Batman & Robin Review

hey guys just a quick heads up at the top of the episode till you know of a cool new feature for this podcast in the new year yep from now on we’re going to be handling the question of the week a little bit differently since your voicemail messages to us on the show’s fifth anniversary went so well we’re gonna be using that function on our website to handle our question of the week segment so from here on out if you have an answer for our question of the week simply visit our website at dynamicduel.com and click the red microphone button in the bottom right of the screen you’ll be prompted to leave us a voicemail message up to 20 seconds long which we will put on this podcast if you’re picked for the no prize or an honorable mention yeah it’s a nifty new feature that we think will result in some more fun engaging content for you the listeners again to answer our question of the week from here on out click the red microphone button at dynamicduel.com and record your response that’s it on with the show [Music] hi welcome to the dynamic duel podcast a weekly show where we review superhero films and debate the superiority between marvel and dc by comparing their characters in stat based battle simulations i’m johnny dc and i’m his twin brother marvelous joe and in this episode we are doing a throwback review of the 1997 film batman and robin directed by joel schumacher and we use the word film loosely here yes yeah now i can’t say that i’ve been looking forward to this review at all it’s it’s not a good film obviously and my arnold schwarzenegger impression is not fun it’s like get to the choppa like that that’s the best i could do so i can’t do it well either come with me if you want to live i can’t do it so this review it’s it’s going to be hard to get through but we’re all going to do it together yeah and of course we’re reviewing this now and tie into our last episode where we pit doctor octopus against mr freeze i have to say i lost a whole lot of respect for mr freeze by watching this movie no no no don’t do that gain respect by listening to the last episode again there you go yeah i’ll have to do that yeah before we get into our thoughts on the movie we’re gonna break down the comic book movie news items from the past week including the release date for morbius being pushed back again and the first trailer for the superman and lowest series on the cw as always we list our segment times in our episode description so feel free to check out the show notes if you want to skip ahead to a particular topic remember that this podcast now has a card game out called dynamic duel war and you can get it by joining us on patreon on any one of our tiers you can find information on how to get the game if you want to have fun simulating battles between marvel and dc characters check us out at patreon.com dynamic duel and also just a quick reminder guys to please subscribe to the show if you haven’t already and if you have please help us grow our podcast audience by leaving a quick rating or review on whatever platform you’re listening to us on or by sharing us with your fellow dc and marvel fans and with that out of the way quick to the no prize a no prize is an award marvel used to give out up until the 90s to fans our version the dynamic duel no prize is a digital award we post on social media that jonathan personally draws for those who we feel gave the best answer to our question of the week we asked you guys what villain do you think ethan hawk will play in the upcoming moon night television series now we got a few answers we did reach out to those who gave us an answer and asked them to resubmit via voicemail on dynamicduel.com and a few of those people did so those are the guys who will be featuring in this segment our first honorable mention goes to nathaniel wagner who said hey it’s nate here and for the question of the week i think it would be great to see ethan hawk portray konchu one of moon knight’s biggest villains is himself so for kanchu to be the antagonist for that would be amazing praise be to kanchu and that’s a pretty interesting answer kanchu the deity himself was a villain in the moonlight comics uh later on in the series he looked really cool because he had like this bird skull head it was really badass if ethan hawk did play him it would be like this motion capture thing that being said i don’t know if ethan hawk could play an egyptian deity i mean i think that’s what the movie gods of egypt got in trouble for right oh that’s right yeah with uh guard butler and uh what’s his face the guy from game of thrones yeah jamie lannister yeah jamie lannister yeah that movie kind of dropped the ball there that being said yeah i would prefer probably to see an egyptian actor playing the egyptian deity our next honorable mention goes to john straurowski who said i think ethan hawk will be the character of the profile even though he’s not a top tier villain he could be used as a main recurring lower level villain throughout multiple series based on his abilities and ethan hawk’s acting knack would be really good across the board the profile was an obscure moon knight villain but he’s one that to me always had one of the most interesting power sets he’s basically a guy who is a superhuman profiler just by looking at people he can determine like pretty much everything about them he can like read people as it were similar to how like an fbi profiler works you know it was just really fascinating and he does kind of resemble ethan hawk so i could totally see them going down this route if the series were going down more of a gritty crime drama as opposed to like the supernatural action adventure path that it seems to be going thanks to both john swarovski and nathaniel wagner for submitting your answers via voicemail but we want to thank everyone who took the time to send us an answer including robert leblanc gabriel bradham matt estes zack hepburn trevor wallace richard mcgrew and shane habezin yeah guys next time be sure to go to the website hit that red voicemail button but the winner of this week’s no prize goes to michael hagerty for the question of the week i believe ethan hawke will be playing morpheus but uh no red or blue pill this time just the hawk connoisseurs morpheus i just realized i don’t know anything about any moon knight villains like ever uh i loved this answer morpheus i think is probably the best response given that ethan hawk could totally play the character and considering the direction that the series is going which is like again the supernatural action adventure kind of in the vein of indiana jones morpheus i think would fit right in as michael said this is not in reference to the matrix character with the red and blue pill but rather morpheus is a character who lost the ability to sleep so like all of this like subconscious built up psychic power manifests as this like e-bond energy that he can shoot out and manipulate things and he could also communicate with people who are sleeping and stuff like that he’s a pretty cool dark character but he has the supernatural vein that i think the upcoming series will steer toward interesting and he’s one of mark spector’s greater villains some names that we didn’t get from our honorable mentions