Originally published July 14, 1995, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1130
When you consider a movie, one thing that should be factored in is: What were the movie makers trying to produce? It’s pointless to criticize Terminator, for instance, because it’s not Citizen Kane. James Cameron wasn’t trying to be Orson Welles (although Ed Wood was trying, but let’s not get into that.)
So upon viewing Batman Forever, you must consider: What were they trying to put up on the screen? A film of daring, singular viewpoint? A dark, foreboding, ground-breaking endeavor that would redefine and reshape the way comic books are portrayed?
No. Hëll, no.
The twofold purpose of Batman Forever is evident from practically the first scene, and that purpose would appear to be: To serve as damage control and to look good.
The Batman “franchise” took a direct hit with Batman Returns. Tim Burton, having given Batman a dark, foreboding feel in the first film, went above and beyond in Batman Returns, stepping up the level of both sexuality and grimness (particularly with the Catwoman licking scene, the Penguin-bites-an-underling’s-nose-off scene, and the copious amounts of blood pouring from the Penguin’s own proboscis at one point).
The underling wasn’t the only one whose nose was put out of joint. So, too, were licensees and parents who felt uncomfortable at the film’s tone and style. McDonald’s, as I recall, was particularly upset. Whoever heard of grim and gritty Happy Meals? (Well, gritty, maybe…)
So Batman Forever was conceived to rectify all the “excesses” that had gone before: to bring in a kinder, gentler, more McDonald’s-safe Batman. And in this, Batman Forever succeeds admirably.
It’s a no-brainer, designed to be watched and not observed, seen and not thought about. Cotton candy for the mind that dissolves if taste is applied. It’s a kaleidoscope with Dolby. And for today’s movie-going audiences, why, that’s just fine. There’s even a kiss-and-make-up to McDonald’s in the opening scene, with Batman informing Alfred “I’ll get drive through”—a lovely little moment that fits conveniently into a raft of McCommercials.
As a film, however—as a genuine movie, an artistic vision, a blend of screenwriter, director, cast and crew—it’s a mishmash. It’s chockablock with self-absorbed characters who act but don’t interact, passing through the story and waving to each other across great emotional distances before the whole vehicle doesn’t end so much as it grinds to a halt.
There’s an old saying that, if it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage. No one knows better than I the deficiencies in the script credited to Lee Batchler, Janet Scott Batchler, and Akiva Goldsman, because I had to try to shore it up in the Batman Forever novelization. Since my story length was more than twice that of the screenplay, I had lots of room to make the script workable. Director Joel Schumacher didn’t get that option, nor did the actors get entire additional scenes explaining just what the hëll their characters were supposed to be about. Consequently, they never really seem to know.
The plot? The plot displays the singular achievement of being incredibly complicated and, at the same time, ludicrously simple: Bruce Wayne/Batman must die. Everything else is bells and whistles. Two-Face (irritatingly called “Harvey Two-Face” at several points, making him almost sound like a Native American) hates Batman for reasons that are murky. Edward Nygma is obsessed with Bruce Wayne for reasons that are murkier. Yet that, combined with Ðìçk Grayson’s revenge kick and the juvenile Batman-fixation by “Doctor” Chase Meridian (named after two banks and yet a few dimes short of a dollar) is the sum and substance of the movie.
And what story there is to tell is told badly, with entire action sequences simply incomprehensible. Paul Dini (who certainly knows his Batman) commented that it looked like it had been edited with a salad shooter, and he’s right.
But hey—it looks good.
Val Kilmer as an ominous, whispering Batman is Michael Keaton redux. Kilmer as Bruce Wayne, however, displays the emotional depth of particle board. This despite his previous cinematic turns ranging from the wonderfully bored-but-twisted student in Real Genius to the delightfully over-the-top swordsman in Willow to his deadpan hilarity in Top Secret to his lethal gunslinging in Tombstone. The guy can act, but there’s nothing for him to work with here.
Ironically, when the Batman movies were first announced, a star more along the traditionally handsome lines of Kilmer was what the fans had in mind. Instead, the offbeat casting of Michael Keaton brought something new to the mix, and fans liked what they saw. Keaton had an oddly smoldering distractedness as Bruce Wayne, uneasy when not in his batsuit and flat-out uncomfortable in daylight. Even when he was quiet, you could see in his eyes (and eyebrows) that there was something going on upstairs. (And the gravity-boot scene remains Bruce Wayne’s defining cinematic moment.)
