Back From the 90s: Batman & Robin (Dir Joel Schumacher, 2h 5m, 1997)

Batman & Robin is a watershed moment. It's the undeniable moment where you can see Hollywood tipping from its early 90s "Golden Age" to the late 90s "Dark Ages". Up to Summer 1997, you can at least point to Men in Black, Con Air, Tomorrow Never Dies, The Fifth Element and Face/Off as highlights of the year. '98 and 99 are a virtual desert in comparison, littered with colossal bombs, bad sequels and simply just bad films. You're left with incredibly slim picking; Blade, the creaky but fun Armageddon, The Mummy and The Matrix being the only highlights of the period, and it's not truly till the mid-2000s that we see the action movie return to form. The film also, undeniably, kills the superhero movie, bringing one of the great blockbuster franchises of the late 80s and early 90s to a crashing halt, and this trend in cinema wouldn't truly make its resurrection until X-Men in 2000. It is the canary-or should that be the Robin-in the coalmine of cinema, warning of worse to come.

But is Batman & Robin a bad film? Is it truly the film that killed superhero cinema? Is it the film that killed the mid 90s blockbuster? Or, for the last twenty-five years, have we been unfairly daubing this as a calamity of cinema wherein it's just a simply bad movie? Certainly, with a quarter of a century of retrospect, perhaps the film requires a a reappraisal, as a campy, and more cartoonish take on the material, harking back to the 1960s television series, in a film series that has often leant into darker and more serious territory. Dare we even describe this film an underrated gem, despite its tarnish? Whisper it...is Batman & Robin actually a good movie? 

No.

But we'll get to that.We've already spoken at length about the first two Batman films, and about the increasing darkness from Burton's take on the Caped Crusader By the end of Batman Returns, Burton and Warner Bros were at loggerhead, the tone of the film at increasing odds with its marketability. The incongruity of a R-rated film with a toy, McDonalds and merchandising campaign isn't that abnormal in the grand sweep of cinema, but with Burton' essentially booted from a potential sequel, the baton passed to Joel Schumacher, the director of cult coming-of-age-film St Elmo's Fire and the vampire/black comedy, The Lost Boys, not to mention a series of well-regarded dramas and dark comedies Cousins, Flatliners (later remade in 2017), Falling Down, and The Client. His filmography matched content that was popular with the teen audiences of the 1980s and early 1990s with the inner darkness of suburbia, and the rage at the heart of Middle America. He thus seemed a perfect fit for Batman

And, to be entirely fair, he was. Batman Forever may be a film riddled with in-fighting, with Tommy Lee Jones unable to sanction Jim Carey's buffoonery, with Val Kilmer playing up the charm of Bruce Wayne, with Nicole Kidman munching the scenery, with goddamn Seal on the soundtrack, and Chris O'Donnell playing a Robin in his early 20s. Compared to Burton's hypernoir Gotham, Schumacher's world is almost saturated with colour, with a heightened reality, with, decades before it became derigeur for the comic book movie, a certain self-awareness, and undeniably, a tongue-in-cheek campiness, seen best in the figure of the Riddler.

It is also one that pays open homage to the pulpy, campy, and undoubtedly larger-than-life 1960s TV series that arguably popularised the comics to a wider audience than ever before, but that, despite being a key visual example of pop art outside the galley, has largely become an albatross around the franchise's neck. Forever embraces Batman as a franchise in all his facets, even at its silliest and most operatic.It also made three hundred and thirty six million dollars; a sequel, thus, seemed inevitable, despite the film's critical mauling. It soon became so, with a sequel being greenlit within days of Forever's $52 million opening weekend, though Schumacher wouldn't agree to direct till August of 1995. 

There was just two problems ; one, Val Kilmer had passed up reprising the role (Schumacher later indicating that Kilmer, never seeing eye to eye with the director, essentially quit and was fired from the sequel, whilst Kilmer claims he was unaware of just how quickly a sequel would go into production). Instead, he had chosen to appear alongside Marlon Brando in the (in hindsight) disasterous The Island of Dr. Moreau, a film wherem in short, everything that went wrong did, with its director going mad, Brando fed his lines via an earpiece, and Brando and Kilmer nearly coming to blows. More pressing, and in hindsight, more disasterous for the film in production, Warner Bros were very very keen to make this next installment of Batman as kid-friendly, and as "toyetic", as marketable, as possible. This would eventually come on to doom the film, as we'll come on to see. 