and the no prize winner were uh characters like black spectre jack russell werewolf by knight um and i think both of those characters would also be heavy contenders for the role that ethan hawk is playing i guess we’ll find out when the show debuts but uh congrats once again to michael hagerty you win this week’s no prize if you the listener want a shot at winning your own no prize stay tuned to later on in this episode when we’ll be asking another question of the week and with that out of the way on to the news [Music] all right speaking of morpheus we’re now going to be talking about a character named morbius marvel’s living vampire character an enemy of spider-man who has his own film coming out starring jared leto now that movie was originally going to be released last year and then it got pushed to this march and then last week it got pushed to october which was then taken by the new james bond movie so sony backed off and they pushed it to next january holy [ __ ] i know that they pushed it to october but i didn’t hear about them moving it to january too that sucks yeah it does because i feel like october was a prime spot for the movie considering that you know it’s the halloween month and the movie’s about you know this quasi vampire superhero character we got a trailer for this movie like ages ago it wasn’t bad we did get the huge surprise that michael keaton will be playing the vulture in some capacity within the film which i think was kind of a big giveaway on behalf of the studio but it did get me excited for the movie and the fact that it keeps getting pushed back it’s almost coming out a year from now and that sucks because apparently sony has nowhere else to take the film you know sony doesn’t have their own streaming service all right maybe i think they do it’s on playstation right i have no idea i don’t have a playstation yeah that’s where powers came out on that being said not very many people would be able to get to see the movie if they went that route now this doesn’t surprise me because sony has gone on the record saying that they weren’t going to release any kind of temple film during the pandemic since the pandemic is still going on and we don’t know when it’s going to go away of course sony’s going to push it because they don’t want to lose money on their films they can’t afford to in the same way that like disney or even warner brothers sort of can yeah that being said there’s no word yet as to whether or not they’re gonna be pushing back the venom sequel venom let there be carnage that movie is still scheduled to come out in june yeah we’ll see what the pandemic looks like you know at that time it does make me nervous though for the fate of black widow will that movie get pushed back too just like everything else is moving out of the spring time frame or will disney finally cave in and just put that movie on disney plus so we could watch it already i don’t know i i don’t think disney will push it again i think whatever happens they may do what hbo max did and do a simultaneous debut on disney plus and in theaters i am crushing my fingers that that will be the case because i think that would be the best case scenario for everybody that wants to see this movie in whatever way they feel the most comfortable with during this time i do think that if it’s on disney plus though it’ll be under premiere access so it’s not going to be you know free with a subscription you’ll probably have to shell out like another 30 dollars i don’t care i’ll do it i’ll do it and i’ll just mooch off of you so it’s fine i do wonder where this puts morbius in the whole like spider-man timeline though because there were cues as to like spider-man you know his identity being revealed at that point and the whole thing with the vulture possibly setting up the sinister six i mean this movie should have come out before the next spider-man movie and now it doesn’t look like that’s even gonna happen yeah the next spider-man movie is scheduled to come out in december it’s still unclear as to whether or not sony will keep it there or if they’ll push it back as well to come after morbius either they’re gonna have to do a lot of tricky cutting in morbius or i think spider-man gets pushed but who knows if disney will even let them do that because i’m sure they have a say in whether that happens or not too maybe at the end of the day even though marvel’s making all the creative decisions it is sony’s baby so we’ll see i am highly convinced that spider-man is going to get pushed back just because i don’t feel like they’re far enough in their production of the movie to warrant a release this year yeah we don’t even have a title of the film yet right exactly exactly they’re a little bit too far behind in production i think for it to still make that december date please do not let 2021 turn out to be like 2020 where everything gets pushed back to the following year that that’s just gonna suck yeah well at least we know that won’t happen for the dc movies that’s right that’s right moving on to the dc news we got the first official trailer for the superman and lois television series that will be premiering on the cw network at the end of february it looks very well produced i have to say from the looks of this trailer yeah the budget definitely looks like it’s pretty high it feels like a nice mixture between like man of steel in terms of like cinematography and smallville you know just like a close intimate look at the personal life of superman which is a great way to introduce conflict into his life you know a lot of people struggle liking the character of superman because he’s so invulnerable but when it comes to his personal life dealing with you know like the struggles of being a husband of being a father he becomes a little bit more relatable and i think a little bit more accessible and they definitely seem to be playing off of that in this trailer now do superman and lois have teenage sons in this show they have one son i have no idea who the other guy is honestly but he must be pretty close to the family because clark kent’s going off and giving away his secret to him along with his son what what is going on why would you do that  like a villain or something i don’t watch the cwu shows so they may have introduced him in one of those i just have no idea who he is yet watch it be like lex luthor jr or something like that now even though you don’t watch the cw shows you have seen tyler hawkland’s portrayal of the superman character and you said that you were impressed yeah i saw him uh a couple of times most recently in the crisis on infinite earth’s crossover event that they did and yeah he’s he’s not a bad superman i think he brings a lot of appeal in a way that perhaps henry cavill doesn’t just because of the darker world that henry cavill superman inhabits this trailer is not like light-hearted by any means it also is pretty i don’t want to say dark i guess moody is the right term it seems to be very dramatic that said i love the line where clark is like sometimes i really wish i could get drunk can he not i mean i don’t know why he couldn’t of course he can’t he would need like kryptonian alcohol to get drunk yeah just slip some kryptonite in your booze you get a nice uh green glowing