Well, we're officially all old.
Batman Forever only came out like 10 years ago, right? Sorry to say.... no. It came out 30 years ago today - June 16th.
I remember the summer of 1995 in incredibly vivid detail. Seal and U2 playing on the radio. All those awesome Kenner toys on the shelves of Woolworths. Adverts for the movie (and sometimes the video game) playing on TV every hour.
I wasn't prepped or hyped for the movie at all. It was my friend Peter who was the big Batman fan. I had seen a few episodes of the animated series but I wasn't super hooked. I had also missed out on the Batmania of 1989 and 1992 - due to those Burton movies carrying a 15 certificate.
I was 11 in 1995 and I had got excited about a few blockbuster films before - Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Jurassic Park, The Flintstones (maybe?) - but nothing prepared me for the sheer burst of energy and colour that was Batman Forever.
My dad took me and Peter and I remember it being one of the last times I was truly swept away by a film. Films don't quite hit me in the same way nowadays. Oh sure, I still like new movies but there's nothing quite like when you're a kid and you just... lose yourself. Be transported to another world. To paraphrase Edward Nygma - it was like I was "inside the show".
I walked out of the cinema incredibly energised. My brain trying to process the rollercoaster ride I just experienced - laughs, action, sadness and a more than a hint of sex.
That weekend I remember seeing the toys on the shelves when my dad took me to Tesco. It was so tough to choose just one (look at me now, I have them all) so I went with Hydro Claw Robin. I thought that Dick Grayson character was a pretty cool guy and I kinda dug that the toy didn't look like the movie - it was it's own interpretation.
Since seeing the film, I was running Batman story ideas in my head. I felt a kind of kinship to the toy manufacturers that we were both trying to visualise further adventures these characters could have. The next few weeks I saved up for the black suit Riddler, and then for Two-Face, and finally a transforming Dick Grayson. These figures were about £5.99 if I remember correctly and I got £2 a week from my grandad. I think I might have even washed his van for a extra bonus £5.
Then one weekend, I went to Tesco and the figures were all gone. I was too slow to get a Batman - I was holding out for the transforming Bruce Wayne. I ended up getting an animated Mech Wing Batman to complete the line-up a few weeks later.
That summer I must have let my dad know how much I enjoyed the film (as an aside, he claims to have no knowledge taking me to the cinema to see Batman Forever when I asked him about it recently). Anyway, my dad went away to America on a business trip - he was a pig farmer and had been asked to talk to farmers over there about UK techniques (random I know). He came back with two presents for me - one was a copy of the graphic novel Batman: KnightsEnd and the other was a huge poster of Kilmer and O'Donnell in their respective suits, awkwardly fist-bumping.
That poster hung on my wall for many years and the copy of KnightsEnd, though slightly baffling at first given that it was the third part of a trilogy, launched me into reading Batman comics. And I'm still reading comics today as a 41 year old man.
But yeah, that summer, I bought the Making of the Movie book by Michael Singer and I bought the soundtrack on cassette. I would relive the movie hundreds of times before I got the video for Christmas just by flicking through that book, listening to the soundtrack, or playing with the figures.
The images from that Making of book were definitely something that intrigued me. It was the first time I took in what a gargantuanly complicated production movies were. How all the sets and costumes were designed and built from scratch. The city built out of models. I remember being particularly fascinated by this costume sketch of Robin where it looks like they redesigned the costume to be blue and gold (in hindsight, I think it was the shading). If you notice, I use this now as my avatar.
I don't think my love of Batman Forever diminished but certainly it spread out and diluted over the years. I became more of a fan of the character than I did of just this one movie. I got into collecting and reading all the graphic novels. I eventually stopped buying toys (other than the odd McFarlane Movie Maniac figure).
When Batman Begins came out in 2005, I felt a little isolated. I didn't hate the movie, but I felt like lots of other people around me starting to express opinions like "thank God this new Batman takes the character seriously, not like those old campy Schumacher ones." I was a little crushed that my once cherished film was now just a marker for other, supposedly better Batman films.
Around 2012, I started getting back into collecting figures again. The whole adult toy collecting was becoming a thing and for a few years I had a lot of fun buying up really obscure toy lines on eBay. The Super Mario Brothers movie, Dune, Wing Commander, SeaQuest, Virus, Lost in Space. The more random the better. I remember thinking - I'm not going to try collecting the Batman Forever line, it'll be a pain to find everything.
In 2017, my wife gave birth to twins and a year later I made the decision to stop working and stay home to look after them. I needed something to keep me sane. So I started thinking about doing a blog about something I loved. I'd already done a short lived one on movies.
At the time I was reading a blog called 1989batman.com which covered the first two Burton Batman movies. It was a delightful mixture of magazine scans, old TV interviews, toy reviews and other miscellaneous material. I check the internet to see if anyone else was covering the other two Schumacher movies (or at the very least just Batman Forever) but to my surprise no one really was. There were plenty that covered all the Batman movies but none just focused on these two colourful, hyperactive, over the top films by Joel. Clearly the internet had create a hate and dislike of Batman & Robin that was so powerful no one would raise their head about the parapet to try and defend them.
I decided then and there to create 1995batman.com and 7 years later here we are.
People often ask why it is that I love Batman Forever so much? It really simple. The film is like a time machine. When I watch it, I stop being an adult and become a kid again. The older you get, the more that feeling becomes priceless. I get transported into Barbara Ling's vision of Gotham. I know the film isn't perfect but I have the most incredibly fun two hours with these characters.
If you're reading this, I guess you do too.
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There will be something else posted later today but as a little present, here's a video I put together showing a side-by-side of the Subway Sabotage section of the film alongside the storyboards.
