utterly cringe inducing. I actually think that buried in their, Schwarenzegger is actually doing a decent job and some of the more heartfelt scenes with him and his wife are actually fairly well done but as you say they just get buried in an avalanche (ha ha ha) of over the top, hammy ice puns, wihch I actually think Schwarzenegger does a good job with in the sense that he seems to clearly just be owning it. It’s still awful, of course.
Here’s a thought: Instead of having Schwarzenegger play Freeze, they should’ve had him play Bane. And not the mindless-thug Bane we got, but the comics version of Bane as a criminal mastermind who was a match for Batman on both a physical and mental level. His nationality would’ve had to be changed, but Nolan did that anyway by casting Tom Hardy. And Schwarzenegger would’ve been far better suited to a physically formidable character like Bane, who’s defined in part by his great size and muscularity, than to a foe like Freeze whose menace comes from his technology. And a Bane-Poison Ivy pairing — Venom and Poison, hypermasculinity and hyperfemininity — would’ve been a more logical matchup than Freeze and Ivy (since cold and plants don’t get along that well). It would’ve made the story less cluttered, with one less villain to worry about.
Of course, it would’ve also meant a movie without constant ice puns, and whether that would be a blessing or a curse is for the individual to decide. :D
Really, casting Schwarzenegger as Freeze has got to be one of the world’s stupidest castings.
@44/Charlotte: Thank you! And anyone who needs to criticise Alicia Silverstone’s weight in order to have a reason to hate the movie really is reaching…
@45/CLB: Yes, I knew…most of that. I guess we’ll never know whether the filmmakers knew it or not.
How much material from the two movies could be saved by one best-of-fan-edits effort?
I was surprised by how much one fan edit (based off another, better regarded but unavailable fan edit), redeemed content from Star Wars episodes 1 and 2 for me. I still see 1-3 as missed opportunities to graft on a more epic plot, but just see all the comments above pointing to isolated tidbits drowned in the awfulness surrounding them. Maybe there’s not a full movie’s worth, but perhaps as a flashback recap short “bonus feature” of sorts to a Scarecrow framework in which Batman is on acid?
@CLB: I totally want to see Jeff Goldblum in this role now. But I also want to see him as everything. I am probably going to see Ragnorak if for no other reason.
Also being in middle school at the time, I enjoyed Batman Forever way too much, which seems to be the concensus. I was also somewhat of a huge Carrey fan, having been into that OTT style of humor at the time and really liking The Mask (having had no knowledge of The Mask comics). Confession: I may have recorded the first several episodes of The Mask animated series based on the film.
But I was also really stoked that Robin was in this film. As the younger brother, I was relegated to being Robin in our imaginary play, and I had the Robin figure while my brother had Batman. I loved that action figure too. And I think I just sort of owned this to the point where Robin has always been my jam. So I was incredibly pleased to see Robin in the film. And I still get a little annoyed when people insist that Batman has to be alone like he originally was, as Robin was introduced less than one year after Batman. For the majority of Batman history, it was Batman and Robin. From the comics over the course of decades, the two 40s serials, the West and Ward series, the cartoon series of the 70s complete with Scooby Doo crossovers…Robin was always there.
I also had the soundtrack to this movie that I would listen to over and over. I also enjoyed the song Bad Days and got a kick out of the line about blowing your boss’s head (in your dreams). Ya know, because I thought that’s what dark humor was back then.
Batman & Robin..yeesh. Saw it on tv and thought it was awful. Now my son loves watching it, and after seeing/hearing it enough times it’s become at least tolerable, and even something to playfully laugh at. But it’s BAD. Level whatever criticisms you want at Forever, at least it resembles a movie. B&R was just BAD.
Funny what you say about Clooney, because I feel like he is totally phoning it in. I can only see George Clooney in a batsuit.
I feel like O’Donnell is the only one (besides Gough) trying to take his role seriously, and Arnold is a master at hamming it up, and just owning it, as Lisamarie says. I see Arnold as treating this the same way as Samuel L. Jackson treats his roll in SOAP or The Other Guys.
@56/crzydroid: “Funny what you say about Clooney, because I feel like he is totally phoning it in. I can only see George Clooney in a batsuit.”
Yeah, but that’s kind of the point — that Clooney’s look and personality are a more natural fit to Bruce Wayne than Keaton’s or Kilmer’s (or even Bale’s, IMHO). He doesn’t have to reach very far to be good in the role. So if he’d had a good script to work with, he could’ve been superb in the role.
Hey, it’s “crzydroid”, is it me or we hadn’t seen you around these parts in a while?
It’s not you…I’ve been a little quiet on here for a while.
Welcome back.
Forever was the first of the films I actually saw in theatres back in 1995. And back then, it was at least to me a major improvement over the second film. More entertaining, more fun. At least Batman felt more like a protagonist in this one, rather than playing second fiddle to the villains, and I enjoyed Nicole Kidman a lot more than Kim Basinger in the role of love interest. Having said that, I was 13 at the time.