Kilmer just seems politely confused, even bored. He has far more in common with the 1960s TV Batman than the 1990s film version. Indeed, some of Batman’s dialogue with Chase Meridian (“You want to get under my cape”; “It’s the car, isn’t it. Chicks love the car”) could just as easily, and more comfortably, have been uttered by Adam West in his customary arch, tongue-in-cheek fashion.
But he looks good.
Chris O’Donnell as Ðìçk Grayson is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, his advanced age (mid-20s) alleviates any charges of child endangerment, which should make Bob Ingersoll happy. On the other hand, it no longer makes sense from a story point of view. Sticking to canon, Ðìçk loses his trapeze-artist parents at the hands of criminals. If he’s a teen, it’s somewhat acceptable for Bruce to take him in to Wayne Manor (risking his secret in so doing) rather than leave him on his own, or to the mercies of social services (which is alluded to at one point).
But there’s no way that O’Donnell as Grayson passes for anything less than a grown man. Bruce could afford to put him up in an apartment, or even buy a whole circus and put Ðìçk in charge. Bruce taking a paternal interest in Ðìçk doesn’t ring true considering that Ðìçk has an earring, a huge chopper, and darker beard stubble than Bruce.
But he looks good.
Nicole Kidman as Dr. Meridian is reminiscent of the occasional sitcom gag wherein the protagonist goes to a mental hospital to meet with a doctor. The doctor starts acting erratically and the real doctor enters, chiding the fake doctor, who turns out to be in actuality one of the patients. Same thing here: You keep waiting for the men in the white coats to show up, tuck Chase securely into a straitjacket, and apologize profusely for allowing her to escape from Arkham Asylum. She alternately throws herself at Batman and brushes him off, making her come across like a tease more in need of therapeutic help herself than Wayne.
But she looks dámņëd good.
Tommy Lee Jones as Two-Face is most conspicuously left afloat by the aimless script. The most psychologically complex villain in the Batman pantheon (with the possible exception of the Joker), here Two-Face is—ironically—one-note. His penchant for two-related crimes vanishes completely after his initial strike against the Second National Bank (gee, that was inspired; how long did that take them to think up? Two seconds?) as he spends the rest of the film displaying none of the ingenuity or deviousness we’ve seen in the comics or animated series. Jones tries to cackle and howl his way through, pausing briefly from time to time to remove bits of the scenery from his teeth.
His scenes with the Riddler evoke nothing so much as memories of the 1960s Batman movie and the sequences between the Riddler (Frank Gorshin) and the Joker (Cesar Romero) wherein they would try to top each other with demented laughter. (Gorshin won, hands down.)
But he looks good. Well, he looks okay.
Speaking of Gorshin: Of all the 1960s TV villains, he’s the only one who could step into his movie incarnation without missing a beat. Nicholson’s Joker, DeVito’s Penguin, even Pfeiffer’s Catwoman, were largely originals. But Jim Carrey, while certainly entertaining enough, brings nothing to the Riddler (nor does the script) that Gorshin and the old TV series didn’t already accomplish, with the exception of Nygma’s ill-motivated fixation on Wayne, and his increasingly garish costumes, awful haircuts, and cane maneuvers.
The only twist is the plot device of Edward Nygma’s “brain drain” device, absorbing knowledge from all the people of Gotham. The invention itself is called “The Box,” which is odd considering it’s not rectangular. Frankly, the so-called Box looks for all the world like it should be positioned in front of a movie screen, alongside a robot and human, hurling snide remarks at really bad B-films.
One wishes for the originally-discussed Robin Williams, who would have left the script far behind (maybe not far enough) and done his own inspired, original thing.
But—you guessed it—he looks good.
And that’s all that’s required these days. To slightly reword Billy Crystal, if it looks good, you feel good. And people come out of this film feeling marvelous.
But I haven’t even begun to approach the single biggest problem with the film: Batman’s character arc.
Because Hollywood is what it is, characters must have an arc. In Bruce Wayne’s case, it’s: Bruce has angst over his parents’ death; Bruce must resolve angst over his parents’ death. This arc formula has been cheerfully layered over Wayne without giving the slightest heed to the notion that if it’s resolved, you no longer have a character.
Now it’s not as if there aren’t folks who became superheroes for no other reason than that it seemed like a good idea. Indeed, many of Batman’s Golden Age and Silver Age contemporaries needed no other motivation other than it was The Right Thing To Do after acquiring powers, frequently through some mishap.
