Batman & Robin - The worst movie "ever made?"

[Robocop]

wait, wasn't Cutthroat Island the biggest flop in history?

I thought it was Waterworld. 

Personally, I dodn't even think Batman and Robin was a bad movie.  It felt like a nice update to the old Adam West series with a much bigger budget, and Clooney was a huge improvement over Kilmer.

I couldn't disagree more. The Adam West series was actually quite clever even if it was campy. B&R along with BF were silly, obnoxious, over the top and if anything an insult to the 60s series, especially directly after the dark gothic universe established by Tim Burton. Kilmer had great potential but was runied with a shocking script, Clooney no matter which way you look at it was a terrible casting choice.

[JaseSF]

Nah, Batman and Robin isn't the "worst movie ever made"...odds are said movie is too boring, possibly over offensive, over-arty and unmemorable for most to even recall they watched it five minutes later...

Batman and Robin is definitely the 60s Batman series updated for a more modern audience as was Batman Forever which I actually did like on some levels (it doesn't fully succeed though). It was meant to be more fun -- now it doesn't succeed in any respect really but I've definitely seen worse films - heck The Terror is worse just because it'll bore you to tears as is Monster From Green Hell...

[Mr. DS]

Pluto Nash was way worse than B n' R, actually nearly every film Eddie Murphy has made in the last 10-15 years could be a better candidate for "worst film", that is, if we're talking profits and losses added into the mix also. I must say, I was bitterly disappointed with Batman Forever (even though I understood it was a nod back to the 60s series) when I went to see it in the cinema after all the good things Tim Burton did to enhance the Batman universe. But, I was even more appalled with Batman & Robin. Saying that though, B n' R now looks like a goddamn masterpiece to me when stack up against the steaming piles of crap currently playing in theaters worldwide....

I think there is a line Hollywood can't seem to walk when they make a comic book movie.  Its either too goofy or too serious.  Right now we're in the way to friggin serious phase.  (insert stupid Heath Ledger "why so serious joke)  I personally hate The Dark Knight more and more each time I watch it.  I did like Batman Begins because I happen to like origin films.  However, if the latest Christian Bale incarnation lets me down with Bane as a supervillain I'm done with it.

Staying on topic, Batman And Robin I felt was an undoubtedly awful film.  Almost as if they didn't seem to care while making it.  However "worst movie ever made" argument isn't really valid IMHO.  Take a look at Bronx Executioner or The Day Time Ended and get back to me.  At least B n R had some special effects going for it.

[Robocop]

Staying on topic, Batman And Robin I felt was an undoubtedly awful film.  Almost as if they didn't seem to care while making it.  However "worst movie ever made" argument isn't really valid IMHO.  Take a look at Bronx Executioner or The Day Time Ended and get back to me.  At least B n R had some special effects going for it.

You are failing to see my side of the argument by completing missing the point. I brought B&R into this category not just because its a terrible film in itself but because its production costs is hefty. $140 million is a huge budget to work with, none of those films you mentioned have a quarter of the money B&R had which is why its not valid to claim a B-Movie with a budget next to nothing is the "worst film ever made" when the argument doesn't hold water to what I'm trying to say.

Logical comparisons would be films that are critically acclaimed in similar manner with a budget around the same mark.     

[Mr. DS]

Staying on topic, Batman And Robin I felt was an undoubtedly awful film.  Almost as if they didn't seem to care while making it.  However "worst movie ever made" argument isn't really valid IMHO.  Take a look at Bronx Executioner or The Day Time Ended and get back to me.  At least B n R had some special effects going for it.

You are failing to see my side of the argument by completing missing the point. I brought B&R into this category not just because its a terrible film in itself but because its production costs is hefty. $140 million is a huge budget to work with, none of those films you mentioned have a quarter of the money B&R had which is why its not valid to claim a B-Movie with a budget next to nothing is the "worst film ever made" when the argument doesn't hold water to what I'm trying to say.

Logical comparisons would be films that are critically acclaimed in similar manner with a budget around the same mark.     

