Predator (1987)

Director: John McTiernan

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Jesse Ventura, Kevin Peter Hall

Have I Seen it Before: Heck, you’re talking to the guy who started a Facebook group in support of the idea of Carl Weathers becoming Governor of Oklahoma because, apparently, the cast of this movie is where we need to get Governors.

Did I Like It: There’s a problem that happens when a long-running film series has a complete revelation with a later entry. I’m looking in your direction, Prey (2022). The original film can start to feel a bit stripped down, a bit tame. I have a real hard time really getting into A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) when I know that Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994) exists.

Can this film possibly hold up?

Yeah, pretty much. It accomplishes what the series lost to certain degree as time went on (and especially when they were set up on a series of blind dates with xenomorphs for a couple of movies. The Predator films are at there best opportunities for seamless genre mashup, and accomplishing this by simply giving us a well-made example of one genre*, and then injecting the Predator into the mix. Prey did it by giving us a well-crafted epic in the pre-colonial world of indigenous America… and then threw a dreadlocked alien into the mix. Here, this film would work perfectly well as the group of paramilitary soldiers enter the jungle with a mix of motivations and understanding about their mission, only to reach disaster. Come to think of it, what the hell was Schwarzenegger’s name in Commando (1985)? Is this a sequel to that? I’m sure someone would have noted that before I did, but it sure as hell could have been**.

*Probably doesn’t work for every genre, though. And, just as soon as I type that a Kindergarten Cop (1990) riff where one of the students is a Yautja would be watchable as hell.

**I keep lamenting that Rambo: Last Blood (2019) didn’t follow the rumored plot line of Stallone squaring off agains a malevolent alien. I had apparently forgotten that this film is essentially that, and way better than we could have expected if Stallone had gotten control of the works.

Last Action Hero (1993)

Director: John McTiernan

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Austin O’Brien, F. Murray Abraham, Art Carney

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. Naturally, given some of the work I’ve done in the semi-recent past, I kind of avoided the film. Sort of like people did in the summer of 93. Ha! That wasn’t fair; I think I was there opening weekend.

Did I Like It: It’s a nice idea—God knows I’d be a little disingenuous claiming anything else—and there are moments of the film that are delightful. You’ve probably seen all of them occasionally crop up on youtube. Schwarzenegger hating himself. The cartoon cat* (Danny DeVito**) popping up every once in a while. Stallone actually being in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991).

But none of it quite comes together to be a good movie on its own terms. Some of the jokes are less clever than groan inducing (Leo the Fart, anyone?) to anyone over the age of eight (I was nearly nine when it came out). Austin O’Brien’s character is prime 90s era movie kid, complete with randomly vacillating between preternaturally wise, and absolutely infantile. This feels like a role written for Macaulay Culkin but which either couldn’t meet his quote or came at the time when Culkin couldn’t possibly be interested in being in a movie again.

The ultimate problem, though, is that for a movie attempting to be a blend of action and comedy, it’s not nearly funny enough to be a good (to say nothing of great) comedy, and it is a pointedly inept action film with a sluggish pace, flimsy stunts, and damp editing. McTiernan—I offer The Hunt for Red October (1990) and, or course Die Hard (1988) as evidence—should have at least been able to deliver an action film which at least doesn’t consistently mistake satire as an act of self-shaming.

*One can’t help but wonder what kind of series of movies Jack Slater actually was… All I know is it’s got to be pretty weird.

**Just one example that having Schwarzenegger serving as executive producer will get a lot of different people out of bed)

Kindergarten Cop (1990)

Director: Ivan Reitman

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Penelope Ann Miller, Pamela Reed, Linda Hunt

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, definitely. I, too was six in 1990, so I’ll never not be the same age as these kids, no matter how old I get. I think the phrase “Mr. Kimble, are you all right?” is one of those top-five uttered phrases in my house. Oddly enough, I think I’ve probably seen it far more from a VHS-recorded broadcast on the NBC Sunday Night Movie in the mid-90s. It’s still weird to hear some of the characters swear mildly in a PG-13 sort of way. “Shove it up your ass” lives in my memory as “shove it” and “How did it feel to punch that son of a bitch” swaps out to “SOB.”

