Over the last few decades, comic book movies have reached heights of storytelling and spectacle that readers could never have DREAMED of. But for every triumphant high—The Dark Knight, The Avengers—there have always been a good number of stinkers… some bad enough to become punchlines or talking points, but most mediocre and ultimately forgotten…
Until they end up here.
The Discount Spinner Rack is where you’ll find the worst, the weirdest, and the most puzzling of comic book movie misfires. We’ll take a look at the things that actually work and the parts that absolutely don’t, and decide whether it’s worth your time and your dime. In the end, movies will be marked down on a scale from $1.00 (a surprise gem) to $0.05 (better used for kindling). For the triumphant return of the Rack’s HALLOWEEN SPOOK-TACULAR, we’ll be watching a movie set on the day itself, which is all about masks, personal demons, the Carnivalesque, and a hellish neon world of garishly macabre imagination: Joel Schumacher’s 1995 three-quel, Batman Forever!
CONTENT WARNING: This review is going to contain a brief discussion of the potentially disturbing subjects of homophobia and pedophilia. Reader discretion is advised.
Warner Bros. had a problem.
Three years after the blockbuster success of 1989’s Batman, director Tim Burton had returned for a second foray down the dark streets of Gotham. The young auteur had been initially reluctant to do a follow-up to the massively successful superhero film, but the studio had lured him back with the promise of creative freedom—that he could make this second film more of a Tim Burton movie, rather than a straight adaptation of the comic books. So, with the help of screenwriter Daniel Waters (Heathers, Demolition Man), he crafted Batman Returns: a pitch-black action-satire featuring a grotesquely deformed, lecherous Penguin (Danny DeVito), a psychologically-fractured dominatrix Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer), Christopher Walken in a fright wig, and loads of violence, sexual innuendo, and political content. It was very much a movie intended for adult audiences…
… and Warner Bros. had allowed McDonalds to make Happy Meal toys based on it.
While the film was a financial success, it didn’t do quite the same numbers as the first Batman—and the audience backlash was SIZABLE. Warner Bros. received thousands of angry letters from parents who were upset to see that degree of violence and sexuality in a film about a comic book superhero—heretofore as kid-friendly a subject as one could imagine for a film1… Excepting, of course, the FIRST Burton Batman movie, which featured Batman killing with impunity and plenty of sexual innuendo… though, admittedly, far less BDSM.. The studio quickly got the message: if they wanted to stay in the Batman business, they were gonna have to keep things kid-friendly.
When talks began for development of a third movie, Burton reportedly had some ideas percolating to continue the franchise… but the execs at Warner Bros. made it clear that they didn’t want him in the director’s chair again. Burton DID stay on to produce, however, and—after initially offering the job to John McTiernan (Predator, Die Hard), who passed on the project—the studio eventually settled on Joel Schumacher to direct, with Tim’s explicit blessing.
Schumacher likely seemed a natural pick for the project: his work on movies like Flatliners and The Lost Boys suggested a pop-gothic flair (with an attendant fashionable-yet-not-too-challenging edge of darkness) that would fit comfortably in the heightened world of Gotham City. He could bring a younger-skewing, MTV-esq energy to the material… but most importantly, he would need to lighten up the Dark Knight a bit, making him an easier sell to concerned parents with toy-hungry children. And as it turned out, Schumacher was exactly the man for the job.
While Michael Keaton was initially expected to return to the role of Bruce Wayne/Batman, it wasn’t long before Keaton dropped out due to his dissatisfaction with the new, lighter direction the franchise was taking. Schumacher considered a bevy of replacement actors—such as Keanu Reeves, Johnny Depp, and Ralph Fiennes, to name a few of the weirder ones—and even made an offer to Ethan Hawke (which he rejected), before eventually settling on Val Kilmer as the new Dark Knight, largely due to his fantastic performance in Tombstone.
Replacing Batman also meant replacing his love interest, as the studio deemed 40-year-old Renee Russo “too old” to play opposite the 35-year-old Kilmer. So instead, 27-year-old up-and-comer Nicole Kidman was cast as Dr. Chase Meridian, an expert on abnormal psychology (rather that a bank chain, as the name implies).
