2. Batman and Robin (1997)
I will stand among the few who will always stick up and defend Joel Schumacher's
Batman Forever; sure, it was silly and goofy, but it was fun, boasted splendid visuals, and had two wacky villain performances from Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones. His follow-up, 1997's
Batman and Robin, however, is down right indefensible, and will likely remain one of the worst superhero films of all time, alongside
Elektra and
Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. It was so bad that for 8 years, it killed the Batman franchise stone dead, and after numerous attempts to resuscitate it, Christopher Nolan came along and saved us all with
Batman Begins. Schumacher ramped up the cartooniness to unimaginable levels, and also enhanced the campiness - as well as the homoerotic undertones - of Batman and Robin's partnership, with plenty of close-ups of George Clooney's arse, and of course, the nipples on the batsuit were back, yet oddly enough missing from Alicia Silverstone's Batgirl outfit. Arnold Schwazenegger provided some light relief as the hilarious villain Mr. Freeze, and frankly seemed to be the only one in the film who really followed through completely with Schumacher's demented vision. Budgeted at $125m, the film went on to gross a mere $238m, a figure that would make it the lowest-grossing Batman film to date, which Schumacher attributes to the negative word of mouth quickly circulated during the first week of release. In addition to this, the film racked up a mere 13% on Rotten Tomatoes, and was nominated for a shocking 11 Razzies, including Worst Picture and Worst Director, winning just one, for Alicia Silverstone's astonishingly bad performance. Perhaps the most salient comment comes from star Clooney himself soon after the film was released, declaring "I think we might have killed the franchise". And that they did, for a while anyway. After countless stalled reboots, it was Christopher Nolan who would revert to a more serious tone for Batman Begins, which kick-started what would be the best comic book franchise of all time, so looking back, perhaps it's a good thing that Schumacher ran Bats into the ground when he did...