Serious comic book fans and discerning cinephiles consider director Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin from 1997 one of the worst films ever made – but they are wrong. It’s easily more entertaining than Christopher Nolan’s feted Batman trilogy (come at me Nolanites) – an endlessly quotable and absurd corporate climate change parable and the source of teenage mania among my early 2000s high school friends.
The intensely silly caper is more reminiscent of the 60s TV show, and Silver Age comics, than the brooding 80s publications that inspired Nolan and everyone since. Fans were understandably upset with the film’s reduction of Bane (one of Batman’s most intelligent foes) to a witless henchman; but in The Dark Knight Rises, Nolan and Tom Hardy turned Bane into a helium-fuelled, amateur Shakespearean actor, so, whatever.
Batman & Robin’s plot revolves around its villains – the eco-fascist Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman) and romantic snowman Mr Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger) – and their attempts to terraform Gotham for the benefit of their loved ones and plants. Go deeper though, and it emerges as a morally complex climate change allegory, in which two visionary scientists attempt to save the planet from the relentlessly destructive capitalism of billionaire psychopaths like George Clooney’s Bruce Wayne.
Looking back on the film, it’s remarkable to see how far we’ve come from the homophobic and insecure criticisms of the film’s hot introduction of nippled Batsuits. And how Poison Ivy was afforded far more complexity of character than Nolan (a known sideliner of female characters) gave to Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman; or how Mr Freeze’s escape rocket was clearly the prototype for Jeff Bezos’s “anthropomorphic” spaceship.
Analysing the film for this column, though, has been fraught. It was dropped from Binge a week before the original publication date, subsequently directing our attention to the film’s wild cultural byproducts. Despite Clooney’s fears they had “just killed the franchise” this thing has legs, wings, or tendrils, stalactites even, that extend far beyond the film proper and remain frozen in the cultural ether.
For one, Batman & Robin has an excellent soundtrack, featuring an at-the-height-of-their-powers Smashing Pumpkins, Jewel’s classic Foolish Games, a Bone Thugs-n-Harmony banger, and a hectic techno sermon from Underworld.
Most delirious though, is the Batman & Robin Audio Action Adventure – a bizarre 34-minute storybook retelling of the film, with relentless foley and sound effects complementing the dubious talents of ring-in voice actors doing their best takes on Clooney’s Batman, Chris O’Donnell’s Robin and Alicia Silverstone’s Batgirl (sadly an Austrian stand-in for Schwarzenegger wasn’t cast).
Mr Freeze has 27 ice puns in the film – his “Tonight’s forecast: a Freeze is coming” line is arguably the second most quotable moment in any Batman film (as well as the second best villain) behind Heath Ledger’s Joker’s “Why so serious?”. The Audio Adventure adds in extra pun-ishment missing from the film (describing a frozen security guard as a “copsicle” is an early ripper).
My friend Andrew found the Audio Adventure CD in a Wellington record store sales bin. Another friend, Adrian, theorised that “it was intended for parents to put on for their six-year-old, and tell them to shut up and eat their cheese and apple”. My most memorable teenage listening session of the Audio Adventure took place at Andrew’s parents’ place, among clouds of smoke, in one of many teenage “hot rooms”: a ritualistic process in which the smallest possible rooms of absent parents’ houses were packed with multiple heaters, becoming dank folkloric caves to shield us from brutal Wellington winters (which somehow feels connected to the film’s plot).
Neither Batman & Robin: An Audio Action Adventure, or the hot room, make sense – but right now nothing does. So if seven seasons of Mad Men feels like a slog, then it’s time to crank the heaters and suit up for an audio superhero odyssey. If you can make it through the Action Adventure’s full, feverish, chaotic runtime, you can make it through lockdown. And if that’s too outlandish for you, fear not – there’s no stopping this Batsled. Batman & Robin, the motion picture, is back on Stan.