Facing Batman in this installment would be Two-Face and the Riddler, who presented their OWN casting hurdles. Robin Williams was initially the odds-on favorite to take on the role of the Riddler, but Williams had been burned previously by the producers on the 1989 Batman—who’d offered him the role of the Joker as a negotiating tactic to haggle Jack Nicholson down on his asking price. So Williams passed on the part, leaving it to be filled by rising comedy superstar Jim Carrey (fresh from the success of the wildly transphobic Ace Ventura: Pet Detective). Meanwhile, Tim Burton had already cast Billy Dee Williams as Harvey Dent in the ’89 film with Williams’ understanding that he would get to play Two-Face in a later sequel… yet when the time came, the producers recast the part with Tommy Lee Jones (The Fugitive, Men in Black). Now, while that does sound… incredibly mean-spirited and shamelessly racist… it was also just a REALLY bad idea—because Jones clearly had no interest in this kind of role. (You’ll see…)
But the final piece of the puzzle would be the inclusion of a classic element of Batman’s mythos… introduced to make the comics more kid-friendly, and now returning to do the same for the movies: ROBIN, THE BOY WONDER!
Robin, a.k.a. Dick Grayson, was created by Bill Finger, Bob Kane, and Jerry Robinson in 1940. The initial spark for the character was that Finger, the writer on Batman’s earliest adventures, realized that Batman needed someone to TALK to: a Watson to his Sherlock Holmes, to whom he could explain the details of the plot and bounce ideas off of. Kane agreed, and asserted that Batman’s new partner should be a child, to give younger readers a character to identify with. Artist James Robinson designed a medieval-looking costume for the character based on the legendary Robin Hood, and they settled on the name “Robin” for their new creation.
… I just want to repeat that last part. Robin, the Boy Wonder, is based on Robin HOOD, not the red-breasted bird. It’s a detail that’s been lost in the ensuing decades, but the Dynamic Duo are essentially a contemporary re-imagining of Zorro and Robin Hood as partners.
Robin made his debut in Detective Comics #38, less than a year after Batman himself. A ten-year-old circus acrobat, part of an aerialist family known as “the Flying Graysons”, young Dick is traumatized when his parents fall to their deaths after their trapeze wire snaps. He soon finds out that they were murdered—their line cut by gangsters as part of a shakedown racket. But Bruce Wayne takes the young boy in as his ward, and soon reveals his identity to Grayson, offering to train him as his partner so that they can catch the crooks responsible for his parents’ deaths. After that? He sticks around just for the fun of it.
Robin is, of course, one of the most famous and influential comic characters of all time. The first kid sidekick ever created2But certainly not the last, as he inspired the likes of Bucky, Kid Flash, Aqualad, Speedy, and Toro (sidekick of the original Human Torch). Sidekicks aren’t as ubiquitous as they used to be—not since Spider-Man popularized the independent teenage superhero—but you still get ‘em here and there, what with the Superboys, Impulse, Wonder Girl, and even the new arrival, Spider-Boy., he was nigh-inseparable from the Batman mythology in popular culture for nearly five decades—popping up in movie serials, cartoons, and most famously as an exclamatory dork played by Burt Ward on the 1966 Batman television series.
The Dynamic Duo were a package set… that is, until Burton’s Batman popularized the idea of the Dark Knight working alone3Mind you, I’m just talking about the mainstream popular culture here—in the comic books, Batman and Robin had worked independently of each other PLENTY of times. In fact, by the time the Burton movie had come out, Dick Grayson had grown up, moved out of Wayne Manor, joined the Teen Titans, and ditched his Robin identity in favor of the mantle of Nightwing. Batman, meanwhile, had worked solo for a while, then brought on a NEW ward named Jason Todd to become the second Robin… but then Jason ended up getting killed off by the Joker just a year before the film released, leaving Batman a solo act again.. And while early drafts of Batman Returns had included a Robin (reimagined as a tech-savvy street kid who would have been played by Marlon Wayans), Burton dropped the character before long—seemingly disinterested in having a colorful kid sidekick running around his gothic BDSM nightmare world.