The first problem was easy enough to solve, with George Clooney, having come to fame barely a year ago in From Dusk Till Dawn, and the medical television drama, ER, beating out David Duchovny and one of the Baldwins to the role. Clooney is...fine; there's a peculiar lack of depth to him as either an affably pleasant but largely banal Bruce Wayne, or a campy and oddly light-weight Batman, but if we considered every character who could be summaried such, we'd be here all day; if Forever has nothing else, it's that Kilmer fits the change to the more flippant style of Schumacher's duology without losing the edge that Wayne/Batman as a character has. Clooney feels like an anti-character, without the comedic chops to keep up with his villains, or indeed the rest of the Bat-Family, and simply gets lost in the mix.

What's worse is that the film places this utterly uncharismatic Batman against Robin in a film that hinges on trying to keep their partnership together...with performances that barely feel in the same studio, let alone the same film. To be entirely fair to Chris O'Donnell, his Robin is at least a consistent carry-across from the previous film, with only he and Michael Gough-the one consistent character throughout-remaining from the previous film. At least O'Donnell as Robin has the excuse that Robin is frankly the hardest Batman character to translate to live action, having long become the punchline via the much-maligned figure of Burt Ward, such that most adaptions either kill him off (hi, Zack), divorce him entirely from Batman (the godawful Titans), or make him a Lego figure. At least O'Donnell is trying. Unfortunately, as will become increasingly apparent, these performances are floating in a technicolour neon void.

This is apparent from the very first moment of the film; our heroes suit up-we'll, uh, get to the bat-nipples and bat-arse shots later-and siloutetted against the rising shape of the Giger Bat-Mobile, Robin suddenly exclaims, in a callback to the previous film: "I want a car. Chicks dig the car." For a moment, Batman stares, then grumbles, in the clunker to end all clunkers "This is why Superman works alone." The film, in all honestly, is dead on arrival; even without the winking homoeroticism of two grown men in tight latex suits with ass and chest closeups that even Michael Bay's pseudo-voyeurism may find a bit much were it on a female actress, starting your film with a throwback to its predecessor, and a lame one-liner is not an encourging start. Fortunately, the dynamic duo are off to stop crime, despite a one-liner from Alfred that clunks in their wake, and we are introduced to the best damn thing in this film.
Enter: Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr Freeze.

Arnold's version of Mr Freeze may be very different from previous (and indeed, subsequent) depictions, as a cold, distant and ultimately tragic figure (look no further than the late Bob Hastings in the stellar Batman: The Animated Series, which, frankly, stands as proof that a child-friendly version of Batman doesn't have to dumb down a single element of itself), but every moment he is on screen seems to lift the film, measurably. Whilst he maintains much of the backstory of Freeze-a wife dying of a mysterious ailment, his own condition caused by an experiment to save her going wrong-Arnold takes Freeze in such a different direction that it's oddly refreshing, even if by this point Schwarzenegger off-screen is starting to look outside acting, and on-screen seems to be playing tired comic riffs on his 80s heyday.

Freeze, in a word, makes the film watchable, because at least Arnold is having fun-a surprise given the six hours a day in the makeup chair, bulky bodysuit, and the excruciating quality of some of the lines he had to deliver, but, alone among the cast, Arnold captures the mix of gonzo-gothic grandeur and campy toy commercial, and, even if he's spouting ice-themed cheesy one-liners...it's Arnold. The man can and has made bad dialogue work before, and he does it here. Unfortunately, Batman and Robin arrive on the scene, to catch him and his ice hockey themed henchmen in the act of stealing a diamond that later becomes part of Freeze's great plan, and even more unfortunately, the film leaps into the first of its action setpieces. The action in this film is shot dreadfully, edited worse, and most of the punches, kicks, bodyslams, chases etc, are so woefully choreographed that at points I can't even compare it to the 1960s series because at least that, for all its "pow" "biff" "slap" silliness, actually nailed its fights.