cocktail there and then you die it does look like there’s gonna be some pretty cool action in the show as well and we get to see superman flying around and and throwing some beams and even do like some super breath and i think we see what appears to be my tallow in the trailer i’m not 100 sure but there is like a robot suit with some kryptonite so it’s probably him this trailer actually has me pretty pumped to see the show i wasn’t planning on watching it earlier again because i don’t really watch any of the cw shows but i’ll definitely have to check out the pilot for this one yeah and when you do uh be sure to let us know what you think will do it’s coming up pretty soon so if you’re the listener check it out send us your thoughts as well and let us know what you think of the show and tyler hawkland’s performance but that brings us to our question of the week who is your favorite superman actor of all time and why record your answer at dynamicduel.com by clicking on the red microphone button which will prompt you to leave us a voicemail your message can be up to 20 seconds and don’t forget to leave your name in case we include you in the podcast we’ll pick our favorite answer and draw that person a dynamic duel no prize that we’ll post to social media be sure to answer before january 30th but i think that does it for all the news for this episode so let’s go ahead and get on to the main event where we review the absolute [ __ ] show dumpster fire of a film batman and robin yay all right so famine and robin was released in 1997 and was directed by joel schumacher who also directed the previous film in the initial batman film franchise  a massive hit this film however was a massive bomb both critically and at the box office it’s on many critics lists as one of the worst films of all time and it nearly killed the superhero film genre forever it’s just the [ __ ] worst if you haven’t seen it don’t even bother trust me even as a huge dc fan i do not recommend it those would be the two longest hours of your life that you could never get back i forgot how long this movie was good god it’s like [ __ ] your pants and then having to sit in it for two damn hours it is way too long of a movie for how bad it is yeah i was so ready for it to be done by the time those end credits rolled it was not even funny i don’t know how many people follow along with us and watch the movies that we’re gonna review as we review them but for everyone that watch this film i apologize like i’ve only seen this movie once my entire life i had maybe probably forgotten exactly how bad it was since i was like 11 years old since i saw it last i’m sorry this movie is really really bad it’s funny because there’s like a lot to look at but the film cannot be more boring i think i remember seeing this movie for the first time at the drive-in like we didn’t see it right away when it first came out i think i fell asleep when we watched it for the first time watching it again recently i couldn’t get through it i also had forgotten how long it was about an hour in i paused it just to double check that things were like going to end soon and i wasn’t even [ __ ] halfway through i felt literal dread it was like it’s just the worst feeling i was like [ __ ] it i’m going to sleep i’ll try again in the morning it feels too long because it is there’s just way too much unnecessary everything like too many characters too many crappy action scenes too many lazy puns way too much nipples and glitter and [ __ ] neon it was an overproduced over designed fever dream and i don’t actually blame joel schumacher entirely i mean why yeah i mean he’s publicly apologized for how bad batman and robin is but i think warner brothers should get as much of the blame if not more warner brothers actually fast-tracked the sequel after the success of batman forever so they were in a rush to come up with the script batman the animated series was insanely popular around this time and two of its episodes with mr freeze had won emmys so they were like go with him really it’s strange because the batman animated series was so true to the spirit of the character from the comics true in its tone this movie could not be more different from not just the comics but from the batman animated series that it was partially inspired by this film’s tone is so much a continuation of the 1960s television show i was surprised because we recently reviewed batman the movie from the 60s show and every problem that i had with that movie where it took this kind of adolescent approach to the action and the dialogue and everything this movie definitely carried the spirit of the 60s show forward this is essentially the 90s version of the adam west burt ward television show sort of i mean i would say the big difference would be that the 60s show was kind of charming in its low budget quality this film looked expensive as hell and so unnecessarily like they didn’t need new vehicles in the last act or new costumes or batgirl at all it was all just to sell toys yeah the merchandising for batman forever was insanely popular it was really good and they made a ton of money off of it warner brothers had toy companies attend pre-production meetings for batman and robin and they let them help design the costumes and sets and vehicles warner brothers explicitly wanted schumacher to make a very family-friendly two-hour toy commercial and the film has about as much substance i will be honest in saying that i did think that robin’s ice sled uh toward the end of the movie was pretty dope i like the design on that with a big fan really you like that yeah yo i just like the big red light up logo on it i don’t know okay well i mean then they got you hook line and sinker right there buddy yeah yeah i’m gonna go buy that toy now that was cool some of the vehicles actually did not look half bad the design of this batmobile is actually kind of cool like the way the whole thing is in front of him but from like a practicality standpoint it’s awful like it has no windshield like the bugs are just gonna splatter on his face as he’s driving down the highway and he sits so far back in the vehicle that he can’t see the front of it i actually think that this batmobile is better than batman forever’s um i don’t like it more than the two burton films batmobiles but my primary issue with it is like the light up spinny engine in the front that’s so not batman you couldn’t get more non-batman than that it is the least stealthy vehicle that has ever been made this movie is like the antithesis of who batman is oh absolutely fans of batman know that this is not who batman is in any way and hasn’t been for a very long time now did you recognize that the first time you saw this movie do you think that that’s not batman no when this movie first came out honestly i remember not even knowing that cc comics was a thing like when batman mentioned superman at the very beginning you know this is why superman works alone i was like oh he just mentioned superman that’s interesting like i didn’t realize that you know they see each other all the time in the comics it wasn’t until probably like two years after this movie came out that i actually started reading dc comics and started getting into them because when this film came out