You loved Tim Burton’s Batman, and believed Batman Returns to be deeply underrated (at the time), but were not married to any particular image of Batman as a character (if anything, Adam West was “your” Batman). GENA: Let’s try another completely hypothetical situation: you were a 22 year-old woman who enjoyed superhero movies, but your knowledge of and interest in comic books started and ended with the Archie Double Digests you occasionally cajoled your mother into buying when you were a kid. But as nice and cathartic it would be to say that Batman Forever is a charming pop confection that doesn’t take itself too seriously and is a nostalgic throwback to when these movies could just be fun, it still just stinks. That “the fans” were blinded by unrealistic expectations and self-involved solipsism and when the movie wasn’t exactly what you wanted it to be and it didn’t treat Batman with the reverence that you felt he deserved, you threw an embarrassing hissy fit (that last part is actually unarguably true, again, hypothetically). If you were that completely hypothetical person, and you grew up and were appalled by the state of fan entitlement and the bitter ugliness it engendered in people, it would be nice to say that hindsight and perspective have revealed that you misjudged Batman Forever. Val Kilmer in Batman Forever (Warner Bros.) Let’s say, hypothetically, that you were a 16-year-old boy who loved Batman and loved the previous two films and loved Val Kilmer and Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones and thought the trailer looked amazing and rushed out to see it first show first day and were so crushingly disappointed that you complained about it literally every day for two solid years until your girlfriend paid for your ticket to Batman and Robin if you promised to just please shut all the way up about Batman Forever. Does it hold up as well as those Burger King mugs or what?ĬHRIS: Let’s say, just for fun, that you were one of those people who were really annoyed by Batman Forever back in 1995. With that in mind, let’s take a look back and see how Batman Forever looks a quarter of a century later. Its legacy was also tainted by 1997’s Batman and Robin, a notorious disaster that was seen as both an extension, and magnification of all of Forever’s worst impulses. Their complaints about the film’s lack of seriousness, depth, fidelity to source material and ambiguous sexuality can easily be seen as forebearers to social media fanboy rages. But, please, do go on.ĬHRIS: Batman Forever’s crowd pleasing set pieces, over the top movie-star performances and pop/camp sensibility also had more than its share of detractors. There was a certain sort of depraved pleasure in drinking badly made screwdrivers out of a Two-Face cup. I worked odd hours at the time and ate far more fast food than I care to admit, eventually acquiring the whole set. I had all four of them, along with the Flintstones mugs. It dominated the summer box office, singles from its soundtrack were all over the radio, and its Burger King tie-in mugs were extremely sturdy, and still enjoyed by mediocre film writers to this day. It featured performances by nineties supernova Jim Carrey, Oscar winner Tommy Lee Jones, heartthrobs Val Kilmer and Chris O’Donnell, and Nicole Kidman, still mostly known as Tom Cruise’s wife. Batman Forever, directed by Joel Schumacher, was the second highest grossing film of 1995, and considered by many to be a return to form for a franchise that had perhaps veered a little too into weirdness with Batman Returns in 1992. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t successful or controversial, because it was both.
It’s also a peek into blockbusters from the Before Time, when comic book movies weren’t complicated interconnecting sagas that dominated every facet of cinema and pop culture. NOTE: this is the result of a (100% friendly, we promise) debate between Spool writers Gena Radcliffe & Chris LudoviciĬHRIS: So Batman Forever is twenty-five years old, and another nail in the coffin containing the youth of Nineties Kidz.
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