Batman Forever and Me

This is a modification of a comment I wrote on Peter David’s blog.

Batman Forever is not a particularly good movie, though it does have its strengths. Oddly for a superhero movie the weak point was the villains, with the bits with the hero being far stronger. Two-Face is my favourite Batman villain and seeing him played for laughs was painful. Jim Carrey was basically doing the kind of shtick he was doing in 1995 when the film was released, which created the effect of a watered down Jack Nicholson Joker from the first movie, or Frank Gorshin’s Riddler from the TV show. On the flip side I did like the Bruce-Dr. Meridian stuff, with Bruce working through some issues (the Robin stuff was somewhere in the middle).

The thing about the Bruce bits, though, is there’s that scene where Bruce reads something in his one of his parents’ (I can’t recall if his was his mother or father’s) diary and we don’t find out in the movie what it was. 1995 was the first year I had access to the Internet. I was so sure there was a key missing scene in there that I actually hunted down a copy of the script and found out what it was. For those who are curious he learns in that diary that his parents didn’t want to go see the movie that they were killed walking home from, but Bruce talked them into it. It’s a powerful bit and really should have been in the movie (it’s since been released as a deleted scene in the collector’s set of that Batman movie series).

One more personal bit with the movie: oddly enough they gave me my favourite drink glasses. You wouldn’t have thought it, given that most McDonald’s drink glasses are plastic with some okay art painted on, but the glasses that McDonald’s made for the movie are one of their best movie tie-in collectibles. Made of actual glass and creatively sculpted. For example, the Two-Face glass’ handle is his coin spinning as he tosses it. It could in fact be argued that the movie’s greatest contribution to the arts was these gorgeous drink glasses. I absolutely love these glasses (to the point where I wish I had had the foresight to buy spares; luckily none of broken or even chipped thus far). Most likely if you visit, I’ll show them off. If I don’t, ask me.