Batman & Robin (1997)

The year 1997 was a bad year for comic book based movies.  Three of the more notoriously bad movies that started in comics were released that year.  There was the movie Steel, which I have already covered for the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  Shaquille O’Neal as a vigilante wearing a steel suit, fighting crime to keep his city safe.  Then there was Spawn, which I haven’t covered yet.  That one had Michael Jai White in it.  And finally there was the movie that I’m going to cover this week, a movie that is infamous for being a poor representation of a character that people love.  It might not be the worst superhero movie that has ever been made, but it’s very close for most people.

Batman & Robin was the fourth installment in the series of movies that started with Tim Burton’s 1989 classic.  This iteration starred George Clooney as Bruce Wayne (Batman), Chris O’Donnell reprising his role as Dick Grayson (Robin), Michael Gough reprising his role as Alfred Pennyworth, Alicia Silverstone as Barbara Wilson (Batgirl), Arnold Schwarzenegger as Dr. Victor Fries (Mr. Freeze), and Uma Thurman as Dr. Pamela Isley (Poison Ivy).  Joel Schumacher was helming a Batman film for the second time, following his experience on Batman Forever, which really should have been the movie called Batman & Robin since it was the movie to introduce the Boy Wonder.  The story is that Batman fights villains.  That’s the simplest way to describe the story, and also one of the most accurate ways.

The only way to truly write about Batman & Robin, nearly two decades after it was released, is to analyze it bit by bit.  My way of doing this analyzation is to take lines from the movie itself and use those lines to relate to the underlying qualities of the movie.  I’ll take a look at the movie through the story, the costumes, the visuals, and the aftermath.  All of this will be done by quoting specific lines of dialogue throughout the movie because the dialogue in the movie is a perfect summary of the different concepts that make Batman & Robin the movie it is.

“Allow me to break the ice. My name is Freeze. Learn it well. For it's the chilling sound of your doom.” – Mr. Freeze

One of the first things that you notice when Batman & Robin starts is that Arnold Schwarzenegger gets the top billing in the movie, playing one of the three villains.  That’s right.  It is a Batman movie where the actor playing Batman is not the top billed performer.  There are a couple of reasons for this to be the case, both relating to the star power of the actors in the movie.  Schwarzenegger was a very popular film star at the time.  The year was 1997 when Batman & Robin was released.  The movie was filmed in 1996.  He was coming off of True Lies, Eraser, Junior, and Last Action Hero.  For his role in Batman & Robin, he was paid $25 million.  Compare all of that to George Clooney who wasn’t even the first choice to play Batman.  Clooney was on ER at the time and hoping to break into the film business.  From Dusk Till Dawn had come out the year before, but that wasn’t enough to propel him to Schwarzenegger level popularity.  And that is how Schwarzenegger got top billing over Clooney.

“There's something about an anatomically correct rubber suit that puts *fire* in a girl's lips.” – Poison Ivy

Something that people tend to latch onto with Batman & Robin is the fact that there are nipples on the superhero suits.  Why are there nipples?  I don’t have any idea.  They are there.  They are noticeable.  You can’t not see the nipples as Batman stands proudly.  The problem that I have with the nipples are that they are pointless and only make the suit look like a naked rubber body.  The suits are meant to be protection.  The nipples don’t help protect Bruce or Dick from harm.  They don’t help with anything other than homoeroticism, which this movie is filled with.  But I’ll get to that later.

“Freeze in hell, Batman!” – Mr. Freeze

Batman & Robin is a movie filled to the brim with cheesy dialogue.  Joel Schumacher and Akiva Goldsman decided that they wanted to pay homage to the 1960s Adam West version of the Caped Crusader through this dialogue.  The problem was that they forgot to make most of it any good.  They threw the camp all over the movie and left out any of the quality.  The line I quoted is one of the most glaring examples of the cheese that didn’t get the polish it needed.  Mr. Freeze had numerous one liners related to cold, and this is one of the more egregious, terrible ones in that it doesn’t make much sense.  Some of the other ones at least made some sense.  That character isn’t the only one getting terrible lines.  Batman got one about a credit card.  And there were many clunky exchanges between the heroes.  But no line got my attention as much as…

“I'm a lover, not a fighter. That's why every Poison Ivy action figure comes complete with him!” – Poison Ivy

I remember watching a special feature from the Batman & Robin DVD.  I didn’t watch it on the DVD.  Someone linked me to a YouTube video of it.  In this making of featurette, two parts stand out as fitting with this line of dialogue.  One was that Schumacher was told by the studio to make the movie more toyetic, a combination of toy and poetic.  They wanted him to sell toys for them.  The other thing that stood out was when Chris O’Donnell said that Batman Forever felt like a real movie, and Batman & Robin felt like making a toy commercial.  All that Batman & Robin was made for was to sell toys.  You notice that with the constant close-ups of vehicles, suits, and weapons.  The studio wanted kids to buy the toys that the movie would produce.  It was a two hour toy commercial.