So what better way to tell audiences that this would be a brighter, friendlier movie, than by dropping a kid sidekick into the mix?
Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Ewan McGregor, Jude Law, Alan Cumming, and many, many more4A popular rumor holds that Christian Bale, the future Batman himself, auditioned for the part… but Bale had denied as much. Still, what, we’re gonna take HIS word for it? were considered for the part of Dick Grayson… but ultimately it was Chris O’Donnell, fresh from playing D’Artagnan in The Three Musketeers, who had the youthful… er, young-ish energy the filmmakers were looking for. The original plan had been to cast a fifteen-to-eighteen year old in the part—much older than Robin is typically depicted in the comics—but O’Donnell (24 at the time) apparently conveyed enough of a “teenage heartthrob” vibe that he won the role.
Batman Forever was released on June 16th, 1995… and it was a hit. A big hit. A HUGE hit.
It debuted to a $52.8 million opening weekend, beating Jurassic Park’s record for the highest opening weekend of all time (a title it would keep until The Lost World: Jurassic Park came out two years later). It remained the highest opening weekend for a Warner Bros. picture until the first friggin’ Harry Potter movie came out in 2001. And in the end, it went on to gross $184 million domestic and $336.5 million worldwide… not as much as the 1989 Batman ($411 million), but a darn sight better than Batman Returns ($266.8 million).
But more than that, there was a sense that the Batman franchise had been given a shot in the arm… a new energy and vitality that rejuvenated audience interest after the oppressive darkness of Returns. Between the colorful, wildly imaginative production design, the cast of hot young newcomers (and Tommy Lee Jones), and the newly established precedent that, if you needed to, you could just re-cast Batman like they do James Bond, and it suddenly seemed like this franchise could carry on forever…
… at least, until the SEQUEL came out, doubling down on all of this film’s worst traits, instantly burning through the goodwill that the filmmakers had earned, and killing all audience interest in comic book movies, and Batman in particular, stone dead.
… BUT! We are not going to be talking about Batman & Robin.
No, instead we’re going to be breaking down Batman Forever to see if there was MORE to this film than just neon and nipples. Is there a thematic depth to this film that gets overlooked because of its distracting spectacle? Like its characters, is this a movie with a dual personality, hiding some resonant truth beneath a veneer of artificiality and lowbrow shtick?
… And most important of all, is there a reason I’m talking about this movie for a HALLOWEEN special?
IN THIS ISSUE: Turn-your-brain-off popcorn entertainment! (With a whoooooole lotta subtext.)
On the most obvious surface level, this is a Batman that has been polished to Hollywood-blockbuster perfection. Burton’s murky, grimy aesthetic has been traded in for a glossy, slick veneer with shimmering neon highlights. Inky black shadows only serve to make the colors pop more vividly. The score by Elliot Goldenthal trades Elfman’s gothic dread for overt, strident heroism. Even the Batsuit—initially a more organic-looking, imperfect thing, then a harshly art deco armor suit—has been machined to a perfect, sculptural finish… sleek, smooth, flawless. It’s less of an art piece and more of a product.
The plotting and action in this installment are far simpler than in the two Burton films. The film opens with a bombastic action sequence, as Batman races to save a hostage from Two-Face—who’s already an established supervillain with a vendetta against Batman, effectively skipping over any narrative complexity that may arise from telling Harvey Dent’s origin story. Fight scenes are flashier and more confident, and action beats come more frequently—sometimes adding little or nothing to the plot, like the mid-point car chase that ends with the Batmobile driving up the side of a building. The script has a formulaic three-act structure right out of Save the Cat!5Not familiar with the screenwriting guide Save the Cat! by Blake Snyder, published in 2005? It’s an infamously shallow and rigidly prescriptive text that attempts to describe a universal formula for three-act cinematic storytelling. The title comes from the author’s assertion that the protagonist MUST do something heroic or sympathetic in the first act to ingratiate themselves to the audience—such as, for instance, saving a cat.