But Batman was always different. He was driven by his parents’ death, driven to work and train for any one of (or combination of) a variety of reasons: guilt, anger, guilt, vengeance, guilt, altruism. The compulsion, though, was always there. He had to be Batman, because the death of his parents was so traumatic that he simply had no other way of dealing with it.
Batman Forever unwisely chooses to address this. It’s dangerous territory in the best of hands, and this is not the best of hands. Any endeavor to portray a feel-good Batman, a Batman who wears the cape and cowl not because he must, but because he feels like it, rings false. Batman well-adjusted is Batman kidding himself. It’s like Edina on Absolutely Fabulous saying, “I have to convince my daughter I’m not an alcoholic so I can start drinking again.”
Unless, of course, one’s goal—as noted—is to hie the cinematic Batman back to 1960s TV show. It may be—again I speculate—that Warner Bros. dictated the following: The Bat-Franchise Is Endangered, So Make Batman Friendlier. Eliminate those nasty, irritating, dark compulsions so that he can feel good about himself instead of being brooding and threatening.
Give him a partner with whom he can trade banter, and a girlfriend who loves him unreservedly, even excessively (even if she’s so dense that, when it comes to detecting secret identities, she makes Lois Lane look like Sherlock Holmes.)
In short, make it so that future Batman films can be as friendly and accessible as James Bond movies (which were, reportedly, the stylistic inspiration for the overall feel and gadgetry.)
I won’t go into detail about how they try to accomplish this reconstruction of Batman or even if they fully manage, because the fact is that parts of that storyline were edited from the final print, either for time or because somebody got cold feet. As a result the resolution is confusing and a hodgepodge.
But it doesn’t matter because, ultimately, Warner Bros. got what it wanted. And the viewers got what they wanted, or perhaps what they deserved. After three films we’ve yet to see a Batman movie with anything remotely resembling a story, or with Batman acting like a detective. (Closest we came was the animated feature, and even that fell apart halfway through). But it’s irrelevant because the true motivation was accomplished. The franchise was saved, and it looks good.
Just like the good old days. Like the recent spate of movies such as The Flintstones, Addams Family, Car 54, The Brady Bunch Movie, the Batman movie series has succumbed to the Hollywood drive towards films driven by 1960s nostalgia. He’s no longer a Batman for the 90s, possibly because no one is sure yet what the hëll the 90s is. So he’s now a Batman for the 60s, having moved away from a big-screen interpretation of the comics and towards a big-screen interpretation of the 1960s TV series.
What makes me think that, aside from my own personal view? Well, as I was departing the theater, I eavesdropped on a group of young men in their late teens. Clearly, they loved the film, and they were eagerly discussing who they’d like to see as a villain in the next film.
The consensus?
King Tut.
I hear Brando is available…
(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705. He’d like to see Clayface, personally. The stuff they can do nowadays with morphing would be worth the price of admission.)
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Me and the Batman movies have a strange relationship. I’m actually one of the few who prefers a lighter Batman. I’m more of a “Batman: The Brave and the Bold” kind of guy than a “The Dark Knight” kind of guy. However, it’s also pretty much asknowledged that the lighter Batman films just aren’t very good.
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It’s interesting to look at this review after so long. I agree with it almost 100%, but the one thing I disagree with at this point is the idea that the third and fourth films were significantly worse than the first and second films. well, I always thought that, outside of the scenes where Keaton and Pfeiffer interacted with each other, Batman Returns was a horrible film.
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But at the time you wrote this, I would have said that the first film was a good film. By around mid 1996, I would have said that the first film was very much like what you’re describing above. Tim Burton’s Batman was a success of style over substance; and there was a lot of style to be sure. But I don’t think that I’ve been able to watch the whole thing before giving up due to boredom since 96. After five or six viewings, Burton’s Batman’s lack of substance really shows through and the “wow” factor of all the style wears off.
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It’s a film that looked awesome for its time, but once the novelty wore off of how it looked, well, it just looked kinda good. This film fit in with the franchise perfectly. It looked good, it made very little sense, it had a thin plot and it was an attempt to push a film that was designed to push style over substance at the box office. It’s only real flaw in retrospect insofar as being a part of this franchise was that it went from being dark to jarringly lighter general tone and a hëll of a lot more garish to look at.
I agree.
Okay, I can grant that it’s arguable that the 3rd isn’t worse than the first two. I disagree, they’re all style of substance, but at least the Burton movies make an attempt at substance, and the style isn’t cotton candy pink. But the 4th? It’s garbage, plain and simple.
