And it fails on all levels.
DC Cinematic Universe ( The James Gunn era)
- Thread starter Samurai8472
- Start date
And it fails on all levels.
Indeed.
This entire topic has taken a complete nose dive in literally the span of a day......
AKA a normal weekend at the TrekBBS.
My two cents:
Batman And Robin sucks and even George Clooney takes every moment he can get to apologize for it. That's not even a joke, he said this in interviews.
Nolan's movies, whether you love them or not (I do) had a huge impact on CMB movies and made them popular.
Although I can perfectly understand why a lot of people dislike what Snyder did with both Superman and Batman, I rank his take on it as one of the best interpretations of A SPECIFIC VERSION of both characters from the comics. Because both Supes and Batsy have had different versions throughout the decades of comics. I just happen to like his take on it.
AKA a normal weekend at the TrekBBS.
My two cents:
Batman And Robin sucks and even George Clooney takes every moment he can get to apologize for it. That's not even a joke, he said this in interviews.
Nolan's movies, whether you love them or not (I do) had a huge impact on CMB movies and made them popular.
Although I can perfectly understand why a lot of people dislike what Snyder did with both Superman and Batman, I rank his take on it as one of the best interpretations of A SPECIFIC VERSION of both characters from the comics. Because both Supes and Batsy have had different versions throughout the decades of comics. I just happen to like his take on it.
That's true - I heard, that even today, he'd give people there money back. And I so wish, I could meet him some day, walking up to him, saying "Mr. Clooney? I watched Batman & Robin. Not in cinema, but on VHS and DVD - and you know what? Keep your money. At least I had fun."
Which is awesome. I still don't see why people need to shame others for loving movies. Hell, I love the Hugh Jackman Van Helsing which is apparently hated across the board. You do you bro, and love what you love.
Hey, the Van-Helsing-Flick is 90 % awesome.
10 Percent is "meh" - and that's the ending. I'm a sucker for happy endings.
At least Annas actrice could go on and play a cool vampire in the "Underworld"-Movies. ^^
But besides that - It's a fun popcorn-flick, and honestly, I don't get, why people are so obsessed with taking these movies so super-seriously.
And
yup, it does. ^^
I've heard Clooney's opinion, and its always apologetic because he knows what a disaster Batman and Robin had been. Rare when an actor in a film is on the same page as audiences.
Popular, and elevated the genre unlike any other production before it. That trilogy set a standard so high, that few CBM since have managed to come close.
Well said. Snyder's versions represent the characters at their best, and in the case of Batman, a perfect, older more jaded version, while the interpretation which preceded it--Nolan's--was the gold standard of Batman's earlier years. Stellar superhero movies & movies in general.
I always feel bad for Clooney when he makes a comment about Batman because he was actually one of the few highlights of the film. If the film had been better he could have become the definitive Batman for a few years. Of course, then we would never have had the Nolan trilogy.
I agree -- he could've been great with better material. He certainly looked more right for the role of Bruce Wayne than any of the other feature-film Batmen.
Dammit Barry!!Yet now we know that both universes were created by Barry's alterations of the timeline.
DCU List so far
In production, pre or post:
Superman, Supergirl, Creature Commandos, Peacemaker S02, Lanterns.
Announcements only:
Batman B&B, Waller.
In production, pre or post:
Superman, Supergirl, Creature Commandos, Peacemaker S02, Lanterns.
Announcements only:
Batman B&B, Waller.
Schumacher being Schumacher, the Bat-films were never going to be good, so, Clooney's run would be short in any case.
As if the director of The Lost Boys and Falling Down wouldn't be able to make serious Batman movies. The man gets a lot of blame, but in the end, he only followed studio mandates.
That's an interesting point - I mean, "Falling down" is a really good movie, 75 % on rotten tomatoes and 84 on the popcornmeter - 7,6 on imdb. And there the "Toyetic"-thing rears its ugly head again: The studio wanted to sell merchandise, so the movie had to be shot accordingly.
By the way - the movie was written by Akiva "Star Trek: Picard / Star Trek: Strange new worlds" Goldsman? Heck, I didn't know that.
Thing is, Batman Returns on the face of it was very toy-etic. Batman has several different vehicles, the Batmobile goes through a major transformation (which warranted it's own toy from Kenner), he does that glider thing, among other gimmicks, warranting its own action figure, a battle-damaged Catwoman figure would have been justified by the movie, the Penguin has his own vehicle, his Red Triangle gang was full of characters worthy of action figures, I mean, I'm just gonna copy and paste from the film's Wikipedia page:
"The Red Triangle gang includes the monkey-toting Organ Grinder (Vincent Schiavelli), the Poodle Lady (Anna Katarina), the Tattooed Strongman (Rick Zumwalt), the Sword Swallower (John Strong), the Knifethrower Dame (Erika Andersch), the Acrobatic Thug (Gregory Scott Cummins), the Terrifying Clown (Branscombe Richmond), the Fat Clown (Travis Mckenna), and the Thin Clown (Doug Jones)."