i was still a marvel fan thank god cause i would have [ __ ] killed myself i think in addition to like the vehicle design the other thing that i kind of liked about this movie was the set design they had some pretty cool sets even though they all felt like sets like something that you would see in like a live action production they were brightly colored and pretty interesting to look at no yeah this whole film reminded me a lot of like a shitty stunt action production show that you would see at like six flags or something like that you know i think part of that is like schumacher’s like love of theater in a way but also again these sets were designed by toy companies so they wanted to create these things that you could really play around in there are some good things about this movie in very small doses there is a lot of action in this film and every once in a while it’s fun to look at but most of the time it’s hard to tell what the hell is going on or like why things are happening in the opening action scene against mr freeze there’s a moment where batman and robin are playing hockey against some henchmen with a diamond for the puck and robin finally gets the diamond the mr freeze sees a giant sculpture of a dinosaur so he goes what killed the dinosaurs the ice age and he freezes it and it randomly falls apart for no reason just because it’s frozen and people scatter and that’s it like the falling pieces don’t knock the diamond out of robin’s hand or trap batman so that mr freeze can escape literally everything continues as it had before there was no [ __ ] reason for the falling dinosaur other than to show a [ __ ] fallen dinosaur and maybe squeeze in like a stupid ice quip but so much of this film is like that things happen for no reason if you had to take a liberal edit to this movie how long do you think it would turn out if you kept only the bits of substance oh jeez that is an interesting question i would love to do that someone needs to do that i bet if you took out all of the unnecessary bits the film would be maybe over an hour definitely not two hours you could probably cut the film in half i would go so far as to say that you could cut this down to a 10 minute film what i don’t know about because that’s how much didn’t matter just the whole movie didn’t matter yeah there you go forget any of it happened the film is so absurd i almost want to call it a comedy i think that’s what it wanted to be but the film was more of a joke yet if there’s any redemption to be had with this film it’s as a film you can laugh at rather than with it’s something you put on with your friends and laugh about how stupid the writing is from the story to the dialogue just everything i could see that i know adam spees had mentioned that the 60s batman movie has drunk validity you know something that you just put on in the background while you get wasted and like occasionally tune in and laugh at with your friends i think this movie has that same validity but i do think that it’s actually worse than the batman 60s movie yeah it absolutely is for sure i blame a lot of that on the writing this film was written by akiva goldsmith who interestingly won an oscar four years after this film came out for a beautiful mind it’s also interesting because he wrote the film and then during pre-production he was apparently like wait you guys this script might actually suck but warner brothers seemingly didn’t listen to him and moved forward with it anyway but i’m not sure how anyone else wasn’t like whoa this is like a pretty big departure from the batman films that came prior you know starting with tim burns batman film from 1989 all of these batmans are pretty stuffed with characters even going back to the burton films but unlike those films the characters in this film are not interesting at all but let’s talk more about that in our character breakdown alright so starting things off with batman and bruce wayne they were played by george clooney who took the role over from val kilmer from the previous film because warner brothers fast-tracked batman and robin kilmer ran into a scheduling conflict due to his lead roles in the movies the saint and the island of dr moreau according to schumacher kilmer was also pretty difficult to work with anyway so he hired clooney based on a drawing of a bat kell he had done over the star’s headshot on paper i think clooney actually works really well as bruce wayne and batman but not in this movie no he should have been a lot better than he was he’s been pretty open about his distaste for the film and his performance in it and compared to the other actors who have played batman over the years he is without a doubt the worst which which is weird because clooney is a fantastic oscar-winning actor and he tried to make it work i think he tried to make bruce wayne charming like bruce wayne has never smiled more in a film but sometimes the smile comes across as if clooney was embarrassed of the dialogue and that i got yeah i think he was largely uncomfortable with the material that he was filming i think clooney could have possibly rocked it as bruce wayne and batman in a better batman movie this movie was not it yeah and also for some reason like clooney could not keep his head still when he wasn’t wearing the mask like almost every time he had a conversation with another character his head would be bobbing around it was super distracting i think he was doing it because he couldn’t move his head at all in the bat cowl just had to turn his whole body bruce wayne is really the only character in the film to have an arc you know he’s afraid of death and it continuing to take the lives of those closest to him like alfred or dick so he’s controlling with robin with the villains of gotham his existence is all about domination but there’s nothing he can do about the terminal condition of alfred the man who raised him until he realizes at the very end that while he can’t dominate death he can trust others to come up with solutions that he can’t he can trust mr freeze to do the right thing if he’s shown trust and compassion in return because that’s just as effective as saving lives as punishing wrongdoing the sentimental lessons bruce learns from alfred in this film are one of the very few things that sort of work in the movie yeah that scene where he kisses alfred goodbye essentially was definitely the best part of this movie it was the most real part yeah yeah definitely clooney and michael goff they have a pretty sincere father-son dynamic but michael goff is also you know just a really good actor he and commissioner gordon were the only mainstays of the four film franchise that started with the batman 89 film and michael goff had a fantastic dynamic with each of the actors who played bruce wayne so i guess you could argue that it was michael goff who really made those scenes work but clooney did pull his weight i feel i feel like all that was way too deep of an analysis for this type of movie it was there it was there this movie is definitely not deserving of that type of scrutiny but yeah good job for pointing that out it was nice the way that alfred told bruce that you know his only regret in life was that he wasn’t able to join him out there you know fighting the good fight against