Franchise Friday: Batman and Robin (1997)

Cool, cool, cool.

Batman and Robin has a reputation. 

Joel Schumacher’s 1997 entry, the fourth and final in the series that began with Tim Burton’s Batman in 1989, was a critical disaster and a financial disappointment. It has an abysmal 12% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and barely cleared $100 million at the box office, making it the lowest-grossing live-action Batman film. It torpedoed Schumacher’s directorial career, almost ended George Clooney’s film career before it started and laid the lucrative Batman franchise dormant for eight years. It has a reputation not as just a bad movie, but as one of the worst of all time. 

But here’s the thing: It’s not even the worst Batman movie ever made. 

Now, everybody chill. This isn’t a defense of Batman and Robin. It’s a neon-filled nightmare whose very existence is unfathomable. I can’t imagine Warner Brothers executives, less than a decade after Tim Burton’s gothic and gloomy take revitalized the Bat-brand, seeing the dailies from Schumacher’s campfest and thinking “yep, this is where we should go.” The only explanation is that they looked at the box office receipts of Batman Forever and just told Schumacher “do that, but more.” 

But Batman and Robin is so bad that it becomes an almost perfect object, a trainwreck that you can’t stop watching. It’s a dull story, but the experience of watching it is never boring; every second, there’s a new “choice” that leaves you slack-jawed and agog that Warner Brothers thought this was what summer audiences wanted in 1997. As such, watching it is an act of sheer fascination, something I can’t say for Schumacher’s shrill and obnoxious Batman Forever or the angry dudebro rantings of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. 

Holy crap, Batman! 

Batman and Robin is a mess, but unlike Schumacher’s previous franchise entry, it’s a mess with a point of view. Where Batman Forever increased the volume and neon, it could never decide whether it was a film set in Tim Burton’s gothic universe or a big-budget version of the campy 1960s show. 

From scene one, Batman and Robin sets its foot clearly on the Adam West/Burt Ward side of the canon. As if to clue us in from the get-go that he’s not going to play this seriously, Schumacher opens with the requisite montage of Batman and Robin suiting up to fight crime. We get the gloves, the boots, the cowl, the cape. And then the montage keeps going. We cuts to Bat-butt, Bat-nipples, Bat-crotch. It actually deserves the laugh it’s going for. But then the characters open their mouths. 

“I want a car. Chicks dig the car,” Chris O’ Donnell’s Robin pouts. 

“This is why Superman works alone,” Batman (now played by George Clooney) responds. 

The scene keeps going. Robin makes a quip to Alfred, who makes a joke about pizza. Now, rather than being a joke about Batman and the aesthetics of superhero movies, Batman and Robin is just another “joke”-filled action movie, starring people who can’t quite navigate the tightrope that camp calls for, so every line of dialogue falls flat. Schumacher is trying to make a big-budget version of the 1966 film, but neither he, the majority of his cast or screenwriter Akiva Goldsman have the skills to pull it off. It was also unfair to expect audiences to go along for the ride. After all, Burton launched the series by promising a gothic, semi-serious take on the character, more in line with the comic books than the weekly TV show. Despite Batman Forever’s lighter tone, audiences couldn’t have been pleased when Schumacher went full-bore “Holy cow, Batman!” on them. 

But that’s exactly what he does. His set pieces are colorful, costume-laden extravaganzas. The opening sequence, set at an ice-filled museum, not only features hockey mask-clad villains playing keep away with a diamond and ice skates popping out of Batman and Robin’s boots, but it also features Batman sliding down the back of a frozen brachiosaur like Fred Flintstone. 

Gone are Jack Nicholson’s silly and sadistic Joker, Danny Devito’s grotesque Penguin or Michelle Pfeiffer’s slinky, psychologically disturbed Catwoman. Instead, we get Arnold Schwarzenegger in a metal suit and blue makeup as Mr. Freeze, whose superpower seems to be ice-related dad jokes. We get Uma Thurman vamping it up as a Mae West-inspired Poison Ivy. We get Bane, one of Batman’s most notorious foes, as a ‘roid-raging henchman who can’t string two words together. The film’s action pieces take place on cavernous sets filled with pink neon or black lights, the stunt work feels more like the Marvel stadium show I once took my son to. The entire thing is loud, bright and filled with spectacle, but never once does it feel spectacular. Maybe it’s missing some superimposed “BAMs!” “BIFFs!” and “POWs!” 

Why did this approach work so well in the every enjoyable 1966 film and fall flat here? Well, one reason is context. Fans of the Batman TV show were in on the joke, and the style was of the moment. Audiences going into Batman and Robin likely expected another brooding, gothic blockbuster (even though Batman Forever should have warned them where Schumacher was heading). 

But the other answer? To crib a line of wretched dialogue from Batman Forever: showmanship. 

