I felt like taking a less serious note after my last couple felt a little too serious, so lets go with this. Batman and Robin is one of my favorite movies from my childhood and, while I will acknowledge it's not a good movie, there are plenty of tells that it probably wasn't meant to be. The cast choices often flit back and forth between good and terrible and the characterization of some do the same, but if we look at it as a stupid movie, it's definitely so bad it's good.
The first clue I found when I got older that this was supposed to be a stupid, campy batman movie was the casting of George Clooney as batman and Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze. No offense to either of these actors, I think they are amazing but even though I have very few ideas who should've been cast instead, these two are probably not even in the top 100. George Clooney doesn't really come off as a man who plays a lot of serious characters to me, based on the movies I've seen him in, and despite his batman being more campy, I still feel like there was a touch of seriousness that just follows batman.
Arnold Schwarzenegger...the main thing that stops me from completely taking him seriously as Mr. Freeze is that I can't help but think that that's the Terminator, or the guy from Predator who is a serious threat and then we cut to a Mr. Freeze who loves ice puns (which I appreciate) but is also the genius who is working to cure an incurable disease to later save Alfred and his own wife. I love Arnold as an actor, but as I said before I don't think he would be even remotely a candidate for Mr. Freeze...maybe an eastern European version of someone like John Hurt....
However, on the flip side, there are plenty of other people who were excellent in their roles. This Alfred, Michael Gough, is my second favorite of the live action only because I think Michael Cane does a fantastic job. He's what you expect because Alfred had to raise Bruce after the murder of his parents and, while I don't see this Alfred being the badass I know he is, I still think he fits the old caretaker vibe and I love it. He plays the role of an old and dying Alfred extremely well by being that special kind of professional, yet personable butler of Wayne manner.
Chris O'Donnel played the Robin he was given well as he was established in Batman Forever (another good-bad movie) as a bit of a punk who thinks with his heart more than with his head. He's a bit older, but he would've been great if he'd been casted to be the Robin who becomes Nightwing after he learns that discipline. It also fit in with the story that he was letting Ivy get into his head and manipulate him like she did with Freeze save that her pheromones actually worked on him.
Speaking of Ivy...Uma Thurman is the best person, in my opinion, to play Poison Ivy. Ivy has always had this air of feminine charm around her and the ability to entice people into doing what she asks of them even before the dust and Uma really gave us that. She was everything one would expect in Poison Ivy, even if the origin might be different to the comics and other cartoons, but it still fit in with the character being an insane activist who was literally willing to do whatever it took to make sure that her precious plants would retake the planet.
Now...back to the bad with Bane. While this was my first experience with Bane even though I grew up with Batman the Animated Series and Batman Beyond, but he also didn't show up a ton in that. However, as I got to see what Bane was and that he was not only intelligent without or without the Venom, but that he was also fucking huge even before the Venom. However, this Bane still works but a bit more on an Arkham TITAN thug kind of direction. He's big, stupid and wants to smash much like the hulk and it kinda works since he's just supposed to be the muscle so it worked...not the best interpretation, but it still works out.
All in all, this is one of my favorite movies despite it not being great, but as you all can tell from previous part, I usually don't care what people think about something. A lot of movies I like, like Pixels or this, many people say are terrible while I feel the same about a good handful of movies that people rave about.
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