Most people know that when it comes to Batman & Robin—the Joel Schumacher-directed fourth movie in the ’90s run of Batman movies that began with Tim Burton’s Batman and Batman Returns which effectively murdered the Batman movie franchise until Christopher Nolan’s reboot began in 2005 with Batman Begins—everything is wrong. It’s a disaster of a movie still talked about to this day because of how bad it is.
But that didn’t stop popular YouTube channel CinemaSins, known for their “Everything Wrong With…” series of videos, from pointing out all of the flaws with Batman & Robin. The video is a record breaker, becoming the lengthiest movie sins video to date at almost 20 minutes, and the one with the most sins to date (a record not likely to fall any time soon).
You can see a rundown of everything wrong with Batman & Robin below.
Sad news across the world for geeks today, as word has reached us that the wonderful actor, Michael Gough, has passed away. He was 94 years old. To most people, Michael Gough was well known for his role as Alfred Pennyworth in the 1990’s Batman movie series, beginning with Tim Burton’s Batman in 1989 and right through Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin in 1997.
However, this wasn’t Michael Gough’s first involvement in a franchise loved by geeks internationally. A very young Gough appeared as The Celestial Toymaker in Doctor Who back in 1965. The episode, The Celestial Toymaker, saw Gough act with the First Doctor William Hartnell. He would later appear with Fifth Doctor Peter Davison, playing a different role, in the episode Arc of Infinity.
In the same interview with the LA Times that revealed Marvel topper Kevin Feige’s view of Batman & Robin as the most important comic book movie ever to be made, screenwriter Akiva Goldsman spoke about all of his other upcoming projects for DC Comics. Covered here is some new bits from the revamping of Swamp Thing and the movie adaptation of Lobo. They also talk about other projects such as Jonah Hex, which you can follow their link to read about.
The best part of everything talked about was easily Swamp Thing. At first this was just another of many remakes which actually sounded pretty cheesy, but with this interview, some excitement has begun to build up. Goldsman explained that they “want a film with real Southern, dark horror overtones, a little bit like a classic Universal horror film,” and that they actually want to make the movie closer to Alan Moore‘s popular comic book vision of the character and not based on the 80s movies.
With these two things, this new Swamp Thing has a lot more potential than it once had, though there is still a long way to go before we really see what they try to do with the property. The article even mentions that Guillermo del Toro himself considers Swamp Thing one of the “few remaining Holy Grails” of comic book characters.
Click over for more and to check out the poster for The Losers!
One of the busiest screenwriters working today, Akiva Goldsman, spoke to the LA Times recently about many, many big upcoming projects. The writer is one of the few rare cases we’ve seen that makes a case for giving people second chances. He wrote the scripts for Joel Schumacher‘s Batman Forever and the passionately-hated Batman & Robin, but went on to take home an Oscar for Best Picture winner A Beautiful Mind. In an around these two highest and lowest points, he’s done many other well-known movies that received varying response such as I, Robot, Cinderella Man, The Da Vinci Code, and I am Legend.
When the topic of Batman & Robin came up something was mentioned that stuck out. It came from the mouth of Marvel’s main man, Kevin Feige, who was quoted as saying that the loathed comic book movie may actually be the most important movie to be made for that genre. And why would he say such things? Well, because of how horrid the movie was, of course. Feige explained that the sheer awfulness of that film forced open new eyes, which in-turn laid the groundwork for the much more accepted style of comic book movie making seen in franchises like Spider-Man and X-Men.
Batman: The Motion Picture Anthology Blu-ray
Directors: Tim Burton, Joel Schumacher
Starring Michael Keaton, Kim Basigner, Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, Christopher Walken, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jim Carrey, Tommy Lee Jones, Val Kilmer, Geroge Clooney, Uma Thurman, Arnold Schwarzenegger
Warner Home Video
Release Date: March 10, 2009
Yes indeed, ladies and gentlemen, fans of the original Batman films can now run out and purchase the entire four-movie set on good ol’ Blu-ray.
Since Christopher Nolan took over and re-invented the way we see Batman cinematically, most have forgotten about these original films — some, understandably so. While these movies aren’t as highly-praised as the new ones, they do, and will always have a place in comic and superhero movie fans’ hearts.
First and most importantly, keep in mind that this new release is Blu-ray, so no matter how many times you’ve seen the movies, you haven’t seen them at this quality level. Love them or hate them, they do look really great in Blu.
I highly doubt there are people out there who aren’t familiar with these movies and what goes on in them, so instead, I’ll simply talk briefly on each one and why ultimately, it’s worth picking up this set.
The first and the best known of the bunch is the original — Batman. Batman was one of the first big comic book superheroes to successfully grace the silver screen. Since then, as you all know, comic book properties have exploded into money-making machines. Very few properties remain as just publications.
Students of the Unusual™ comic cover used with permission of 3BoysProductions
The Mercuri Bros.™ comic cover used with permission of Prodigal Son Press