I mean, an Organ Grinder figure with the organ rotating machine gun action feature just immediately springs to mind, that's toy-etic AF.
So, the problem wasn't that Batman Returns didn't lend itself to making toys, the problem was the tone of the movie. It was perceived as too dark, too openly sexually themed, too violent, too scary, and the Penguin as too gross. Parents complained, they didn't want to buy the McDonald's toys, they may have bought a lot of different Kenner Batman variants, but the villains weren't a big seller.
That's why Burton was let go. And Joel Schumacher was a pretty decent choice as a new director for Batman. Now, there were several studio mandates that happened during pre-production. Robin had to be in it (for real, this time, having been planned and discarded in both of the Burton movies), they hired a prominent comedian for the villain who, while being the secondary villain in the movie, had the whole marketing build around him, it was supposed to be more kid-friendly. Batman wasn't supposed to kill in this one, a stark departure from the character in Returns.
But the script for Forever was still relatively deep and serious, being all about Bruce Wayne's trauma. It felt a lot closer to the comics at the time. And while Schumacher made the film more colorfull, it was still pretty dark, visually speaking. The Flying Grayson's dying was depicted in the movie, Dick Grayson's arc was all about overcoming revenge and survivor's guilt, the latter he shares with Bruce. The musical score, while not being as gothic as Danny Elfman's, was still pretty gothic with a bit of industrial sounds mixed in. The vehicles are spikey and have a skeletal quality to them.
However, the movie was butchered in editing. Whole subplots were dropped that would have fleshed out Bruce's character arc in the movie a lot. The continuity was changed, making some action scenes appear to be rather random.
And, of course, the villains were really reduced to being updates of the kind of gimmikey villains from the Adam West show.
All these changes were made to make the movie less dark, more in tune with the attention span and humor of children. And when Schumacher recognized that, and talks for the sequel started, he just went ahead and made it more kid-friendly to start with.
And when Batman & Robin bombed, he was ready to go darker again. But the fanbase had picked Schumacher as the man to blame, and the studio heads were all too happy to play into that, making Schumacher toxic for the franchise and pretty much any genre work.
There actually is a "Schumacher Cut" of Batman Forever that is closer to the original script, but it's not quite ready for release (with unfinished effects, color timing and score). It does exist, Kevin Smith apparently even screened it once unannounced for the audience of one of his podcasts. But WB has not been willing to finish and release it, which is a real shame.
For the time being, I'm gonna recommend the junior novelization of Batman Forever by the late comic writer Alan Grant, which was based on the original screenplay and gives a bit of a sense of what the movie could have been.
Making a few well regarded movies doesn't mean he was capable of making a good Batman film. He was not the type of director capable of making any other type of batman film then the ones he did. He had a disdain for the source material and was an inherently camp focused director. The man spend decades defending the bat nipples for gods sake, that wasn't a studio mandate. I'd also say that I don't think he ever made a good film, but the few I can see that did well were totally different kinds of films then what would make a good Batman film.
In the end the director made exactly the type of Batman movies the studio knew he would make when they hired him. The fact that WB hired Akiva Goldsman to write the movies didn't help, the guy couldn't write a good script if his life depended on it, but in the end the studio wanted a certain kind of Batman movie so they hired the perfect people to give them the product that they wanted. The end results were terrible because the studio was run by idiots that wanted something that was never going to be good.
Some directors are not up to some types of films. That doesn't even make them "bad" directors, just inappropriate for certain projects. David Lynch on Dune immediately comes to mind, the master of arthouse gross out horror was absolute garbage trying to adapt a sci-fi book to a general audience. That doesn't make Lynch a bad director, just a bad director for that project. Schumacher just shouldn't have been making Batman movies.
Dunno, I thought the Pilot of "Strange New Worlds" (title: Strange new Worlds), "Rememberance", "The Star Gazer", "Penance" and "Farewell" (all of Star Trek: Picard) were quite good, same goes for "The Da Vinci Code" and "Angels and Demons".He also wrote the "better" Batman Forever, "The Divergent Series: Insurgent" and "A beautiful mind". So, saying that he couldn't write a good script, if his life depended on it, is a tadbit over the top, eh?
@Kai "the spy": Oh, Saru was on Batman? Didn't know that. Thanks for telling me. And yeah, I heard about the "Schumacher Cut", and I'm all for releasing this one.
Similar threads
