Countdown to “The Dark Knight Rises”: Part 5 of 11 – “Batman & Robin”

If you missed it here is Part 1 of 11: Introduction to Batman “The Gift”

And here is Part 2 of 11: A look Back at Tim Burton’s ‘Batman’

And Part 3: ‘Batman Returns’

Last week’s Part 4: ‘Batman Forever’

“Death before dishonor.” It’s a common phrase. It started as a battle cry from Roman soldiers before heading into battle. Apparently no one involved in the production of Batman & Robin had said it, read it or even heard it spoken. If they had, they might have heeded its advice. Instead, they chose the exact reverse order of the phrase. They made the film, dishonoring themselves in front of the whole world. Then they committed hari-kari, which was the only thing left to do. We could have all been spared had just one person remembered the phrase. Instead, we had to suffer as a result.

Joel Schumacher had begun the dismantling of the hard work Tim Burton had put into the building of the Batman brand when he got his hands on Batman Forever in 1995. Just two years later, he had completed the demolition. As I mentioned last week, Burton’s name remained on screen for the initial Schumacher effort. This time around, his name is nowhere to be found and “effort” certainly isn’t the word I would use to describe Schumacher’s contribution to the nail named Batman & Robin plunged into the character’s coffin. An “E” for “execrable,” certainly, but “effort,” no.

Prior to release, was there any industry outsider who could have expected this? Batman Forever was certainly a downturn, but in hindsight, retrospect and definitely comparison to this, it was at least semi-competent. I know my friends and I didn’t expect it.

Just beginning high school, I had slowly broken away from my parents’ clutches. I was no longer under their tyranny, but also no longer under their constant support. Money wasn’t doled out when I wanted/ needed it, but when I’d earned it. Food and shelter were the last bastions of support given to me for free, until I decided I wanted to eat on my own. Taco Bell was my haven and I was happy to plunk down my hard-earned (for room-cleaning and trash-dumping) money there.  After all, I had an incentive. Batman & Robin collector cups.

Priceless movie memorabilia: "Batman and Robin" Collector Cups

I still own all five. “With pride” is not how I’d say they’re displayed. “With apathy” is more like it. I’ve held onto them for fifteen years now. They mean enough to me to warrant that. Whatever that amount is, it’s certainly the minimum required. I plan on keeping them, but I don’t know why. I guess to remind myself of the way things were. I should say collecting the cups was not the goal for me that summer. Every cup came with a peel-off type gam-piece like McDonald’s Monopoly. I believe you had to capture five or six characters to win the big prize and Alfred was the ultimate rarity. A friend swore a relative halfway across the country had an Alfred, but it naturally never materialized. Either way, we had a lot of fun, spent a lot of money and drank a lot of Mountain Dew. I’m pretty sure the effects of that summer still demonstrate themselves on my body. Therefore, I guess the movie provided enjoyment in some respects, just not the type or way in which it was intended.

What makes the movie so atrocious? A de-evolution took place. If the leap from Batman to Batman Returns took us from Neanderthals to homo sapiens, Batman Forever dropped us down to homo erectus and Batman & Robin took us all the way back to the days of Australopithecus. Which of course was what the ‘60s TV show was. The only difference between the show starring Adam West and the movie starring George Clooney was a bigger budget and lack of “POW!” titles appearing on the screen. But in truth that may have at least added a little fun.

Batman & Robin is the only Batman film without any semblance of a love story and those were certainly the weaker parts of each of the three preceding films, save for the emotional gymnastics necessary between Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle in Batman Returns. This film proves that there are far more things that can go wrong than the shoehorning in of a love story. Bruce actually already has a girlfriend in the movie. She’s played by Elle Macpherson. I think she even has one line of dialogue. This is used to zero effect whatsoever, though Pamela Isley tries her best to put Bruce and Dick Grayson under her love spell.

While on the topic of Pamela Isley/Poison Ivy, it’s necessary that we talk about costumes here. Look at the difference between this and this. Obviously one is a drawing, but the other is a Hollywood production where the imagined is supposed to come to life. Instead, her outfit looks like it was made of the same material stretched across the chests of Adam West and Burt Ward 30 years prior. What probably happened logically is that all of the costume budgets were spent on Batman and Robin’s nipple-suits, complete with contoured butt rubber for when they get their obligatory close-ups in the opening sequence. That and the design of Mr. Freeze’s suit.

The stellar makeup and costumes of Freeze and Ivy make for Halloween rave treats.

