Batman ’66 Begats Batman ‘97
Joel Schumacher looked at the Sixties Batman series and said “You call that camp? Hold my beer…”
Batman & Robin (1997)
Directed by Joel Schumacher
Written by Akiva Goldsman
Our movie begins with rapid cuts of polyurethane codpieces and bun-hugging rubber bondage pants with built-in butt cracks. This sequence represents our heroes suiting up as they prepare for a grueling night spent righting wrongs, combating evil, and doing a bunch of amyl nitrate poppers in the parking lot behind the Pleasure Chest. Before climbing into the Batmobile (which now has a rotating disco ball behind the radiator), Batman (George Clooney) and Robin (Chris O’Donnell) pause to contemplate the rubber nipples attached to each other’s costume.
Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger) has commandeered the Gotham Museum and is, well, freezing things, as he goes about stealing an enormous diamond. Batman and Robin arrive to foil his plan, and Arnold commands his minions to “Kill the heroes. Yes, kill them. Kill them. Yeah. Destroy everything.” But he says it in such a bored, detached way, that he sounds less like a super villain ordering a massacre, and more like a gas station attendant giving a motorist directions to the Interstate. Nonetheless, the Caped Crusaders find themselves under attack by the Mighty Ducks, and suddenly — it’s Batman on Ice! You half expect to see our two heroes get the living crap beaten out of them by a giant figure-skating Snoopy.
The sequence ends much as it began — stupidly. Batman hops into Arnold’s tank, which morphs into the elevator from the end of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and blasts through the skylight. With Batman trapped inside, and the capsule headed for space, Arnold jumps out into the night sky and turns into a butterfly. Apparently, Batman loved Mr. Freeze, so he set him free. Mr. Freeze doesn’t come back, however, so evidently he was never Batman’s to begin with. Anyway, it turns out Robin was clinging to the outside of the capsule, despite the ice and wind shear and G-forces. He frees Batman, and they both escape by kicking out the doors and using them to sky-surf 30,000 feet down to earth, in what some might call the ultimate use of extreme sports as an idiotic deus ex machina, but which I prefer to think of as a pretty nice Mountain Dew ad.
Meanwhile, botanist Uma Thurman is attempting to crossbreed a rattlesnake with an orchid, while her next door neighbor, geneticist John Glover, is attempting to splice an Australian skinhead with a Mexican wrestler. John catches Uma peeping on his experiment, and dumps so much acid on her that it eats a hole through the floor, and straight down through the crust of the earth, although the effect on Uma seems to consist largely of tightening her pores and giving her a henna rinse.
Cut to the Bat Cave, where George narrates home movies of Mr. Freeze’s origin. It basically involves Arnold falling into some ice water, causing the viewer to reflect that Bedford Falls narrowly escaped being plagued by a super villain when Harry Bailey fell through the ice in It’s a Wonderful Life.
Anyway, it turns out that Arnold, who requires sub-zero temperatures to survive, needs diamonds because he uses lasers to keep his costume cold. Got that? Or should we just move on?
Let’s move on. Alfred, who has been with Batman since the first movie in 1989, can’t stand what the franchise is turning into, and starts pretending to die. Meanwhile, Uma pops out of the acid-eaten hole in the ground. She’s now got bright red hair, vines wrapped around her arms, and a campy delivery, having mutated into a combination of Bette Midler and Swamp Thing. Oh, and her lips are poisonous (especially when she uses them to speak dialogue.)
Cut back to Arnold, who plans to hold Gotham City for billions in ransom. But the truly evil part of his scheme involves wearing fuzzy slippers like your grandma, and making his henchmen watch a lousy Rankin-Bass animated holiday special. Then he pays a tender visit to his beloved wife, whom he stores in an aquarium.
Back at Wayne Manor, Alicia Silverstone appears on the doorstep. She’s Alfred’s niece, and is freshly arrived from an English boarding school, judging by her knee socks, pleated skirt, starched white blouse, and charcoal blazer. Or perhaps she’d just appeared in a Japanese porn video.
Later, Batman and Robin act as celebrity sponsors for a slave auction. Uma, now billing herself as Poison Ivy, shows up in a gorilla costume covered with shiny pink acrylic fur, making her look like the toilet seat cover in Mary Kay’s bathroom. Then she strips down, and the crowd instantly finds her irresistible, because she’s dressed in a provocative costume like the Jolly Green Giant’s mascot, Sprout. Oh, and also because she drugged everybody to like her.
The Dynamic Duo are both trying to hump her when Arnold arrives to steal some more diamonds. Uma tries her pheromone drug on him, but since Arnold is completely blue, including his balls, he’s gotten used to the sensation, and doesn’t fall for her.
Meanwhile, Alicia is coping with the grief over her parents’ death in an auto accident by engaging in unsanctioned motocross events. “I guess all the speed and danger help take me out of myself,” she tells Chris. If only it would take her out of this movie.
But with all the money she’s won racing, Alicia plans to whisk Alfred away from his “life of dismal servitude” and free him from the “master-servant” relationship in which he’s trapped. At last, Chris realizes her true identity: She’s Emma Goldman Girl!
Mr. Freeze and Poison Ivy now team up to inflict tedium on the audience, with Arnold vowing to blanket the city in endless winter. “First Gotham,” he shouts, “And then the world!” Which is not generally a phrase I enjoy hearing out of the mouth of an archconservative with a heavy Austrian accent. Anyway, after mankind has been turned into Otter Pops, Uma plans to populate the Earth with her genetically spliced reptilian plants, which resemble a sort of Goth Kukla.
Meanwhile, Alfred is dying of the same disease that killed Arnold’s wife, so he programs his “brain algorithms” into the Bat Computer, and becomes Alfred Headroom. He also creates some fetish gear for Alicia, so we get to watch the whole crotch/ass/nipple suiting-up sequence again.
Robin tracks Poison Ivy to Busch Gardens, where she kisses him with her poisoned lips, but Robin foils her with the use of a dental dam he borrowed from Lesbo Lass. Unfortunately, he then falls into Uma’s koi pond and gets his ass kicked by the little bubbling diver. Batman arrives to save him, but is immediately attacked by the man-eating vine from The Addams Family. Then Alicia (now Bat Girl) crashes through the skylight, and she and Uma trade savage blows while engaging in a spirited exchange of ideas about Naomi Wolf’s “The Beauty Myth,” and the early works of Germaine Greer. Finally, Alicia’s stunt double puts us out of our misery by kicking Uma’s stunt double into the maw of Audrey II, the giant plant from Little Shop of Horrors.
Arnold freezes the city, but Batman pulls some rock salt out of his utility belt, and that’s pretty much that. Oh, and it turns out Arnold had a couple test tubes in his sleeve full of some blue liquid (Vanish, I think, or maybe 2000 Flushes) which cures Alfred, thus foiling his escape from the franchise. The end.
So what’s the moral of the story? Well it’s the old Hegelian Dialectic: that thesis generates antithesis, which resulting tension is ultimately resolved by synthesis. The uber-campy 1966 Batman TV series was followed by the Tim Burton Batman movie, which, though ripe with camp elements, was also marbled with veins of Burton’s trademark dark fantasy. Schumacher responded to this premature attempt at synthesis by creating a Platonic ideal of camp in Batman & Robin, which ultimately caused the pendulum to swing to the opposite extreme: Christopher Nolan’s grimdark Batman movies — a clear win for the antithesis team. Which leaves us to wonder: which brave visionary will step forward to unite camp and grimdark into the ultimate expression of grimcamp, a combination as upsetting, yet inevitable, as liver and onions?
This piece is adapted from the book Better Living Through Bad Movies.
