Director Joel Schumacher, Tim Burton's hand-picked successor, was clearly drawing his inspiration from the 1966 television show, and with Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones chewing their way through every available bit of scenery, replicating Adam West's stentorian straight man so they'd have something to bounce off of probably seemed like the best way to go. To be fair, there was a good reason for him to make that choice as an actor. Rather than a dynamic growl that goes with the action, Weller winds up just being boring, and whatever problems you might have with The Dark Knight Returns, "boring" should not be one of them. He might actually be the worst part of the film, and considering how much it sadly suffers in the transition from the page to the screen, that's saying something. Whether it's Weller's unfamiliarity with the art of voice acting or the desired effect from director Jay Oliva - which would be difficult to believe given his otherwise solid track record - Weller sounds in every scene like he just woke up. Unfortunately, the idea is the only part that's perfect.
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It sounds so good on paper, right? An older, more brutal, and even angrier Batman, payed by the guy who brought his blunt, stentorian voice to the title role of RoboCop, a movie so in sync with Frank Miller's mid-'80s work that they got Miller to write the sequels? It's such a perfect idea that it's hard to argue that they should've done anything else. Say what you will about the molded abs and plastic nipples of Joel Schumacher's late '90s Batsuit-at least the damn thing fits.
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It's like a look at an alternate universe where young Bruce Wayne was wondering how to make criminals afraid on that fateful night all those years ago, when a floppy-eared bunny rabbit crashed through his window. The worst part, though, is the costume: a straight up sweatsuit capped off with an ill-fitting cowl. We'll take "hilariously silly" over "upsettingly racist" any day of the week, but the fact remains that Lowery's bumbling, barely present Batman is trapped in a pretty awful plot that stretches out even longer than the first serial. The only problem is that Batman and Robin, the World's Greatest Detectives, see him walking around on multiple occasions, and never think to maybe adjust their suspicions accordingly. Robert Lowery's Batman stumbles from one goofy cliffhanger to the next-including being electrocuted on three separate occasions-in an attempt to unmask a mad scientist called the Wizard, only to dismiss the prime (read: only) suspect because he's in a wheelchair. That is, unfortunately, not entirely unexpected for superhero stories released during World War II, but around the time that the narrator starts praising the government's internment camps for "shifty-eyed" Japanese-Americans, it becomes pretty clear that this is a Batman best forgotten. It somehow winds up being repetitive even by the standards of serials, with alarmingly bad special effects, hilariously awkward costumes, unconvincing fights, and, of course, a massive helping of racism to bring it all together. Unfortunately, the actual execution is atrocious. In theory, that's a pretty exciting plot, and it actually does wind up introducing two key elements that would stay at the core of the Batman franchise: the Batcave and the thin, mustachioed version of Alfred that would quickly supplant the heftier version in the comics. Batman and Robin, played by Lewis Wilson and Douglas Croft, are recast as government agents who joined up to help the war effort and are tasked with stopping the villainous Dr. The first serial, released by Columbia in 15 parts, amounts to four and a half hours of the worst version of Batman to ever hit the silver screen.