NIT:
George Clooney as Batman.....
'nuff said.
Humph. they never did quite explain what happened to Dr. Chase. Why do characters like Robin cross over to the sequels, but not the love interest? I think Hollywood suffers from the Austin Powers Syndrome too much.
I liked this film and think all the negative criticism directed at it is unfair.
Blasphemer!
www.whoisalfred.8m.com
I think the only exciting parts were:
Batgirl donning on the skin-tight rubber suit and
Poison Ivy when she emerges from the hole in the lab.
WORST SCENES: The wind surfboard scene & the car chase scene....you can tell from a country mile that these were computer generated sequences
The ice skating scene was just plain silly.
Arnold Schwarzegger however, made a very convincing Mr. Freeze.
I took it for what is-a popcorn movie, not great art. This was the first movie I took my son to, and told him before it began that everything in it is faked. Ok, the ice looked like formed plastic, too, but I still enjoyed the movie.
I'll never understand why they re-used the SAME MUSIC from "Batman Forever"...was it REALLY that big of a chore to write a new soundtrack?
All the money for things like music, script, etc went to the casting of big-name stars.
Also, check out the guv himself, Jesse Ventura, as one of Poison Ivy's prison guards. "Here's your cell, ma'am."
This move was pure cheese. Every line Mr. Freeze said was a cliche.
"Freeze in Hell, Batman"
"hey everybody, Chill."
"Cool Pary"
"There is one constsant in the Universe, Everything Freezes"
And so on.
All of the modern Batman movies are AWFUL! The last two only moreso than the first two.
Wouldn't that be "all of the batman movies are awful". Everything about the old batman show and its movie sucked. Also the first Batman ruled. Batman Forever was not that bad.
I had a feeling someone would interpret my remarks that way. The reason I phrased it this way, Brian, is that unlike the old Batman material, which everyone would probably ADMIT is cheesy and of low production quality, everyone ADORED the first Tim Burton movie, and the second one just a bit less so.
I didn't.
Tim is a good director who is good at establishing a dark mood and atmosphere, and doesn't seem to work with screenwriters who write good plots or characters, IMHO. As a comic book purist, I believe that things should be changed from the canon ONLY when it is necessary (the costume) or even makes a BETTER element than the original material (the Batmobile.) The X-men movie followed this well, but the vast majority of the changes in the Batman movies were not only arbitrary and stemmed from the director or writer's whims, but weren't that good. I didn't mention the older material because I was focusing on the modern. If I said ALL Batman material blew chunks, it would've undermined my point of why the modern material is specifically bad.
1960's vs this movie...
West Vs. Clooney....West....no explanation needed.
Schwartzenagger pulls off Mr. Freeze better than any incarnation of the character in the orignal series.
I know I'm gonna get some raspberries for saying this, but here it goes....
The 1965 Batman movie was better than this one.
Why?
It was more fun fun than this movie.
This movie wasn't even fun!...It was just "F--"
(Missing the "UN"---in other words, F minus MINUS!)
This one certanly tried to have a lot of fun. George Clooney walked around the whole time with a 'geez I really crack myself up' grin on his face the whole time; cheesie one-liners abounded. More than one critic said that this movie was more a continuation of the old TV series than of the previous movies.
What gets me is how eminently forgettable Clooney is as Batman. I can picture him as Bruce Wayne yelling at Robin, but can't grasp an image of him as the Bat.
I'm a big fan of the Batman comic and at first I thought it was a HUGE mistake to have Micheal Keaton as Batman.
why?
Because I just can't see him as Batman. Sorry, but I kinda pictured someone like (forgot the actors name). the guy that played the main character in The Sentinel.
hears a few other problems I had :
1)peguin was just an over weight man who became a crime boss i.e. the kingpin
2)was I the only one paying attention when Harvey Dent was played by Billy Dee Williams--A black guy?
not that I have anything against it but I expected a little continuaty, Harvey Dent WAS Two-face after all.
Ihad a few others but I can't think of them all right now.
Sorry Anonymous, but Keaton was perfect. If you look at his eyes when he's in the Batsuit, you can see that he's just *this* side of criminally insane, which is what was wanted.
Oh, and I was skeptical about Keaton at first, until I saw the film. I never saw the last two (Kilmer and Clooney), so I can't comment on them as Batman.
Anon, NANJAO Harvey Dent continued to be portrayed as a black man in the animated series.
I didn't have a stopwatch at the time and I excluded the interval of time that elapsed during the commercial break, but my rough estimate of the time remaining for Batman and co. to thaw out Gotham City (according to Batman's absurd 11-minute frozen rule) was, give or take, 19 seconds. Batmain claimed they had to thaw out the entire city and its inhabitants within those precise eleven minutes. About four or five--possibly six--minutes pass when they remark on how they only have eight minutes left. Some hijinx ensue. Then, at least two minutes pass as Batgirl and Robin figure out how to magically hack into the military's satellite defense program (doesn't that just make you feel safe?) to deflect the sun's rays upon Gotham City. They just barely make it, and the telescope plummeting out of the observatory would've definitely taken more than a minute's time.
I imagine I'm taking the long, circumlocutory way of getting to a nitpick, but something about the time limit and the way the scenes played out just didn't feel right to me. At least these creators/writers took a better stab at adhering to a time limit than those of The Mask (Jim Carrey, Cameron Diaz) in which a package of dynamite conveniently paused itself and jumped back and forth throughout the entire conclusion (if memory serves me correct, the bomb ought to have gone off around the time Jim Carrey leapt over that bar).
Butch, to which animated Batman series are you referring? If you mean Batman: The Animated Series, I have no idea what you mean. Harvey "Two-Face" Dent in the cartoon series was most definitely white. Though, they did pull that same crazy idea of having Dent's scarred side a particular color (in this case, blue; in Batman Forever, purple). Sigh. Too bad we people in the real world, when being scarred, don't have those areas of disfigurement turn into a solid color scheme. Insert thick sarcasm.
As long as they keep Joel Schumacher FAR AWAY from it, it'll be an excellent movie.
Also...bring back Danny Elfman for music & not the other guy!
Sorry...wrong board.
BTW, if Schumacher wanted to "go campy", why not bring back Adam West & Burt Ward?
Because they're too old and out of shape to play such characters.
Although they were a lot of fun (Along with Frank Gorshin and... one of the catwomen, can't remember which) in Back to the Batcave: The Misadventures of Adam and Burt drama/doc.
"How did you go through all that without a scratch?!"
"Stunman."
"...Dang!"
IMDB doesn't list anyone playing "modern" Catwoman. But both Julie Newmar and Lee Meriwether were in it. Based on the IMDB credits, I'd guess it was Newmar, since she's listed as playing herself, while Meriwether is listed as "Waitress in Diner".
I saw it, but don't remember which one of the two it was.
In his autobiography (which campiness aside, is a well written, honest account of one's personal successes and failures), Adam West muses on not being asked to reprise his role on the big screen. While West is obviously rather deluded if he thought he could still play the role, some of his ideas for an "old Batman" are intriguing, although that could be because he unintentionally (?) cribbed some of them from the actual comic.
BTW, avoid Burt Ward's autobiography at all costs.
You mean his sex-o-autobiography?
That's pretty cool. I had heard that when the fate of Batman 5 was still up in the air he wanted to direct it and make it a dark brooding film that he felt he owed to the fans after this one. I've seen most of his other films and 8mm (which was his followup to Batman & Robin) sticks out in my mind as one with a style and tone that would have been great for a Batman film.
I've also heard that all of the blame can't exactly be laid at his feet as the studio wanted him to make a family-friendly 2 hour toy commercial.