13 Biggest Mistakes The Batman Movies Ever Made

Again, Batman Forever doesn't necessarily get everything wrong, but it really drops the ball with its villains. Jim Carrey's casting as The Riddler made sense, given he was the biggest comedy star in the world at the time. Given his larger-than-life persona, though, he was surely enough to take villain duties on his own.

However, despite hogging the spotlight, Carrey actually takes third billing on the movie, behind Val Kilmer and the official headline villain: Tommy Lee Jones as Two-Face. Again, this was casting that made sense as Jones was one of the premier Hollywood bad guy actors of the time, and yet the role as written was little more than a turgid retread of Jack Nicholson's Joker.

Not only was this a waste of Jones, it was a waste of one of the most interesting Batman villains. The scarred, traumatised, former Gotham District Attorney Harvey Dent is meant to be literally half good and half evil, two sides of a personality at war with itself in a manner which reflects the internal struggle of Batman/Bruce Wayne.

Alas, Batman Forever can't be bothered with all that rich subtext, and so just plays it by the pantomime villain playbook. Fans were short-changed; Jones by all accounts hated making the movie, and particularly disliked his co-star Carrey; and on top of all this it broke series chronology, as a pre-scarred Harvey Dent was introduced in 1989's Batman, played by Billy Dee Williams.

Williams, naturally, was disappointed not to be invited back, although many years later he did get to briefly play Two-Face in 2017's The Lego Batman Movie.