This film is broad, welcoming, and unchallenging. The main villain is played by Jim Carrey, for God’s sake! And he’s not playing, like, a scary, intense, or threatening version of the Riddler—he’s a manic goofball in a spandex leotard, doing silly impressions and mugging like crazy! I would compare him to “Frank Gorshin on cocaine”, but even Gorshin could muster moments of icy calm menace at times. This is just a straight-up comedy routine! Batman is literally fighting Ace Ventura!
But there are definitely aspects of this big, bombastic approach that do not work. In particular: Tommy Lee Jones as Two-Face.
In theory, Jones is an inspired pick to play the disfigured D.A. Dent. The man can bring a stone-faced stoicism to a role while allowing you to see flashes of emotion and conflict lingering just underneath the surface; he would seem to be perfect fit for a man at war with himself, while presenting an outward façade of cold-blooded professionalism and menace. But, you see, that would require a subtle take on the character… and this movie is anything but subtle.
So instead, Jones is forced to go WAY out of his comfort zone and play Two-Face as a cackling, theatrical maniac. Given how he’s written, he doesn’t have much choice: this is the Batman ’66 version of Two-Face, setting acid-based deathtraps and splitting the decorations in his hideout down the middle between “evil” and “good” décor. So Jones goes BIG, seemingly channeling Nicholson’s Joker… and he’s terrible at it. Worse, it means there’s no contrast between the villains; we just get TWO maniacal jesters instead of one, and every scene they have together it seems like they’re trying to out-ham each other.
It’s not like the movie is completely without depth, though.
The screenplay—written by Lee Batchler, Janet Scott Batchler, and Akiva Goldsman (The Dark Tower, I, Robot, Lost in Space… hoo, boy…)—features a clear and powerful arc for Bruce Wayne/Batman. Triggered by witnessing the murder of Dick Grayson’s family and prompted by discussions with his new psychiatrist love interest Dr. Chase Meridian6I sincerely wish that there was more that I could say about Dr. Meridian as a character, but she is the textbook definition of a perfunctory love interest, who’s only in the film to help propel Bruce’s character journey. EVERY scene and conversation she has in the movie revolves around either Bruce or Batman. She spends most of the movie hot for Batman’s rubber muscles, until she spontaneously decides she’d rather have the normie billionaire Bruce Wayne just in time to facilitate the next step in his character arc. Hell, the one character detail that they give us that ISN’T related to Bruce or Batman—that she knows how to box, and keeps physically fit—never even ends up paying off! She gets easily kidnapped by Two-Face’s goons without even throwing a single punch! So really, if not for the fact that Nicole Kidman has a tremendous amount of natural charisma and sex appeal, there would be nothing at all to this character., Bruce begins to have flashbacks to the night of his parents wake, and a red book he found on his father’s desk. This turns out to have been his father’s diary… and Bruce’s memory of the final entry (“Martha and I want to stay in, but Bruce insists on seeing a movie tonight”) is revealed to have riddled him7No pun intended. with repressed guilt over the notion that he was responsible for his parents’ deaths… guilt that had manifested as a drive to punish himself by committing to becoming the Batman.
At the end of the second act, though, Bruce is able to recover the diary in the depths of the Batcave and discovers, upon reading the final entry, that he was NOT responsible for his parents going out that night. Relieved of the burden of his guilt, there is a surreal moment as Bruce comes face-to-face with the giant, demonic bat of his nightmares… the one that inspired him to become the Dark Knight all those years ago… and he stretches out his arms—affirming his choice to fight for good as a creature of the night, and later confidently declaring to Alfred, “I’m Batman.”
… What’s that? You don’t remember that part of the story? Well, that’s probably because the whole damn payoff to this subplot got cut out of the movie.
Now, technically, anyone involved in the production could have made these cuts. Some studio exec could have ordered the subplot dropped because it was a bummer. The editor could have chopped it out for pacing, not seeing Bruce Wayne’s personal crisis as being necessary to the plot of the film. But personally… I think Joel Schumacher himself might have been behind this, as a deliberate effort to re-shape Batman’s arc into something with a little less self-loathing.
