#36 - Batman and Robin

OK, before we start time for some house-cleaning. It’s become apparent that this meme

Is massively overused so I’m starting a coin jar. Every time I’m tempted to use the clip, I put a coin in the jar, this will last until the end of the year and any money in it will be donated to charity. (I’m all heart, I know)

That’s for the time I used it just now. So with that out of the way, Batman and Robin

I think I might need more change

Oh good grief, this is when Schumacher went too far. I have my issues with Batman Forever but ultimately, I enjoyed it more than I did the Burton movies. Sure, it was over the top but it did have quieter moments and focus was where it should be, on Batman!

In terms of success, being more kid-friendly than the Burton movies helped as it made it more marketable. I doubt they lost any fast food tie ins with this movie. But, this movie’s success was questioned from the start. The movie was fast-tracked into production by the studio after the success of Batman Forever, meaning there was a rushed feel to it, even from the beginning. Making it worse is toy companies coming in during pre-production, adding a commercial feel to proceedings. Chris O’Donnell has said that filming Batman and Robin felt like a toy commercial

Because of scheduling conflicts, largely relating to the fast tracking of the movie, Val Kilmer couldn’t return for a second shot as Batman and so George Clooney was hired instead. Also, with some insistence from Schumacher himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger was cast as Mr Freeze, one of the main villains of the movie, and they were planning to base his origin on the vastly popular episode of Batman: The Animated Series, Heart of Ice. So, yes, I’m doing yet another terrible attempt to replicate it (you might remember the awful attempt to retell Mr Freeze’s origins in Batman Annual #1)

A lot of people in production don’t have nice things to save about this movie, I’ve mentioned Chris O’Donnell’s thoughts. George Clooney said he’d offer refunds to anyone who saw it in theatres (I did not, being the ripe old age of 5 when this came out) and Joel Schumacher himself apologised for it. 

  

Produced on a $140m budget, the movie made back its money with a strong overseas performance but it was lambasted critically, holding a mere 11% on rotten tomatoes, 28% on metacritic and a 3.7 on IMDb.

So, now we’re past the longest intro ever, let’s dive into the sea of sh*t that is, Batman and Robin.

I do have to give props; the opening is better than the Burton films that used Times New Roman. Those props are taken for shots of Bat nipples, Bat asses and Bat codpieces as our heroes suit up. Joel Schumacher says he based the costumes on Greek Statues, which is idiotic when you’re doing a character BASED OFF A COMIC BOOK, look to those for costume inspiration, not bullsh*t Greek statues.

Their vehicles rise and Robin see he wants a car because chicks dig them, and they’re all already copying jokes from Batman: Forever, this does not look good for the film’s “comedy.” Robin’s costume is… why? It’s essentially the New 52 Nightwing suit, which makes no sense. Robin is not supposed to be as dark as Batman, not that Batman is dark in this movie.

Anyway, so Batman and Robin drive away and we get the first indication that something might be amiss with Alfred in what amounts to a relatively pointless subplot. As Batman’s driving around in his… open-top Batmobile (available now, $29.99) I have to wonder WHY THE F*CK DOES BATMAN HAVE AN OPEN TOP BATMOBILE? At least with a motorbike he’d have manoeuvrability, he’s a sitting duck in there. And don’t tell me his suit would take the fire, it’s actually canon that it’s made of rubber.

Anyway, apparently the car has an instant video hotline to Commissioner Gordon. Mr Freeze has commandeered the Gotham Museum. We cut then to said museum where the security guards that Gordon just said had been frozen get frozen and we get the first the first of the terrible ice puns.

Batman dives in through the skylight and says this “Hi Freeze, I’m Batman” was that supposed to be a joke? It’s not funny, it doesn’t work in context, it doesn’t relate to anything he was doing he... Never mind, I’m less than 5 minutes into the movie, I can’t get too bogged down in details now, I won’t survive.

He slides down the dinosaur and kicks the diamond out of Freeze’s hands and Robin bursts through the door, creating a “Robin symbol” in doing so. I suppose it isn’t too hard to figure out why I’m calling bullsh*t on that.

A priceless vase is knocked away and Batman catches it with the tagline ‘you break it, you buy it’ which will come back to bite them when you see the state of the museum later on. Mr Freeze’s men attack and so Batman and Robin flutter their capes about a bit, they finally engage but the editing makes it difficult to see what the f*ck is happening.

