The intended theme of duality leaves the film’s tone cleft in twain, and nowhere is that more obvious than in the casting and performances of the two villains.
Batman & Robin may be a monumentally silly movie, but at least it’s not as torn between unfunny pantomime and dull psychodrama as Forever. You’ll probably find us in the minority for thinking that Batman Forever is the weaker of the two Schumacher-directed Batman films. We’ve covered this more extensively in a previous episode of the Film Stories podcast, which you can listen to right here… The casting of Jones and Carrey came at the end of a behind-the-scenes upheaval that saw director Tim Burton and star Michael Keaton depart the Batman franchise, to be replaced by Joel Schumacher and Val Kilmer, respectively. And then there was 1995’s Batman Forever – not only “one of the greatest movies ever made” (said Jonathan Ross) but also the motion picture event that brought then-recent Academy Award winner Tommy Lee Jones and comedy’s biggest rising star Jim Carrey together at last.
The 1992 sequel, Batman Returns set Danny DeVito and Michelle Pfieffer as misfit collaborators, with Christopher Walken’s amoral CEO providing some less flamboyant antagonism from the sidelines. Even since Jack Nicholson pocketed a sum that has been estimated between $50 – 90 million for playing the Joker in 1989’s Batman, there’s been a certain expectation attached to the casting of big villains. Crime pays if you’re playing a Batman villain.
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