This is some great timing; Comics Alliance just posted their review of Batman Forever and are starting B&R next week. I’m really enjoying their take on it, which is that all four of the 80s/90s Batman films are bad, the only difference is that the last two has enough light so that you can see what’s happening. All four of the films are extremely campy, but people have a hard time accepting that.
I think I hated Batman Forever more than Batman & Robin, possibly because I wasn’t expecting the latter to be good. But Batman Forever had an amazing trailer, I loved the two Burton films, and, well, Flatliners was a good movie. So when it turned out to be a complete mess, I was confused and angry. B & R was just more of the same.
Batman Returns looks like a masterpiece next to what would immediately follow this particular steaming pile of a film.
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Looking back on this one, beyond the bad casting and acting, beyond the complete lack of a coherent story, the one thing that stands out in my mind is the awful scenery which would only get worse in Batman & Robin. All the neon to try and brighten up night scenes. Ugh.
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In the end, the scenery alone turned the Schumacher Batman films into something that, imo, never really felt like a Batman film. At least Burton had a pretty solid idea of what Batman was about.
“What Batman was about?”
But Batman’s about a lot of different things. In the ’40s he would fight vampires and monster men in addition to crooks. In the ’50s he would go on sci-fi adventures with Bat-Mite. In the ’60s he would escape from garish supervillian death traps. In the ’70s, he was what Morrison termed a “hairy chested love god” and would have James Bond style adventures against guys like Ras al Ghul. The only thing that remains the same is that he’s a costumed crime fighter who’s also a rich guy.
Batman’s an icon because of how he can change to fill different roles and still be Batman.
I think when you look at the fact that the Nolan Batman films are much closer to Burton’s films in style and tone, compared to Schumachers, you can see what Batman has been about for pretty much the last 30 years or so.
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While I readily dismiss the camp of the 60’s TV show, even that early Batman of the 40’s was a borderline hero at best – not everybody survived encounters with him.
“Like the recent spate of movies such as The Flintstones, Addams Family, Car 54, The Brady Bunch Movie, the Batman movie series has succumbed to the Hollywood drive towards films driven by 1960s nostalgia.”
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And now, nearly two decades later, we’ve got films driven by 1980s nostalgia. So at least Hollywood is consistent. I’m dreading the day in 2030 or whenever when Lost: The Movie comes out.
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“So at least Hollywood is consistent.”
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Eh, Hollywood has always been like that. Nothing new.
Hearing that they had been discussing casting Robin Williams as the Riddler makes me sad for what could have been. Carrey would have made a better Two-Face than Jones, as well, I think…
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And you definitely called it on WB trying to aim the franchise toward the old Adam West TV show – heck, the next guy to play the part, George Clooney, baldly stated that he had used Adam West’s performance as his model for how to play the Batman.
From Craig J. Ries: “I think when you look at the fact that the Nolan Batman films are much closer to Burton’s films in style and tone, compared to Schumachers, you can see what Batman has been about for pretty much the last 30 years or so.
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While I readily dismiss the camp of the 60′s TV show, even that early Batman of the 40′s was a borderline hero at best – not everybody survived encounters with him.”
Well, you have to understand that I’m someone who burned out on Batman as a joyless, anti-social dark avenger in the ’90s around the time of Knightfall. I just don’t find him any fun to read about. My favorite version of Batman is the one from the Brave and the Bold cartoon who’s always serious and kind of a grouch but rarely a depressing jerk. I’m actually a proponent of more fun and humor across the DC line, which I think they’ve largely been lacking.
To me that feels like going too much in the other direction. Fun and humor have their place in comics, but not in Batman comics, except in moderate doses, IMO.
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I am more comfortable with a middle-of-the-road approach. Batman in the 1970s and 1980s, and the 1990s animated series. Dark and driven, but not quite sociopathic.
Actually, I always thought the B&B Batman as the one who realizes that he’s the straight man in that universe and he’s fine with it.
This was the film that told me I didn’t want to see Batman and Robin. Fortunately, I listened.
Also fortunately, Schumacher and Co. didn’t kill the franchise completely, as it only took eight years before we got Batman Begins.
Hey, PAD? Seems to me I remember reading your novelization after seeing the movie, and you had “your” opening scenes out of order from the movie – which I thought made much more sense (your book, I mean). I always wondered if the script was written the way you had it set out in your book, and that the movie was changed in editing to have more of an exciting opening – or if you changed it because, well, it made more sense?
