Can you still have an opinion on Batman & Robin?
I’m not asking if you’re still allowed because too much time has passed (though it has) or if it’s status as “so-bad-it’s-good” makes it impossible to truly criticize. I’m asking if you can have an opinion on a film that has been as saturated in opinion as something like Batman & Robin. Can you trust that your thoughts aren’t a miasma of other people’s disdainful, snarky comments about the inherent stupidity of “bat nipples.” Are your marrow-deep feelings about Batman’s credit card something you discovered for yourself or a singularity of thoughts from around the world, metastasizing in your brain, the tumor ultimately feeding your delusional belief that this feeling was somehow organic to you?
These are the questions posed by CinemaSins’, “Everything Wrong With Batman & Robin In An Awful Lot Of Minutes”. For your consideration:
This was the first I’d heard of CinemaSins, but I guess I’m in the minority on that. They’re the kind of click bait videos that other sites post regularly to drive traffic because they talk about movies everyone knows. To their credit, Batman & Robin seems to be an anomaly to the kind of work they normally do. They’ve covered Back to the Future, for example.
And yet I wonder: what’s the point? Do the authors of this particular entry feel like they’ve really cracked the code on this film, or is it simple scrapbooking? Look, here’s what the world thought of this movie. We put it all together for you in a 17 minute video for future reference.
There’s a smug satisfaction to the video that suggests otherwise. These aren’t the archeologists or explorers of our times, but the kids who point at the fossils in a museum and say, “really?” And they’re doing it 17 years after the fact.
Congrats.