Did I Like It: As I started to type this review, the word “flawless” keeps floating through my head, even if that feels like something of a ridiculous word to bandy about in a film whose plot hinges on trope after trope after trope, when it isn’t pushed forward by bouts of food poisoning. But, what else is the film really aiming for? What’s more, the film manages to be surprisingly enlightened (minus a few moments where a large germanic man is making children march in coordination) on its views of early childhood education.

Schwarzenegger is aptly game, increasing his comic acumen that he all of a sudden revealed to everyone (by way of Reitman) in Twins (1988), and proves that he at least has less of an ego about his film persona, and in fact might simply be funnier than his contemporaries. Sure, Bruce Willis might have become famous with a comic persona, but it wore away as the years went on, give or take a The Whole Nine Yards (2000). Stallone can try to do an Oscar (1991) or, god-forbid a Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (1992), but he never got anywhere close to being believably flustered by a comedic situation.

Terminator Genysis* (2015)

Director: Alan Taylor

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jason Clarke, Emilia Clarke, Jai Courtney

Have I Seen it Before: Yeah.

Did I Like It: And you know what, I kind of liked it back then. Sure, it’s a film powered almost exclusively by convoluted time travel, but I like convoluted time travel. Convoluted time travel is my bread and butter.

But here’s the problem, man can not live on convoluted time travel alone, nor should he try. Ultimately, this film reminds me of The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). Wait, wait. Come back. I’ll explain. I had spent several years between screenings of that most infamous second film directed by Orson Welles. The ending was taken away from him, re-shot by Robert Wise, a perfectly accomplished filmmaker in his own right, if more of a journeyman than Welles. Now Ambersons has never been my favorite Welles film, and I always thought the legends about the bastardized ending were off, but during my most recent viewing of the film, it was such a stark difference between the work of Welles and Wise that it had become inescapable how altered the movie had become.

Similarly, when comparing the work of Taylor against the work of Cameron—especially in those scenes where Taylor is recreating Cameron’s earlier work in The Terminator (1984), that difference is once again inescapable.

This is not to say that the film isn’t riddled with plenty of other unforced errors at which I could wag my finger. The film is riddled with awkward Riker Moments, where one character describes a phenomenon in the most convoluted technobabble available, forcing another nearby character to describe the same thing in terms so simple that even the not-so-bright kids will get it. Narration repeats stuff ad nauseum, just in case those same kids didn’t get the dumbed down explanations the first time. This renders the whole thing a pretty depressing affair, even if, again, some of that convoluted time travel still tries to justify this film’s existence far more than was done for its equally dim-titled successor, Terminator: Dark Fate (2019).

But do you want to know what really annoys me about the film this time, if for no other reason than I am mad at myself for not noticing it the first time. This film is so slavishly devoted to the mythology and iconography of the Cameron-helmed Terminator films. One can take that as a flaw or a comforting dose of nostalgia. Both perspectives are valid. But how in the hell does Kyle Reese (Courtney) have a photograph of Sarah (Clarke; not that one; no relation) just moments before he climbs into the time displacement field, when the first film really goes out of its way to show us that same photo burning during a Terminator attack? I’m willing to acknowledge that the makers of this film probably saw the original. I’m just not so sure they were paying that much attention.

*I needed several tries to get that title right. It is, truly, an insipid way to spell that word. Everyone was right on that front, at least.

True Lies (1994)

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Arnold, Eliza Dushku

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: It is a shame that James Cameron so rarely makes films now. Indeed, his only feature directorial effort in nearly twenty-five years* is Avatar (2009), and the only films he has on his schedule are sequels to that film. Had he kept his output at the pace it was in the 1990s, we’d have 5-10 new films from him to enjoy. 