gotham’s criminal underworld and that was a good line yeah i liked that though apparently in this film it’s revealed that alfred is the one who designed the bat suits and given the rubber nipples and sculpted ass cracks i would hate to have seen what albert’s costume would have looked like you would have had assless chaps and you know like spiky nipple clamps i hate you for putting that image in my head the batman suit in this film is probably the worst on-screen batman suit next to adam west’s only because of its coloring though you know besides besides the nipples it’s all black and i think it could have really benefited from like a splash of bright yellow if not on the belt then at least the chest emblem i think a lot of people forget that val kilmer’s second suit in batman forever also had bat nipples on it but i think what made these ones particularly atrocious was that they had both areola and like pointy nipple section yeah they’re like very anatomically correct uh in this suit like the ass crack was like too deep within the actor’s ass obviously and like the bat cod piece was just way too pronounced it’s just too much all around yeah that being said i don’t think the bad girl costume went far enough yeah where’s areola on that one yeah geez you could do fake male nipples but not fake female nipples of course hashtag freethebatnipple right please make that a hashtag gosh moving on to robin dick grayson he was played by chris o’donnell who reprised the role from the previous film alongside vel kilmer it’s not the most substantive of roles even though he’s technically one of the title characters he comes across as a whiny horny [ __ ] for a majority of the film who never really learns the lesson batman is trying to teach him about not being impulsive i mean granted he did listen to batman at the end and he put on you know the rubber lips before kissing ivy but his whole arc was supposed to prove to batman that he was smart enough to make good decisions so with the rubber lips not being his idea but batman’s it kind of ruins his storyline especially since the rest of the movie he continues to get his ass saved right robin was the absolute [ __ ] worst in this movie i hated him he was so worthless he did nothing in this whole damn movie but being annoying from the very opening lines of this film when he was like i want a car chicks dig the car i wanted to be like shut up robin [ __ ] idiot it’s unfortunate because dick grayson is such a great character in the comics and chris o’donnell was kind of screwed by the script they gave him it kind of ruined his film career yeah he’s referred to as robin in this film but costume and age-wise he’s closer to nightwing which is pretty cool like if there’s one good thing i could say about this film they did a good job with the robin logo like that emblem is almost as cool as the bat logo and i remember admiring it even as a kid i’ll admit to even liking the costume you know sans the rubber nipples the nightwing costume doesn’t traditionally have a cape but i thought it worked here along with the red color scheme since he was technically still called robin yeah i have to agree the robin logo was badass probably the best robin logo that we’ve ever seen honestly because traditionally it’s just represented by the letter r and i kind of wish that you know the comic book robin would adopt this cool kind of like bat inspired motif of the robin bird i also especially like the way the emblems like kind of stacked on top of each other yeah for the promotional material in this movie yeah totally i remember when i was a kid i made like paper airplanes out of the batman logo and once i saw the batman and robin logo i started coloring the robin on top of it too yeah it just worked there’s just something aesthetic about it i think if this movie didn’t suck as much as it does they probably would have used it in the comics by now just like give it to tim drake he could be like red winged or something no red wing is uh marvel please marvel copies dc all the time whatever moving on to mr freeze dr victor freeze was played by arnold schwarzenegger and to this day i’m like why his performance the suit nothing about it says mr freeze to me like there are a bunch of other actors older actors like anthony hopkins who were considered for the role until schumacher decided he wanted mr freeze to look like he was chiseled out of a glacier but being physically imposing was never one of the draws of mr frieza’s character like mr freeze is one of the most relatable villains in batman’s rogues gallery because at the end of the day he’s just trying to save his wife and they got that part right in the film like seeing nora floating in the cryostasis tank was pretty iconic but the fact that mr freeze was trying to fund research and to curing her by stealing diamonds that themselves have a ridiculously high monetary value oh that’s true right mr freeze said he needed billions for his research and i looked it up just one of those diamonds would be worth billions and he had like 10 which you know which he wanted to use to power a freeze engine that would help him freeze gotham and hold it for ransom you think someone as smart as freeze would have been like wait a minute i could just sell the diamonds i did not even think about that but that’s so true that’s a huge plot hole in a movie that barely has a plot exactly basically the entire movie should not exist it breaks the film it does absolutely his motive shifts once ivy tells him that batman killed nora then he just wants everyone to die which would have been sinister if it wasn’t for how arnold schwarzenegger has to expose it everything in excruciating detail with each sentence needing an ice pun it’s unbearable too many [ __ ] puns i just too many [ __ ] puns i gotta say that every single line that he had was a pun like the midway point in the movie i was just sick of it i wanted to mute the television every time he opened his mouth right he’s like here comes another [ __ ] ice pun oh he’s gonna get it we get it dude you like move ice just to touch on his costume real quick uh that thing is fugly the way random parts light up like neon underglow the bizarre headgear like the suit would have almost been passable if you didn’t just have that weird headgear i guess schwarzenegger wore like a bald cap for the film but you couldn’t tell and i thought they did a really good job with like the glittery blue texture of his skin on close-ups yeah if they just put those iconic red goggles on him instead of giving him both cataracts and pink eye he would have been halfway decent yeah i think if you gave him like the the glass dome helmet with the existing armor i think that would have actually looked pretty good you know of course in addition with the red goggles moving on to the other villain poison ivy aka dr pamela eisley was played by uma thurman it was like watching a shitty broadway performance it was like watching a shitty off-broadway performance it was cringe-inducing i actually felt bad for her so bad i’m like honey stop just whatever you’re doing like the weird accent like why the accent right three or four different accents in this film like ranging from american to fake really bad british there were some parts where