From a couple years back but id not read this before
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/batman-robin-at-20-joel-schumacher-more-reveal-what-happened-1014972
Interesting article! I didn’t know about the Annie Leibovitz photo shoot of Uma Thurman.
shareI don't entirely understand why they felt that people wanted to see a Batman movie treated as if it were a farce. I don't want to lay this completely at Joel Schumacher's feet because I realize that he was essentially having to comply to the demands of Warner Bros. and the sponsors/toy companies. But I'll never understand why the filmmakers thought it was such a good idea to bombard a Batman movie with endless puns, cheesy one-liners, sexual innuendos/double entendres, and cartoonish slapstick. When Tim Burton put out the first Batman movie back in 1989, they were trying desperately to get away from that campy, pop art image that Adam West created back in the '60s. Batman & Robin is quite obviously a movie that wasn't test-screened, because there's little way that it would've made it out into theaters otherwise.
shareMaybe the idea was to go full on movie version of the 60s series (which Forever was like a blend of 70% Burton 30% TV series).. back in the 90s the 60s nostalgia was 'in' like it is with the 80s/90s now, and 60s TV stuff was being remade into big movies around then like Mission Impossible, Avengers, Lost in Space etc (possibly kicked off by the success of the Fugitive in 93)
shareI don't know if this is a good enough of an analogy, but Batman & Robin is sort of like the superhero movie version of the 1989 Academy Awards ceremony produced by Allan Carr. Long story short, both of them just came off as misguided, cheesy, campy, and ridiculous. Here's some details about it in the likes below.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Carr#Snow_White_and_the_Academy_Awards
https://www.metaflix.com/video/2020/08/15/backlash-lawsuits-and-lore-why-the-1989-oscars-are-considered-the-worst-ever/
https://www.lamag.com/longform/snow-job/
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/feb/18/how-snow-white-and-some-coconuts-killed-1989s-oscars
https://www.newsday.com/entertainment/movies/oscars-daily-bite-why-the-1989-academy-awards-were-a-disaster-1.13161488