Because I think Schumacher wasn’t interested in a story about guilt and absolution. Schumacher wanted to tell a story about pride and self-acceptance.
So let’s talk about…
To start with, it’s important to know that Joel Schumacher was a gay man. As such, many of his movies contain queer subtext… some more subtly than others (I don’t think anyone could have seen the sweaty shirtless saxophone man in The Lost Boys and not gotten the message). As tolerant of queer people as Hollywood might have been BEHIND the camera, however, the industry writ large has always been aggressively heteronormative, so that subtext was basically always going to BE subtext as long as Schumacher wanted to work with the big studios.
(For the record, I should point out that I am a straight cis man myself, so if my read on any of these topics is incomplete or inaccurate, I do apologize. Let me know in the comments, and I will endeavor to correct any issues that may present themselves in my analysis.)
Secondly, you have to understand that Batman and Robin have been facing puritanical accusations of homosexuality almost since their crime-fighting partnership began. Most famously, psychiatrist Fredric Wertham asserted in his 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent8An alarmist text that scapegoated comic books as the root cause of a rising tide of juvenile delinquency. The censorious fervor that was sparked by the book was the key factor in forcing comic book publishers to implement the Comics Code Authority, a self-censorship body within the industry, and… well, that’s basically a whole ‘nother essay… that Batman & Robin’s adventures were “psychologically homosexual”, constituting a subtly but fundamentally gay fantasy of an older and a younger man living alone in a mansion, doted on by a posh British butler. (Robin was, of course, a child, so the fact that Wertham was conflating homosexuality with pedophilia—a common tactic among homophobes—should not go without mention…)
While Batman would ultimately survive this moral panic, DC editorial seemingly did everything in its power from that point forward to curtail any suggestion that the Dark Knight might swing the other way… saddling him and Robin with crime-fighting girlfriends9Batman’s designated hetero counterpart, Batwoman (a.k.a. Kathy Kane), was gradually phased out of the comics before being killed off in 1979. However, a NEW, post-Crisis version of this character would be introduced in the 52 miniseries in 2006. This Batwoman, now named Kate Kane, has become a prominent member of the Bat-family in the years since her introduction… oh, and also? She’s a lesbian. Screw you, Fredric Wertham!, briefly replacing Alfred with Dick’s aunt Harriet, etc. Nevertheless, the notion persisted… an ever-present background radiation of innuendo in the duo’s pop culture presence.
Now, by the ‘90s, when filmmakers began planning to bring Robin to the big screen, clearly the most pressing issue on their minds was the character’s age. After all, Batman fighting crime beside a ten-year-old might fly on a comic-book page, or in a cartoon… but in a live-action film, it would be harder to sell such a fanciful concept without coming off as ridiculous (or making Batman look like a child-endangering monster).10For the record, I think an actual kid-sidekick character CAN work in live-action, and in fact already HAS: just look at Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, or the Kid in Dick Tracy. So the decision was made to age up Dick Grayson.
But when Schumacher cast O’Donnell—who, again, was twenty-four at the time—the vibe shifted. This was clearly an adult man, being taken under the wing of an older adult man. There’s no mention of Dick Grayson’s age in the movie, save for a throwaway joke about him taking the superhero name “Dick Grayson, College Student”. There’s not even a suggestion of adoption or parentage when he moves into Wayne Manor—just that he needed somewhere to stay. And when Bruce shows off his motorcycle collection to convince Grayson to stick around… and later, as Bruce tries to connect with Dick because of the ways that their unique emotional alienation makes them “the same”… well, it feels like Schumacher may be trying to LEAN INTO the gay subtext a little.