“Alfred's not sick, he's dying.” – Bruce Wayne

There was an added side story in Batman & Robin about MacGregor’s Syndrome.  It was the disease that Victor Fries was trying to cure (his wife had it) when he transformed into Mr. Freeze.  Basically, it was the catalyst for the villain, and one of the motivations for him to be so evil.  Then it is discovered that Alfred also has MacGregor’s Syndrome.  This discovery is meant to elevate the emotional elements of the film, and is a way to bring Batgirl into the story.

“No matter what anyone tells you, Bane, it really is the size of your gun that counts.” – Mr. Freeze

Can you spot the homoeroticism in that line?  It’s all over this movie.  Batman & Robin is a massively homoerotic movie.  From Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson, both full grown adults, living together to the anatomically correct superhero suits with codpieces, the movie has a lot of gay tendencies to it.  Sure, Bruce and Dick are both infatuated with Poison Ivy, but that doesn’t lessen the apparent homosexuality that is bubbling beneath the surface of the movie.

“Uncle Alfred, it's me, Barbara!” – Barbara Wilson

The only reason I’m bringing this quote up is that there are multiple instances in which Barbara tells other people who she is.  She tells Alfred that she’s Barbara.  And later, when she’s fighting the villains as Batgirl, she tells Batman and Robin that she is Barbara.  She spent a lot of time in the movie saying that she was Barbara.  And finally…

“It's the hockey team from hell!” – Robin

There are a strange number of sports in this movie.  Batman & Robin starts with the hockey players from hell that are mentioned in the quote.  People are shooting a giant diamond around with hockey sticks.  This is soon followed by Batman and Robin skydiving out of a rocket, using the doors of the rocket as boards to cruise through the air on.  It’s weird.  Later on in the movie, there’s a motorcycle racing sequence that doesn’t really do much for the movie.  If it wasn’t in the movie, the movie wouldn’t be changed.  This was basically the extreme sports version of Batman.

Batman & Robin is a movie filled with oddities.  They don’t come together in the most conformed way.  Instead, it’s a messy roller-coaster of a movie that never lets go until the final moments.  The visuals stand out, the dialogue is in your face, the story is fairly simple, and the costumes are the most homoerotic to be in superhero movies.  In the aftermath of the release, most of the people involved in Batman & Robin opened up about how bad they believed the movie was.  Few of them stand by the movie.  They tend to actually make fun of it.  And it is hard to disagree with them.

I’ve seen Batman & Robin more times than I can count.  As a child, I grew up with the movie.  I mean, I was seven when it came out.  I watched it a lot until I grew out of it.  I see now that it’s a movie geared toward children.  It's not an overly good movie geared toward children, but it’s entertaining by child standards.  They succeeded in making that much happen.

And now I will succeed in giving you some notes:

• Batman & Robin was suggested by @Shagwit82.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger is not new to the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  He was previously in Hercules in New York.
• Uma Thurman was also previously featured in the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  She was in Playing for Keeps, a movie I keep forgetting I watched.
• James Kim and Simon Kim were both in Exit Wounds, which was included in the Sunday “Bad” Movies before Batman & Robin.
• This is Kimberly Scott’s third time being in the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  She has already shown up in Santa, Jr. and Drop Zone.
• Do you know Sandra Taylor?  She was in Batman & Robin.  She was also in New Year’s Eve.
• Julie Michaels is another two time Sunday “Bad” Movie actor, being in Batman & Robin as well as Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday.
• Batman & Robin was the second outing for Joe Sabatino in the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  He was in BermudaTentacles.
• Elizabeth Guber made her second Sunday “Bad” Movie appearance in Batman & Robin.  She could previously be seen in Bio-Dome.
• And finally, let’s stay cool by recognizing that Coolio has been in two Sunday “Bad” Movies.  He was in Leprechaun in the Hood and Batman & Robin.
• I mentioned Steel at the beginning of this week’s post.
• I mentioned Michael Jai White in this post.  He was featured in Exit Wounds and two of the Toxic Avenger movies.
• Do you have anything that you want to say about Batman & Robin?  Did I miss anything when I was talking about it?  There’s a comments section where you can talk about the movie.
• Do you have a movie that you think I should watch for the Sunday “Bad” Movies in the future?  You can leave it in the comments, on my Twitter page, or in my email inbox at sundaybadmovies@gmail.com.
• Next week, I will be covering Laser Mission.  I have never seen it and I have multiple copies of it.  Let’s see how this goes.