Thread by @Darren_Mooney

#NowWatching “Batman Forever.”

“Batman Forever” is ground zero for what happens when you let angry, shouty people set the direction of your multi-million dollar franchise.

It’s the ultimate work of creative compromise, which exists almost entirely in response to a bold and uncomfortable creative vision.

“Batman Returns” remains one of the most singular and uncompromised superhero movies ever produced. It is, to be frank, a masterpiece.

It was also... controversial and divisive.

“Batman Forever” is what happens when you define your entire movie in opposition to that.

“Do you have a first name, or do I just call you Bats?”

Although far from the movie’s biggest problem, Doctor Chase Meridian is indicative of the flaws with “Batman Forever.”

“Batman Returns” was driven by the incredible f&!ked up kinky horniness of Keaton and Pfeiffer.

In contrast, “Batman Forever” offers us the sort of empty, generic “People Magazine” prettiness of Val Kilmer and Nicole Kidman.

There’s no chemistry, no weirdness, no spark. If you told me they shot their scenes separately, I’d believe it.

But they look pretty together.

To be clear, Kidman is great. She’s arguably one of those actors - like Colin Farrell - who suffered from essentially being a character actor who was treated like a movie star.

Maybe Kidman could have done well with material like “Returns.” But she’s wasted here.

“Oh no! Boiling acid!”

There is, to be clear, nothing inherently wrong with a “Batman” movie aimed at kids.

“Batman ‘66” and “Mask of the Phantasm” are among the best “Batman” movies ever made.

Hell, even “Teen Titans GO! To the Movies” is pure unbridled joy.

There is, however, something very wrong with a “Batman” movie that treats kids like idiots. Which is what “Batman Forever” does.

With its stupid jokes, its terrible exposition, its broad comedy sound effects. It’s an approach that says more about the film than the audience.

“Batman Forever” has nothing but contempt for the audience who are taking time to watch it. It’s so insanely lazy and patronising.

It is the worst form of blockbuster entertainment. And it’s compounded by the movie’s repeated insistence that it’s smarter than it is.

I remember the first time I saw “Batman Forever.” I was eight years old, and on a plane.

It was the moment that I - an eight year old - realised that movies could have things I liked in them and still be terrible.

“Batman Forever” holds a special place in my heart for that.

“You were supposed to understand.”

Paradoxically, I think Jim Carrey’s Riddler is the closest that “Batman Forever” comes to working.

Carrey manages to do something more than impersonate Frank Gorshin, and hits the tone that “Forever” seems to be aiming towards.”

Of course, there are aspects of Carrey’s Riddler that don’t quite work.

There’s just a slight whiff of gay panic to his performance, but I tend to trust Schumacher to judge that better than I do.

Even then, Carrey adds an otherwise absent element of sexual energy to the film.

The bigger problem with Carrey’s Riddler is the idea that he might possibly be obsessed with Bruce Wayne, as played by Val Kilmer.

Carrey quite simply has nothing to play off. (Ironically, I think he’d have had better luck with either Keaton or Clooney.)

Ironically, the best onscreen version of the Riddler since Gorshin would arrive onscreen in another 1995 movie.

Jeremy Irons’ work in “Die Hard With a Vengeance” is a much better Batman villain than any character who shows up in “Batman Forever.”

“Tonight, a new act for your amazement. We call it massacre under the big top.”

On the other hand, Tommy Lee Jones is just awful as Two-Face. He’s offering a thinly-veiled first-person-plural take on Jack Nicholson’s Joker.

His performance feels like reheated leftovers.

Batman has one of the best rogues’ galleries in comic books. More than that, most of his villains are interesting enough to sustain multiple interpretations.

It’s particularly disappointing to see one of the great comic book villains reduced to Generic Comic Book Baddie #2654.

“I figure telling that cop I'd stay here saved me a truckload of social service interviews and good will.”

To be fair, maybe some parts of “Batman Forever” have aged better than others.

Chris O’Donnell’s mid-twenties live-at-home orphan feels like a Judd Apatow protagonist.

A twenty-something-year-old slacker living out of the basement of his surrogate father’s mansion, maybe Chris O’Donnell gave us a truly millennial version of Robin the Man-Boy Wonder.

Maybe he arrived a few years too early for us to truly appreciate it.

“Killing Two-Face won't take the pain away. It'll make it worse.”

What I really, truly, fundamentally hate about “Batman Forever” is it’s repeated insistence that it’s a “worthy” or “deep” or “profound” movie that actually has something to say.

That condescending earnestness.

To be fair to Schumacher, there’s a lot to suggest he wanted to make a much better movie than either “Batman Forever” or “Batman and Robin”, and I don’t blame him for their failure.

But the movie’s weird earnest hints at an unearned psychologically depth are so trite.

“Batman Forever” is that toxic combination of a movie that looks down its nose at audiences, while insisting upon its own insight.

Gee, do we think the death of Bruce’s parents messed him up? Really? Imagine thinking you were smart for realising that.

And again, Chase Meridian is the unfortunate nexus point of all this.

The cleverest idea that “Batman Forever” has amounts to: “what if Batman were to date a psychiatrist? wouldn’t that be weird? you see, because he has psychological issues?”

And then the movie calls it a day.

“You make the kill, but your pain doesn't die with Harvey, it grows. So you run out into the night to find another face, and another, and another, until one terrible morning you wake up and realize that revenge has become your whole life.”

Ugh. There’s that faux profundity.

There’s the bones of a decent arc here, in that it could be read as a meta-textual commentary on the violence (and borderline psychopathy) of the character in “Batman” and “Batman Returns.”

After all, Keaton’s version of the character seemed to relish violence.

Indeed, part of what makes “The Dark Knight Rises” such a pleasure is that the film is explicitly positioned as a critique of the character’s decisions in “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight.”

But that criticism is at least earned and organic. It is set up and paid off.

But “Batman Forever” is - ironically due to outside factors positioning it as a rejection of “Batman Returns” - unable to meaningfully engage with this idea.

Val Kilmer’s Bruce Wayne doesn’t seem like a guy who has embraced violence to feel better. He just mostly looks bored.

In order to sell an audience on the idea that Bruce Wayne is wrestling with his demons, you need to convincingly sell the audience on the idea that Bruce Wayne has demons.

Kilmer can’t sell it in his performance, and the film won’t sell it in its actual characterisation.

“From this day on, Batman is no more.”

@ellardent pointed out that “Batman Forever” steals the Batman/Chase/Bruce triangle from classic Superman comics.

It also shamelessly steals the fifteen-minute retirement from “Superman II.” Which, it must be said, did it much better.

And, again, there’s something rather shameless and exhausting in all of this. Batman is one of the most iconic characters in pop culture.

Imagine being so terrified by the backlash to “Batman Returns” that you build so much of your Batman film around generic Superman tropes.

“You see, I'm both Bruce Wayne and Batman, not because I have to be, now, because I choose to be.”

People who know me will tell you, honestly, that it takes a lot for me to hate a film. I don’t even hate “Batman and Robin.”

But I truly, deeply, honestly hate “Batman Forever.”

“Batman Forever” is kinda lucky that (a.) the racist forties serial, (b.) “The Killing Joke”, and (c.) the theatrical cut of “Justice League” all exist.

Because those three things alone just about prevent it from being the worst theatrically released “Batman” film ever.

At its core, “Batman Forever” is blockbuster entertainment at its most soullessly and vacuously self-congratulatory.

A movie that spends two hours beating you over the head with a lead pipe and expects you to thank it for that experience.

It’s awful. Truly awful.