10 Terrible Films That The Wrong Person Got Blamed For
4. Joel Schumacher - Batman & Robin
Who Else Was To Blame: Everyone involved.
As discussed on this very site earlier this week, the misguided, dumb, camp, punny Batman & Robin is viewed as a necessary evil so we could get Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy. Following on from the already awful Batman Forever, the gothic styles of Tim Burton's films were well and truly gone in place of locations that were closer to toy playsets and vibrant colours that only served to highlight those infernal bat-nipples. Try not to get too angry though; since the film's franchise-redefining release, its director Joel Schumacher has been relegated to low budget, easily ignorable fare. Serves him right. Well it would if Batman And Robin was just a director messing up; in reality it was a culmination of unbelievable hubris from all involved.
Warner Bros. had forced out Burton for the third Bat-flick to ensure the hero didn't become too dark for the lucrative child audience, slowly upping the toy quotient. And writer Akiva Goldsman has admitted that with Batman he was completely out of his comfort zone, happy to throw pun after pun into the mix. Yet Warner eventually turned the series into a cash cow and Goldsman would go on to win an Oscar for penning A Beautiful Mind. Doesn't seem fair now, does it?
From his filmography Schumacher clearly has little directorial skill beyond being susceptible to studio demands, but he didn't need to become a singled-out fan hate figure he will forever be.