Batman & Robin
It's Thanksgiving and you know what means... it's time for this year's cinematic turkey! Few movies are as deserving of the the title as 1997's epic misfire Batman & Robin. Reviled by fans and critics alike, this film did so much damage to Warner Bros' flagship franchise that it would take the better part of a decade for the Caped Crusader to recover.
In fact, it's developed such a notorious reputation that at this point, it almost felt like too easy a target. So in addition to breaking down why it doesn't work, we were also interested in figuring out how it happened in the first place, whether or not Joel Schumacher's decision to draw from a particular era of Batman's history was actually perfectly valid, and what this adaptation can teach us about bending even the most malleable properties too far.
Topics include: our expectations before we saw it for the first time and what we thought of it back then, why it didn't even matter who was playing Batman at this point, an earlier draft of the script where Mr. Freeze was more in line with his animated series counterpart, the film's reliance on Batman Forever's formula, the inclusion of Bane and a bunch of other unnecessary elements, how this set the stage for the modern comic book movie, and much much more!