Batman & Robin
Hey, Do You Remember...?
Christopher Schrader
4.8 • 676 Ratings
🗓️ 22 November 2017
⏱️ 153 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's Thanksgiving and you know what means... it's time for this year's cinematic turkey! Few movies are as deserving of the the title as 1997's epic misfire Batman & Robin. Reviled by fans and critics alike, this film did so much damage to Warner Bros' flagship franchise that it would take the better part of a decade for the Caped Crusader to recover.
In fact, it's developed such a notorious reputation that at this point, it almost felt like too easy a target. So in addition to breaking down why it doesn't work, we were also interested in figuring out how it happened in the first place, whether or not Joel Schumacher's decision to draw from a particular era of Batman's history was actually perfectly valid, and what this adaptation can teach us about bending even the most malleable properties too far.
Topics include: our expectations before we saw it for the first time and what we thought of it back then, why it didn't even matter who was playing Batman at this point, an earlier draft of the script where Mr. Freeze was more in line with his animated series counterpart, the film's reliance on Batman Forever's formula, the inclusion of Bane and a bunch of other unnecessary elements, how this set the stage for the modern comic book movie, and much much more!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, do you remember Batman and Robin? |
| 0:06.5 | 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 Carlos. |
| 0:33.4 | And I'm Kristen. |
| 0:34.4 | And today we're revisiting Batman and Robin. |
| 0:53.7 | Yeah. And I'm Kristen. And today we're revisiting Batman and Robin. Remember everybody, it's a cartoon. Those are the words director Joel Schumacher would yell into a megaphone before calling action throughout the production of Batman and Robin. And I think what's most amusing about that anecdote now is that it speaks to an ongoing conflict with the type of fandom surrounding any comic book |
| 1:11.7 | character is storied as this. The desire to have these properties legitimized by adaptations |
| 1:17.0 | that take them more seriously, and the fact that most of them were created to entertain children. |
| 1:22.6 | It might be argued that some of the most successful interpretations understand that these two |
| 1:26.6 | ideas are not mutually exclusive. |
| 1:29.1 | Batman the animated series is a wonderful example, or a Captain America movie that can hold the |
| 1:34.0 | attention of your 10-year-old and also have something to say about the current state of the world. |
| 1:38.6 | But not everything needs to, or should even be interested in, hitting that sweet spot. |
| 1:43.5 | In fact, one of the things I love most about Batman |
| 1:45.7 | is that he's malleable enough to cover the entire spectrum. |
| 1:49.2 | Your kid can be watching the Brave and the Bold cartoon on TV |
| 1:52.1 | while you're reading the Dark Night Returns on your iPad. |
| 1:55.2 | Everyone gets to have their Batman. |
| 1:57.6 | But when it comes to a $100 million summer tent pole, |
| 2:00.7 | I do think that's one instance where |
| 2:02.3 | you have to be a little bit more careful about how you walk that line. You guys have heard me say |
... |
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