And we might be less inclined to dwell on the ones that don’t work as well as the others. I remember enjoying this film a great deal in years past, but something about it doesn’t ring as sharply now.

The action is good, which isn’t surprising, as anything less from the team of Schwarzenegger and Cameron would have been a colossal blunder. Even then, it does feel like it is not all that surprising. The set pieces you see here would be stuff that had become old hat in the James Bond franchise by that time.

Maybe part of the problem is that Schwarzenegger isn’t quite the right casting for a suave mega-spy. He’s a better actor—or at least movie star—than most people give him credit for, and his roles after leaving the governor’s mansion have been by and large pretty good, but he is a howitzer, not a device for finesse.

I think the real problem, though is that the film is at its heart a romantic comedy, and Cameron excels at action and spectacle, and not so much the smaller human stories. He doesn’t fail at it, necessarily. He brought plenty of romance to Titanic (1997), obviously, but a light comedy may not be in his blood.

*His version of Spider-Man (2002) would have really been something, though. DiCaprio as the Wall-Crawler? Schwarzenegger as Doc Ock (had they ever gotten around to it)? But in that scenario, we all would have idly wondered what Sam Raimi’s version of the films would have been like.

Total Recall (1990)

Director: Paul Verhoeven

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rachel Ticotin, Sharon Stone, Ronny Cox

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. But strangely, it feels like my first exposure to the film (and thus, the one that sticks with me the most) is the image of Arnold in a dress getting sucked out through a crack in the Mars colony, which was in every comic book published in 1990 as part of the print campaign (kids, ask your parents) for the NES video game.

Did I Like It: My more effusive reviews tend to answer that question with something that can be boiled down to “Yes, let me me tell you why.” Here, my answer will be something along the line of, “Yes. However...” And I assure you, only some of my reservation stem from the realization that I might have internalized parts of this for certain other projects. That it stealthily influenced me so is more of a mark in its favor, I think.

Yes, I do like this film. However, I’m thinking this is not the best work of anyone involved. Schwarzenegger plays slightly against type as an every man propelled into extraordinary circumstances. The ruse never quite works, as no one’s been able to convince me that the Austrian Oak is not directly descended from the Man of Bronze*. He’s probably the most fully realized version of the movie star that is Arnold in a movie like Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). He even improved on the every-man/super-spy dichotomy more in True Lies (1994). 

Verhoeven has flashes of the satirical anarchist that made him one of the greats, but if you think you’re going to get me to forsake RoboCop (1987) in favor of this movie, you’ve got another thing coming.

I don’t think I’m out of line in saying there are other, more robust adaptations of Dick’s work. You’re going to say Blade Runner (1982), but you’re wrong. The correct answer is Minority Report (2002).

Even Jerry Goldsmith has had more memorable scores. Gremlins (1984), Star Trek: First Contact (1996), Rudy (1993). Hell, his score is one of the best parts of The Shadow (1994).

So the film is good, but I couldn’t help but want to watch their other, sharper work.

*Why didn’t this man ever play Doc Savage? It seems like one of the supreme missed opportunities in pop culture. He could still play an older Doc... Hell, I would watch the shit out of that movie. Never mind me. Feel free to return to the review proper.

Conan The Destroyer (1984)

Director: Richard Fleischer

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Grace Jones, Wilt Chamberlain, Mako

Have I Seen It Before?: With so many series released slightly before my time, I feel as if I saw both of the Schwarzenegger-led Conan films in some kind of congealed blob on cable. I’m reasonably sure that I never say down with the specific intention of watching the movie, though.

Did I like it?: As I was watching Conan the Barbarian (1982), my wife found the notion that I was enjoying the film somewhat perplexing. I’ve never been a fan of fantasy in general. I’ve fallen asleep through most films based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, and I’d rather do almost anything than spend any time with C.S. Lewis. But there was something about the original film that works. It’s the singular nature of the character, and his ability to embody the spirit of the filmmaker in question while mostly avoiding sermonizing on the topic of its ideals.

