BATMAN & ROBIN
An evil masterpiece?
I was looking at my CD collection today. I came across one lonely, near-forgotten disc, right between Blackstar's Barbed Wire Soul and George Carlin's Back In Town. It was Pat Boone's In A Metal Mood. That's right - the CD that got his show cancelled and got him booted from (I believe) the Christian Coalition, since of course any association with metal means that he's the Devil's marionette.
Now, there's just something about this CD. It's not genuinely pleasant to listen to - he takes a dozen hard-rock and metal classics and makes 'em into lounge-lizard-type songs. But you can't help but smile. Even if you're a big metal fan like me. You know why? Because this might be one of the biggest, best jokes in rock n' roll history. This guy takes these twelve songs and makes them his creepy, almost Mormon own. He took King Ozz's "Crazy Train", didn't change a word and made it sound like Bible thumping. (that Osbourne himself is the most God-loving man in rock-n-roll notwithstanding) He took "Enter Sandman", barely changed a word (just the spoken part) and made it sound like a reminder to kids how good it is to pray before going to bed. It's ghastly what he did to, say, "Panama". But man, I have to admit, that I took some joy in it because so many things seem to have been done for the sole purpose of making staunch metalheads cry. I could almost hear the choked sobs of my fellow headbangers around the world.
What does this have to do with the dreaded B&R? Simple. I'm starting to think that B&R might just be a work of twisted genius. Now, I'm not arguing that it's a good movie. I'm even one of the few guys on the net which will admit to liking Batman Forever, but we all know this one is just...wrong. But I'm saying that Joel Shumacher may well be remembered as pulling one of the greatest jokes in cinematic history. Just like I could imagine the clenched bowels of metal fans everywhere when those backing singers sang "Crazy crazy train...choo! Choo!", there were a hundred points in this movie which made me chuckle. I didn't think they were really intentional at the time...and sometimes, I thought I was just laughing at how bad a joke was (the same way I laughed for days after hearing Species II's unbelievably bad "Brother can't get no booty!" line). But the things in that movie are funny, and they're funny because one can only imagine the horror felt by Batman fans around the world, people who take Batman even more seriously than I take my metal (they'd have to, since I thought Boone's album was pretty funny).
Indeed, anybody over the age of ten thought this was a pretty ghastly experience. And while many of them might merely have been put off by a bad movie, it's the horrified reaction of Batman fans (as exemplified by the hysterical postings on the net a year ago) that makes this ultimately pretty funny, and makes me think that Schumacher knew what he was doing all along. So many things seem to have been done for no reason other than to horrify the Batman fans of old. Like ice skating? Turning Batman into an Ice Capades show? Oh, my. The weird cryptohomoeroticism? Never failed to get a chuckle from me. For God's sake, the way Arnold falls into the vat of...whatever? I used to think that I was laughing at Schumacher. But now I think I might have been laughing with him. Has the guy actually managed to pull a $100M joke on the Batman-loving world? This wouldn't have been a big risk for him (excepting the occasional twit who might have him knocked off), since B&R, disappointing box office notwithstanding, was guaranteed to pull in a certain amount, and keep Schumacher working.(no one bomb could possibly put a stop to his career, unless it's the bomb ticking away in the engine block of his car)
Pissing off purist fans is easy. (witness the bashing of pretty much any sequel/update/remake that comes along that isn't 100% up to snuff) But Schumacher went far beyond merely pissing some people off. He actually seemed to have given them the cinematic finger. Dear God, I might even be tempted to view this movie a second time just to see if there's anything I missed. God help me.