While Tim Burton uses cartoonish elements to his advantage (his Dark Knight films are, after all, based on funny books aimed at general audiences), Schumacher goes full cartoon.
In this poor excuse of a PG-13-rated sequel, Batman (Kilmer) must battle Two-Face (Jones) and The Riddler (Jim Carrey) with help of an amorous psychologist (Nicole Kidman) and a young circus acrobat who becomes his sidekick, Robin (Chris O'Donnell).
Directing the movie as if it's a music video with quick edits, tilted angles, and garish sets, Joel Schumacher presents the gaily dressed heroes and villains such that they're always ready to break into a song and dance routine.and, sadly, not even the Batusi. In Batman Forever, this same tone just plays out like a cartoon aimed at grade schoolers.
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Granted, the Caped Crusader's '60s TV adventures hold a special place in pop culture but this trippy production was a White Buffalo in the Zeitgeist. And then Batman Forever follows Batman starring Adam West and Burt Ward. Americans keep saying some historic gaffes will never happen again. Similarly, I am curious what the film would be with a different actor playing the Riddler.Regressing superhero flicks back to the days of candy-colored camp, the slapsticky and recast Batman Forever sports a title that's quite apt seeing as it begins a once-edgy franchise's slow demise. I, like many others I am sure, would be very curious to see the “Goldsman Cut” of Batman Forever. So, the whole movie was actually built around this kind of psychological reckoning, which is why the love interest is a psychologist…Īkiva Goldsman goes on to describe a deleted scene in which Bruce Wayne returns to the place where he first found the Batcave as a child and has a vision of a giant bat that, essentially, inspires him to accept his destiny as a vigilante. In the screenplay… there is a very different center of the movie where he opens up the book and the last entry is, ‘Martha and I want to stay home tonight, but Bruce insists on going to see a movie.’ And, so, the idea was that somewhere Bruce remembered and had repressed his fantasy that this was all his fault, that if he just hadn’t made them go see a movie that night they would never had been out and they would never have been killed. Hearing him say the following about scrapped material regarding the red diary that belonged to Bruce Wayne’s father, Thomas, actually makes the film sound even more interesting and, especially, darker: fears of repeating the Batman Returns Happy Meal debacle. In another DVD featurette, screenwriter Akiva Goldsman talks about the version of Batman Forever that audiences never got to see, due to Warner Bros. Little did fans know that, lurking beyond the bright, neon signs was a certain darkness that audiences did not get to see.īatman Forever Intended To Have A Darker, More Complex Take On Bruce Wayne’s Psychology In a bonus featurette included on the 2005 Batman Forever DVD release titled Beyond Batman - Imagining Forever: The Visual FX for Batman Forever, visual effects supervisor John Dykstra explains how the crew used small-scale sculptures to stand in for Gotham’s buildings with computer animated effects to enhance their surroundings. What I find especially interesting is how the unique urban landscape was created for the film, combining classic methods, which were slowly on their way out, with new tricks considered cutting edge for the time. You know what I actually think is kind of cool about Batman Forever? It may be an unpopular opinion, and I fully understand why, but the production design, which reinterprets Gotham City as the eccentric love child of New York and Las Vegas, is pretty intriguing, if not slightly out of place. Gotham City Was Created Using A Mix Of Miniatures And Digital Effects With images of Greek statues and medical illustrations as his visual aids, he pitched the concept to the lead designer Jose Fernandez, who personally added the Bat Nipples which Schumacher thought was “cool.” In following years, fans would question why the late Joel Schumacher opted for such an unusual and unnecessary alteration to the Batsuit and in 2017, when speaking to Vice, he would give his answer.īy the time Joel Schumacher was hired to direct Batman Forever, the rubber molding process used to make the suits from the first two movies had advanced, which gave him the idea to make the suit appear anatomically correct. While Batman Forever still has its fans to this day, and for various reasons, the one thing that most would deem a mistake in the production was adding artificial rubber nipples to the hero’s costume - something that would reappear for one final time in the fourth installment, Batman & Robin, in 1997. Joel Schumacher Wanted The Batsuit To Look Anatomical, Hence The Bat Nipples