Well the producers complained but not a whole lot...from Wikipedia:

The film went on to gross $107.3 million in North America and $130.9 million internationally, coming to a worldwide total of $238.2 million.[20] Warner Bros. declared Batman & Robin a financial success, but not on the scale they were hoping for.

Also check on this which is also featured in a thread.  B n R are not on there:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_biggest_box_office_bombs

[Olivia Bauer]

It's a bad movie. No, not a bad movie... A HORRIBLE movie. No, a STUPID MOVIE!

An ungodly abomination of film! Worst movie ever? No! Not even close!

I've seen much worse movies! I'll take Batman and Robin over "MAC & ME" any day!

[Hammock Rider]

   I think if you're a huge Batman fan this movie would hurt to watch.  However, as a casual fan of the Dark Knight I wouldn't say it's the worst movie ever. It's a stinker to be sure. The attempt at camping it up ala the Adam West years was pretty dismal. It wasn't as smart as the Adam West version and seemed more to be mocking it rather than paying homage to it. On the other hand it had Uma Thurman and Alicia Silverstone so the Eye Candy factor alone moves it light years ahead of anything like Manos, Pod People, The Creeping Terror or The Beast of Yucca Flats.

[Robocop]

Box office statistics are all well and good, but I'm leaning towards the cost of production and what drastic impression its since left over long after the final set of figures had been finalized. I mean B&R was so terrible that the studio had no choice but to reboot it from scratch, not to mention the slack it gets from media outlets and the general public since its release in 97. Hence the giant waste of time and money, and in my mind from a financial view point making it the "worst movie ever made" not visually or in terms of storytelling (even though its pretty bad), but purely from a cash flow prospective. 

But I suppose there are many ways of arguing/analyzing its position whilst that be financially or otherwise like for example: the list of 'bomb records' you presented.

[Mr. DS]

Much like any artform I guess the artistic value is in the eye of the beholder in any movie.  That would make it hard to determine of if the money was wasted or not.  Someone may look at an abstract painting and think its worth one million and I wouldn't pay 5 bucks for it.

In this case B n R may not have any value to you and I but perhaps somoene else will like it.  I bet if I put it on for my 5 year old he'd dig it.  You have to figure if WB didn't spend the money on this film they would have blown it on some other subpar film that probably wouldn't have grossed anything. 

[Psycho Circus]

I think we've all pretty much hammered home the fact that it's a poor movie. Everyone has chipped in with their opinions and we've covered the main points such as; the acting, the budget, the comparisons to the other big screens Batman flicks. Robocop, you asked the question: "Batman & Robin - The worst movie 'ever made' ?" Why ask, when from everything you've posted it seems you are unhappy with all the replies you have gotten? I know you're looking at it from the point of large budget = poor quality content, but there's hundreds of films we could name (and we've named a few) that could be analysed in the same manner. When all is said and done, it comes down to a matter of taste. One persons trash is anothers treasure regardless of value.

Now, lets stop taking this so damn seriously! 

[Chainsawmidget]

Batman and Robin has a plot that makes (at least somewhat) sense. 
The ending doesn't come out of nowhere and the movie doesn't just STOP.
The actors have personality.
They can actually act and aren't just reading cue cards being held off camera. 
It actually HAS special effects and costumes that look like what they're supposed to be.
There are little to no HUGE plot holes or lapses in continuity. 
They have actual sets that aren't made of cardboard or look run down (except when they're supposed to.)
They actually use different camera angles.
The can afford extras in scenes that need them. 
It didn't end anybody's career.
The movie made back it's budget.

Considering I can think of tons of movies this does not apply to, I feel safe in saying it's not the worst movie ever made. 

[Robocop]

Robocop, you asked the question: "Batman & Robin - The worst movie 'ever made' ?" Why ask, when from everything you've posted it seems you are unhappy with all the replies you have gotten? I know you're looking at it from the point of large budget = poor quality content, but there's hundreds of films we could name (and we've named a few) that could be analysed in the same manner. When all is said and done, it comes down to a matter of taste. One persons trash is anothers treasure regardless of value.