I love Mr. Freeze as a character. I’ll talk about that a little more when discussing both “Batman: The Animated Series” and “Batman: Arkham City.” His blue flesh and his glowing suit in the film are both pretty spectacular. I’m glad the money went into those aspects of the character. Unfortunately, he’s reduced to spouting pithy one-liners like, “Cool party” and “Ice to see you.”  I can’t believe “Let’s play a game of freeze-tag,” while he shot at people with his ice cannon, didn’t make it into the shooting script. Freeze’s henchmen also appear to be understudies from the Gotham production of “Starlight Express.” Luckily Batman and Robin’s suits both come equipped with ice blades on the bottom and truly, why wouldn’t they when Mr. Freeze is a villain they’ve never seen nor heard of prior to the opening scene.

I didn’t touch upon Dick Grayson/Robin last week. I know I’ll do so a little more when it comes to “Batman: Arkham City” again, but I actually don’t hate Robin conceptually. I believe the character can have a purpose, especially as Bruce ages. He can take on an heir to the Wayne fortune as well as his particular brand of vigilante justice. I even like the little origin story he’s given in Batman Forever. In this film, he’s reduced to being a whiner. He’s the teenage son in any TV show. He’s Rodney Dangerfield in a mask. He continually cries about how he gets no respect from Bruce/Batman to trust him and to let him fly on his own. Go ahead and rebel. That ought to earn some trust.

Not all new characters have been covered yet. I still have two to go. Alicia Silverstone is in this thing. I used to have a huge crush on her. I watched Clueless in the neighborhood of twenty times one summer. I can quote the trailers that played before it on the VHS. I even dragged my buddies to see Excess Baggage with me in theaters. I was looking forward to her in this and she’s about as pointless as a new pencil. With her Barbara Wilson set to play Batgirl, we got more “heroes” than we did villains.

Except there were actually three villains in this film, too. Six major superhero/villain characters. Nothing that anybody not named Joss Whedon can’t handle. Unless your name is Joel Schumacher. That villain is Bane. Yes, the same one who’ll be the big bad in Christopher Nolan’s trilogy-capper. In this, he may even have fewer lines than Elle Macpherson, unless you count muffled grunts. His “muscular” body resembles foam padding. He’s as throwaway as Skymall catalogues and as unnecessary as Skymall products. Last week, I said there was no more obvious a difference in quality between these ‘90s attempts at Batman films and Nolan’s than the treatment of Two-Face. Come July 20^th, we’ll be able to compare Bane, too.

There’s literally nothing from this movie that took Nolan to the current place where he is in his franchise. And of course, that’s the exact thing that brought him there. This movie killed Batman at Warner Bros. Plans to do a fifth installment called “Batman Triumphant” were scrapped. Schumacher was going to come back for it, even. Thank goodness someone wised up. Far better to keep the franchise silent than to drill it into the ground some more. It’d be eight more years before Batman graced the silver screen again. Schumacher and company had scraped the bottom of the barrel. Luckily there was another one ready to go. It just wouldn’t hit peak flavor for nearly a decade.

Next Week: Saturday morning cartoons get dark in “Batman: The Animated Series.”

Countdown to 2012′s ‘The Dark Knight Rises’: Part 3 of 11 – ‘Batman Returns’

If you missed it here is Part 1 of 11: Introduction to Batman “The Gift”

And here is Part 2 of 11: A look Back at Tim Burton’s ‘Batman’

A few months ago, I was sorting through a hodgepodge of old baseball cards. That is of course the general term I’m using to describe them, much like people use “Xerox” to describe making a copy or “Kleenex” to ask for a tissue. They were a variety of trading cards, ultimately. The vast majority were from the four major North American sports, but there were some non-sports-related cards as well. It was fun to discover old relics from my youth. Some weren’t from too long ago, like a box of Simpsons Inkworks cards I purchased about a decade previous, but some went as far back as before my time. I just got a hold of them somehow through the years. In the middle of the pre-me through semi-recent spectrum of this collection was a grouping of cards from Batman Returns. There are 14 of them total, which means I probably purchased one pack once upon a time and that was it. As you’ve read previously and you’ll continue to see though my write-up on Batman & Robin, I owned some item related to each of these Batman installments. The cards are the only piece of memorabilia I have/ever had relating to “Batman Returns,” which is kind of shame as it’s certainly my favorite of Warner Bros’ first attempt to bring the character to screen.

After the failure to be of requisite age according to both the MPAA and my parents to see Batman in theaters, I naturally aged three years in between the release of the initial film and Tim Burton’s follow-up. I still hadn’t reached 13, but neither did I see the movie with the restrictions of my parents. My Grandma (not the one who’d bestowed the original Batman figure to me) took me and because of this I was always a little uncomfortable with Michelle Pfeiffer dropping the line, “Life’s a bitch. Now so am I.” But Grandma didn’t seem to mind and watching the movie again now, I can’t imagine what she thought of the strangeness her grandson dragged her to back then.