Now, the screenplay is actually doing its level best to AVOID casting its central characters as gay. Bruce Wayne has a dedicated, super-sexy hetero love interest throughout the movie (for BOTH of his identities) in Dr. Chase Meridian11Though interestingly, every time Chase makes a pass at Batman—Bruce’s leather and rubber-clad nighttime fetish persona—he gets INCREDIBLY flustered and either tries to deflect with inappropriate humor (“It’s the car, right? Chicks love the car.”) or becomes openly defensive. Hmmmmmm…. Dick Grayson pointedly tries to pick up chicks—smooching one rescued damsel, and even pulling up to a street corner at one point to seemingly proposition prostitutes in the stolen Batmobile! And Two-Face, of course, has not one, but TWO sexy gun molls hanging off his arms—Sugar (slumming former child star Drew Barrymore) and Spice (Debbie Mazar).
The only explicitly queer-coded character in the SCRIPT is the Riddler: our main villain, an obsessive and flamboyant oddball who displays zero romantic interest in any of the female characters, but is endlessly enamored with, and FROTHINGLY envious of, Bruce Wayne. His entire motivation is that Bruce shot down a product proposal of his, spurring him to seek long-term revenge; he is, essentially, a jilted would-be lover.
Yes, queer-coded villains were all the rage in the ‘90s—just look at the Disney Renaissance. Homophobia was definitely “in”. But Joel Schumacher cleverly took the edge off this particular trope… by relentlessly queer-coding the ever-loving sh*t out of EVERYTHING ELSE in the film!
Those perfectly sculpted Bat-suits I mentioned before? They’re designed to look like Greek statues, with more sensual design lines and the inclusion of the infamous Bat-nipples. The color scheme for the film is bright and ostentatious, with a good amount of bisexual lighting thrown in (purples and blues). Speaking of which, the bad side of Two-Face’s outfit—as well as his face—is magenta and purple, with cheetah stripes, studs, and leather incorporated throughout. Two-Face’s goons are all oiled-up bodybuilders in leather jackets, spiked leather collars, and skin tight pants. So when the Riddler pops up in a skin-tight body stocking, hot pink wig, and wearing heavy rouge and lipstick… hell, he just blends right in.
So after a stale main plot in which the Riddler steals Gotham City’s brainwaves using a 3-D television device (a limp and ineffectual critique of television as a force for intellectual entropy that withers on the vine because it’s not connected to ANYthing), things get interesting again when the Riddler and Two-Face discover Batman’s secret identity. ‘Face just wants to kill him, but Riddler insists on creating a psychological torture trap, kidnapping Chase Meridian so that Batman will have to come rescue her.
Meanwhile, Dick Grayson—who’s ALSO learned Bruce’s identity, and has spent a quarter of the film trying to join Bruce’s nightly escapades (while Bruce has been actively trying to dissuade him from adopting his… er… lifestyle)—gets himself a rubberized, be-nippled superhero version of his circus outfit. Adopting the name “Robin”, he finally gets Bruce to accept him as a fellow crimefighter, and declare him to not just be a friend, but a “““PARTNER”””.
And with that, Batman and Robin set off to Claw Island, the Riddler’s absurd base of operations—and after a brief showdown with Two-Face (who kills Dick’s parents in this version… probably should have mentioned that), Robin IMMEDIATELY gets captured to set up the movie’s big, final thesis statement. See, the Riddler has created a death trap in which Chase Meridian and Robin are going to be dropped to their deaths, and Batman only has time to save ONE of them… so he has to choose. Save Chase, the love of Bruce Wayne’s life? Or save Robin, his new crimefighting best buddy? Is he Bruce Wayne or Batman?12But how did the Riddler KNOW that Batman would show up accompanied by a perfect second hostage, which he explicitly needed for the “choose one or the other” deathtrap to even function, let alone make SENSE? … Look. Just don’t think about it. This is a movie about vibes, not plot.
And this becomes EXTRA interesting when you add in the queer subtext. Does he save Dick, his newfound “””””””””“““PARTNER”””””””””””, thus affirming the validity of his queer-coded identity? Or does he save sexy blond doctor Chase Meridian, opting for a life of heteronormativity and turtlenecks?
So the moment finally comes, and Batman chooses to save… BOTH of them!
… Wait, what?
