Having broken out as the star of NBC’s hit Thursday-night drama ER, George Clooney gave his first blockbuster-film performance as Batman in Joel Schumacher’s follow-up to Batman Forever. Clooney now openly mocks the film. And rightly so. It’s so mockable. Where to begin? How about Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and his incredibly awful one-liners? (“Let’s kick some ice!” “Everybody chill.” “You know what killed the dinosaurs? The Ice Age!” That last one doesn’t make sense in any context.) How about compounding batsuit nipples with batsuit codpieces? How about a sequence featuring killer hockey players? How about Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl? How about … well, you get the point. The movie was so roundly panned that it essentially killed the entire franchise, which made a comeback only when director Christopher Nolan took the series in the complete opposite direction. Realistic, dark, gritty, tough — the Nolan films are everything that Batman and Robin was not. Luckily, though, that Clooney kid made out all right.
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