she was like also like southern yes that was just out of nowhere i did not get it i think she was trying to like evoke the performances of the 60s television show like an eartha kitt or lee merryweather type performance and it just came off so ridiculously cheesy at least when you watch an arnold schwarzenegger film like you know you’re not going into it for arnold’s moving performance the guy is not a great actor but uma thurman is she was nominated for an oscar for her role in pulp fiction just three years before this film was released so to see her crash like so spectacularly here it’s kind of tragic yeah and it’s not for a lack of trying like she really gives it her all it’s a big performance again like something you’d see on a stage but that just doesn’t work in film john glover the actor who played the evil scientist dr jason woodru he said that before each take schumacher would yell into his megaphone remember everyone this is a cartoon so the actors went into their performances with that mindset and i think it shows across the board now in regards to poison ivy’s costume it’s so bad um thurman is an attractive woman but the drag queen approach they took with her design here was not appealing that’s what i thought she looked like too i thought she looked like you know the next contestant in rupaul’s drag race yes uh you know she’s not an androgynous type person but the way they styled her makeup made her look androgynous it did yeah i mean the costume starts off fine but it gets progressively worse until they go with like bizarre hairstyles and completely destroy her eyebrows at one point she goes from wearing these like fingerless gloves with like pine scented car fresheners on her palms to wearing full on green dishwashing gloves with red fingernails painted on it’s so gross that’s the only way to describe it now character wise she starts off a little crazy you know wanting to create plant slash animal hybrids so that plants would be better able to protect themselves after she’s resurrected from death she wants to kill mankind but batman and robin are in the way so she teams up with mr freeze but their future vision of killing everyone and being the last remaining humans really is incompatible mr freeze wants everything to be like a frozen hellscape and she wants a tropical paradise it doesn’t make sense why they would team up no it doesn’t and you would think that she would [ __ ] know that plants need sunlight and warmth in order to grow there’s no vegetation in a tundra why is is why is my question why is people what are they thinking yeah they’re both supposed to be scientists oh god it’s crazy when like the 11 year old version of you is smarter than the doctors in the movie it’s not right now mr freeze isn’t the only person that she teams up with she also teams up with bane early on you know they’re both products of her venom formula now understand why they went this route with bane since they could have him be her muscle but it’s one of the biggest disservices done to a character in comic book history like bane in the comics is highly intelligent and here he’s like a luchador hulk yeah especially because he’s green in this movie and he goes around saying like brain smash and bomb and stuff like that yeah as we all know from the animated series and from the dark knight rises bane is one of batman’s most formidable foes because he’s a match for batman both physically and mentally in this movie he’s mindless which is so bizarre for one of the smartest characters out there i guess the guy who played him the actor robert swenson was massive he was over  he’s six foot four he made schwarzenegger look like a small fry when schwarzenegger won mr universe he was like 200 something pounds whoa steroids man i guess he died of heart failure like a few months after this movie came out yes what’s almost worse than the fact that he was mindless though was how easily he was defeated in all the instances he went up against the dynamic duel like he got kicked into a pile of boxes and was out and then you know like the tube thing it just got like kind of like flicked out of the back of his head and he’s done you know it was so embarrassing it was it was and after all this is the character that’s supposed to break batman’s back how do you have bane in a movie and not have him like at least lift batman up to like break his back like they did in the animated series they didn’t even do that what a waste the last character i want to talk about is batgirl aka barbara wilson played by alicia silverstone barbara wilson say what yeah normally the character is barbara gordon commissioner gordon’s daughter but for some reason they made her alfred’s niece in this film the character in the film is supposed to be british but silverstone didn’t even attempt a british accent i think they made her alfred’s niece as opposed to commissioner gordon’s daughter just so that they could get her in the bat cave to set up her origin yeah i buy that that makes sense she was kept a secret by alfred for some reason and she travels to gotham in order to free her sick uncle from his life of servitude though once her uncle is cured she seemingly ends up being okay with him being a butler apparently silverstone was like the first and only choice to play the character they didn’t audition anyone or anything like that she had just come off of her success from clueless her performance here is a bit too cute and childlike even when she’s not putting on like an innocent facade for alfred the relationship between the two doesn’t quite make sense either like he doesn’t want her riding a dangerous motorcycle at first but then he reveals that he designed a suit for her to fight crime alongside batman it’s like what’s true yeah what does he want for her she didn’t come across as tough or capable really in what she was doing at all except for like you know maybe the hacking stuff where she like a whiz managed to crack a three character passcode who can do that yeah she had like an unlimited number of attempts to do it apparently but like when she was fighting both poison ivy and when she flipped robin she was like hi yeah yeah she did that several times so stupid and she’s loving and doting to alfred but then she’s like [ __ ] your secrets uncle alfred i’m gonna hack into your [ __ ] and that was kind of messed up i mean alfred entrusted her with that documentation although i want to know why alfred was giving batman and robin secrets to his brother was that because he wanted his brother to come and serve as batman and robin’s butler after he died yeah that was my impression it was kind of manipulative on alfred’s behalf though because like he knew she was going to hack into his disk that he gave her so it’s like why not just take her down to the batcave yourself yeah that whole end scene where alfred’s face comes up in the bat cave and he’s like intruder alert it’s like dude you’re putting your face on an intruder alert screen like if the bad guy didn’t already know at that point who batman was he for sure knows now because there’s his [ __ ] butler’s face on this intruder alert screen so dumb yeah i don’t even think of that that is that is horrible barbara was also a love interest of sorts for robin though it’s not really