The chase ends with Batman and Robin, having ended up in the low stratosphere after Freeze's rocket takes off from inside the museum that he's raiding, descending to earth via snowboard, a sure sign that a franchise is now going for broke only to have Robin be frozen by Freeze, who makes his escape, diamond in tow. Our heroes are forced to regroup with a visibly ailing and increasingly nostalgic Alfred, as the film leaps to Brazil, and one of Wayne Enterprise's labs, as the film introduces its other villain. Unfortunately, whilst Freeze is the campy charm done right, Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman) basically spends her entire screentime bouncing between vengeful earth goddess, eco-activism, femme-fatale, and patron at an all-you-can eat scenery buffet. Unlike Tommy-Lee Jones and Jim Carey, this double-act, between the dry Jones and the off-the-wall Carey, Arnold is doing so much of the heavy lifting that Thurman feels like she's barely there in the film, so unbalanced is their back and forth.

She is the camp over-the-top sentiment of Batman & Robin run its full course and it is every bit as bad as you can imagine. Whilst her initial appearance at least manages to capture the complexity of the character, from the moment she leaves the lab with Bane (the towering figure of Robert Swenson), she practically devolves into a roulette between these four parts, with a complete lack of consistency. The fact she has to spend large numbers of scenes playing off against charisma vacuum Clooney, O'Donnell, and Arnold, does not help matters. Moreover, the film's internal logic frankly starts breaking down by this point; her plan, once she reaches Gotham and threatens Bruce Wayne and its population with being mulched, seems to be to kill Freeze's wife, tag along with Freeze's plan to freeze Gotham to death, and then unleash her "Feed Me Seymour"-aping plants to reinhabit the frozen world. It was dumb in 1997. It's dumb now. Back to the Bat-action, such that it is.

The Batman parts of ...& Robin are frankly, the worst thing about the film, not least because there is at once far too much-and not enough-going on with our heroes. Batman and Robin, at emotional loggerheads with each other because Robin is an angsty teenager (despite being played by a man who was nearly thirty by this point), who desires independence but also wants Batman to treat him as an equal rather than a sidekick, basically spend about five minutes at each others necks (mostly under the influence of Poison Ivy's pollen), at a date auction where Batman and Robin try to outbid each other before Batman literally whips out a Bat-Credit-Card (actually, something literally taken from the comics) to solve the matter. The film is so terrified of having anything challenging for its audience via its action-figur-I mean, heroes fighting each other that they're back together as a duo so quickly it causes whiplash.

Worse, they never feel like a duo; even if one compares Clooney and O'Donnell to Keaton and O'Donnell, it's lacklustre, let alone the comics, or indeed the 60s incarnation-moreover, even if one argues that the film is homoerotic to a fault-something clearly aimed at the Batman franchise as a whole, and the 60s series and Schumacher's films in particular, (to the degree that Clooney played Batman as a gay man), to even try and find narrative subtext in the film (putting aside the visual subtext for a moment) is like clutching at straws-even if you compare this to Ward and West, it's not even campy fun, so much as it is an utterly sexless world, especially after Returns and Forever-one gets the feeling of Batman not so much as homo- or heterosexual so much as non-sexual-after all, action figures don't get any.

At least away from the dynamic duo, there's a little bit more meat. Michael Gough, whose character arc boils down to "I am dying, and am trying to find my brother who, in 1997, is somehow unfindable despite being the servant of the richest man in India", at least has some charming moments-the last survivor from the Burton era, his narrative arc draws to at least a fitting end, albeit saved from his mystery ailment by an annoying set of coincidences. And then, at last, at least is Batgirl/Barbara Wilson (Alicia Silverstone), whose character at least has a coherent narrative arc; arriving from school, where she later reveals she was expelled for street-racing, she at first seems to be a charming and sweet natured girl until this wilder side is revealed, after which she and Robin engage in adventures, she uncovers the Bat-cave, and is instrumental in defeating Freeze and Poison Ivy.

