There are a great deal of things wrong with Joel Schumacher's second Batman feature, and it might seem hard to narrow down the list to the absolute worst offences. Hell, just trying to single out the worst piece of casting is a challenge all by itself. Well, until you remember that the director made a conscious choice to allow nipples to be placed on Batman's suit. It's not that the nipples actually make Batman & Robin a bad film (the campy acting, hyper-neon colour palette and godawful writing do a fine enough job of that on their own), but it illustrates just how far off the mark Schumacher was in trying to recapture the spirit of the tongue-in-cheek comic adventures of the Adam West TV show for a modern audience who really couldn't connect with it. Schumacher wasn't making a film he was passionate toward about a character he had affection for. He was making a film he thought people wanted to see about a character that was always popular. It wouldn't be until 2005's Batman Begins before fans got a movie that depicted the kind of serious Bats that people were champing at the bit for. And that was likely both because and in spite of the supreme silliness that is Batman & Robin.
