could Batman: Triumphant have saved the series?

[Cobblepot4Mayor]

Brad Dourif in a Batman movie?? What an INCREDIBLE idea. And just why in hell has the man yet to appear in a Batman film to this day? The perfect Man-Bat.
Triumphant sounds utterly mad. And that's not a put down at all. It's a melting pot of wacky ideas and cast choices and I personally would have LOVED to have seen this get made. To have had this instead of the Dark Knight films? Oh sure, yes f***ing please! lol

I guess fans breathe a huge sigh of relief that this project never happened. But you never know how cool it may have been. Lessons may have been learned from Batman and Robin. Any idea how far this project actually got? Did it get to the point where actors were contacted?

Jeff Goldblum is the best Scarecrow we never had. I am a child of the 90's so wacky choices for Batman films is perfectly fine by me. These were the wonderful days when a director tried to cast actors who truly looked like the characters they were going to play. And things were always certainly helped further by their sure to be amazing Bob Ringwood wardrobe (no Lindy Hemming back then boys and girls, THANKFULLY!).

Bringing Jack Nicholson back would have been a huge step in the right direction and I think the concept they had for it sounded reasonably cool and just a bit creepy. I'm not sure however if he would have suited George Clooney but it would have been undeniably cool seeing him cross swords with Chris O' Donnell's Robin and such. The clashing of entirely different era's and all that. Always exciting stuff.

The Madonna rumor always makes me smile. I wouldn't have had a problem personally (though I know a lot of people sure would!) with the lady being in a Batman film as that would be a whole other level of cool to me. I think I wrote once about her Harley Quinn potential in relation to another film she did and she may not have been as crap a choice as you might first think. And let's face it she'd certainly have fun with the wardrobe department. As I'm sure we know she's also a very close friend of Debi Mazar (Spice) who appears in Batman Forever. So I would have thought may we also have seen a return of Two-Face's girlfriends in the movie had things worked out? They did survive the explosion of Nygmatech.

So a movie that returns some old favorites and ushers in a whole slew of new, unique characters played by major names? Sounds like a crazy, exciting event to me.

[riddler]

Madonna does kind of remind me of harley quinn, I can picture it.

Brad Dourif would have been awesome, no dispute there.


The one area Schumacher badly misfired is the casting;

Two face was likely Tommy Lee Jones worst role. There wasn't a lot to like about that character; badly acted and badly written as a joker type. I don't know if it's bad casting but he was on fire at that time.

Jim Carrey is an interesting one; 1993 the only people who'd heard of him were fans of In Living Colour. in 1994 though he reeled off the mask, dumb and dumber, and Ace Ventura. I wonder at what stage Schumacher got him for the riddler.

Chris O Donnell seemed to do okay as Robin but the runner up was Leo Dicaprio who clearly ended up being the better actor.


The studio wanted Patrick Stewart or Anthony Hopkins for Mr Freeze, Schumacher pushed for Schwarzenegger.Supposedly with the fifth film, there was a similar debate for the Scarecrow of Jeff Goldblum vs Howard Stern.

[Catwoman]

Which means we would have gotten Howard Stern, since that's the pattern. Ug.

Patrick Stewart could have made a perfect Mr. Freeze if we go by the animated version of him (that everyone seems to love). Guess we'll never know. Thanks Joel.

[riddler]

Which means we would have gotten Howard Stern, since that's the pattern. Ug.

Patrick Stewart could have made a perfect Mr. Freeze if we go by the animated version of him (that everyone seems to love). Guess we'll never know. Thanks Joel.

Yeah or Anthony Hopkins. Pardon the pun but I prefer Two face and Mr Freeze to be cold, dark villains instead of joker ripoffs.

Even the scenes with Mr. Freeze that they almost got right, Schumacher screwed up with his desire to be funny; the one where he was watching videos of his wedding which could have been emotional but we had the silly tear freezing and line 'I hate when people talk during the movie' and the last batman scene (the only one Clooney came off well in the cowl) convincing Freeze to give a life and again they gave the goofy 'take two of these' line.



Don't get me wrong, the shucmacher films can be fun popcorn films but both could have been so much better. While Schumacher had some successful films, none of them were his big budget flicks, it seemed like every time they gave him money, he didn't know how to use it. The main casting problem is he got the most popular actors as opposed to the right ones.

[Slash Man]

The subject matter of Freeze clashed with what the story movie was trying to tell.

The way I see it, Batman & Robin could be improved by one of two things: making it wholly serious, or wholly... not serious. Things like Nora's condition and the Ivy love triangle are kind of embarrassing to watch.

Burton and Schumacher both love to make castings that people would never guess. Though Burton tends to see something that no one else does, while Schumacher ends up dealing with miscast characters.

[johnnygobbs]

The subject matter of Freeze clashed with what the story movie was trying to tell.

The way I see it, Batman & Robin could be improved by one of two things: making it wholly serious, or wholly... not serious. Things like Nora's condition and the Ivy love triangle are kind of embarrassing to watch.

Burton and Schumacher both love to make castings that people would never guess. Though Burton tends to see something that no one else does, while Schumacher ends up dealing with miscast characters.

I don't think Schwarzenegger was the problem.  He and Vendela, the supermodel who played his wife Nora, made a believable suitably (in view of the name 'Freeze') Nordic-looking couple.

The problem was the writing and direction which didn't maintain a consistent tone.  Sadly, the bare bones of Victor Fries' tragic backstory, adapted from the acclaimed animated series origin, is all there.  But the execution loses the courage of its conviction, and almost touching moments like Freeze watching a video of his wife during happier times are entirely undermined by silly lines like "I hate it when people interrupt the movie". 

[Slash Man]

Schwarzenegger could have played it straight with the script, I have no doubts about that, but I believe that there could have been other actors more effective at conveying such an emotional role. The studio actually saw much more obvious choices that might've worked, though it's not fair to compare given the final script we got.

I love Schwartzenegger's movies, but never understood what Schumacher saw in him that made him think of Victor Fries. The thing he did best was deliver one-liners, but that wasn't really one of the positive aspects of Freeze in the movie.

[johnnygobbs]

Schwarzenegger could have played it straight with the script, I have no doubts about that, but I believe that there could have been other actors more effective at conveying such an emotional role. The studio actually saw much more obvious choices that might've worked, though it's not fair to compare given the final script we got.

I love Schwartzenegger's movies, but never understood what Schumacher saw in him that made him think of Victor Fries. The thing he did best was deliver one-liners, but that wasn't really one of the positive aspects of Freeze in the movie.

Schumacher wanted Freeze to be big, strong and imposing like a glacier hence the casting of Schwarzenegger.

Like I said, if he had been directed properly this could have been Arnold's one chance to prove he was more than a monosyllabic action hero.

[Edd Grayson]

Yes, I see the potential in Arnold's Freeze too. He could've been a much better villain.

[Slash Man]

One last thing to note (although this is more nitpicky), Freeze was pretty much a guy of average build; it was the suit that made him seem more colossal. Though they did that when it came to Bane, but to an extreme; he's a tiny guy that gets super jacked. When before, he was already a massive man that just got larger.