Our ongoing series looking at movies that took the blockbuster genre into the realms of excess. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.
By John J. Joex
Rating: 1 out of 5 Stars
This was the fourth Batman movie in the big screen franchise that began with Tim Burton’s re-introduction of the character to the general public in 1989’s Batman. Directed by Joel Schumacher who had taken the reins of the franchise with the previous film (Batman Forever), it delivers a convoluted plot with multiple villains and heroes each trying to upstage each other on the big screen. Batman (played by George Clooney this time around) and his sidekick Robin (introduced in the previous film and played again by Chris O’Donnell) thwart a diamond-napping scheme by the nefarious Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger), but the villain managers to evade capture. Meanwhile, we witness the origin of Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman) who has a vendetta against Wayne Industries because that company funded research on the Venom Drug that brought her into existence and she decides to team up with Mr. Freeze to take revenge on Gotham City. Meanwhile, Robin falls for Ivy and Batgirl (played by Alicia Silverstone hoping to get her own Bat-gig on the big screen) shows up to amp this super-powered bloat-fest to the next level of the absurd.
Back in the 1960’s, the Batman television series with Adam West and Burt Ward in the lead roles cemented a camp image of the character into the public consciousness and that ultimately worked its way into the comic book series as well. People would then see Batman, who had started off in the 30’s as a darker crime-fighter who even carried a gun at times, as a comic character more adept at rolling off one-liners and escaping from ever more ridiculous traps than instilling fear in criminals. The comic book would gradually veer away from this interpretation in the 70’s and 80’s, eventually culminating in Frank Miller’s grand re-interpretation of the character with Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. When Tim Burton received the nod to direct the big screen adaptation of the character in the late 80’s he drew heavily on the direction that Batman had followed in the comics at that time and he succeeded in erasing the camp image that had lingered since the 60’s. He carried this into his 1992 sequel Batman Returns (which took an even darker turn than his first film), and Schumacher still drew upon this approach when he took over the franchise with Batman Forever. However, the camp elements and super-powered character overkill had already begun to creep into that film and by Batman & Robin the franchise returned to all-out camp, essentially undoing all of the progress made in comics and on film since the 60’s and practically derailing Batman (and superheroes in general) as a presence on the big screen.
Batman & Robin fell victim to the typical ill-advised sequel misstep of amping what had worked in the previous films to grand excess. The film focused on action, posturing, and clever quips and decided to substitute massive quantities of those elements for any attempt at telling a decent story or giving us much in the way of character development. Sure, there was plenty of backstory provided for the characters, but most of this was co-opted out of the comics and thrown onscreen to fill time between the action sequences and smirking wisecracks. This all starts out okay, for about the first five minutes, but gets really old really quick and there’s still 120 minutes of this overly long bloat-fest left. Schumacher went completely over the top with this third sequel and completely disrespected what the franchise had accomplished with its previous films and in its more recent comic book stories. Of course, he claimed that Warner Bros. demanded that he make this film more toyetic (merchandise/tie-in friendly), but that does not give him a pass. Plenty of other films have taken this route without descending to the levels of camp and bombast that we saw with Batman & Robin.
This film also demonstrated a direction that has since doomed several superhero franchises: super-powered character overkill. Admittedly this had already begun to manifest itself with the previous two films as Batman Returns gave us two villains (the Penguin and Catwoman) and Batman Forever gave us two villains and another hero (Two-Face, the Riddler, and Robin). But now we had two villains (Mr. Freeze and Poison Ivy) and yet one more hero (Batgirl) and a script can only handle so many leads (and a director can only juggle so many egos). We have seen this same trend with the sequels to other superhero films, and I can understand the temptation because of the plentiful rogues galleries and supporting characters that the writers want to work into the mix. But more is rarely better and usually just dilutes the final product. We saw that clearly with Batman & Robin and unfortunately Hollywood has yet to learn its lesson.
Batman & Robin ultimately made money at the Box Office despite its hefty budget ($100 million) and widespread derision. But it did not make nearly as much as the previous films, falling well below expectations. It was also panned by critics and scooped up an ample amount of nominations at the Razzies, which cast the franchise in a bad light for several years that followed. In fact, superheroes in general fell out of vogue as a big screen attraction until The X-Men succeeded in reviving the genre in 2000. And then Christopher Nolan would again restore respect to the Batman franchise, and undo the damage that Schumacher did, with his reboot of the character in Batman Begins.
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