I honestly don’t recall.
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PAD
They re-edited the start of the film. I believe it originally started with a deleted scene at Arkham Asylum with Two-Face escaping, then it went to the scene at Wayne Enterprises where Bruce meets Edward Nygma and then sees the Bat-signal. After this it would have picked up essentially where the film did with Bruce suiting up and heading off to the bank heist. Presumably they moved the heist to the start of the film to give it a more punchy opening.
Personally, I always rather liked Forever, I think if Batman & Robin hadn’t taken Forvever’s excesses to the absolute extreme, Forever might not be so badly thought of.
I’d love to see the film re-cut back to it’s original form, removing the cartoon sound effects and restoring the scenes from Bruce’s childhood where he fell into the well. I believe Schumacher was willing to re-cut the film for DVD but Warner Bros didn’t want to spend the money (which is fair enough I suppose, it probably wouldn’t have recouped the costs).
That said, I think Tommy Lee Jones misjudged how he should have played Two-Face. I think the script recognised that Bruce and Harvey were characters with two halves that were at war with each other, and the story looked at how Bruce got over that but Harvey didn’t. But TLJ was apparently competing with Jim Carrey to see who could go the most over the top, so there was no duality or subtlety to his performance to really offer any sort of counterpoint to Bruce/Batman.
The thing I most regretted about “Batman Forever” was the dumbing down of Two-Face, and the waste of Tommy Lee Jones in the role. If I had been the supreme overlord of the Batman franchise in the 90’s, I would have done the first film much as it was…but don’t kill off the Joker…what a waste! The 2nd film would have dropped the Penguin entirely – Catwoman and a mob boss/crooked politician antagonist (ala Boss Thorne) would have sufficed. And I would have used the 2nd film to build up Harvey Dent as a friend of Bruce Wayne and ally of Batman. Then, in the 3rd film, when Dent becomes Two-Face, it would mean something to Batman (and the audience.) Here’s a deadly foe, whom Batman must try, not merely to defeat, to to save and redeem. Needless to say, Two-Face would either be the sole villain of movie three. (It would have been good to have the Joker return and have Batman and the Joker in a war for Dent/Two-Face’s soul…but would that have occurred to me before Nolan’s “The Dark Knight”??? Not sure.) It would have been really interesting to have Billy Dee Williams become Two-Face. After all, Dent was supposed to be handsome and charming…to heighten the contrast with his scarred alter-ego. It might have been a challenge to the make-up artists to make an African-American Two-Face work, but I think it would have been worth it.
“Joel Schumacher is history’s greatest monster!”
— ROBOT CHICKEN
I suspect that if BATMAN AND ROBIN didn’t exist, BATMAN FOREVER would be considered the worst superhero movie ever, from the Ðìçk Grayson who’s a helpless orphan (yet as big and possibly old as Bruce Wayne) to the cliched “ditzy ‘brilliant’ sexy female” to the “holey rusted metal” line.
What always stood out to me was that the brain-drain things sent out glowing green beams of energy that went right to the villains’ lair. There was literally a lit-up trail to the bad guys, and yet only B&R went there. I guess in the Schumacher universe it doesn’t take much to be the World’s Greatest Detective.
It’s possible that those beams were only visible for the benefit of the viewer.
Not a big fan of the Batman but, for me, BATMAN BEGINS blew the others right out of the water. Though I did find some of the 60s tv series’ villains (Burgess Meredith as the Penguin for example) to be a lot of fun, too.
Not only was Two-Face “irritatingly called ‘Harvey Two-Face’ at several points”, but noted brain surgeon Drew Barrymore…on Tom Snyder’s show, I seem to recall…called him ‘*Tommy* Two-Face’!! Which got a Dan Aykroyd-esque guffaw from Snyder.
I will say my favourite moment in this movie is when Carrey cranks his boss over the head with the coffee pot and goes, “CAFFEINE WILL KILL YA!”
And my favourite bit from the novelization is how PAD describes Edward Nigma’s face as one of rubber, which I always saw as riff on Carrey’s physical comedic performance he was known for at the time.
I don’t know if resolving Bruce’s angst destroys Batman.
I could see the character moving to a point past the angst where he decides to stick with being Batman because he likes saving people and stopping criminals. Cops and firemen do the same thing without major childhood trauma.
While I’m here, let me float something regarding Robin. Bruce spent years studying detection, science, fighting, etc. before becoming Batman. What’s the natural arc for any advanced student? To become a teacher. I’d even go so far to say that Batman has one advantage over most super-heroes: he can train new Batmen.