Batman and Robin deploy their most lethal weapon, bat ice skates. Does Gotham freeze regularly enough for that to be a necessary feature into their costumes? Batman says he’ll tend to Mr Freeze whilst Robin plays ice hockey with the diamond and a few of Freeze’s thugs. For heaven’s sake, SOMEBODY PICK THE DAMN THING UP!

Mr Freeze retrieves his gun as Batman figure-skates up to him. Robin finally picks up the diamond but Mr Freeze freezes the dinosaur and it crumbles, destroying no doubt thousands of dollars of priceless artefacts. And to make matters worse, Robin drops the diamond in a shot so quick I’m not even sure why.

Time for more ice-hockey as Robin retrieves a staff to pole vault to the upper levels where the diamond is, but one of Freeze’s men knocks it into Freeze’s hands. Mr Freeze enters his freeze-mobile (available now $39.99) and get unveils an anatomically impossible rocket. Batman enters to confront him but Freeze knocks him down and launches the rocket. Robin latches onto the Rocket from the outside.

Apparently when they reach 30000ft Batman’s heart will freeze. I’m not sure about the science of this, so I’m just gonna call bullshit on it anyway. Freeze escapes using an escape hatch and the glider built into his suit, go figure and leaves Batman frozen to the rocket. Robin enters through Freeze’s escape hatch and uses the Bat-laser (yeah, they have those now) to free Batman from the ice. Batman attaches a bomb to the rocket to ensure it doesn’t explode upon re-entry.

They then and I can hardly believe I’m saying this, use the escape doors as surfboards and surf back to the ground. Batman catches up with Freeze, knocking the diamond out of his hands and into Robins. This is where if he was smart, Robin would grapple away and ensure the valuable diamond is kept out of Freeze’s hands, as it is they follow him into a furnace he’d frozen and is now snowing for some reason. His gun shoots ice, it doesn’t make it snow!

Robin jumps the gun, forgetting that he’s holding the very thing Freeze is after because he’s a moron. Screw it, Robin’s actions here almost deserve another coin in the jar.

So, shocking I know, Mr Freeze, freezes Robin and warns Batman that if he’s not thawed in 11 minutes he will die. This is a point they keep bringing up and will eventually lead a to gargantuan plot-hole.

So, Mr Freeze escapes, electing not to kill Batman for some reason, Batman uses the furnace’s water and his bat laser to thaw Robin out, Robin comes out asks

“did we get him”

…

So, after a CGI shot of the most cliché looking evil lair possible. We cut to Pamela Eisley performing experiments for animal plant cross-breedings that require venom for some reason. Her intentions are to allow plants to fight back. So, just like the Joker, she was crazy before everything went down. She takes dictation that if Doctor Woodrue wasn’t taking her venom samples, she’d proceed faster.

She heads into his lab to investigate what he’s doing, turns out he’s using venom to create super-soldiers for powerful dictators and others. They bring Antonio Diego to be the guinea pig for this experiments. Yes, you’ve guessed this is their interpretation of Bane. He activates his venom button so Bane can show off and seems someone shocked that he can overpower the guards.

Woodrue notices her and there’s denying that he has a sexual attraction to her. Anyway, he’s doing this because the funding was cut for their work. Pamela is not happy to see her research used in this way and rejects Woodrue. Woodrue reacts in a rational manor and pushes her to the ground. He pushes a load of chemicals on her before returning to his bidders.

Meanwhile, we see security footage of Victor Fries at Gotham University, his wife Nora contracted a disease known as MacGreggor’s syndrome, an illness so vile it’s infecting people on Arrow and the Flash today. So he placed her in a cryogenic storage.

“Now, here’s where everything goes North” – did he mean South, that’s usually what the phrase is, isn’t it?

Anyway, clearly Victor went to the same school of carefulness that Max Dillon did as in taking on a likely dangerous task (small chance of explosion) he’s thrust into a chamber of cryogenic liquid that wasn’t covered!

OK, let’s address their butchering of Mr Freeze here. Incorporating his wife and this version of the origin, you’re trying to make us sympathise, except even if you can get past the insufferable ice puns, HE TRIED TO BLOW UP A ROCKET IN GOTHAM, WHICH WOULD’VE SLAUGHTERED THOUSANDS!