Then they had to go and fuck it all up with a sequel. The first mistake was likely to drain all of the violence out of the picture, in an effort to somehow amplify the box office. It didn’t work, and we are left with a far less remarkable film. One might give it the excuse of being released mere weeks before PG-13 gave films some sort of middle ground between PG and R, but it does not change the fact that we are stuck with a toothless film.

It doesn’t make up for the loss in visceral action by making Conan more of hero, either. He is a bland cypher, content to swing his sword around and hint at the future where he will wear a crown upon a troubled brow. This film might have even benefited from being less subtle about its ideas, if they were truly intending the film to be for children, but those notions are gone for one of the blandest action fantasy films of the 1980s, and that is saying something. The original aims for ideals and ideas, and it’s reasonable to debate whether or not it hit those targets. This film aims for nothing, and somehow misses.

Conan The Barbarian (1982)

Director: John Milius

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, James Earl Jones, Sandahl Bergman, Ben Davidson

Have I Seen it Before: I want to say yes, but the more I think about it, the more I become convinced that every memory I have of the movie is half remembered wisps from various partial viewings on cable throughout the years.

Did I Like It: This is an interesting border movie. Yes, it comes after the one-two-three punch of Jaws (1975), Star Wars – Episode IV: A New Hope (1977), and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) in an age where films were slowly going to become more about spectacle and never look back, and when films more about ideas like anything directed by Francis Ford Coppola. 

Conan somehow miraculously straddles the line between the two worlds. On the surface, it is a high fantasy epic with swordplay, mysticism, and action to spare. It made Arnold Schwarzenegger a household name, which was no small feat as at that time all the Austrian Oak had to offer to the world of film was the documentary Pumping Iron (1977) and the sublimely, transcendently awful Hercules in New York (1969, AKA Hercules Goes Bananas). That alone would make it a staple of the action genre.

But there are ideas present here, thanks to the idiosyncratic hand of John Milius at the helm. It’s a deep dive into the Nietzschean ideal, and aside from an awkward title card as the first thing we see, it is all delivered subtly. It’s one of the most brashly atheist films ever conceived for a mainstream audience, with the film stopping for several scenes so that characters can debate about the value of their various arbitrary gods, only to then effectively dismiss their usefulness altogether. The third act hinges entirely on a mass cult meeting that unravels after their charismatic leader (Jones) is decapitated during a ceremony.

I’m not even sure I’m entirely on board with such slavish devotion to Nietzche, but the film could have been far more of a drag in its examination of those ideas. I’d imagine—and I’m basing this mostly off of a knowing viewing of The Big Lebowski (1998)—that I wouldn’t find Milus agreeable company, but one cannot deny that he made an imminently entertaining film that is steeped in his feelings about life and destiny. Star Wars might have had some ideas behind it as well, but I think we can all agree that there was a little bit more to the notion of selling action figures. No such luck here.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick, Edward Furlong

Have I Seen it Before: It’d be weird if I hadn’t by now, right?

Did I Like It: It’d be weird if I didn’t right?

The big (and likely unfair) question one must confront when critiquing this movie is how it ranks against its predecessor, The Terminator (1984). Many say that this is the superior film, putting it in that rare pantheon of sequels that out-perform the original film, The Godfather, Part II (1974), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), and another entry in the Cameron pantheon, Aliens (1986).

I’m not sure this one qualifies.

Don’t get me wrong, the tools Cameron brings to bear here (now with a full budget) cements his status as one of the greatest technical filmmakers. The then-embryonic use of CGI is perfectly applied, used to bring the T-1000 character to life at a time when it really couldn’t do anything other than give us strange metallic polygons. But at the same time, the use of puppetry, miniatures, and even rear-screen projection is used with just the right amount of restraint that it makes it all the more irritating when other filmmakers over the last twenty-five years have decided that even lesser quality CGI is all they needed to sell the reality of their films. Honestly, no one uses rear-screen projection anymore, even Cameron. It’s a real shame.

