When talking about comics, it is common to mention “The Dark Knight” as the best, or at least in the top 3. The second film in Chris Nolan’s Batman trilogy is considered a masterpiece that has received considerable respect even among non-comics enthusiasts. But what if I told you that just this month, 25 years ago, the film that is considered the worst comic book film in history, and also belongs to the Batman brand, was released?
Yes, that’s true. On June 12, 1997, the Werner brothers released what was supposed to be their next success – “Batman and Robin”. Val Kilmer, who starred as Batman in the previous film in the series, was replaced by George Clooney, and later revealed that he simply felt lonely on the set and cut off from the rest of the cast due to problems created following the Batman suit prepared for him. Alongside Clooney, Chris O’Donnell returned to play Dick Grayson (Robin). The main villains were Arnold Schwarzenegger (Mr. Paris) and Uma Thurman (Poison Ivy).
Despite the exploding names, and the desire of the studios to ride on the success of the previous film in the series, it seems that the failure of the film was mainly due to the haste in which it was made. To explain the ear and understand the magnitude of the failure – the film opened with a huge success of revenue of more than $ 42 billion in the first weekend, a figure that placed it in third place that year (after Black Men and Jurassic Park: The World is Lost). Despite this, in the second week revenues fell by 63%.
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The film received particularly cold reviews, with the critics blaming director Joel Schumacher for failing to make Batman a more comedic film stand out. The director himself claimed that the responsibility was not on him, but on the studios that wanted a film for the whole family. He later agreed to admit that he too was not without mistakes in the film.
Even movie star George Clooney hated the final product (as much as you can hate a movie you starred in). For years he repeatedly apologized for the film, when in 2005 he even said he thought they had killed the brand (how lucky was it that shortly afterwards Nolan’s “Batman Begins” arrived and saved him?). The film failed so badly that the studios rushed to cancel the sequel planned for it and delete all the scripts that were already in the planning.
How much did the film fail? The film won 11 nominations for the Razi Award, such as the Academy Award for worst films and only a few: nominations for worst film, nomination for worst supporting actor (both Schwarzenegger and O’Donnell), two nominations for worst supporting actress (Uma Thurman and Alicia Silverstone who also “won” “In the award), nominations for the Worst Couple Award (Clooney and O’Donnell) and also nominations for the Worst Director Award.
Aside from the failure in cinema, the film even managed to produce a storm around Alicia Silverstone. The media revealed that Silverstone gained weight during the filming, which meant that the production had to change the outfit she wore as a “bat-girl” so the filming was delayed. The media killed Silverstone and reported that she was “too fat” to match the character and outfit.
A little hard to believe today, but the failure of Batman and Robin was so traumatic that DC waited another seven years until they released another comic book movie (not counting Steel, starring basketball player Shaquille O’Neal, which came out just two months after Batman and Robin). Yes, DC’s next live action movie came out only in 2004 and featured the character of “Catwoman” starring Halle Barry. Luckily for the studios, a year later Christian Nolan and Christian Bale arrived and captivated the fans with “Batman Begins”.