So, now the bit that Batman cannot possibly know. The suit uses diamond enhanced lasers to keep him cool (yeah, that’s totally how that works) we also get a second sign of Alfred being unwell.

He tells Alfred to bring out the Wayne diamonds to use as bait, before telling Robin to go train. Robin gets defensive for no good reason, even accusing Bruce of not trusting him. Alfred kind of agrees and honestly even Bruce himself backs them up. Alfred tries to call him out and we get this wonderful piece of dialogue

“Ah, don’t tell me you’re on his side. Again”

I’m sorry, am I listening to Batman or a 5-year-old having a temper tantrum?

Alfred says some sh*t about trust being the nature of family and gives another hint about him not being well. Bruce looks into a hallway and gets a flash of Alfred taking care of him as a child, it’s about as pointless as you’d expect

Meanwhile, the ground opens up and delivers a present to Doctor Woodrue, Pamela Eisley, now aka Poison Ivy, she flirts with him whilst revealing her new abilities and the fact she can kill with a kiss, she kills him instantly. After going on a rant for no reason other than to reveal her plan, she burns the place down and notices one of the beakers is registered to Wayne Enterprises

Oh and Bane serves her now, yeah, sure, why not?

Meanwhile, in the exceptionally subtle hideout of the abandoned ice cream parlour, we see Mr Freeze conducting a sing-a-long. Why? One of his eskimo girls tries flirting with him, and he rejects her… Why does he even have an eskimo girl? He calls his right hand Frosty for no reason as he loads diamonds into his suit to power it. That’s now how diamonds work!

He reveals his plan, to complete a freezing engine to freeze the city and hold it to ransom to complete his research. OK, I have many questions

1) Why not just rob a bank? You robbed a museum with ease, just rob a bank or 4

2) Why not sell the diamonds? They must be worth a ton, even on the Black Market.

3) YOU HAD A GIANT ROCKET – how the hell did you afford that? Also, if you stole it, why don’t you sell it. It would be worth a hell of a lot of money.

4) Seriously, why the f*ck do you have an Eskimo girl?

5) What was the point of calling Frosty over, you’re only telling him things he already knows.

6) If you need billions, what makes you think the city could provide it? The city can’t have that big a surplus of cash.

Back at Wayne Manor, we’re introduced to Barbara Pennyworth, Alfred’s niece and did we really need another subplot? She’s supposedly British but I assume Schumacher must’ve thought British people were pretty stupid not to notice her accent. It’s not British, not even close really.

So apparently her parents are dead too (you can guess where this is going) and she’s been supported by Alfred ever since. He kept this secret for some reason. She takes a liking to the bikes and Alfred is concerned about her riding a motorcycle, remember this!

Bruce invites Barbara to stay out the house and we get a way to long a closing shot. She comes to tuck him in (wait, you’ve been in the house 5 minutes and know nothing about his sleeping patterns, why patronise him with something like this) anyway, he’s trying to find his brother, Wilfred, who also happens to be a butler. But he’s having trouble since he’s in India with a travelling court.

Here’s Barbara’s contribution
“I don’t suppose they have fax machines on elephants”

No f*cking duh! We also find that his sister, Margaret was nicknamed Peg by Alfred.

So, after some more patronising, we see that Barbara has a different side to her as she dawns a leather coat and makes a prison escape, no seriously and steals a bike.

The next morning, Poison Ivy hears about Bruce Wayne doing some speech or another at the Gotham Observatory, so she tells Bane to head there. Now if you want my opinions on Bane, they can be summed up in the following polite paragraph

… and shove it into a hippo’s rectum. With that out of the way

So, Bruce is donating the world’s most advanced telescope to the observatory, they use satellites to reflect light from anywhere on Earth to the telescope, allowing them to see throughout the world

Seriously, that’s not how telescopes work, but of course they need this bullsh*t to be set up for later. So in yet another pointless subplot, Bruce is going out with Julie Maderson but is a little nervous on the marriage front thanks to being Batman and all.