And yet, the restrictions make for a more interesting film. The restraint that Cameron uses here is all the more present in the initial film. There a fewer moments in the original film where I am thinking about the technology at play. I am more thoroughly immersed in the story there. Maybe the romance between Sarah (Hamilton) and Kyle Reese in the original film is a stronger engine for a story than the Shane built out of chrome on display here. No wonder Cameron got out of the cyborg game after this one, and with each new entry in the series why we wonder why they keep going.

Terminator Dark Fate (2019)

Director: Tim Miller

Cast: Linda Hamilton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mackenzie Davis, Natalia Reyes

Have I Seen it Before: Oddly enough, no. For the most part. Who would have thought that any Terminator movie could reach for anything fresh? 

Did I Like It: Yes… But a qualified yes.

It’s probably unreasonable to ever thing that we’re going to get a Terminator film that is somehow better that the first two films directed by James Cameron. Several have now tried, and they’ve had varying degrees of ultimately disappointing success. Cameron is one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. Even his arguable failures like The Abyss (1988) never fall short of ambitious.

He’s now back in the business—if even in an ancillary fashion—and the results are remarkable. The film has a lively energy that none of the non-Cameron films could even hope for, and this is coming from someone who actually kind of sort of liked Terminator Genysis (2015), despite it being a huge convoluted mess of time travel with a crappy title. The clutter of previous entries has been swept away, and the action re-focused on the central element of the first and greatest movies, Sarah Conner as played by Linda Hamilton.

Now that doesn’t make it entirely fresh, as a rash of legacy sequels—most notably last year’s Halloween—have trucked in similar territory. This film isn’t quite as crowd pleasing as that other film, but one has to admire this for indulging only in the bare minimum of fan service (especially for the sixth film in a series). The only time nostalgia takes over is in the films opening minutes for a scene that takes place shortly after Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). The technology on display to make Hamilton, Schwarzenegger and even Edward Furlong appear as if no time has passed since that peak of the series is staggering. Thirteen years ago we were subjected to the twitchy CGI horrors that were Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan in the opening scenes of X-Men: The Last Stand, and four years since Schwarzenegger himself awkwardly appeared as his younger self in the aforementioned Genysis, but it truly seems like the technology has reached its maturity here. How long before we are treated to entire films using the same tools?

How long before this series clears the decks again and just gives us a an entire movie with those stars as they appeared in the 90s.

I suppose Dark Fate’s box office will dictate what that strange techno future will look like. 

Come to think of it, Dark Fate is kind of a dumb title that doesn’t really have much to do with the film that surrounds it. At least Genysis was the name of something in that movie…

Oh, well, start the clocks for the next entry Terminator: Woo-hoo b-words coming sometime in the next few years.

The Terminator (1984)

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Biehn, Linda Hamilton, Paul WInfield

Have I Seen it Before: I want to make some kind of joke about their being no fate but what we make

Did I Like It: Why don’t you make movies with real things and real people, James Cameron? Why?

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first. This film is perfectly cast. Before he became the most improbable quip-machine in history, Schwarzenegger brings all of his monosyllabic lethality to the role of a lifetime. Lance Henriksen wouldn’t have been the right choice—although he is good in the film, and does eventually reach his potential as a robot for James Cameron one day. OJ Simpson was in the running at one point, but everyone decided he wouldn’t be convincing as a killer. True story. Linda Hamilton plays the arc of the Final Girl’s transformation to Warrior Woman much more efficiently than her peers or successors. And then there’s Michael Biehn. Is there an American action star who is better to display constant patience with the events and people around him? That he hasn’t been a much bigger star over the years is completely beyond me.

But let’s really talk about how this film has no business working out at all.