reciprocal like she comes off as rude and he comes off as like a creepy stalker i think they wanted her to come across as like tough and self-sufficient but i don’t know like if they wanted that they should have hired elisa silverstone who comes across as like very innocent and naive that scene where she like visits and then bruce is like well then it’s settled she’s staying and like the look on robin’s face where he has like the world’s biggest grin it’s so inappropriate it’s so weird i thought it was inappropriate how he kept putting his arm like around her like pulling her close to him as she was like staring at her sick uncle just all sad he was like totally taking advantage of that situation robin’s such a creeper in this that does it for the character breakdown let’s move on to the plot breakdown now which [ __ ] the film starts off with an extreme close-up of batman and robin’s rubber nipples cod pieces and ass cheeks as they suit up in the bat cave it is like no lie the absolute worst opening to any film in cinema history the batmobile and the redbird motorcycle emerge and batman and robin raced to the gothic museum to stop the new villain mr freeze and as they leave the batcave we also learned that alfred might be sick at the museum mr freeze freezes all the security guards and steals a diamond before batman and robin arrive on the scene and they start wrestling for control over the diamond the way these fight scenes played out i’m very much surprised that we didn’t see like the pow and bam right exclamation graphics pop up on the screen mr freeze finally gets the gem and escapes in a rocket ship launched from his weird ass vehicle that looks like the front engine of a train yeah that was weird i did not get that vehicle batman makes it inside the rocket and robin grabs onto the outside as it launches into the sky this whole thing is pointless i don’t understand the whole like going up in a rocket only to come back down thing it was just weird yeah i think maybe it was to set up another toy uh where batman and robin could have like surfboard accessories when they’re like surfing off the doors from the rocket ship but other than that i have no explanation because yeah again the scene ends with them like in one of the smoke stacks i think yeah of a gotham city factory and robin gets frozen by impulsively leaping through a door and it’s like batman gets so mad at robin for like getting frozen but did he like not forget that robin also saved him from the rocket ship it’s like how crazy impulsive can you be you got iced it’s like dude you just [ __ ] got iced too yeah his arms and he’s lucky it was just his arms in fact it makes no sense that it was just his arms [Laughter] batman of course thaws robin what’s really interesting is that apparently chris o’donnell did not shoot a single scene with arnold schwarzenegger like any time they were in the same frame which was like practically never it was always a body double really oh that’s fascinating in the next scene we’re introduced to dr pamela eisley who is killed by her colleague dr jason woodru after she learned that he was corrupting her research to create super soldiers for hostile nations yeah i didn’t appreciate the fact that he called it a super soldier serum pamela is later resurrected as poison ivy and kills dr woodru before taking bain with her back to gotham city where bruce and dick learn about mr frieza’s origin and his diamond-enhanced suit bruce develops a plan to lure phrase with the wayne family diamonds now this is the part where we see mr freeze’s henchmen like singing christmas carols or something like that right yeah he’s trying to get them to sing the mr snowmiser song so ridiculous like it must be so horrible to be a mr freeze henchman it’s like when they’re handing out like flyers for all the different villains that you could be a henchman to like the people that showed up late got mr freeze because they had to like live in like a refrigerator and they’re freezing their asses off like all their boogers were frozen and everything and they had to like sing songs it’s just so [ __ ] ridiculous it’d be the worst to be a mr freeze henchman and everything mr freeze says here in this whole scene is just the most unbearable exposition again too many ice puns it’s so hard to get through back at wayne manor alfred’s niece barbara wilson visits and bruce offers to let her stay that night we see alfred searching online for his brother and barbara sneaks away from the manor with a stolen motorcycle at the gotham observatory bruce wayne explains to the press how a new telescope can see around the planet using a system of mirrored satellites bruce is confronted by ivy who proposes wayne enterprises cease all environmentally toxic work while threatening everyone else ivy learns of batman and robin and realizes she needs to eliminate them in order to take over gotham with plants freeze learns that the wayne diamonds will be at a charity gala which poison ivy crashes using pheromone dust to seduce batman and robin turning them against each other poison ivy’s entrance in this scene was the stupidest idea oh my god like her and bain are in these monkey suits and they start doing like this weird belly dance type thing and it’s like but she’s wearing the big fluffy monkey suit it’s so not sexy and she’s like slowly removing her gloves i think it’s supposed to be some kind of like burlesque thing but it’s so [ __ ] ridiculous this is really the part where i wanted to shut off the movie like i had made it this far with everything stupid that happened with the whole hockey fight scene and you know like the bat ice skates in the boots and everything like all the ridiculous stuff like that when those purple monkeys started dancing i was like i’m out i i i gotta tap out this is too much and little did i know that i was like barely like probably not even halfway through the film no no you weren’t not yet mr freeze shows up and steals the diamonds impressing poison ivy and escaping in his weird vehicle when mr freeze escapes the party batman and robin give chase during which batman disables robin’s bike preventing him from completing a jump he doesn’t think robin can make batman does make the jump in the batmobile and takes out freeze and this thing didn’t make sense to me either because i would think that the motorcycle would make that jump long before the car did that batmobile is so front-end heavy it would have just like gone straight down like a rock yeah well same thing with mr frieza’s vehicle too that thing was very front loaded as well for the rest of the film anytime bruce and dick are seen at wayne manor they’re always arguing about trust and they’re arguing over ivy and it just gets really old really quick well frieza’s put in his cell in arkham asylum poison ivy takes over a gang’s hideout and fills it with her plants at wayne manor dick spots barbara sneaking out again and he follows her to a motorcycle street race where he saves her life from some corrupt competitors now that scene where like the cheating gang swings on these like ropes and elaborately throws down this wall of fire that the bikes can’t get through so they fall off their bikes and they almost slide over the edge of this bridge what were those