Meanwhile, Pamela bursts through the guards. Now if she has hypnotic spores like she demonstrated later, why doesn’t she use them on the guards? Anyway, she confronts Bruce with the thing the 90s dreads the most, an environmental proposal. Bruce brushes it off with his people come first shtick. Also, I’m amazed about how nonchalant he is about Pamela surviving the lab that burned down.

So, after she makes a rambling speech which gets her laughed at as in Gotham, Batman and Robin protects them. Bruce invites her to visit a rainforest ball where Batman and Robin will be attending to sell off a prize diamond. And yet again, Miss Ivy does a rambling speech that at this point would likely get her arrested.

Meanwhile, at Mr Freeze’s, Mr Freeze is watching old memories with his wife, when Frosty brings him a news article about the diamond auction. At the gala we see a tribal dance which isn’t even the main attraction as beautiful women is being auctioned for dates, some of them begin outbidding each other whilst bidding on different women. Also, a man in a monkey suit arrives and begins and maybe I spoke too soon saying it was a man.

It’s Poison Ivy, who spreads her spores through the audience. She use them to walk on a path of the tribal dancers to the stage for reasons of… of… I have no f*cking clue. She begins using her pheromones to make sexual innuendos at the dynamic duo. She takes the diamond and offers an evening in her company to the winner. Since the pheromones were active, everyone starts bidding, including Batman and Robin. Batman bids, unveiling his Bat Credit Card.

No, I’m not going to do it, why should I use the nostalgia critic meme, why the f*ck would I be so goddamn lazy as to not come up with a new meme for my…

The bidding war is interrupted by the arrival of Mr Freeze, who begins freezing people for no reason. Batman disarms him but his henchmen come out and more really terrible looking action scenes. Mr Freeze gets his gun and swings over to Poison Ivy. She tries to use her pheromones on him but it doesn’t work, so she willingly gives up the diamond.

Mr Freeze starts heading away and Batman and Robin pursue, leaving the Commissioner to thaw the populace. Mr Freeze crashes through a statue and rides it to the next ledge. Batman isn’t sure Robin can make the jump but Robin is. Batman disables the engine of his bike, much to Robin’s annoyance. OK, 2 things

1 – Stopping Robin’s bike when it had built up that much speed is idiotic, if he’s stopped over the edge, he would’ve fallen

2 – ROBIN HAS A GRAPPLING HOOK, even if the bike couldn’t make the jump, he could’ve fired a grappling hook at the building and survived, sure the bike may not have made it, but it wouldn’t if it had stopped over the edge either.

So Robin screams, Mr Freeze’s henchmen’s vehicles crash, Mr Freeze freezes the stupid Batmobile but Batman puts Freeze under his cape and knocks him out. So another argument between Batman and Robin ensues and as much as I hate to admit it, because of the 1^st 2 points I’m actually on Robin’s side this time. He’s still a whiny brat but letting him make the jump should not have endangered his life in the slightest.

So, Robin heads off, bringing up some bullsh*t about Ivy loving him and not Bruce (I say I’m siding with Robin, but the arguments he brings up are still stupid.) Meanwhile Alfred finishes his disk to Wilfred, Bruce comes in wanting to talk to Alfred about what Robin said. Alfred proceeds to tell a story that only vaguely relates to the issue.

Barbara returns and Dick confronts her, she flips him to the ground, having taken a few judo lessons herself. Remember this also.

At Arkham Asylum, Mr Freeze is brought in by 2 security guard, he’s pushed into a ‘cold beam’ whilst the guards mock him… Technically, I can’t use that meme when 2 are involved, so I keep my pounds for now.

Anyway, despite having a nice cell, he can only live on his bed until his inevitable rehabilitation and release… Who am I kidding? He escapes within the next 10 minutes. Have the staff at Arkham forgotten that this is supposed to be a hospital? It was never good in the comics either but it at least gave some pretense.

As Poison Ivy continues to monologue to herself (does talking to Bane even count?) she finds a potential new hideout and throws out their current neo painted tenants complete with cartoon sound effects. She then uses some seeds to redecorate.