This thing could have floated away in a river of nonsense exposition, in the middle of the second act. But Cameron is no idiot. When Kyle (Biehn) has to tell the whole story of the future, and John Conner, and the Terminators to Sarah (Hamilton), he does so in the middle of a car chase. And not just any old blah-blah middle-of-the-backlot run-of-the-mill car chase. This is a next level, look out French Connection (1971) car chase, and it’s one of three in the film. You could do a film like this much less artfully, but then it would be Highlander (1986).

Even the few elements fo special effects in this film that don’t age super well (spoiler: it’s those moments when there’s any kind of rear-screen projection, or when The Terminator (Schwarzenegger) is clearly a puppet) have their delightful charm. I can kind of see how a grade-a control freak like James Cameron now wants to exclusively make films using the motion capture technology he adopted in Avatar (2009). He is no longer at the mercy of the elements, time, or people. It sounds nice, but I’m starting to miss great movies made outside of a computer, especially when James Cameron is making them.

Batman & Robin (1997)

Director: (trying to control my rage) Joel Schumacher

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Clooney, Chris O’Donnell, Uma Thurman

Have I Seen it Before: It’s a little shocking how many times I’ve actually said it.

Did I Like It: What kind of a question is it.

The text of this review appeared previously in a blog post entitled “What Schumacher’s Batman & Robin got right” published 05/22/2016.

WARNING: Heresy and rubber nipples lie ahead.

It's 3AM. My stomach is a churning miasma of unsettling notions. Naturally, my mind wanders to the work of Joel Schumacher. They go together like nausea and Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze. Between the rubber nipples and cascade of puns that have become the stuff of legend, Schumaucher's contributions to the legend of the Caped Crusader are uniformally seen as the dark ages for the Dark Knight.

Here's the unfortunate secret that most bat-fans wouldn't dare admit, unless they're waiting for an industrial-sized dose of Peptol Bismol to kick in:

There are some things -- just a few, mind you -- that Joel Schumaucher not only got exactly right about Batman, but in fact did better than in any other Batman film to date.

I had to be wrong, so I went ahead and did the one thing I should never do: I re-watched the damned movie. Thankfully, the world is not completely upside down. Batman and Robin is just as bad, if not worse than you remember. The movie is congenitally unable to latch on to anything resembling a story arc for its characters. Every quip falls flat. It's kind of a miracle that even the law of averages wouldn't have given the movie some semblance of wit at some point in the proceedings.

Maybe it is all because the film was more of a toy commercial than it was a major motion picture. I tend to think it was because Schumaucher and company came to the conclusion (perhaps rightly so) that superhero films are for kids. Where they went off the tracks and never bothered to look back is determine that because these films are for the under-15 crowd, then it doesn't matter if the film sucks. It doesn't so much matter that the film is bright and campy and doesn't take itself too seriously. It's of far more importance that the film just sucks.

And yet, as I watched the movie again today, there they were, those few scant things that, while they hardly elevate the film in any measurable way, do show some semblance of awareness for what Batman is and can be.

1) The Batman does not kill.

Quick. Go watch every Batman movie, and then go read every Batman comic in existence. I'll wait. Done? Notice anything? The main theme people come away with is that in publishing, Bruce Wayne is bound by a particular code, springing from his origin at the end of Joe Chill's gun. Put simply: The Batman does not kill.

Except, no one bothered to inform the various screenwriters who have handled Warner Brothers' number one franchise. In Batman (1989) Bat-Keaton specifically tells Jack "I'm going to kill you," and he damned sure he puts a grapelling hook to good work to get the job done. 

In Batman Returns (1992) Bat-Keaton again dispatches Louie De Penguin with a carefully orchestrated wave of bats and a steep fall. Don't even get me started on the circus strongman that blew up real good for the capital crime of asking Batman to hit him. 

In Batman Forever (1995) Iceman-Batman flung Billy Dee Tommy Lee Jones from a tall height* even after Robin O'Donnell learned the important lesson of sparing one's enemies. 

In Batman Begins (2005), Bale-Bat does go out of his way to not directly kill Ra's-al-Gon-Jin, but he's pretty content to not save him, when he had plenty of time and resources to do so. 