Don’t ask me why DC never thought of a comic called “Batman Academy” or “the Dark Knight School”
I went to “Batman Forever” with a lady friend, who made comments afterwards about how gay Gotham seemed to be. She described it as a city planned as “Contemporary Bathhouse.”
I did get the DVD of “Batman and Robin” with Schumaker’s commentary on it. And I do recommend renting it just for this. Sure, Schumaker might be trying to put all the blame on the suits. But his comments about being told to make the movie “toyific” for merchandising seem on the mark.
Does he explain why Batman and Robin had nipples on their costumes but Batgirl didn’t?
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PAD
She didn’t spend us much time down in that cold, cold cave?
Nope. My guess is that she had a bra on under her costume, while the guys were barechested underneath.
The original Batman movie had such a profound effect on me as a youngster that I will love it dearly and defend it to no end. Maybe the last act of the movie falls apart. But one thing it has is a memorable quote in virtually EVERY scene and almost every scene is memorable. How many movies can truly claim that?
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My biggest problem with Batman Begins is…well, it’s boring. I can’t get through it on DVD without dozing off. The fighting scenes are choppy. I can see why a lot of people love it but…it just doesn’t do anything for me.
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As for Forever…I remember looking forward to the movie and being let down. Gotham was ruined, Two-Face was squandered. The Animated Series was so, so good that anything paled in comparison. Sometimes I lay awake at night and wish that when I wake up there will be a copy of a Tim Burton directed third film with Robin Williams as the Riddler and Keaton as Batman. For some reason, it never happens.
We need a Transformers 3 review Cowboy Pete…
PAD Says: (Closest we came was the animated feature, and even that fell apart halfway through)
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Woah, THAT needs some qualifying! Peter, did you REALLY think BTAS ‘fell apart’ halfway through? Do you still think it?
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Here was me considering it as pretty much the finest, purest version of Batman EVER.
Do I STILL think it? I dunno; haven’t watched it in years.
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PAD
I’m pretty sure he meant the animated movie, not the show.
Yeah, I think he was talking about Mask of the Phantasm and not saying that he thinks the TV series fell apart halfway through it’s run.
Wait, you think I meant the TV series? No, I loved the TV series. Since what I was referring to was the animated feature, “Mask of the Phantasm,” it didn’t even occur to me that you thought I was referring to the ongoing series.
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PAD
I have long called this one “Batman For(No Reason Whatso)ever. A waste of talent and time with the worst screen Batman of our time. Clooney was not such a good Batman, either, but at least I could buy him as heroic. Kilmer was basically filling space, and had zero chemistry with anyone else in the film.
Great retro-review Peter. I was 16 when the original Batman movie came out in 1989 and LOVED it. As I got older I preferred the animated series over the movies. Now I prefer the Nolan movies over the animated shows. Looking back Batman Forever I liked it better than Batman Returns because it did balance the dark aspects of Batman with the kid friendly approach. I still love the end when Batman dives over the edge to save Robin like he did. I can actually remember me and my friends jumping out of our seats and giving each other high fives!It was a comic book movie and did not applogize for it. Now as for the bat nipples…meh. LOL It was the 1990’s. Now on the other hand Batman and Robin…dont get me started. LOL
Not a favourite film of mine because Two-Face is my favourite Batman villain and seeing him played for laughs was painful. I did like the Bruce-Dr. Meridian bits. The thing about those, though, is there’s that seen where Bruce reads something in his one of his parents’ (I can’t recall if his was his mother or father’s) diary and we don’t find out in the movie what it was. Even in these early days of the Internet I was so sure there was a key missing scene in there that I actually hunted down a copy of the script and found out what it was. For those who are curious he learns in that diary that his parents didn’t want to go see the movie that they were killed walking home from, but Bruce talked them into it. It’s a powerful bit and really should have been in the movie (it’s since been released as a deleted scene in the collector’s set of that Batman movie series).
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Interesting that you mention McDonald’s in your review. While I didn’t care for the movie, the drink glasses that McDonald’s made for the movie are one of their best movie tie-in collectibles. Made of actual glass and creatively sculpted. For example, the Two-Face glass’ handle is his coin spinning as he tosses it. It could in fact be argued that the movie’s greatest contribution to the arts was these gorgeous drink glasses.
Batman Forever? Not a great movie…a waste of time in my opinion. The Bale Batman is my fave, and still is not all it could be…