Meanwhile, time for another pointless subplot where Julie tries to convince Bruce to propose and Bruce mumbles and is this scene really necessary? It does show that the spores are still having an effect and he’s seeing poison Ivy. Despite the scene showing no dialogue the next line is

“Who’s Ivy? You just called me Ivy”

No he did not! Moving on. Robin is investigating Ivy on the Batcomputer when he sees security footage of Barbara heading out again. Robin decides to head after her. Turns out there’s illegal street-racing and Coolio gets a cameo as the guy who organises the prize money or something, I’m sure he’ll be embarrassed about it later. Anyway, I’m going to skip some stuff here but we have a guy who sets up a trap, causing Barbara to almost fall in the world’s worst green screen effect but Dick rescues her.

She’s been racing since her parents died as a means of escape and was kicked out of Oxford for it (OK… if she was doing something illegal and was found out, she should’ve been arrested) but it doesn’t matter, she’s saved up enough money to ‘rescue’ Alfred from his life of servitude. And it finally dawns upon Dick that Alfred’s sick, Bruce confirms that Alfred is in fact dying.

Back at Arkham, Victor uses materials he must’ve smuggled in here because how else did he get a glass jar and a pocket watch. His ‘sister’ pays him a visit, it’s Poison Ivy, she gives them both the kiss of death and surely there are means for other guards to be alerted if something like that were to happen. Even more so when Bane breaks into the equipment vault which of course is kept on-site because that’s not stupid in the slightest. Bane takes Freeze’s suit into his cell.

The guards begin cutting through the cell door, and Freeze is low on power, making things worse, the walls are reinforced steel. Freeze uses some spare cryogenic gas to freeze the pipes, making a convenient exit, they jump out the window and fall what looks to be several thousand metres

Batman finds out about Freeze’s escape and they head to his hideout, which they now know about. Gordon shows them something that couldn’t possibly be surveillance footage because it’s a low angle shot that shows that Poison Ivy and Mr Freeze are working together. Gordon also mentions her arrival from South America began with the hospitalisation of 10 security guards and the death of a businessman.

So the two discuss how Ivy as evil and how the f*ck they fell in love with her. They find the secret door leading to Freeze’s wife, still cryogenically frozen. They find that Freeze already has a cure for stage on of the syndrome but Nora is much further down the line. Ivy says she’ll rescue his wife, and take care of the dynamic duo whilst Freeze flicks a switch that begins suffocating the police officers, allowing him to retrieve his diamonds.

Batman and Robin encounter Bane and whilst he tosses them around, Poison Ivy uses her pheromones on them. Batman resists but chooses not to assist his partner who was being beaten by Bane. Meanwhile Commissioner Gordon restores the heat, saving the police officers. That folks is the most interesting he’s done in all 4 of the movies of this saga. Poison Ivy begins manipulating Robin, Batman tries to stop her but it becomes is pissing contest leading to Robin getting thrown into a vat of ice cream… This is an abandoned factory, right? Why the hell would there be a full vat of ice cream. Robin storms off and this time I am unequivocally siding with Batman. Poison Ivy turns the power off to Freeze’s wife.

Upon returning she tells Freeze that Batman killed her, using the necklace she was wearing as proof. Ivy convinces him to take his revenge on the entire city, and then the world, allowing Ivy to restart the world with plants.

Alfred’s now bedridden, it is stage 1 of MacGreggor’s syndrome. Bruce and Dick have yet another argument (you know, you’re not in the cave right now, Barbara could overhear you, rather easily.) Alfred tells Barbara to find Wilfred, saying there are duties that must be fulfilled in his stead and only family can be trusted.

Meanwhile, the new telescope is being unveiled at the observatory. Pamela is around and uses her pheromones to get the bat signal, Bruce gets a sniff of the pheromone dust but Julie keeps him occupied. Mr Freeze projects his freezing engine as Bane lifts the bat signal from its perch.

Barbara goes against Alfred’s wishes and accesses the CD, which is password protected. Meanwhile we get a very uncomfortable scene with Bruce and Alfred which calls for this clip

After god knows how many password attempts, like seriously, shouldn’t she have be locked out by now, she guess a short 3-letter password (which wouldn’t be allowed on most sites) and she sees that it’s a disk about Batman and Robin. Weird as that might be.

Mr Freeze arrives at the observatory, hoping to use the telescope’s crystals to complete his engine. Meanwhile, Ivy calls Robin using a Robin signal but Robin continues to a whiny bitch about it. OK, he was tolerable for the first half of this, he’s annoying now. Bruce brings his own words back on him.

