Michael Caine is quite unashamed about his work in awful movies. When asked about “Jaws: The Revenge” in an interview, he replied:
“I have never seen it, but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific.”
People are still worked up over this?
The “Batman” series of movies were generally not very good to start with; the Keaton/Nicholson Batman is clever and original, but approximate six days long and kind of silly at times. After that they got worse as they went. Batman Forever is a flatly stupid movie and I struggle to remember which one is that and which one is Batman & Robin.
Define “worked up”.
Schmuacher, apparently out of the blue, decides to “apologize” for a the last shitty movie in a series of progressively-shitty movies, after all this time, reminding me of a film I never watched because I knew it would be shitty but it still killed the franchise for 8 years, and so we comment on it.
It’s still a shitty movie, no matter what he says. It’s not going to go post-modern, and become retroactively good. I had forgotten it existed, and if he had never mentioned it, I would have continued to not think about it forever.
Damn you, I now require strong drink. And an early bedtime.
It’s pretty clear from your comments that you didn’t read the interview. You should; it’s a good read.
Nice touch.
I don’t know why but we for some reason we, as a culture, just can’t let the whole Bat Nipples thing go. Yeah it ultimately was not a good idea but it was one bad idea in a sea of hundreds for that movie.
How many other movies made in 1997 get this kind of energy spent on a dumb decision? Beverly Hills Ninja had Chris Farley in a gi, what they heck were they thinking? 
I see your point. I was unfair to Mr Schumacher. He seems cool in the interview. At peace with his legacy. 
But I will stand by my “string of shitty movies” comment. Batman Returns was weak, but Batman Forever was so bad that it was a major reason I didn’t see B&R. And I* like* Val Kilmer! (*The Saint *is a much better film than its reputation would indicate.)
I thought it was funny that he passed on B&R to do The Island of Dr. Moreau, which was by god even worse! “but man, it’s Marlon Brando!”. That should have been the reason not to do it.
Every day they make another terrible movie, that’s no big thing. To make a terrible movie that people remember 20 years later as a terrible movie you have to go above and beyond.
Batman and Robin was a huge huge blockbuster movie. It had a gigantic budget, and an even more gigantic marketing budget. It had major stars, it was a continuation of a successful franchise, and people wanted to see it and like it.
And it was terrible, just terrible. Yeah, bat nipples. But bat nipples are, as you say, just one of a hundred terrible things about this movie. Should we list them? I don’t have the strength.
It’s true that the fetish aspect of Batman is a legitimate thing to explore. This is a guy who goes out at night dressed in a latex animal costume looking for some rough trade. What’s up with that? “You’re not really here for the hunting, are you?” And the Burton films and the Nolan films didn’t go there. So…Schumacher could have gone there. Fanboys would have screamed, studio exec would have screamed, it would have been a fiasco, but at least it would have been something.
But Schumacher couldn’t do that, although some of it oozes in, because the studio wouldn’t allow that to happen to their franchise.
If it wasn’t for B&R being so bad, we never would’ve had the Nolan movies. So I thank Schumacher for this.
Rght on; glad you read and enjoyed it for what it is.
I only ever saw the first Tim Burton-directed Batman; it’s partly responsible for my huge dislike of the man and his work as he was relatively unknown back then. He had directed Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, which I loved (I was already a fan of Pee Wee having watched the HBO taping of his stage show many times) so I thought his Batman might be cool, but to me it was just a stupid mess of a movie with terrible acting, terrible sets, terrible story, etc. There was no way I was going back to that well.
So I’ve never even seen B&R. It’s been nearly impossible to avoid knowing what a debacle it was tho. And there’s plenty to back up your perception that the films got worse with every iteration; I doubt many would quibble with you on that.
Totally agree. I can only guess that after the handful of films he made where he wasn’t a complete shit to deal with in the early 1990s (The Freshman, Don Juan DeMarco, A Dry White Season (1989, I know)) people must have forgiven and forgotten what he was reportedly like on the set of Apocalypse Now.
I don’t have any particular hatred for the man or the movie. It was a bad movie, by all means, but that’s not a personal affront to me or anything.
But, as apologies go, I don’t find the interview to be much of an apology. I’d rather see him reflect on the logic that he had going into the development of the movie. There’s no real indication that he understand why the movie was bad or what he should have done to make it better. He seems to accept that ‘people’ don’t like the movie, but not so much that he made poor choices, just unpopular ones.
Did he read a bunch of comics from the 70s and decide that he wanted to keep going that direction?
Did he come to the belief that his target audience was 8 years old (and if so, then why the nipples)?
Was he just in a camp/zany frame of mind at the time?
The most he offers is that maybe he was a little too self-important at the moment in time. But I don’t see how that leads to such a bizarre choice of directorial style for the movie. It doesn’t feel like he went artsy-fartsy. The movie more just feels like he was in a flamboyant mood at the time, but I’d like to better understand why.
I didn’t hate any of this series of Batman movies. The first was definitely the best, but still, the others had their fun moments and didn’t take themselves too seriously. I definitely enjoyed watching them more than Star Wars Ep I-III.
Setting the bar pretty low there, aren’t ya?
The 1990s was just kind of a crap decade for movies. It wasn’t universally bad, any more than any decades are universally good, but there were bad trends and things the studios just didn’t know how to handle floating around, and movies suffered because of them. There were better periods before and after, and the worst Schumacher can be accused of is not rising above the trends of the period.
About the only good thing about the Schumacher “Batman” films were the soundtrack albums. Especially the one from Forever.
“Suit me up, Uncle Alfred” was a joke amongst my friends for a long time.
Strong drink? What’s that? Two tablespoons of Metamucil? 
40 and playing the mom in the latest “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” movie (which - and I say this as someone reluctantly dragged to it - wasn’t bad at all as live action family movies go). Yep, she’s firmly in family comedy mom territory now.