I mean, of COURSE he would—he’s Batman, after all—but Akiva Goldsman’s script is leaning REALLY heavily into the concepts of duality and personal identity here.
I mean, just look at the movie’s antagonists: Two-Face very literally embodies Bruce’s difficulty with reconciling the seemingly contradictory aspects of his own personality, i.e. his light side and his dark side. And then you have Edward Nygma, a.k.a. the Riddler: a man with NO identity, drawing his sense of self from a parasitic obsession with another person… namely, Bruce Wayne.13One could make the argument that Carrey’s manic, impression-heavy performance is another layer of his lack of identity, as he seems to have derived his entire persona from absorbing and regurgitating the manic and dissociated language of television—’cause again, his whole M.O. is about using T.V. to drain people’s brains, remember? So his characterization is that he’s an EMPTY person who spouts nothing but banal platitudes and pop culture references. His personality is basically “T.V. incarnate“. But frankly, that might be giving the screenwriters too much credit… Hell, even his SUPERVILLAIN persona is stolen! His question-mark motif and costume are shamelessly swiped from a puzzle game mascot!
So when Batman rescues both Chase AND Robin, this is meant to be an affirmation of both parts of Bruce Wayne’s psyche… an illustration of how he’s grown since the start of the film. In Goldman’s draft, this growth is explicitly the result of shedding the personal guilt of his parents’ deaths—an absolution from beyond the grave. But when you cut OUT the red diary subplot, Bruce’s growth reads as entirely the result of the people in his life helping him to understand and accept every aspect of who he is, and to have pride in himself. It’s a much more socially-minded, positive message!
Still, with the token hetero love interest being rescued as well, the gay subtext kinda gets thrown out the window by the end… unless, of course, you choose to read the ending as a metatextual synthesis of the text and subtext: Batman can be gay OR straight! However you want to see him! Because Batman is for everyone!
And thus ends one of the horniest and most bombastic Batman films ever made. Two-Face is dead, the Riddler is in Arkham Asylum, Bruce and Chase kiss passionately… but pointedly, Chase and Bruce part ways after that, and the final shot of the film is a shot of Batman and Robin’s silhouettes running towards the camera in front of the Bat-Signal (an homage to the opening credits of Batman ’66). Batman & Robin have ascended… and notably, Chase Meridian isn’t in the sequel.
Hmmm. Maybe the subtext is still in there.
IS IT WORTH YOUR DIME?: Y’know what? I’m gonna say “yes”. There is, admittedly, a lot of broad shtick in this movie; your enjoyment may depend on your ability to tolerate Jim Carrey (or, for that matter, Tommy Lee Jones pretending to BE Jim Carrey). But there is a solidly-constructed blockbuster movie happening here… and its got a helluva lot more style and personality than most superhero movies today!
DISCOUNT PRICE: $0.75
FAVORITE BITS:
- “Is this a Robin?”: Alright, I might be annoyed about writers conflating the name “Robin” with the bird, but at least this movie gives us a good REASON for him to pick a bird as his name. Shortly after arriving at Wayne Manor, Dick starts unpacking his stuff when Alfred comes in. He asks about a red bird painted on Dick’s motorcycle helmet, and Dick explains that his father gave him the nickname after he swooped in to rescue his brother during a aerial performance gone wrong; “he said I flew in just like a robin“. So in this telling, the name has personal significance for Dick: it represents a moment of heroism, as well as his love for his family. This scene is also a sweet little bonding moment between Dick and Alfred, as the butler assures him, “broken wings mend in time. One day, Robin will fly again… I promise.“
- Circus, Circus: Basically everything about the circus sequence is a delight! Schumacher really goes all-out with the visuals, as you can see all sorts of performers– jugglers, clowns, mohawked muscle men painted gold on drums, and a ringmaster who vaguely resembles Tim Burton– all decked out in red, yellow, and green (i.e. Robin’s colors), along with the entire set.
