“The truth of the matter is, I was bad in it. Akiva Goldsman—who’s won the Oscar for writing since then—he wrote the screenplay. And it’s a terrible screenplay, he’ll tell you. I’m terrible in it, I’ll tell you. Joel Schumacher, who just passed away, directed it, and he’d say, ‘Yeah, it didn’t work.’ We all whiffed on that one.”
Jonathan101 wrote: ↑Thu Dec 17, 2020 10:54 pmHonestly, worse superhero films have come out since. At least it isn't boring (Fan4stic).
Yeah but no franchise has been buried that bad. It took them 8 years to reboot it that time. Not even Spiderman has had to deal with that kind of a layover.
Really it doesn't make much in-universe sense either. This is meant to be the same Batman as Michael Keaton who is arguably the darkest of any Batman we have ever seen on screen... and now he is running around with nipples and a credit card.
clearspira wrote: ↑Thu Dec 17, 2020 11:24 pm
Really it doesn't make much in-universe sense either. This is meant to be the same Batman as Michael Keaton who is arguably the darkest of any Batman we have ever seen on screen... and now he is running around with nipples and a credit card.
TBF, BF kinda set that into motion. He's nowhere near as gritty as Mr. Keaton's Batman, and Mr. Carrey's Riddler and Mr. Lee's 2-Face are both campy as H, like something from the '60s Batman TV show. It's not a bad portrayal, but it did set up B&R.
All four films are wildly different from each other in many ways. BATMAN 89 felt like a return to the 30s/40s pulp noir comics. However, with BATMAN RETURNS that's where the camp got cranked up. I'd say that film and FOREVER are equally campy, only one film is set at an inkwell while the other is splashed by neon lighting. For what they are, they're highly entertaining.
BATMAN & ROBIN however seemed to aim to be much more overtly the 60s TV show, except it's done terribly. 60s Batman has wit to its humor, whereas the 1997 film was more banal and unfocused. It's clearly a rushed film and everyone is just going through the motions. Even Clooney, who isn't really given anything to work with like Keaton and Kilmer were.
I do wish Schumacher had a chance to do a director's cut of FOREVER. It was supposed to be much darker than the final cut turned out, and a lot of the cuts done were because WB didn't want to go through the same complaints RETURNS did.
For example, here's the original opening with Odo discovering Two-Face escaped and wrote on the wall with blood.
I actually read Arnold Schwarzenegger's autobiography, and apparently he had that affair with his maid around the time he worked on this movie. So every time I've watched this movie since then and see Arnie making one of his ice puns, all I'm thinking is, "I wonder if he told his maid these lines in bed?"
Schumacher used a lot of extravagant lighting while Burton was pretty much the opposite. The velocity of excessive characters is consistent between Returns and Forever, but I'm much complacent splitting them between directors.
Batman 89 only had the Joker as the excessive element. I feel like I remember the environment and social décor being more straight laced, more like Friends rather than Seinfeld. Returns starts off pretty zany to the bone when Pee Wee Herman chucks his kids into the river.
