10 Ingenious Scenes In Otherwise Terrible Movies
4. Alfred's Wise Words - Batman & Robin
No disrespect to the late, great Joel Schumacher, but his Batman & Robin is one of the most infamously maligned superhero movies of all time - an unintentional comedy of bad creative choices and, uh, bat nipples.
But amid all the stamina-sapping campiness and those toe-curlingly awful - or awesome? - one-liners from Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a genuinely compelling exchange between Bruce Wayne (George Clooney) and Alfred (Michael Gough).
The scene in question sees Bruce asking Alfred if he's become a control freak, to which Alfred drops this wonderfully eloquent monologue:
"Death and chance stole your parents. But rather than become a victim, you have done everything in your power to control the fates. For what is Batman if not an effort to master the chaos that sweeps our world - an attempt to control death itself?"
Better still, when Bruce adds that he can't control death, Alfred chillingly retorts, "None of us can." This scene is so wonderfully somber and poetic it feels like it belongs in one of the Nolan movies, rather than this one where it feels entirely out of place.
Still, it's perhaps the single shred of proof that Clooney could've made a good Batman with the right material, and serves as a brief showcase for Michael Gough's tender wisdom as Alfred.