Snow Set Movie 3: Batman and Robin (1997)

When I was a kid, I liked Batman and Robin.  In the way that kids do things, I got my parents to buy me a VHS copy of Batman and Robin.  That’s how much I liked it.  I watched it a few times, until we got a DVD player and I moved on to other movies.  Then I grew up and my taste in movies changed.  I went back to watch Batman and Robin as a part of the Snow Set Movie Marathon and, boy, do I really dislike that movie now.

Let’s run through a lot of the stuff that I disliked, beginning with the beginning.  Bat nipples.  That’s been tread over a lot.  Why are they there?  What function do they serve?  They have about the same purpose as real nipples on men.  Nothing at all.  This also leads into a later costume choice.  I saw no nipples on Batgirl’s suit.  I may have just missed them, but I don’t remember seeing them at all.  What I did notice was that Batgirl had high heels.  That’s not good for crime fighting.  Heels can easily get stuck in small spaces, hindering you helpless because of that leg’s new handicap.  Just put some running shoes on the suit.  That’ll work so much better.

Also at the beginning is the fact that Batman gets in the Batmobile, Robin on his bird cycle thing or whatever the name of that is, and they are then told what the problem is.  With all the high tech gear, they could have been told while they were in the Batcave.  Sure, this is a small thing to complain about but it really did bug me.

Now onto the bigger issues...the writing was horrendous.  Most of the movie was really bad one-liners.  I can see that Arnold Schwarzenegger had fun saying them but that does not make them better.  Then there was Poison Ivy.  She was alright looking, but only ever said how good she looked, how all the guys liked her, and how humanity should be punished in order to save the planet.  That could have worked if it had been written even decently, but it’s as if they were writing her for you to just get annoyed. Next up is Bane.  He doesn’t talk a lot, but when he does, he seems mentally retarded.  He says bomb every time he sets a bomb.  Is that necessary?  In no way.  Did they write it in?  Of course they did.  The writing is terrible like that.

There is no attention made to any sort of logic the movie.  You can fall and die, but if you jump out of a rocket, using a door as a surfboard, you can fall a mile to the ground and survive without any injury.  If you get frozen in ice, you can survive for eleven minutes without being thawed.  When you are thawed, you just have a case of the sniffles, and sometimes not even that.  Swinging on a vine from three feet above ground will propel you twenty feet into the air.  There is no way that any of this makes sense.  None whatsoever.

Finally, I want to talk about Gotham City itself.  Why were so many buildings shaped like human bodies?  What kind of architecture is that?  Why is half the city held up in the air?  Why was there a gang of glow in the dark thugs?  All of this added to a really unbelievable city that was aesthetically off-putting.  I didn’t like this Gotham.  I didn’t care if it got saved.

Too much bad in the movie.  I can see that the cast was having fun and that’s a bonus, but it does not help a movie that is burdened by a poor script, poor art direction, and a director who was only in it for the merchandising.  It was actually painful to watch this movie.

As you can tell, I didn’t like it.  This is definitely a contender for the worst movie of the marathon.  I am sorry that most of this write up is me bitching and moaning about how terrible the movie is.  I couldn’t help but vent.  It was that bad.  Watch it if you want.  I wouldn’t.