But sadly, the fourth film was an unmitigated disaster. Who needs character motivation? Let’s generate conflict for conflict’s sake. It’s almost as if they’re more concerned with the aesthetics than actually writing a coherent plot with a decent story or character arc. However, I feel the Burton films are just as guilty of this.
And the sad thing is, Joel Schumacher is a very capable director, having done some excellent films before and after the fact. And Akiva Goldsman has an excellent track record of his own as a writer and director (I’m enjoying the hell out of ST: Discovery as I type this).
For that it’s worth, these two films have the best soundtracks of all seven. Having SEAL, U2 and Smashing Pumpkins playing during the credits are among the few reasons I’d try and rewatch them now. And maybe the bat credit card scene. It actually works if you don’t take any of that movie remotely seriously.
Forever came out while I was in my early 20s, and I saw it with a group of friends. Most of us thought it was pretty bad, but one friend just loved it. There had been a murder in his apartment building overnight, and he’d spent all morning repeatedly telling the police what he’d seen and heard, which was nothing. He agreed the movie was completely mindless, but said it was exactly what he was looking for in that moment.
I didn’t even bother seeing Batman & Robin in the theater. In those days, I’d see pretty much any superhero movie out there, so that was a pretty strong vote of no-confidence.
Val Kilmer’s Batman – not his Bruce Wayne but his Batman – is a very, very accurate (deliberate or not) adaption of the Neal Adams/Denny O’Neill version from the comics. This Batman was serious rather than dark, athletic rather than bulky, more talkative than most versions – and more emotional, often portraying outrage, confusion, fear or even the odd smile.
@63/Cobalt Blue: I did think Batman Forever handled Batman better than the Burton movies did, as I may have said. It just didn’t handle much else very well.
No one said nothing about Ben Affleck as the Bat. Would like to know which actor playing the bat/bruce you liked most. indifferent of the movie itself
for me it’s a tie between Val and Ben
Live action, I prefer Affleck.
Kevin Conroy is the best Batman. Period.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@67/krad: I’d say Conroy’s about even with Adam West. Batman is more than one thing, so fortunately I don’t have to choose between them.
Beware the Grey Ghost, still the best episode. Except for the music from the Chain Gang episode. I forget the name.
And the punchline.
@6/Athersgeo
“One good thing came out of Batman Forever: Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me – one of the better U2 songs from the mid-90s. The film that I cobbled together in my head from the clips in the HMTMKMKM music video is vastly superior to the real thing, probably because the music video doesn’t use any of the dialogue!”
Very small, point, but, actually: it does! ;)
(And – dear God – was this difficult for me to track down! Most of the versions of the music video out there on YouTube have replaced the scenes from Batman Forever with new footage cut in from the Nolan movies! Guess that says a lot about the general opinion of Batman Forever …)
https://vimeo.com/41133252
If you watch the opening seconds, and again from 1 min, 58, and 2 min, 43, you’ll hear the dialogue (from Riddler, Two-Face, and others; even the “chicks love the car” line used in headline here!)
The main reason that fact stuck in my head is because of the captive guard’s cry: “It’s a trap!”
Because that cry just syncs so well with the main themes of both the song and the music video.
This is one of my all-time favourite U2 songs, and, possibly, their best ever music video (well, okay, maybe Window in the Skies might just pip it, because it has such a brilliant concept – and because they tracked down the most-absolutely-perfect footage of Elvis to use in making that concept a reality).
I think what impresses me most about the HMTMKMKM video, though, is the creative insight in recognizing the connection between Bono’s ZOO-TV-era Macphisto character and a primary question that keeps re-occurring in the Batman narratives: he’s the good guy; but now that he’s put on a costume, and is operating outside the established rules … can we still be sure that he’s the good guy?
The answer, of course, in both universes (at least as far as I read it): is yes.
@63 “Val Kilmer’s Batman – not his Bruce Wayne but his Batman – is a very, very accurate (deliberate or not) adaption of the Neal Adams/Denny O’Neill version from the comics. This Batman was serious rather than dark, athletic rather than bulky, more talkative than most versions – and more emotional, often portraying outrage, confusion, fear or even the odd smile. “
I couldn’t agree more.
and I forgot to add – yeah Nicole Kidman
Add me to the giggling hooligans who in-ironically enjoy these films: Batman can contain multitudes and I deeply resent being obliged to endure SO MUCH Dark Knight with so little Caped Crusader over the past few decades.
If I wanted the real – or anything too realistic – I wouldn’t be watching the adventures of a Zorro with a Dracula theme and no sword!
Damn, Keith, you really gave these movies the Cold shoulder
(Speaking of, I kinda like Freeze’s suit and Batman’s sonar suit. I’ve only seen pictures, though.)