A few weeks ago, I decided to finally sit down and watch the craptastic 2004 Catwoman movie starring Halle Berry. I decided to document my thoughts minute by minute in a running diary and post it up on this illustrious website for all to see. The running diary ended up being a success and I had several requests to do one for Batman and Robin, another crappy DC movie (seems to be a lot of those). Well everyone, I listened your requests and did in fact do a running diary of Batman and Robin!
This is part one of a two part article. The second part will be my running diary of the actual movie itself. At first I was just gonna jot down a few thoughts on my opinions of Batman and Robin to lead into the running diary, but my thoughts and ideas just ran on that I found myself with a whole new article on my hands, so here it is!
First a quick historical note. The Batman movie series has a long and storied history, but the modern movie series can be traced back to 1989 when Tim Burton's Batman hit theaters to great reviews and massive box office. Since it was such a success, Warner Brothers immediately hired Burton back for a sequel, and this time Burton was given much more creative freedom. While I won't get into all of the trouble around Batman Returns(if you want my thoughts, check out the article I wrote a few months back), but Returns came under fire for it's darker and more edgy content, drew mixed reviews, and brought in a smaller haul at the box office than it's predecessor. After that, Warner Brothers decided to bring in a new director that would bring Batman into much... safer... territory. That man was Joel Schumacher. I gotta say that at the time Schumacher probably seemed like a good choice because at the time he had a couple pretty solid thrillers under his belt and seemed like he take Batman seriously without giving kids nightmares. But Batman Forever came, and made more money than Batman Returns, and while it wasn't terrible, it wasn't good. Warners was happy though, and put another Batman in production, and the rest is history.
Batman and Robin was a critical and commercial failure and sent the series into a eight year long tailspin. But bad comic book movies are a dime a dozen aren't they? Not Batman and Robin, for some reason this movie has refused to go away. It hangs like a ghost over the current bat-series and every other comic book movie out there? But why? Why can't we just let it go?
I guess we have to look at why we hate this movie to begin with. The most obvious complaint is the campiness of it all. We look back at the camp of the Adam West era with a sense of amusement, and I think Schumacher wanted to do the same with this one, but Batman and Robin lacks the self aware FUN that the Adam West Batman had. Batman and Robin plays out like a chid's fantasy but with a big budget, it seems to want to take itself seriously, but can't for some reason. Joel Schumacher has said that he was told to make the movie family friendly and "toyedic"(that's an actual quote), so I'm guessing this was his attempt to appeal to kids and adults alike.
Now I was a kid at the time when this came out, and much like with the shameless marketing of Batman Returns, I fell for it with this movie. I bought all the toys, all the merchandise, I fell for it all. But even as a child, I knew something was missing when I watched the movie. As I got older, I realized that it lacked the edge that made the first two movies cool. So even as a kid, I wasn't fully under Batman and Robin's spell, and we all know how the older viewers felt.
Now, there's the campiness to take into account. The rest really stems from that. The casting and performances go hand in hand, because both were terrible. I read somewhere that in the right movie, Arnold could have been a perfect Mr.Freeze. He has the cold demeanor and monotone, he could have been a damn intimidating villain. Sadly, we get the cackling, pun spouting Freeze we all know and love. As for George Clooney as Batman, well, honestly I don't know who came up with that. Clooney is one of my favorite actors, I'll see anything he's in, but he was a terrible, terrible choice for Batman. I gave Clooney props when he apologized to fans for the movie and placed the blame on himself for killing the franchise, but he was far from the only problem. As for the rest of the cast, well, they all suck. Not one good performance is given in this movie. Everyone seems to be hamming it up to the extreme, which fits with the campy tone, but takes it all to an extreme level.
But I think the final problem with this movie is the script. When I was watching it, I pointed out in my running diary all of the subplots running through it, but then I realized that I had no idea what the main story was. The movie is so crowded and so busy that you really lose sight of the main objective, the main driving force, which I don't even know what that was. There are two sub-plots, the one revolving around Alfred dying, and the one about Bat-Girl being a bike racer, that don't have any impact on the movie at all. Two whole sub-plots could have been excised and no one would have blinked an eye. I think that Schumacher and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman were just given a bunch of characters and told to make them fit, and they tried their best. Sadly all we get is a movie bursting at the seams with characters and plot lines, and nothing binding them together.
And here we are, years later, and we still talk about it. Once again, why can't we let this go?
Batman and Robin is like the one bad break-up we all have. The break-up we all should have seen coming, all the signs were there, but we ignored them. We told ourselves that things with our girl were fine, that we were just going through a rough patch. Then the break up happens and our world collapses. We take time off to collect ourselves, to start again, but anytime we go out with another girl, that shadow of our ex is hanging over us. We wonder if this relationship will take the same course, and panic at any sign that it will follow that dark path.
Batman and Robin is that break up. The new Bat-series has gone to great lengths to not be Batman and Robin, so much so that I doubt if we'll ever see a live action Robin again. Though Nolan and company won't say it, we can all tell that they're terrified of their movies straying into the same campy territory, hence the hyper-realism. Anytime we hear about a comic book movie having too much characters or having a lighter feel to it, we immediately say "its gonna be another Batman and Robin". As much as we try, we'll never forget that ex-girlfriend and we'll never forget Batman and Robin.
But did only bad come from Batman and Robin? Yes, it did send my favorite comic book movie series in a decade long hiatus, but look what came from it. Batman Begin and The Dark Knight are considered two of the best and most influential comic book movies of all time. The failure of Batman and Robin seemed to make Warner Brothers realize how valuable of a property Batman really was, and it lead them to be much more protective and careful when developing future Bat-projects. Yes, we had to wait eight years for a new Batman movie, but I think it was worth the wait. Hollywood in general seemed to realize that comic book movies need to be treated with respect and be taken seriously in order to succeed. Though marketing is still a big part of comic book movies, it seems that filmmakers are more focused on making a good movie than selling toys now. Many lessons were learned from Batman and Robin, and while I'm sure we'll see many more bad comic book movies, I don't think any of them will be quiet at Batman and Robin's level of bad.
I guess what I want to say, is that we all have that one bad break-up, but at some point we have to look at the good gained from it. Lessons can be learned from everything, and we have to apply those lessons to future endeavors. We can only live in the shadow of that ex for so long before we decide to take a leap forward and move on with our lives. Not only do us fans need to let go of Batman and Robin, but so do filmmakers. Hollywood needs to focus on making a good Batman movie, and not making a Batman movie that isn't Batman and Robin
Well that's part one of my spiel on the comic book movie we all love to hate. Check back soon for my running diary!