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More noise, more toys 

In ensuing years, Schumacher has apologized for the film, saying that he had been instructed to make it more “toyetic,” creating a movie that existed to sell plastic cars and gadgets to kids. While that is definitely evident in the ensuing film — Batman, Robin and Bat-girl (surprise!) have multiple costume changes, a plethora of new gadgets and new vehicles...including at one point what looks like a Bat … swamboat...but for ice?  — Batman and Robin would be a mess even without the marketing add-ons. 

For starters, Goldman’s script is a plodding disaster of incidents and episodes that never connect or follow through. Freeze’s goal, for instance, is to acquire diamonds so he can heal his sick wife; but aside from that being how Batman and Robin find him and a last-minute betrayal by Poison Ivy, there’s no real thread to this plot. And Ivy’s origin is a blatant carbon copy of Catwoman’s from Batman Returns, right down to being the mousy assistant murdered by an evil partner (John Glover seemingly transporting in from a cartoon). Ivy is turned from a meek researcher into a vamping, seductive force, driven crazy about how man has destroyed the environment and bent on stopping all fossil fuel emissions. She’s not evil; she’s just 20 years ahead of the curve and probably has a point. 

When the film focuses on its big, silly set pieces, it almost works. Schumacher understands the aesthetics of camp and has fun going big and absurd. With its canted angles and fluorescent colors, the film is garish, but purposefully so. It’s an homage to the 1960s show, but it can’t pull off the jokes with a straight face; a moment involving a Bat credit card might be the nadir of blockbuster filmmaking. 

But Schwarzenegger and Thurman at least know what type of movie they’re in and they meet Schumacher at his desired level. Schwarzenegger’s puns are awful and his villain silly — at one point, he leads his henchmen in a sing-a-long of the Snow Miser’s song from The Year Without a Santa Claus  — but with his constantly lit cigar and a wry grin, you can’t really accuse the actor of phoning it in. And Thurman’s sexualized Ivy is awkward and silly, and wrapped up in a Hanna Barbara-level story about love potions, but Thurman puts everything into it; the problem is that the film can’t rise to her performance. For the campiness of Schwarzenegger and Thurman to work, they must met by a strong directorial hand, and Schumacher understands the look but never knows how to play the film in a way that doesn’t feel like a kids’ movie or a Batman burlesque show (the horniness from Batman Forever is again at play). 

And when the film drops away from the villains, it’s a black hole of energy. Chris O’ Donnell continues to portray Robin with all the joy and charisma of an oak tree. Alicia Silverstone’s line readings are so flat and disaffected that I began to wonder whether she was being held hostage. It doesn’t help that the two are given nothing to play off. Robin is saddled with a ridiculous Poison Ivy obsession that puts his relationship with Batman at odds, and Silverstone’s character is...rebellious? Angry? In a waking coma? Michael Gough as Alfred tries to bring some class and heart to the proceedings, but he’s largely confined to his bed as the film pretends that it’s going to let Alfred die, only revealing in the last 45 minutes that his incurable disease is the same one Freeze can cure. 

And poor George Clooney. There is a world where he could be a great tortured, brooding old Batman. But he’s saddled with a script that makes Bruce Wayne an utter non-entity. Any duality or psychological trauma that has traditionally been a part of the character is tossed out the window, with nothing to take its place but Clooney’s charm. There’s a weak subplot about Bruce Wayne deciding whether to settle down with his long-time girlfriend (Elle MacPherson), but it amounts to one scene of surprisingly amateurish hemming and hawing from Clooney and one conversation that amounts to “Do you want to get married, Bruce?” “Nah.” “Okay.” There’s a brief attempt to make Bruce a father figure to O’Donnell and Silverstone’s characters, but it’s treated with all the nuance and subtlety of a sitcom. And once he’s in the suit, there’s nothing fierce, badass or even endearingly silly about Clooney’s Batman. It’s literally just Clooney in a Batman suit. Watching this, it’s shocking to think he’d go on to be a respected director, producer and Oscar-winning actor (of course, paying attention to this script, it’s also shocking to think Akiva Goldsman would also win an Oscar several years later). 

Batman and Robin is a trainwreck, but unlike Batman Forever, there are a few moments where it briefly connects with the campfest it wants to be. The problem is that’s only about 10 minutes of a movie lasting more than two hours. And coming only eight years after Tim Burton revitalized the character, it’s a tonal shift that feels parodic, toothless and cheap. I’m not the biggest fan of Burton’s Batman films; I think the first is fun but flawed and the second too dank. But they are cohesive, definitive statements. With Schumacher, these are corporate mandated messes carried out by a director whose best work was with smaller, character-based films. 

Batman and Robin is a bad film. But without it, we’d likely would have not seen the course correction Nolan brought eight years later, and another beginning this week with Matt Reeves’ The Batman. So, in that way, maybe it’s worth being thankful for. But not too much; I mean, chill out, man.