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WATCH: Oliver retro-reviews Batman Forever

January 23rd, 2013 by Irwin Fletcher Comments

Welcome to Oliver Harper’s Retrospectives & Reviews. Like us all at FTN, Oliver LOVES cinema, and like us, he has passions that not everyone shares, but he feels obligated to put the word out. This week Oliver looks at Batman Forever… we’ll let him tell you the aims of these videos himself. Over to you, Oliver…

Every week FTN will be hosting videos looking back at classic films from the 80s and early 90s…

The videos will be a retrospective look back at a particular film covering all sides of the production and discussing how the film turned out. Many people on the net generally like to discuss films with a negative attitude and take joy in bashing films for comedic effect which does work but often many of the reviews aren’t researched well or films are taken out of context for the purpose of making a joke and I feel websites such as youtube have become over-saturated with these types of videos, I wanted to do something different.

“Often you come across films with no extras available on the DVD and you want to know more about it, so with some of the upcoming videos I will be discussing films that don’t get the respect they deserve or the ones that aren’t as bad as people think…”

Batman Forever ( 1995 )

After the lukewarm reception of Batman Returns, Warner Brothers really wanted to go in a different direction for the next Batman film and to make things a bit lighter in tone to please the general public. Many had complained of the dark style and unnecessary violence but the main problem with it, it didn’t really work because of the weak story.

In steps Joel Schumacher who was a big fan of the comics and who had never done a big action film ad brought his visual flare to the series and alsowas responsible for the introduction of a new Batman – Val Kilmer. They had a big cast of popular actors but the main selling point was Jim Carrey as the Riddler. Having had huge success with Ace Ventura and The Mask, Carrey brings a lot of his comedic style to the role which at the time many people enjoyed but later, down the years, the fans weren’t happy with his interpretation of the comic book villain, he didn’t seem like the Riddler many knew but was simply Jim Carrey playing… Jim Carrey.

Batman Forever often gets lumped in with Batman & Robin – which killed the franchise – but there is much more to Batman Forever. It’s the only Batman movie excluding the Christopher Nolan series, which expanded the character of Bruce Wayne and had him more central to the plot instead of being a secondary character in his own movie which many felt was the main fault of the Burton films.

Yeah, It’s silly and stupid in many areas but it can be very dark and captures the comic book version of Batman at the time and audiences loved it but it also very forgettable. It’s pure mid 90s blockbuster fodder.

OLIVER’S REVIEW:

ORIGINAL TRAILER:


I'm an LA journalist who really lives for his profession. I have also published work as Jane Doe in various mags and newspapers across the globe. I normally write articles that can cause trouble but now I write for FTN because Nerds are never angry, so I feel safe.