Mr Freeze and Bane break into the very unguarded telescope and Victor Freezes the scientists whilst Bane plants bombs saying ‘bomb’ each time for no reason. He inserts the cold engine turning the telescope into a giant freezing gun. Don’t ask me how the science works there. Batgirl enters the bat cave, from below somehow and Alfred reveals he’s created a digital simulation of himself on the Batcomputer.

Barbara wants to help Batman and Robin and fortunately for her Alfred has prepared her a costume. Wait, what? He didn’t even want her to drive a motorcycle! Let alone put on a costume. Beyond that, how is she qualified to be Batgirl? Batman spent years training himself to be one of the best martial artists. Dick spent most of his life training in gymnastics, Barbara has had a couple of judo lessons.  

So we get the lovely scene of her dressing up, focusing on her ass and tits of course. Anyway, Robin arrives at the Turkish baths and visits Poison Ivy, he asks her what Freeze is planning and she reveals it. She kisses him and expects him to die but apparently rubber lips made him immune. How the flying f*ck does that work?! The toxins were injested, as was mentioned in an earlier scene, through the mouth, wearing rubber lips should do jack sh*t.

She pushes Robin into the water where some vines hold him down. Batman arrives but her vines drag him into the air. So, this was Batman’s plan, huh? Can the real Batman share his thoughts?

  

Fortunately for the dynamic f*ckups, Batgirl crashes into the party, having found them by… I assume following the Robin signal but that’s not especially clear. They fight with Batgirl giving what Schumacher thinks is a pro-feminist speech. Batman uses his bat-saw (yes he has one of those now) to escape as Ivy confesses to murdering Nora Fries.

Barbara rather easily knocks Ivy into her own flower at it eats her, why that happened is unclear, she was sitting in it earlier. Batman and Robin escape and Barbara reveals the incredibly obvious secret that she’s Barbara.

As they say they’ll have to kill her (which given the first 2 movies is far from an idle threat) they head to confront Fries but first they have to show off their latest toy-line.

Before we get to that, we see Freeze freezing the city some more, incidentally it’s exactly 11 minutes to midnight, how dramatically convenient? Remember the whole 11 minutes thing? Anyway, here at the latest lines of Bat jet skis and silver lined bat costumes, available at stores now only $29.95 apiece. Well, at least this one has a hood. So Batman uses his ‘shield’ to reflect the freeze ray back at the Freeze-mobile, destroying it

Freeze tasks Bane with killing Robin and Batgirl whilst he deals with Batman. Batman uses some bat-heaters (available now $13.99) and they theorise that if they realign the satellites, they can reflect sunlight from the Congo back at them allowing them to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow of the telescope and thaw the city (I may have added something there, but it makes about as much sense). After some painful dialogue Robin and Batgirl head to thaw the targeting mirrors whilst Batman sets up the satellites, why would a telescope have targeting mirrors. It’s a f*cking telescope?!

Mr Freeze shows up out of nowhere and begins fighting Batman, re-aligning the telescope and sending Robin and Batgirl falling, they grapple to safety. Batman and Freeze fight as Bane takes on Robin and Batgirl. They use his incredibly obvious weakness and kick the tube from his head, knocking him out. Batman places one of his heaters on Batman’s suit, allowing Freeze to be tossed over the edge. Batman begins using satellites to do sciencey things but Freeze decides to detonate the bombs, destroying the telescope.

Batman saves the two scientists he left hanging on the telescope for most of the fight and gives Robin and Batgirl a lift back up as well. It’s now already past midnight but f*ck it the rules are thrown out the window now and now they have to positions the satellites to thaw the city directly. They were pushing it before, but this is just, no.

It’ll take a computer genius but thankfully Barbara… wait a minute! When was Barbara ever established as a computer genius, she took 35 attempts to guess a password, that’s the only time we’ve even seen her interacting with a computer. Although I’ve seen Robin do even less so how he claims to be a computer genius is beyond me. Anyway, they melt the city which and everyone lives, despite the fact they’ve been frozen for more than 11 minutes.