In The Dark Knight (2008) Bale-Bat returns to fling Billy Dee Tommy Lee Eckhart from a tall height** after spending the entire movie not killing Ledjoker, despite literally everyone being fine with that possibility. 

In The Dark Knight Rises (2012) Batman drops a thermonuclear bomb into Gotham Harbor, thereby ensuring that the next seventeen generations of Gothamites can look forward to a litany of thyroid problems, if they're lucky. 

And finally, in Batman v Board of Education: Dawn of the McMuffin (2016), Batman's antipathy for guns didn't get translated to the other 807 plot points, because Batfleck is more than content to drop a few no-names in the pursuit of... Kryptonite? Barely a month out of seeing the movie, it already feels like a blur.  

Sense a pattern here? Batman and Robin is the only post-Adam West cinematic outing where Batman does not kill. One point for Schumaucher and company. Brings the score to 787,231 to 1, but at least it won't be a shut out. 

2) Who is Batman? 

By the time the fourth film in the series begins, everyone should know. It doesn't take much to find out. Alfred Pennyworth, Vicki Vale, Jack Napier, Selina Kyle, Oswald Cobblepot, Max Schreck, Dick Grayson, Edward Nygma, Harvey Dent, Chase Meridian, Ra's Al Ghul, Rachel Dawes, Lucius Fox, Coleman Reese, Talia al Ghul, Bane, Selina Kyle (again), Non-Robin, James Gordon, Clark Kent, and Diana Prince. Through the course of the Bat-films, all of these characters have figured out Bruce Wayne's secret. Here's the question: are there any other characters in the Batman universe? Outside of Bat-mite and Aunt Harriet, does anyone not know? 

There's only one film where Bruce Wayne's secret identity isn't sussed out by the villains or his girlfriend (or some mixture thereof). Which film is that? You guessed it. Batman and Robin. Yes, Barbara Wilson trips over the truth***, but I'm grading on a curve here. Give me a break.

3) At least they didn't run out of money.

I don't think anyone is going to get this far into this blog post and get the idea that I'm actually defending the core of this movie. It's a completely wrongheaded cluster of half-baked almost-ideas, packaged into a cheap sausage casing of '90s fashion. It's the cinematic equivalent of haggis, although saying that does a grave disservice to a sheep's stomach filled with food you wouldn't otherwise want to look at.

But at least they, you know, finished the movie.

It's not neccessarily high praise to say that Warner Brothers didn't just cut their losses and release a rough cut of the turd they had in the oven, but it does make it, fundamentally better than other fourth entries in superhero franchises. Superman IV is content to just use the same footage of Christopher Reeve flying towards the camera, and has a climax that confirms the long-heard suspicion that Mariel Hemingway can breathe in the vacuum of space. It's important to keep things in perspective.  

There are a lot of other examples from there. The villains' origins are -- if goofy -- more or less correct. The mythos isn't contorted to make it so that Mr. Freeze is the one who pulled the trigger on Thomas and Martha Wayne, even if that would've been one hell of a flashback. The Schumaucher movies also make Gotham City appears as if it may have the actual scope of a major metropolitan area, even if that city might be a maddening mish mash of Greek statues. In retrospect, Burton's movies look like they take place on a remaindered set from a dinner theater production of Our Town. The movie tries to be funny, which isn't the worst thing in the world. Batman can be funny. Adam West as Batman is funny. The problem is that the movie only tries, and forgets to bring the laughs. It is an important distinction. 

So, maybe Batman and Robin is the worst. Making movies is hard. We can't imagine what they might have been up against, and even if Schumaucher's myopia is to blame, there are far more serious sins in the world. Don't believe me? Go watch Superman IV: The Quest For Peace one more time.

* A lot of falling deaths in these movies, no?

** Sound familiar, no?

*** Again, it's not like a lot of deductive reasoning is applied; she uses an infinite amount of password tries to unlock an interactive CD-ROM.