Joel Schumacher's infamous Batman & Robin gets another look. Join us as we revisit this film's icy Dark Knight legacy....
W. Adel Shalaby
Batman & Robin. A superhero movie relic frozen in 1990 s Hollywood excess. Its very name is still a hushed whisper of doom on internet comment sections. As the fourth entry in what was once the most popular franchise in the world, this 1997 sequel was a chilly warning of what happens when studio logic and corporate synergy run amok and to its most chaotic end. A two-hour toy commercial, a soulless cash-grab, and the film that did what no villain ever could when it killed the Batman (franchise), this gaudy monstrosity is a testament to two absolutes in this world: Everything freezes…and Batman & Robin is an abomination before the eyes of man and beast.
…But is it really that bad?
To answer this gnawing question—or perhaps just an excuse to kill some time as an icy assault of another kind took hold of the greater five borough area—I dared to revisit this Day-Glo gem. At about the two-minute and twelve-second mark I had my answer, just as Chris O’Donnell exclaimed, “I want a car, chicks dig the car,” and an instantaneously embarrassed George Clooney begrudgingly quipped, “This is why Superman works alone.”
Yes, it is that awful.
A myriad of bad choices that turned Gotham City into a neon nightmare more grotesque than the decades of eternal shame suffered by those who partook in disco,Batman & Robin indulges a litany of sins that only begin with the nipples on the Batsuit. After all, this is the film that gave us our textbook definition of toyetic—studio jargon about maximizing the merchandising value of a media property—and birthed into the world a Mr. Freeze whose weapon was designed by toy companies. In an attempt to make the film as Happy Meal friendly as possible (an ongoing reaction to theBatman Returns affair), Batman and Robin now were ice skating with thugs who spent their spare time doing Christmas movie sing-alongs before an Arnold Schwarzenegger who spoke exclusively in puns. Wonderfully horrid puns.
Truly, this film is a monument to what happens when studios attempt to shovel just about anything into our moviegoing mouths.
But even so, I am positive that it doesn't deserve the bitter acrimony that is synonymous with its name and director Joel Schumacher. Besides the fact that Schumacher, a talented filmmaker in his own right during better days (see: The Lost Boys, Falling Down), has apologized for his grievous errors by speaking in the behooved tones of a courtesan’s confession, Batman & Robin also serves a divine role in both the history of film and the gospel of the Dark Knight.
Indeed, this ghastly miscalculation of entertainment—which featured Uma Thurman doing a bad Mae West impersonation while dressed as a dancing gorilla—is single-handedly responsible for the Caped Crusader’s ascension to pop culture and pure cinema glories eight years later. Only a film this tastelessly garish, and only a box office failure this flamboyantly disastrous, could allow a studio to let Christopher Nolan do with their former cash cow what he did between 2005 and 2012. Without the iconic aberration that is Batman & Robin, there would be no The Dark Knight.
Or in other words: you can’t have your resurrection without a Judas.
In certain theological circles, there is a tradition that dates back to the Gnostic Christians, glorifying Judas as the devoted and perhaps most trusted disciple. The only way for Jesus to come back is if he is killed. And like this religious Gordian knot, there couldn’t have been a Batman movie where the Joker blows up the love interest and howls at the dawn of American paranoia if we didn’t first see Mr. Freeze say “Let’s kick some ice;” if you wanted Bane to break the Bat, first he had to break your speakers with his monosyllabic grunting; and to see Jim Gordon speak about his costumed ally with the reverence of an urban messiah, you needed to endure the Bat-Visa (I bet it came with a credit of 30 silver pieces). To get that applause, we all had to hear the deafening silence that greeted this cinematic tribulation.
But with all that said, Batman & Robin has also earned its abiding spot in genre history. Indeed, 18 years out, it is just as deliciously bad as it was upon its 1997 release, perhaps even more so. Like a lava lamp or leopard-skin chair, movies this cataclysmically awful are renewed over time like a time capsule full of kitsch—a pop culture artifact so abominable that it long outlives the blandly tolerable. For example, Schumacher’s previous effort, Batman Forever, is a more passable viewing experience, but it is also the worse for it. Rather than being allowed to revel in every cringe-inducing pun from Akiva Goldsman’s screenplay, crafted for maximal groaning when Schwarzenegger is onscreen, we are left to merely tolerate Jim Carrey’s "joygasms" and Tommy Lee Jones’ boredom. By contrast, Batman & Robin endures in the mind like all of humanity’s worst mistakes.
0 التعليقات:
إرسال تعليق