It's doubly frustrating because even this simply paced narrative arc is a complete mess in which your immersion is broken multiple times (how did Alfred know the outfit would fit her? How much money has she actually made street-racing? Is it creepy or creepy that her bat-suit has the same feature hugging assets as her male counterparts), and features one of the worst paced chases I have ever seen in mainstream cinema. If the film can't introduce a fan-favourite character (though, I must confess I prefer the Cassandra Cain run of Batgirl), without falling on their face in editing, tone and presentation, there is something abjectly, objectively wrong with the film. Her botched character arc is the film in miniature.

I...wanted to like Batman & Robin. I try to see the best in films. I wanted this film to prove me wrong. Is Batman & Robin actually a good movie? No. It is a mess of bad writing (courtesy of Akiva Goldsman, the mind who also brought us The Dark Tower and Transformers: The Last Knight), but the writing itself is not the problem so much as the whole concept. The cast is patchy, with only Schwarzenegger, Silverstone and Gough capturing that sweet spot between schmaltz, camp and earnestness, but when your director is perched forty feet up, bellowing that you have to remember "this is a cartoon", it's difficult to particularly get anything out of a performance. We're left with a toybox of plastic empty characters who get smashed together for a bit before the child gets bored and wanders off to another sequence, rinse and repeat for the entire film.

Yet, you can't even blame Schumacher. Two years prior to Batman & Robin, he'd made another bright, campy, quasi-homoerotic superhero movie, dominated by two outrageously over-the-top villains and focusing upon Batman and his ward trying to work together. That film, of course, was Batman Forever, and it made nearly three hundred and forty million dollars. The exhumation of Batman and Robin is a internet cottage industry, but has become, in the film's curious afterlife, a second death by a thousand takes. I think Batman & Robin failed for two reasons. The first reason is darkness. Batman films are scared of the light these days, and the Schumacher films are why-with the exception of the occasional animated film that makes it into the multiplexes, Batman from Batman Begins to The Batman are dark, often oppressive, and nigh-monochromatic films. Forever may have changed the visual tone of Batman, but it's not until Batman & Robin that the backlash, the wish to return to the Stygian gloom of Burton, kicks in with a vengence, and has haunted the Dark Knight ever since.

The other is because there was already a superb, now nigh-legendary adaption of Batman, squarely aimed at children. Batman-The Animated Series may have ended two months after Forever,  but it created a version of Batman (voiced by the openly gay Kevin Conroy), that neither dumbed down its tone, nor its storytelling for younger audiences. It is, nearly thirty years on, the greatest piece of Batman media, ever. And it did Mr Freeze, Poison Ivy, Batgirl, Robin, Bane, and so on, properly, making them beloved characters of 1990s animation. How on earth could, as the series entered re-runs in 1997, could a live-action movie compete?

So, I ask again. Is Batman & Robin actually a good movie?

No. Did it kill superhero films? No. Less than three years later, X-Men would start Fox off on a cinematic odyssey that lasted nearly twenty years and only ended with the mutants subsumed into the Mouse's trove of IP. Did it kill the blockbuster? No. We're halfway through the season, for one. It's going to get worse, but Joel Schumacher didn't kill the summer blockbuster off (nor his own career, with the slick thrillers 8mm (1999) and Phone Booth (2002) following in the next few years). Hell, he didn't even kill Batman; that was down to Warner Bros spending the next eight years fumbling through Batman projects before going with Nolan's enjoyable, if lopsided trilogy.

I wanted to hate Batman & Robin. I can't. It's a mess. It's undeniably bad. It is a franchise running on empty. And yet, for all its flaws, I at least respect what it's trying to do. It's a loveletter to the 60s series, an unapologetically camp take on a franchise so used to stolid darkness and grimness. It wants you to believe 200 pounds of Austrian muscle can be a scientist, that Batman and Robin can save the day, that for all its toy-commercially bent narrative and visuals, that there is hope and optimism in this world, that Batman can save the day, and not kill anyone, not even his arch nemeses. It may be the most hopeful Batman has ever been cinematically. But, above all, Batman & Robin is arguably one of the most fascinatingly bizarre films of the 1990s, and for all the pupported carnage it left in its wake, it may be one of the great cinematic guilty pleasures of the entire decade.

Rating: Neutral

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