Now, lets stop taking this so damn seriously! 

It's not that I'm unhappy with the replies, in fact I welcome them because more people equals more discussion. The only posts I've had queries with is one that didn't quite understand my POV on the subject, so I followed that up with a more detailed response, and the other was strictly opinionated about B&R being a 'decent update' on the old Adam West TV show by which I couldn't disagree more with. Although like I said their are multiple ways to assess its imprint on the film world, and your post Circus Circus wraps it up in a nut shell. Well said.   

[joejoe]

I saw Batman and Robin years back. Some good action, some good laughs. I'm on the fence with this one

[WilliamWeird1313]

wait, wasn't Cutthroat Island the biggest flop in history?

I thought it was Waterworld.  

Personally, I dodn't even think Batman and Robin was a bad movie.  It felt like a nice update to the old Adam West series with a much bigger budget, and Clooney was a huge improvement over Kilmer.

I, for one, DO think it was a bad movie. As a hardcore Batman disciple, it was a disappointment. BUT, I definitely agree that it felt very much like the Adam West series in a way. It seems to me that Tim Burton's take on the character was more influenced by the character's crime, pulp, and horror roots, whereas Schumacher took more of his cues from the Adam West television series and the Comics Code-era version of the character. I don't think that this alone makes Batman & Robin a bad movie (nor do I think it's budget, however exorbitant, is an invitation to disdain either). Mostly, I think the plot was just plain iffy, the acting uneven (if ONLY there had been MORE JOHN GLOVER, he was fantastic), and the story structure rickety and weak. I also felt that many of the characters, such as Bane and Alfred, were just utterly wasted (ironically, the only character I thought was given any engaging sort of depth was the pun-spouting Arnie-played Mr. Freeze, despite how bad his costume looks and how much of a pop culture punchline this iteration of the character has become).

Nowadays, I can't mention Schumacher's name around my fellow Batgeeks without getting hissed at, but I feel like the man gets a bad wrap just based on this movie (and Batman Forever, which I actually DO NOT feel is a bad movie AT ALL... vastly different from previous installments, frequently hokey, and not AS GOOD, but STILL GOOD). I mean, he's proven himself to be a fine director with many of his other films (Flatliners, The Lost Boys, Falling Down, Phone Booth, Blood Creek), and it's a shame that so often when his name comes up his entire career seems to get summed up as "nipples on the batsuit."

In truth, despite the fact that I feel Schumacher's Batman films are inferior to Burton's, I still think, whether good or bad, you CAN'T deny that they have a certain visual insanity to them that is just incredibly dynamic. If the Adam West series (which I adore) was defined by titled camera angles, bright colors, and cardboard sets, then Schumacher's film can definitely be seen as a direction extension of that. The sets are more grand and bombastic, but possibly even faker. The colors are brighter, and often available in fluorescent glowing neon. And the camera angles are more extreme. I absolutely LOVE the LOOK of Schumacher's Batman movies (nipples notwithstanding). You cannot deny that this man had a VISION, even if it's not one you may share.

Colorful, chaotic camp or corrosive Crayola crap, either way I can say this... it's a helluva lot better than what Nolan's self-important and contrived approach is doing to the series. I swear, the only movie of that guy's I liked was The Prestige (and that's just out of my fixation on Victorian stage magic and my appetite for steampunk-type imagery).

For the record, I for one did prefer Kilmer over Clooney, personally.