Batman tells Freeze that he’s heading back to Arkham. Freeze tells him to kill him, just as he did Nora. Batman then uses his Bat-camera to show Poison Ivy in shot he couldn’t possibly have gotten (maybe from Batgirl, but even then it’s a stretch) confessing to said murder. He then says that didn’t happen since she was restored soon after. He’ll have Nora moved to the lab at Arkham waiting for Freeze to find a cure (yes, let the supervillain play with dangerous chemicals, no wonder Arkham’s security is so infamous)

Anyway, he was doing all that so that Batman could ask for the cure to stage one of MacGreggor’s syndrome. This appeal to his humanity would be heart-warming if they’d gone a different route with him, here it doesn’t feel right at all. Freeze gives him the cure and they administer it to Alfred. They all wait around his bed with Robin the only person still in costume.

Meanwhile, Poison Ivy is picking a flower, something I would not associate her with doing. Anyway, Mr Freeze is her new cell-mate and he’s in his suit this time. Errr. HELLO, he used it to escape last time! Geez, the Arkham staff are morons. He’s come to hurt Ivy more than she can imagine – I reiterate my previous sentiment on the Arkham staff.

The next morning, the house is a total mess (didn’t take long, did it?) and Alfred is alive and well. Bruce and Dick have another homoerotic conversation and Barbara shows off before being invited to join the dynamic dipsh*ts. And we get a rehash of the ending of Batman Forever with Batgirl included because it’s iconic?

THIS MOVIE GIVES ME RAGE ISSUES!

I’ll give some credit, whilst some of the green screen effects are terrible, they do give you a decent scope to the city and there is some nice imagery. The music, whilst a little corny never got distracting either. With that said, the script for this movie is awful. Batgirl and Alfred’s illness should’ve been cut out; they were not necessary for what is already a pretty jumbled plot.

The dialogue is atrocious in places. Mr Freeze and Poison Ivy both take record for the most number of irritating puns, it makes it impossible not only to take them seriously as villains but to sympathise with them in any way, which they clearly wanted to do with Mr Freeze. And it’s not just them, Robin, Batman and Batgirl are spouting out cr*ppy puns every 5 seconds as well.

In terms of an adaptation, it’s trying to be the campy series the Adam West shows tried to whilst adding its own more modern sensibilities and it ultimately fails because it doesn’t embrace either. If you wanted to go full goofy, leave out the tragic backstories, leave out the irritating arguments, leave out Julie Madison, she didn’t serve a purpose anyway, leave out Alfred’s illness and the pointless motorcycling subplot. It just wasn’t fun to watch like the Adam West shows were.

If it were going for the modern touch, it’s too campy to take seriously. And as an adaptation of the comics, oh my oh my. Barbara being Alfred’s niece rather than the Commissioner’s daughter makes sense given Gordon’s had a very minimal role on proceedings thus far but their interpretation of Mr Freeze was woeful, and I think I’ve gone over that in detail. And as for Bane, Bane was introduced in the early 90s, he doesn’t have decades of history and interpretations to mess around with. This was insulting to me as a comic book fan. Bane’s intelligence and strategic planning that made him the one to break Batman’s back is completely absent.

Poison Ivy is insulting to me, Poison Ivy’s obsession with plants was cast aside for the bullsh*t femme fatale nonsense. I could even forgive the puns with her if she actually loved plants not Mr Freeze. It just seemed like a convenient way to get the two to team up, and honestly, it doesn’t feel natural for them to team up.

Then we come to the acting. I noticed some woeful acting in Batman Forever but it wasn’t from the leads, here, the leads are atrocious, although once again, I attribute it to direction. Let’s start with George Clooney as Batman, George Clooney has the playboy socialite parts of Batman down but as Batman he’s woeful. His voice is so similar to his voice as Bruce Wayne it’s hard to see why people don’t notice.

Chris O’Donnell has some experience from Batman: Forever but his constant whining grated on my nerves beyond belief. In fact, really the only grace in the acting department is Michael Gough as Alfred Pennyworth. As for the fighting, it’s edited from angles so you can barely see what’s going on or guess that the fighting isn’t very good.

Rage Rating 1000%

Next week, we go and take a look at an action staple in Pacific Rim

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Images/clips used in this review are from Batman and Robin, Ratchet and Clank, Animaniacs, Justice League Unlimited, Superman: At Earth's End, the Nostalgia Critic, Looney Tunes and The Ambiguously Gay Duo and belong to their respective owners. All images in this review are subject to fair use