Those crappy Batman movies

For Christmas I had the wonderful fortune of being given some Amazon gift certificates by my parents. I put them to good use and bought several things I've needed for sometime DVD-wise, like the Planet of the Apes 35th Anniversary Edition and the Joe Schmo Show. I also at long last purchased The Batman Anthology.

Since my work schedule has calmed down immensely since the aftermath of Sundance and a couple other projects which shall go unnamed, I've cherished my freer weekends as of late to watch some of these new films I've purchased recently. Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment and just don't realize it, but I decided to put off doing taxes once again in favor of a double feature of Batman Forever and Batman & Robin. The lesser of the two evils? Hmm, good question.

Originally, I had planned to begin a series of blog entries entitled "WHY!?", where I would watch bad movies such as these and catalog each fault that made me yell out "WHY!?!?" Unfortunately, I couldn't keep doing this after fifteen minutes of Forever. It just got too damn exhausting.

For quite some time now, I've been telling people that Forever is inferior to Robin to which they promptly reply "Batman Forever wasn't THAT bad!" Now that I've rewatched them both back-to-back, it's definitely that bad. In fact, I may say Batman & Robin has even grown on me a little bit. Yes, it's still pretty horrendous, but let's take a look at what each of the Schumacher Batman films has offer.

Forever has two villains trying to act like Jack Nicholson's Joker. The weird thing is that neither The Riddler nor Two Face (especially not Two Face) should act like the Joker. Tommy Lee Jones' Two Face is just downright awful for this reason. Val Kilmer looks incredibly uncomfortable through the whole film; poor Val is completely clueless as to what's going on the whole time. So am I thanks to all of the movie-style bullshit science of brainwaves throughout the whole film. And please don't forget that Val Kilmer -- NOT George Clooney like most people cite -- was the first to don the nippled Batsuit. Basically, aside from the soundtrack, the only thing good about this film is watching Nicole Kidman inexplicably joygasm every time she looks at Batman.

As for Batman & Robin, I would say its biggest crime is the treatment of Bane, who is far from the hired muscle role he plays here. If they wanted a random brainless goon, why use Bane, who is actually intelligent and educated? If the filmmakers were to have taken a look at some Batman books instead of just talk to the children in their family about who they'd want to see in a Batman movie, they could have discovered a perfect candidate in Solomon Grundy. But on the upside, at least Robin does a decent job of feigning depth in the plot. I like that Paul Dini's tragic villain-style origin story from Batman: The Animated Series was incorporated for him here. I also like the themes of family within Wayne Manor, as many times Batman stories are a family affair (especially most recently in the comics continuity with Grant Morrison bringing Bruce Wayne's son Damien into play). Of course, that storyline is forced and as cheesy as the rest of Joel Schumacher's run on Batman.

And as for the performances, Uma Thurman's pretty damn good at over the top, and she takes ridiculous dialog and makes it work. Come on, we've all seen Kill Bill. I love Kill Bill, but most of those words probably wouldn't fly if they came out of some other actress's mouth. George Clooney is a far better Bruce Wayne and even a better Batman than Val Kilmer because he at least fits in with the rest of the film. Sure, Val had the whole 'dark and brooding' thing down in a way, but it didn't work in Forever because (1) he was the only one that wasn't goofy for the duration and it was just awkward, and (2) he didn't emote one bit.

But I digress. I tire of defending a crappy movie against a crappier movie. The point I'm really trying to make here is that Batman Forever is the worst of the bunch by far, so before you try and tell me otherwise again just think back to how old you were the last time you watched it, because you were probably just old enough when you saw Batman and Robin to realize its faults. But when it comes to the previous film, who didn't love Jim Carrey in 1995?