Chris O'Donnell on Adam West

[Edd Grayson]

FOX411: Your show 'NCIS: Los Angeles' is in its 7th season. What do you think the appeal is exactly? And you can admit you have something to do with it.

O'Donnell: It's always tough to figure out why some TV shows are more well-received. There's chemistry between LL CooL J and me on screen. It's lightning in a bottle. The audience has fallen in love with the characters.

FOX411: So, who do you think was more starstruck the first time you and LL Cool J met?

O'Donnell: He had posters of me on his walls as a kid. (laughs) I look back and laugh -- if you had told me in 1985, watching LL, and told me I was spending thousands of hours with him I would have not believed it.

FOX411: Do you think your show is more kick-ass than "Law & Order: SVU"?

O'Donnell: I've never seen the show.

FOX411: Being you starred in the "Batman" franchise, who is your favorite actor to play the title character past or present?

O'Donnell: For me it will always be Adam West. I loved the show. I just watched a documentary about him and his career and facing the challenge of being Batman. I worked with two very talented actors: Val [Kilmer] and George. We had a lot of fun George and I, but the film was a disaster.

[Wayne49]

These kinds of comments from cast members just bum me to no end. Arnold and Uma still retain their respect for the project, when they comment so there are definite contrasts in play here. Here's a brief Q& A with Uma last year...

I was a kid when "Batman & Robin" came out, and I worshipped you as Poison Ivy.
So you must like Mae West? Because what I did was take Mae West and played with it.

Did you know at the time how notorious its reputation would become?
What is it notorious for?

For being campy.
Well, it came out in a different time when people were still being bitchy about campy. Humor being campy and campy being a code word for gay has changed. I think one of the most beautiful things I will get to say I've witnessed in my lifetime is to have lived through part of the major movement of trying to quell persecution of human beings who have a different sexual orientation. If you think of the Berlin Wall coming down, people always talk about all these big things. I think  what Pope Francis did 10 days ago, which people have just talked about in hushed voices: "Oh yeah, you hear the pope said that?" -- I'm not Catholic, but I have to tell you, to me, Pope Francis should be sainted for this, what he did for mankind. For the millions and millions and millions of people on the earth who have died because of who they were. God, you just got me. So anyway, the word "campy" has nothing to do with "Batman & Robin"; it just somehow made me think of this. Obviously the Batman movies went in a very serious direction, a very humorless direction. Really straight and hardcore.

Absolutely. They're beautiful movies, but they're not the same ones that Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher were making.
Oh no, they're totally different: hardcore violence. And I like them. But I think at the time the idea of taking a male superhero and having fun with it and someone using the c-word [campy] on it caused people to be very nasty. And that kind of nastiness was acceptable on those terms. And I think that's the reason some people were particularly annoyed. They didn't like seeing that tone applied to their heterosexual male icon.

End of interview segment...

Now some would say, "She's saying the heroes were gay? No. She's not saying that at all. She's saying there was a stigma against the director because he was a very public gay man who was directing this film in a lighthearted style. Her point is that people took the treatment to be another expression of being gay because of the attitudes of the day. And I tend to agree with her on that. I can't tell you how many times I've heard the claim Batman & Robin were gay in this film. How? Where? They both sought out females and exhibited heterosexual behavior. But because it was a gay man directing them to play it lighthearted, fans took "offense" and blamed his sexuality. I think that is the true origin of the stigma here and it's a sad reflection on our society. Kudos for her calling it out and defending both the film and the director. Some actors from this production have stronger backbones than others.

But you know Clooney and O'Donnell got paid really good money to be part of this production. That financial boost and worldwide recognition for Clooney gave him career opportunities (and he has admitted as much), so it was definitely a springboard for him. You would think ,after a while, they would just let it go and let each fan decide for themselves what to like. They were all saying wonderful things while they were making the film and had no problem promoting the movie after it was in the can, so trying to distance themselves at this stage seems rather moot. They saw the script, took the check, and performed as requested. I've heard Schumacher is a very collaborative director with actors. So it seems hard to believe after they read shooting scenes for each day, they would have no feedback or suggest an alternate way to say something. So, to me, there is some accountability for them and all of this estrangement from the film just looks like them wilting from listening to the nerd extremists. Uma keeps it real.

[Edd Grayson]

I think Batman & Robin is still the weakest, but that does not make it the worst movie ever made, like some people overacted, and it's really better than other non-Batman films that were also made on a big budget, to me.

It should be judged fairly, taking both the good and the bad. And no, the suits with "nipples" were not even noticeable for me until I read so many complaints on the internet about that.