By the way, Robocop, I disagree with your assertion that the studio had "no choice" after Batman & Robin but "to reboot from scratch." There's always a choice, and I, for one, would have much rather seen Schumacher's proposed "darker" film (Batman Triumphant, with Scarecrow and Harley Quinn as the main villains) or the also proposed DarKnight (with Scarecrow and Man-Bat) than what we eventually ended up with (or the similarly proposed Year One or Batman Beyond films, ...as much as I like both the Year Once comics and the Batman Beyond TV show, I have to say "no thanks"). Honestly, I feel the decision to "reboot" the series has had more long-standing negative effects on the modern film industry than the critical/artistic "failure" of Batman & Rob ever did. The series very well could have kept going. It did fine at the box office, even if "not on the scale the studio was hoping for." So? Dial back your expectation, and your budget, for the next one, and focus on making a smaller, better sequel. You don't HAVE to reboot. Fact is, Batman will ALWAYS draw crowds. He will ALWAYS make money. You make a Batman movie, and people WILL pay to see it, and you WILL make a profit. By choosing to reboot, however, the studio communicated that it would rather say "nevermind, that never happened, let's try this again" than soldier on. Nowadays, we have reboots getting announced before the franchises in question have even been inactive for the blink of a eye. Look at Spiderman. 1 and 2 were both very well-received, while 3 was criticially mauled. One bad sequel, and bada bing, bada boom, we're already on the path to a shiny new reboot. You can't place the blame squarely on the Batman franchise reboot for the "reboot first, ask questions later" mentality currently in vogue in Hollywood (The Hulk movies were significant exacerbaters as well), but it, and the success of Batman Begins (which I attribute more towards the franchise's dormancy than the film's quality... though it was significantly bettter than The Dark Knight), did, I think, play a large role in getting us to where we are now (a place, I must point out, I am NOT fond of).

Furthermore, I'm sure there's been movies made with larger budgets and more negative impact than Batman & Robin. I don't have the research to back that up, but I also don't really feel like wading through mountains of budget numbers and then debating a film's impact (despite the fact that seems to be exactly what I did in my previous paragraph), which is really not something you can definitively state anyway. Ultimately, no matter how many film experts and opinionated cineastes declare a particular film to have positive or negative impact, it's still not a fact, just an opinion (no matter how much evidence is used to support or refute said opinion).



Also, Darksider, I agree wholeheartedly with your comment about superhero movies being "way too serious" nowadays. I'm glad to hear someone with the same stance as myself on that particular point.

[Robocop]

By the way, Robocop, I disagree with your assertion that the studio had "no choice" after Batman & Robin but "to reboot from scratch." There's always a choice, and I, for one, would have much rather seen Schumacher's proposed "darker" film

Reboots are not always ideal or even essential in the case of the examples you provided (Spider-Man and Hulk) but I disagree with Batman. In order to restore some respectability back into this franchise I stick with the argument that they had no choice but to reboot the franchise and in turn: start a fresh. If for instance they went down the road of a sequel or prequel or spin off  or whatever to B&R the new film in the hypothetical franchise would already be at a significant disadvantage by being tied down to the previous two before it, I am of course talking about the campy Schumacher films. Now sure they might not have done too bad at the box office, but fans everywhere were typically outraged with the treatment Batman was given with Schumacher at the helm  & the studio forcing him to go back to the campy style of the 60s TV show (and if anything making a mockery of it rather then updating it), everyone knows Batman deserves more respect then that.

Now I know Schumacher wanted to make the dark & psychological films that he was never allowed to do because the studio wanted to market Batman as more of a family film to sell merchandise such as toys etc. However despite his intentions if he had access to creative control I think the worse thing they could have done was give him a stab at his vision despite how gritty and serious it might have been. It doesn't matter if he was apart of a sequel to his own creation in B&R, or a reboot of the series, the fact of the matter is the torch needed to be passed to somebody else and that director was Christopher Nolan. Now sure opinions are divided on his spin of Batman (I didn't like Batman Begins too much TBH) but I did enjoy The Dark Knight and many consider it to be the best Batman film to date. The success it made reflects that, which I'm assuming without looking at specific statistics is 10 times more then any Batman flick before it (including Burton's).

Anyway what it comes down is there was no choice in the matter, you couldn't have seen Schumacher's proposed "darker" films without the damage he was responsible for inflected before hand. It was impossible and a 1 in a 10000 chance of ever happening. So unless hypothetically everybody was fine with the corny, comedic approach then a 'reboot' was a must which as a reuslt payed divide ends.