None of his films are what you would call kid's films or action adventure films, isn't exactly the most ideal choice to do a Batman film or a family friendly film usually go with someone whose a genre filmmaker or an auteur or hotshot director, he was probably only hired because he was a studio friendly director.
shareHindsight is 20/20. Schumacher was known for colorful nonsense beforehand, and he has shown a knack for it ever since.
shareHis films look hot & sunny and people dressed cool, Flatliners' dream sequences are pretty colorful.
His Batman films were suppose to be kid friendly but there's a huge discrepancy on how it was done compared to The Animated Series Forever and especially B&R don't always look gay but they often do, Schumacher being blamed for B&R's poor quality is probably often an attack on him as a person.
Actually, before the Batman movies, he was a great choice. The Lost Boys, The Client, Falling Down, and Flatliners all showed he was capable of very dark and intense movies involving violence, crime, and psychosis. His more recent movies like 8mm and Phonebooth showed he could still make dark noir films even later in his career.
His Batman movies are the only colorful movies he made for whatever reason.
His Batman movies were colorful because he was trying to capture the over the top coloring you often see in comic books.
I don't think dark and gritty necessarily lead to a better film but I think makes a more fan pleasing one.
What I was trying to say if WB wanted a family friendly film after Batman Returns why go with somebody who hasn't done any of that? if you wanted family friendly Joe Johnson.
Ah, I see. Joe Johnson would have been perfect, I think.
As for dark and gritty, while I'm not in the dark=good camp, I do think one needs a certain amount of grit when it comes to someone like Batman.
With Schumacher I'm not quite sure why he's doing or how he fits into the genre and this feels true of many of the cast and crew, they could've with people more ideal for the type of film but obvious they wanted to play it safe.
Dark as it needs to be but not trying too hard to the point of trying to be HBO. The lightness of Forever and B&R could've been played straight but it was overdone as they do look overdone.
btter than zach snyder.
shareSchumacher saying he only wanted to do Year One felt like a diversionary tactic or a need for approval, it wasn't like it was the most obvious choice to go after Returns or a time to reboot, fans wanted a sequel with a different villain so doing Year One didn't matter to anybody but to him like he was a few installments behind to where people are with the series or many years too soon for a prequel/reboot.
Year One was more of a Jim Gordon story and had no super villains, since 89 Batman it had become a bit timeworn to do a Batman film where he only fights ordinary criminals.