AGE OF HEROES What the hell were any of us thinking making the terrible Batman Forever a huge hit?

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You can see how it happened. The executives at Warner Bros. didn’t set out to destroy the Batman mythos or to make unwatchably shitty Batman movies that would put both the character and the superhero movie genre at large into a state of prolonged stasis. They just wanted a hit. Tim Burton’s Batman Returns, from 1992, had been a hit, but it hadn’t been enough of a hit. The movie made significantly less money than Burton’s original Batman, and parents’ groups complained about its dank, depraved tone. (Parents’ groups complained about everything back then, and big film studios, more often than not, listened.) In Joel Schumacher, Warner found someone who might plausibly be able to keep some of Burton’s mythic, expressionist vibe intact but who would be primarily concerned with making accessible, lucrative entertainments.

Schumacher had started out as a costume designer on movies like Woody Allen’s Sleeper, so he’d clearly be comfortable with the pageantry and theatricality that a superhero movie required. He claimed that he’d grown up with comics. And as a director, he’d made plenty of movies—The Lost Boys, Flatliners, Falling Down—that were messy and often stupid and incoherent but also visually stylish. His movies were about sensation. He’d play ball, and he’d make something that was fun to look at.

And it worked! It’s crazy to think about it now, but Batman Forever, Schumacher’s first stab at the character, was generally considered to be a big success. It definitely made money, more than $300 million worldwide. It out-earned Batman Returns and ended the year as one of the highest grossers. Reviews were mixed, but reviews had been mixed for Batman Returns, too. And anyway, this was the pre-Rotten Tomatoes era; reviews were just not a part of the calculus for studios. Audiences seemed to like the movie well enough. Kids were entertained. Toys were sold. And those same executives presumably high-fived one another before green-lighting another Schumacher sequel.