Out of the first 4 Batman movies, Batman Forever is my favorite. The 1989 Keaton Batman was quite good, Batman Returns was a bit too dark, and Batman and Robin, while interesting as camp, obviously was a step down.
I wanted to see more of Jim Carrey as the Riddler in this movie. My ideal movie would not have had Tommy Lee Jones at all. The Riddler backstory could have been explored a bit more.
There is no question that Val Kilmer is the best Batman as well as Bruce Wayne. Keaton made a good Batman, but I didn’t ever think he did a good job as Wayne. Kilmer has the scenes with Chris O’Donnell which I think work very well as the Bruce Wayne scenes.
The more colorful Gotham City really works well for me in this movie. This is also the best Batmobile.
The Prince soundtrack to the 1989 Batman is the best music to the first four Batman films , but the U2 Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me, is by far the best music ever in a Batman movie, far better than the forgettable Seal song Kiss from a Rose.
I thought Tommy Lee Jones played a better Joker in Batman Forever (as Harvey) than Jack did in 89.
Forever also happens to be my favorite of those 4. It felt like the only movie that got Batman and Bruce Wayne right. In the first 2, Batman was real stiff and hobbled around. He looked like if he jumped off of a building, he’d fall to his death. In Forever, he can actually move around. Also, he didn’t murder people in Forever like he did in the first 2. If you watch the deleted scenes, it also kind of fixes that part about the Joker killing his parents that the first movie screwed up.
I did hate Robin, TwoFace, and The Riddler in that movie though. I wasn’t really pleased with any of those 4 movies, but Forever worked the best for me.
Val did a good job. He was better than Clooney, but that’s probably due to Batman and Robin being the stupidest film out of all of them. He didn’t have much to work with. That’s pretty much all the good things I can say about the film.
Keaton and Bale were the two best ones. I liked Keaton’s sort of airheaded version of Wayne, and I liked Bale’s womanizing billionaire playboy interpretation.
I was very disappointed in Kilmer as Wayne & Batman. Several in my circle agreed when it first came out that he did not diffentiate between the characters. We expected Tombstone level acting tho we certainly didn’t have that level of scripting.
Jim Carrey’s Riddler was fine. TLJ as Two-Face was disconcerting as the franchise technically had BDW. However, I had no problem with that performance.
If we must have Dick Grayson/Robin, he should have been younger.
Incidentally, I did not expect much from Clooney so he did not disappoint. Nor did Alicia Silverstone. However the change in the Barbara/Batgirl backstory was unforgivable.
Arnold’s Mr. Freeze & Uma’s Poison Ivy were OK, Bane was a non-entity. Michael Gough’s Alfred was the saving grace of the whole thing.
I liked Kilmer’s Batman but didn’t really like his Wayne- although, I did really like his first scene with Jim Carrey.
I thought Carrey was pretty good. Though he was 10 years into his career and had done a variety of roles, he was only a few years into being famous- and he was hanging his fame on doing “Jim Carrey” roles. So, this was pretty much the first “acting” role he had since being famous. The role did allow for him to incorporate his schtick to an extent but I thought he walked that line very well.
I wasn’t too fond of Tommy Lee Jones, he was too over-the-top. I did think he had decent chemistry with Carrey, though. I also liked that we didn’t have to see his “origin story”- the achive news footage of his acid-ent was sufficient.
I didn’t like O’Donnell in either of his two movies. The character was scripted poorly, but he really did nothing to elevate it.
I can never understand anyone not listing Burton’s first Batman as the favorite of that 4 film series. Keaton’s Batman was great and his Wayne was great and the first film hit every mark just about perfectly. The scene where Wayne confronts The Joker in Vicki Vale’s apartment is probably the greatest scene in any Batman movie including the Nolan films (toss-up in competition with the scene when Joker introduces himself to the mob bosses in Nolan’s second film).
The movie had two good things going for it: that song by U2, and that song by Seal. Besides that, it was a campy, incoherent mess. Everything you hated in the next film was present there, to a marginally lesser degree (and for the record, I thought Kilmer was even wore than Clooney). It was Batman as seen through the eyes of a gay window dresser.
BATMAN RETURNS: come for the dueling weirdness of Danny DeVito and Christopher Walken; stay for a whip-wielding Michelle Pfeiffer in skintight black leather.
“You know, mistletoe can be deadly if you eat it.”
“A kiss can be even deadlier, if you mean it.”
<beat>
“Oh my god. Does this mean we have to start fighting?”
I so much dislike the “monsterfication” of The Penguin in Batman Returns that my overall score for the film is significantly brought down because of it. A shame really, because I love so much about the rest of the film and maybe would have ranked it higher than Batman but the ridiculous characterization of The Penguin significantly tarnished the whole thing.
In the first movie, Tim Burton was constrained by studio demands and restrictions; he was given a much more free hand in the second, which is why it is possibly the most Burtonesque Tim Burton film Time Burton ever made.
Really?!? I find that scene remarkably dumb–not only because Michael Keaton’s “crazy” is not remotely convincing to me, but more critically: he uses a metal serving pan as protection under his clothes? All Joker had to do was shoot him in the head, and Movie Over. I like the first film in plenty of ways, but if there’s one scene that almost kills it, it’s that one.
Hands down my favorite film of the first four, with you citing perhaps the best, most moving scene of the pre-Nolan Batman films. Her Catwoman is the only real character from any of the villains from the first four films–everyone else is just variations of cartoonish tropes, sometimes fun but always one-dimensional. But her acting is a thing of beauty and elevates the film (though DeVito and Walken both play off her extremely well).
This is why I prefer Batman Returns slightly more than the first (Keaton) Batman. Pfeiffer made the movie; DeVito and Walken nearly killed it. So for me, it’s 2, 1, and blah for the rest. I also agree that Kilmer sort of missed the point about the distinct personalities of Wayne and Batman. Only Keaton and Bale even bothered. I know this thread is about the original series, but Bale summed it up nicely when he said in an interview (and I paraphrase) ‘Wayne is the costume.’
:checks IMDb rating history to be sure memory is accurate
I gave it 1 star. From my personal notes, that equals
Sorry.
(FWIW, other movies I gave 1 star are: Gloria, Blood Work, The Departed, City of God, Gladiator, Crash, Batman & Robin, The Matrix Revolutions, Thirteen, Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer, The Patriot, Showgirls, and What Lies Beneath.)