10 Movies Ruined By Listening To The Fans
3. Batman Forever
Tim Burton's Batman Returns may be a great movie and arguably better than the 1989 original, but for mainstream fans it was simply too weird and too dark, and so grossed less than two-thirds of what the '89 Batman did.
The message to Warner Bros. was clear: "fans" felt that Burton had gone too far with Batman Returns, and so the studio went about assembling a more light-hearted standalone sequel without Burton or star Michael Keaton.
Batman Forever hit screens in 1995, switching out Burton for Joel Schumacher and Keaton for Val Kilmer, in a more goofy, candy-coloured, family-friendly Batman film that could clearly shift a ton of merchandise.
In purely commercial terms the bet paid off, as Batman Forever out-grossed Batman Returns by almost $70 million, but while the film is hardly bad, it's tough not to see it as an inferior substitute for a surely more adventurous threequel with Burton and Keaton.
Today Batman Returns is embraced far more fondly by general audiences, but back in the '90s it was perhaps a little ahead of its time tonally.
After Batman Forever, the franchise smashed through the silliness threshold with 1997's infamous Batman & Robin, a film so absurd - and absurdly unsuccessful - that it scared Warner Bros. off the IP for 8 years, before bringing Christopher Nolan in to tidy things up with a more serious-minded take.