So sayeth Marvel's president Kevin Feige... and it's pretty hard to disagree with his logic. 1997's fourth and final installment of the original Batman film franchise, notes Feige, "was so bad that it demanded a new way of doing things. It created the opportunity to do
X-Men and
Spider-Man, adaptations that respected the source material and adaptations that were not campy."
Batman & Robin was such an atrocious waste of celluloid that it's now deemed the benchmark at which comic book film-making hit rock bottom and began the climb toward sincere and serious adaptations like
The Dark Knight... because at that point things certainly couldn't have gotten any
worse!
GeekTyrant has more thoughts from Feige. And also from Batman & Robin scribe Akiva Goldsman, who demonstrates enough sincere repentance about the mess that was Batman & Robin that maybe we should finally forgive him and Joel Schumacher for their involvement. In retrospect Warner Brothers was hellbent on making an overblown toy commercial, and not a real movie...
(But it also goes without saying that others before have also claimed that "we were only following orders".)
If I understand correctly, George Clooney is apologetic about the movie too. I think he deserves none of the blame for the movie. In fact, I usually forget that he was in it.
ReplyDeleteI put all the blame in Joel Schumacher. But, even Joel Schumacher isn't all bad. At least he did well with A Time to Kill and Phone Booth. Michael Bay is definitely worse.