"Batman Forever" Review (Spoilers)

[matt_zimmer]

Batman Forever

That was poorly written, badly acted, unfunny, obvious, overly campy, stupid, and annoying. But I will dispute it is any more-so than Batman Returns. Joel Schumacher did NOT ruin this franchise. It was already in tatters from Tim Burton. Schumacher is just taking his lead.

The Holy Rusted Metal thing was supposed to be fan-service, which shows how inept the movie is. Because it means nothing, it's stupid, and makes me cringe instead of smile.

The Bat-nipples are freaking weird. Also bizarre is Batman has a full ass-crack molded into the suit. What the actual fuck?

Chris O'Donnell was too old to play Robin. Bad casting.

I don't feel like doing a deep-dive into this one because the waters DO feel a lot more shallow than Burton's films. Burton's Batman films may have sucked, but they certainly gave me plenty to talk about. I think the major thing I want to address, and thing that bugged me most, will stand-in for everything else I was annoyed about.

But Chase Meridian calling first the stalker and the the Riddler "a wacko"? It grates. Not as much as say, the r-word. But I feel like the subtext is far darker and more manipulative than that. People distrusted psychiatrists for a LONG time, because mental illness was dirty embarrassing secret for most people who suffered it. So psychiatrists in films of this era were usually portrayed as ignorant or outright hostile to reality. The producers reasoned here an easy way to get the audience on Chase's side and like her is for her to utter a slur against a mentally ill person no professional would ever say. The writers suggest we are only allowed to like the film's shrink if she essentially disowns her entire professional and moral code about it. And shit like this is constant and soul-crushing and fucking infuriating. And it's SO obnoxious and damaging I don't really feel the need to spend fuck-all time telling you everything this movie did wrong. I'm just kind of done with it. *1/2.

Comments

[neoultramike]

"Chris O'Donnell was too old to play Robin. Bad casting."

From what I read in Batman Returns, Marlon Wayans was actually cast for that movie but the script became too long to really use him at all so that part was cut. And though Wayans at the time would have been younger then O Donnell he still would have been... what at youngest like 19 or something which even that is too old for Robin. Granted 24 to 25 is especially too old but yeah that is a problem with the character it was hard to really get away from at the time; that you couldn't really get away with having a child actor be a full time super hero. Yeah there are a lot of action movies and even ones where kids play a central role but usually it's done in a really out there aesthetic or you give the kid some sort of power which yeah Robin's not supposed to have at all thus another reason why the character never really translated properly to live aciton. I do feel that's something that's not as much an issue NOW with Dafne Keen as Laura/X-23 and even Ella Jay Basco who was Cassandra Cain so in theory the young kid robin in the DCU Batman movie will be a kid but that wasn't something you were going to get in 1995.

"The producers reasoned here an easy way to get the audience on Chase's side and like her is for her to utter a slur against a mentally ill person no professional would ever say. "

- It's especially sad since yeah for all the producers attempt at making Chase this memorable and unique love interest for Batman she wound up being somewhat forgettable. I remember watching this movie in 1995 and the stuff with Batman and Robin and Two Face and yeah Riddler always stuck in my mind but until I saw reviews of it years later I totally forgot Chase was a thing and yeah rewatching her scenes again I guess they're more memorable then they were before but not in a good way. I do feel Vicky Vale and Selina Kyle had problems in the Burton movies but man are they soooooooooooooooooo much better love interests then we got in the Schumacher films. To be fair in Batman and Robin... whats her name just fell there out of obuligation and that was much more jam backed with characters but did feel like Schumacher was trying with Chase to make her a character he was just... bad at it and put in this concept where it just wouldn't work. I do argue though I'm not sure you're supposed to take Chase that seriously anyway considering like 70% of her character is running around trying to get in Batman's pants and flauntering herself seductively to try and peak her interest that doesn't work in concept.

I guess it is at least a better fit to the Burton movies then say Batman and Robin but yeah that doesn't mean it's good or really holds up that well. Hopefully Batman and Robin gives you at least more to vent about then this one did Matt.

[matt_zimmer]

We'll see. I will probably watch it tomorrow or the next day.

[jasonderoga86]

Yep. Again, I agree with your perspective. As a child, this film sufficed. As I am now, though?

*struggles not to roll my eyes as I think back to the last time I watched this in 2018 or so*

Now, nothing really makes any sense to me in this film. And in retrospect, even for the kind of "Adam West-style" vibe this film was shooting for, it still missed on all marks. Adam West-style Batman was colorful in a COLORFUL way. Forever... honestly, the only analogy I can think of is a rinse cup that a painter uses for their paintbrushes. Murky and wild at the same time, and a literal eyesore. Yeah, it actually pains my eyes when I look at it, and Batman & Robin wasn't much of an improvement, even when I first saw it as a child.

I may not have paid attention to the Batsuit "wardrobe issues" as a kid, but in retrospect I really have to question what the motives were here. Schumacher supposedly gave an explanation for it, but I only remember coming across it once and don't really care to look it up again -- my reason being that I'm sure the same kind of dudes who dogged the original Robin (Dick Grayson's) costume for having short-shorts and implying some sort of pedophilia fetish within Batman probably went to town on him for doing so. If I remember correctly, that controversy happened around Frederick Wertham's crusade against comics with his essay Seduction of the Innocent, which led to the creation of the short-lived Comics Code Authority. In my opinion, stuff like what Schumacher did in modern times is the kind of fuel that overbearing and super-strict "model citizens" need to attack entertainment in such a way that stuff that's harmless to even children becomes forbidden/taboo material. It leads to attempts to censor things that even a 5-year-old would say, "Mister, excuse me but... are you freaking serious?!"

I also feel you on the mental illness thing. Chase Meridian's character violated the chief rule for psychiatrists: she violated the Hippocratic Oath more times than I can count. How does a psychiatrist get off literally trash-talking the people she studies? Shit, if I were Bruce standing there listening to her describe people with mental illness issues as monsters with no moral compass, I'd ghost her fast. She's basically a purveyor of the very stigma her profession is supposed to combat. Even Batman saying "You need help, Harvey -- give it up" is more reassuring than how smugly Chase disparages people like Dent with her "professional words" and such. In this day and age, from some of the stories I've recently read, a psychiatrist talking like this to their client could very well find themselves liable for emotional and psychological abuse -- and from what I've read, that shit is serious. That's a person's mind -- it can do a LOT of damage. One story went as far as to describe how one client felt so traumatized by how cold their psychiatrist had treated them that they not only stopped coming to appointments -- but they also ended their lives.

As I tell so many of my friends and family, especially in this day and age: mental illness is not a label, and it's not a permission slip for stigmatization. That goes for ALL stigmatization, and several researchers have claimed that entertainment media that portrays the mentally ill as rabid murderers is dangerous and egregiously discriminatory. My last word on this is a commercial I saw around the early 2010's, in which a relative of actress Glenn Close, whose first name was Calen, called out to society to understand that not every person who struggles with schizophrenia is a "lunatic on a rampage", obviously referencing the statistics which prove that the mentally ill are far more likely to be VICTIMS of violence rather than PERPETRATORS of violence. Glenn Close then stepped up and firmly demanded that people talk honestly about mental illness. The commercial was for something called "Bring Change 2 Mind" and given that I had been diagnosed with schizophrenia three years earlier, the whole clip really spoke to me and was probably the spark that would eventually lead to me accepting myself and becoming an advocate and helper to the disabled in my community.

[matt_zimmer]

I have schizoaffective myself among other diagnoses.