Batman Forever

Hey, Do You Remember...?

Christopher Schrader

Tv & Film, Comedy

4.8 • 676 Ratings

🗓️ 19 February 2021

⏱️ 179 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After complaints that Batman Returns had been too traumatizing for younger viewers, Warner Bros. set a clear mandate for the next film in their flagship franchise: lighter, brighter, and more fun.

Desperate to move away from the gloomier aesthetic of Tim Burton’s first two entries, the studio turned to Joel Schumacher - a director whose pop sensibilities were more in line with pushing happy meals and action figures.

Batman Forever was an absolutely massive hit at the box office in the summer of 1995, but it remains a divisive installment amongst fans. Join us as unpack its complicated legacy and also clear up some misconceptions about its development and production.

Topics include: whether or not there was ever actually any version of “Tim Burton’s Batman 3", how late into pre-production Michael Keaton dropped out and what that meant for the film, the much different story Schumacher initially pitched, some insane stories of the tension behind the scenes, the mishandling of Harvey Dent/Two-Face, the challenge of bringing Robin into live-action, alternate casting choices, how we felt about this new approach to the series as kids, where it ranks for us now, and much more!

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, do you remember Batman Forever?
0:06.7	Hello and welcome, Hey, do you remember, Hey Do You Remember, a show where we reminisce about a movie or TV series we grew up with, then take off the rose-tinted glasses to see how it holds up.
0:31.7	I'm Chris.
0:32.4	I'm Donna.
0:33.2	And I'm Carlos.
0:34.2	And today we're revisiting Batman Forever.
0:53.1	Yeah. And I'm Carlos. And today we're revisiting Batman Forever. Riddle me this. riddle me that.
0:56.2	Who's afraid of the big black bat?
0:59.8	Well, lots of little kids who saw Batman returns.
1:03.6	Turns out.
1:05.1	And this was bad news for Werner Brothers,
1:07.5	who suddenly found their flagship franchise at a bit of a crossroads.
1:12.2	Although the film had been a big hit at the box office, its worldwide gross was still
1:16.3	considerably less than the first film's record-breaking numbers three years prior.
1:21.6	More concerning for the studio was the fact that this trend extended to sales of merchandise
1:26.5	as well.
1:29.1	And this was a point in time where Hollywood had figured out that that was literally the bottom line. As far as they were concerned,
1:35.2	a lot of these tent pole films were essentially two-hour commercials for all the tie-in products
1:40.1	they wanted you to buy. Batman was a franchise in every sense of the word. And because of the
1:46.0	lukewarm response to returns, the entire ecosystem of licensing deals these movies supported was now
1:52.7	in a somewhat vulnerable position. So listen, we have an entire podcast episode about this. When we
1:59.1	covered Batman Returns, we went in depth about the mixed
	...

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