9 thoughts on “The Top 5 Dumbest Things in Batman Forever”

  1. Two-Face is badly portrayed in Batman Forever. He’s played for laughs. There is a moment in the movie however that’s interesting…

    “Yes of course you’re right, Bruce. Emotion is always the enemy of true justice. Thank you, you’ve always been a good friend.”

    We got a glimpse at what should have been Two-Face throughout this entire movie…

    1. That’s the another thing the animated series got right. Actually, that’s two things…appropriately enough. Batman Forever failed to articulate Two-Face’s raison d’etre and it failed to articulate Bruce’s relationship with Harvey. Two-Face has always worked best when he and Bruce Wayne share at least some personal history together. Both are sons of Gotham, basted in the same brand of crazy sauce. Both chose to fight crime using their own specialized means. But while Bruce worked to understand criminals, inside and out (he being a detective and all, something almost all these films are terrible at), Harvey never got past the surface glamor of criminality. He saw in crime a chaos, and in that chaos, a freedom. After years of envying that apparent freedom (and repressing his envy in order to do his job) it’s no wonder he goes insane. By itself, that’s one hell of a story. Once you throw Batman in, you have to work real hard to make it anything less than awesome. And no matter what they might say, Schumacher and Jones put a lot of hard collaborative work into this film.

      1. That’s an interesting analysis Dave and recalling Steven Englehart’s Dark Dective saga, Two-Face indeed described crime as “a release”.

        1. That does not at all surprise me, given Englehart’s influence on post-Bronze Age Gotham. Would it be fair to say we can pretty much thank him for the modern psychological underpinnings of most Batman rogues? Because, if not, I’ve got about ten years worth of egg on my face.

          1. I’d defiently say so. It was Englehart who gave us the truly “crazy” Joker among other popular characterizations of Batman villians.

    1. The above seems to me a fairly accurate sample of a conversation between Dr. Chase Meridian and Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney. “Objection!”

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