We get a fantastic acrobatic sequence with the Flying Graysons14I didn’t even get to MENTION this, but unlike the comics, in this movie Dick also has a BROTHER: Mitch Grayson, who also ends up being killed by Two-Face along with their parents. Mitch is actually named after the “actor” who plays him (who wasn’t REALLY an actor, but rather Chris O’Donnell’s stunt double), whose name was… and I swear, I’m not making this up… “Mitch Gaylord“., working together as a unit and strongly establishing their bond with very little dialogue… and then when Two-Face takes over and everything goes to hell, we get possibly Bruce’s most heroic moment in the film: he immediately tries to give himself up to Harvey to get him to spare the audience, but when that fails, he rushes out and starts kicking the crap out of thugs in his tuxedo, completely unconcerned with maintaining his secret identity when lives are at stake. Just beginning to end, a standout sequence. - “He took the car.”: Halfway through the film, Dick finally manages to stumble upon the entrance to the Batcave, and makes off with the Batmobile. Meanwhile, Bruce is having a date with Chase Meridian that is just about to get hot and heavy… when Bruce’s… video-phone watch?15Okay, I know Bruce is a billionaire, but why exactly does he have a video-phone watch in 1995? Is this, like, an EXPLICIT Dick Tracy reference? Because I can’t tell you how surreal it was for me to switch over from reviewing Dick Tracy to this, and to realize I’d picked ANOTHER movie with an impractical wrist-mounted communications device…!… beeps and buzzes with an incoming call. It’s Alfred, calling to let him know that Dick has run away… but since Bruce isn’t alone, he tries to keep it simple: “actually, he took the car.” “He boosted the Jaguar?” Bruce responds. “Not the Jaguar… the OTHER car.” Not getting it, Bruce asks, “the Bentley?” At which point, Alfred loses his cool, and growls in response, “NO, sir… the… OTHER CAR…!” and then Michael Gough fixes the camera with this absolutely hilarious scowl:
- Batman for the Prosecution: During a news broadcast recapping Two-Face’s origin story, we see that, during the Boss Maroni trial in which he threw a vial of acid at Harvey Dent’s face… Batman was sitting, in full costume, in the public gallery. In broad daylight. In a court of law. I mean, he HAD to be—because we literally see him leaping over the banister in slow motion in a desperate attempt to stop Dent from getting splashed with acid. And that suit? You can’t change into that suit quickly. Even Superman would take a minute or two to get that sucker on. So Batman was, apparently, at the courthouse in full costume in some kind of official capacity. Maybe he was testifying?
- EXTREME Laundry: Early into his stay at Wayne Manor, we see Dick Grayson in the laundry room, pulling some clothes outta the wash. Alfred, who’s doing some ironing, admonishes Dick to leave the laundry to him. “I’m not used to being waited on, Al,” Dick replies… and then, rather than putting the clothes in the dryer, he starts flipping each article of clothing around wildly (as if he were doing a martial arts routine) and wringing all the excess water out onto the floor before flinging them onto a clothesline. And all the while, a heavy metal guitar riff is playing out behind him, and Alfred stares on incredulously, as if flustered by this incredible display of youth and vigor. In the end, Dick saunters saucily out of the room, giving Alfred a wink and a thumbs-up, and I half expected a brand name for a soda to pop up next to him.
- BONUS! The Soundtrack: I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that the soundtrack to this friggin’ movie is incredible! Most movie albums from the ’90s had a solid hit single that the studio relentlessly pushed to sell the movie– in this case, “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me” by U2– but basically every track on this album is a winner, from such diverse performers as Brandy, Massive Attack, The Flaming Lips, Method Man, Nick Cave… it’s an embarrassment of riches if you’re into ’90s music. But the track EVERYONE probably most associates with this movie has gotta be “Kiss From a Rose” by Seal, which has a music video that was even directed by Joel Schumacher himself!
NEXT ISSUE: Alright, no foolin’ this time: for the next spin on the Rack, we’re looking at the OTHER legacy of Batman ’89—knock-offs and coattail-riders, rather than sequels! And to start with, we’re going to finally, FINALLY talk about 1990’s Dick Tracy! (I promise I’ll have it done before year’s end!)