[Wayne49]

I think the nipple design is so utterly overstated it borders on ridiculous. When I first saw it, it felt like a Greek statue influence like the various statues instituted in the design of Gotham city. So when Schumacher came out and confirmed that, it seemed overly apparent to anyone paying attention. How that got convoluted into...well... whatever the complaint truly is here is really beyond me. Thematically it completely fits with the comics and their influence on film. The funny part? How was this missed in Forever? Same design but I heard nothing of the sort there. But suddenly, when a movie is disliked, it gets taken to the shed for anything people can find. So while I can respect people for not liking the film, I'm lost on the criticism over a simple production detail in the costume. To me, if you have to go scrapping for problems there, then it sounds more like a stigma to the director than the film itself (more points to Uma). In an age where we have people subscribing to HBO to watch Game of Thrones and it's overt obsession with nudity, a nipple design on Batman seems quite tame. So this kind of 'outrage' feels and sounds very fake. No one on this planet should find that suspect or controversial.

[Edd Grayson]

The main difference between Batman Forever and Batman & Robin for me was the slightly better script and better casting of the former.

For example, Jim Carrey can do comedy even really over-to-top, while Schwartzennger really can't be that funny except when we laugh at the absurdity.

[The Laughing Fish]

Clooney and O'Donnell got paid really good money to be part of this production. That financial boost and worldwide recognition for Clooney gave him career opportunities (and he has admitted as much), so it was definitely a springboard for him. You would think ,after a while, they would just let it go and let each fan decide for themselves what to like. They were all saying wonderful things while they were making the film and had no problem promoting the movie after it was in the can, so trying to distance themselves at this stage seems rather moot. They saw the script, took the check, and performed as requested. I've heard Schumacher is a very collaborative director with actors. So it seems hard to believe after they read shooting scenes for each day, they would have no feedback or suggest an alternate way to say something. So, to me, there is some accountability for them and all of this estrangement from the film just looks like them wilting from listening to the nerd extremists. Uma keeps it real.

I reckon it's quite possible that O'Donnell was genuinely disappointed with how B&R turned out. There is a retrospective featurette on the film's DVD where he described working on BF as a movie-making experience, whereas he felt he was making a toy commercial for B&R. It sounds like he stands by his work on the first Batman he did, but not the other.  Schumacher telling his actors to treat the film like a cartoon might have discouraged O'Donnell too.

[Edd Grayson]

I reckon it's quite possible that O'Donnell was genuinely disappointed with how B&R turned out. There is a retrospective featurette on the film's DVD where he described working on BF as a movie-making experience, whereas he felt he was making a toy commercial for B&R. It sounds like he stands by his work on the first Batman he did, but not the other.  Schumacher telling his actors to treat the film like a cartoon might have discouraged O'Donnell too.

Well, I think Chris was right about that.  Forever does feel more like a movie while B&R feels like fun to make, but not so great to see.

[Wayne49]

I've seen those interviews on the Special Features disc and I would think those thoughts by O'Donnell are a little closer to how he truly feels. But I think where I see a bit more catering to a perceived consensus is calling it a disaster (as well as Clooney's 'apology tour' which he never seems to stop). Calling it a 'disaster' though is not true in the slightest. The movie was a commercial success (albeit less than previous installments). But if you look at adjusted totals today it makes more (or similar money) as Captain America and Thor from the much touted Marvel string of movie hits. So context is important here. Yes it disappointed a number of diehard fans, but that doesn't mean it didn't deliver financial success. Worldwide it grossed $238 million (unadjusted in 1997) as well as another $58 million in rentals alone. Add in DVD sales and the related merchandise and Warner Bros made excellent returns. So this idea that B&R was a commercial collapse that closed down the franchise for years is a myth.

Critics of this movie are quick to forget this was the consensus after Batman Returns. When they were making Forever, it's well documented they had a hard time getting people onboard to either fund the film or even support it with merchandise. So there was already a prevailing opinion Batman couldn't sustain a marketable life in movies or merchandise after the first sequel. Should we judge Returns as others like to judge B&R with this reasoning to trounce it's worth? Of course not. But B&R sold plenty of merchandise and even had a hit soundtrack that sold platinum and won a Grammy. So vendors who jumped in to support this movie profited well. I think the primary reason why another Batman film was not made is because Schumacher decided to drop out and the studio was unsure the franchise could find support for another reboot since they had already covered both ends of the spectrum, so it took a rest. So what a studio does or doesn't do can't always be contributed to a film's merit. It's also worth noting these actors who "hate it" now were onboard for another sequel while Schumacher remained on the project. So there are allot of facts that get glossed over in order to cater to that distain which the 90's generation likes to keep alive for this film.