There’s no mistaking that Batman Returns is a Tim Burton film. It carries all of his trademark oddities and you’d think this would make for a bizarre pairing when viewing the world of Gotham through the lens Christopher Nolan has now painted it, but Burton and Batman meshed so spectacularly in this film it’s actually a wonder what the heck could have turned Warner Bros to pairing up with Joel Schumacher for the next two installments, but we’ll get to that starting next week.

A bevy of 'Batman Returns' "baseball" cards lights a flame to rewatch Burton's film.

The film opens on a tone which Burton would make familiar in all of his subsequent work. The camera rises up over the gates encircling the luxurious Cobblepot estate like the first frames of Citizen Kane, descending into the home in time to witness a disturbing event. An expectant mother exerts the stressful sounds of childbirth and the newborn immediately takes up painful cries of its own, resounding in a chorus of horror. The midwife is sent scurrying out of the room. The delivery doctor follows suit, almost certainly never having brought forth such agony and despair into the world. These are the circumstances in which Oswald Cobblepot, a child soon to be dumped into a river and raised by penguins, was born.

It’s a fantastic opener for the movie and one that provides an insight into what monstrosities make up the main foe this time around and gives motivation for his moves when he attempts to resurface after suffering in a sewer with his flightless brethren for a few decades. Penguin is a man in search of the parental love he never received even from his first few agonizing breaths. His abandonment and his parents’ subsequent deaths prior to him returning to the streets of Gotham remove reconciliation from the possible equation and he’s then driven to selfish revenge. He decides that if he can’t bask in the light of unconditional love, then no one deserves that ability. And so, he plots to kidnap the first-born son of all Gothamites.

After the release of The Dark Knight, rumors swirled about who the next villain(s) would be in a potential sequel. The prevailing unsubstantiated-by-anything-whatsoever tidbit came in the form of Johnny Depp as The Riddler. Fake posters were made. Obviously this never came to fruition. Outside of Catwoman (which did come true and we’ll touch upon below), the next most frequently cited idea was hiring Phillip Seymour Hoffman to inhabit The Penguin. Like most everybody, I love Hoffman in everything and any acting talent required to portray any role is something he has in spades, but I don’t think it ever could have worked (and like The Riddler, didn’t anyway).

Part of the reason anybody was clamoring to see The Penguin in another Batman film is due to the success of the character as played by Danny DeVito in Batman Returns. However, Nolan has veered from the typical superhero film by grounding his franchise with a sense of realism. When stripped to his essence, The Penguin is such a cartoonish character. He’s a man who’s raised by penguins and eats fish. His body-type is oval. God may have made man in His image, but Penguin was modeled after Humpy Dumpty. It’s all of those qualities that make him a perfect Tim Burton character and gave him experience with roly-poly body-frames for when he chose to make Alice in Wonderland with Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. I just don’t think the character could have been perfected elsewhere more so than in the hands of Hollywood’s posterboy for miscreants.

Penguin may be the deeply onyx-colored jewel in the Batman Returns crown, but Catwoman is the character that would have wings of “Hot Topic” dedicated to her had the store existed back then and had her good name not been sullied in 2004 by a guy named Pitof. Everything about Selina Kyle in this movie oozes “outcast.” She wears huge classes, nervously interrupts business meetings only to chastise herself mockingly afterward and she sleeps with stuffed animals. In short, she’s a cat lady. Which of course ends up being her saving grace.

Catwoman (Pfeiffer) and Penguin (DeVito) converse in Burton's 'Batman Returns'.

In Batman, the titular character was given a love interest and that part of the story seemed to be the quicksand inhaling all of the quality forestation around it. This time around, the film kills two birds with one stone (or with one cat) by making a combination villain/love interest. It tightens things up so much more than the first film and you’re much more thankful for it.

Selina is a peon. She knows it and we know it. And she hates herself for it. Her arc takes her from boot-kicked to boot-kicker through meeting a man of duality, surviving death, being reanimated by her feline friends and finding an inner strength due to just plain craziness that she’s never able to fully overcome. I have a feeling the Nolan’s Catwoman storyline won’t carry the same tone. The flirting about with Bruce will assuredly remain, but I doubt the psychological damage will. Only two more months until we find out for sure.

It’s somewhat interesting to note the villainous similarities between Burton’s films and Nolan’s. Nolan used the Joker in his second installment, which Burton used in his first. And Nolan is bringing back Catwoman for his third go-round, whom Burton brought to his second. They can almost be seen as parallels to each other, as long as you view the use of Scarecrow in Nolan’s Batman Begins as some kind of “Batman: (negative)1” prequel Burton never had the chance to direct. And like Nolan’s second attempt at a Batman story so far being the superior of his two, so is Burton’s. It makes me wonder why I never bothered owning the movie and even more, why didn’t I buy at least a second pack of cards to commemorate it? To the eBay-mobile app.

Next week: Joel Schumacher picks up the torch… and drops it, burning everything in sight.