The coding blog of Alastair Smith, a software developer based in Cambridge, UK. Interested in DevOps, Azure, Kubernetes, .NET Core, and VueJS.
Batman Forever (1995) screened on Channel 4 last night. Having not seen it in many years and having The Dark Knight still relatively fresh in my mind, it was very interesting watching it again and comparing the tone of the two movie series. Tim Burton passed on the directorial reins to Joel Schumacher for Batman Forever (and the relatively awful 1997 film Batman and Robin), and instead took the producer’s role for Batman Forever only. Maybe unsurprisingly then, the film still has Burton’s style stamped all over it, with a subtle gothic fairy-tale undercurrent, and maybe it’s telling that Burton didn’t stick around for Batman and Robin.
What is also interesting is the flimsiness of some of the characters. Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones), for example, was but a cardboard cut-out of the character, and psychologist-and-love-interest Chase Meridian (Nicole Kidman) and Robin (Chris O’Donnell) were also relatively crudely drawn. Maybe it’s because there were so many new characters in this film that it wasn’t feasible to flesh them all out properly; the genesis of Two-Face was skipped through very quickly via a handy news report Bruce Wayne happened to be watching, for example. Comparing Aaron Eckhart’s Two-Face with Tommy Lee Jones’ particularly highlights the more mature tone of Christopher Nolan’s Batman series: Two-Face was much more cold and cruel in The Dark Knight than Tommy Lee Jones’ who was simply “psychotic villain #2”.
The Riddler (Jim Carrey), however, was a much more interesting character, and much more well-defined; this was mainly due to this being “The Riddler’s film” (Two-Face evidently isn’t an interesting enough character to have his own film in the same way: in all of the films in which he’s appeared, he’s been paired up with another rogue, usually The Joker). I felt Carrey was perfectly suited to the role, drawing on his performances in The Mask and, to some small extent, Ace Ventura to provide an interestingly obsessional and deranged character. The film traces Edward Nygma’s path from his first introduction to, and rejection by, Bruce Wayne after being hired by Wayne Enterprises, through his development as a villain, right through to the tense-but-not-edge-of-your-seat conclusion.
Batman Forever is highly stylised in a way that Batman Begins and The Dark Knight are not. Whereas the latter two place Batman into a regular action-style movie, Batman Forever is a comic book film. This is not necessarily a bad thing: there are many more and varied colours in Batman Forever than The Dark Knight, for example, so it is visually quite lively. The style is very much that of comic books: baddies are bad, and borderline (or actually) insane; the hero is macho and gets the girl (and is most definitely a hero and not a vigilante); the girl is beautiful and submissive and breathy-voiced. In many ways, though, this works fantastically well; I had forgotten how iconic the scene with Batman and Chase Meridian on the rooftop by the Bat Signal really is, for example. However, it is clearly aimed at a younger audience and perhaps because of this it often runs very close to becoming a parody of itself; the music is over-egged, with cheesy sound effects emphasising the on-screen action to a point that is almost slapstick. I believe it is only because of context of the rest of the film that it only just stays on the right-side of the line.
It is also very much a product of its time. The opening titles and some of the CGI really sticks out, such as in the opening titles where the rendering faltered for whatever reason, leaving them not completely smooth1. Additionally, some of the sets are clearly sets, such as the Bat Cave and the opening scenes with the bank vault. I also love the way the film cuts from a just-escaped moment of peril to the characters dusting themselves down (check out the end of the climactic sequence where Batman has to save Robin and Chase at the same time).
In summary, then, whilst Batman Forever is not a bad film, the script lets it down; were I reviewing the film, it would probably get a 3.5 or 4 out of 5. It’s got great, well-suited actors for the top roles, good action sequences, and some good style, but the writing is just painful in places. I am in the process of acquiring the first two films in this series, Tim Burton’s Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992), so that I can better compare this first series with Christopher Nolan’s Batman for the 21st century. I’m expecting them to be better and darker than the neon and somewhat immature Batman Forever.