bikes supposed to do if they weren’t stopped by the fire exactly it would have gone over the bridge exactly where was this course supposed to go because if they kept going straight down it they would have just died right that whole thing was just so pointless it had coolio the planned sequel they had for this film it was going to be called batman unleashed or maybe unchained one of those two and coolio was being considered for the role of scarecrow that’s weird yeah so i guess he was like jonathan crane in this film it is beyond weird coolio must be a big fan of comic books because he also had a large role within the 2003 daredevil movie before it was cut well that’s right yeah it’s back in the director’s cut though right right yeah dick and barbara arrived back at the manor and barbara confesses that she was kicked out of school and is there to take alfred away from his life as a butler dick and bruce learned that alfred is sick and dying meanwhile poison ivy breaks mr freeze out of arkham and bane retrieves his cold suit and i didn’t hate the design of arkham asylum in this film like i liked it better here than like in batman begins this look was way much more of like a like a haunted house kind of sinister looking building and i think that’s how arkham asylum should look especially like the interior cells and stuff i feel like that was taken straight from the comics when batman and robin learn the ivy broke freeze out of arkham they meet the police at frieza’s ice cream lair where mr freeze and poison ivy also arrived to retrieve frieza’s diamonds freeze engine and wife while mr freeze takes out the police bane and ivy make short work of batman and robin turning them once again against each other batman realizes what’s going on and saves robin from being kissed before escaping ivy pulls the plug on nora yeah that was messed up i i forgot that she killed or allegedly killed nora uh during this movie it all happened off-screen like the whole killing of her and then the whole saving of her it was kind of like an unfair kind of twist at the very end like oh actually she’s alive yeah definitely it wasn’t earned yeah it was it was cheating ivy tells freeze that batman killed nora and mr freeze vows to freeze all mankind in revenge allowing ivy’s plant to slash animal hybrids their chance to flourish again which doesn’t work between that and the diamond thing the whole plot of this movie is just so nonsensical that i think they should really stop showing it just in general like burn all existing copies erase all digital copies and just never have it exist anymore just like 1984 that [ __ ] just like erase it from history yep they should it’s revealed that alfred has stayed joined mcgregor syndrome which is the same illness suffered by nora freeze which is super convenient and as bruce and dick continue to argue over ivy alfred gives barbara a disc containing a secret message for his brother which barbara hacks her way into learning that bruce wayne is batman at a dedication ceremony for the telescope ivy seduces commissioner gordon into giving her the keys to the police headquarters roof bane steals the bat signal and modifies it to show the robin logo instead bruce pleads with robin not to answer the call asking him to trust him about ivy while this is going on mr freeze and bane take over the telescope connecting the freeze engine to it to turn the telescope into a giant freeze ray robin follows the robin signal to ivy’s lair where she tries to seduce and kill him with a kiss the rubber lips save him batman appears but gets tangled up in ivy’s vines after which barbara appears now suited up as batgirl and kicks ivy into her own plant which for some reason tries to eat here this time i don’t understand that because poison ivy entered into the scene coming out of that same giant flower exactly at the end she like gets tossed into the flower and she was like curses and she’s done she’s like defeated it is so lazy so completely lazy that they couldn’t find a better way to dispose of her they’re just like ah just kick her back onto the plant we’ll have to eat her makes no sense she controls plants exactly what is going on it’s unacceptable batman robin and batgirl decide to join forces to take on freeze who’s freezing the city luckily the dynamic trio now have new vehicles capable of traversing the iceline streets that came out of [ __ ] nowhere like did they go all the way back to the bat cave for this probably but also you know if their freaking shoes have built in ice skates their vehicles are probably equipped also geez so random so completely random they make their way to the observatory telescope and determined that they can use the mirrored satellites to charge the telescope into a heat ray that could thaw the city mr freeze shows up and he and batman fight while robin and batgirl encounter and defeat bane batman gets the upper hand on frieze who sets off ice bombs he and bain had set up earlier that destroy the telescope with batgirl’s computer skills with a z they managed to redirect the satellite mirrors directly onto gotham thawing it once gotham is thawed batman reveals to frieze that nora is alive and that it was ivy who tried to kill her even though there was no way he could have gotten footage of her saying that because he was too busy signing off vines at the time batman asks for frieza’s help in carrying alfred in exchange for allowing him to continue his research in arkham asylum with his wife for some reason frieze has the mcgregor syndrome cure in his suit and he gives it to batman like why is he just carrying that around as bruce gives alfred the cure mr freeze shows up in ivy’s cell at arkham to get his revenge the cure works alfred is fine and bruce dick and barbara decide to team up for good and that’s the end of the movie thank god way too long way too much plot for so little actual plot like you said if you wanted to cut out all the extra fluff this movie could be way shorter even talking about it feels way too long by this point you guys are probably tired of hearing about the movie even talking about it as a boar there’s very little to praise so i give it one and a half stars out of five that’s worse than what we gave the  it is a worse film it is the worst batman film ever now i’d say that there are a few things to like like the set design and like the vehicle design was pretty cool except for the spinning engine on the batmobile and that’s it that’s the only thing to like about this movie there’s literally nothing else so i will agree with you yeah one and a half stars i won’t say that it’s quite as bad as something like catwoman which would get like one star i think it’s just slightly better than that movie because again this movie does have some validity if you want to make fun of it if you want to pick a part of the plot and joke about the cringy dialogue and look at the bright colors you know so it does have some merit as far as that goes but uh yeah i cannot recommend this movie whatsoever a lot of people say that hey if it wasn’t for this film we wouldn’t have gotten batman begins moving to that i say erase this movie from history but that does it for this review uh let us know what you thought about the movie if you’ve unfortunately seen it by writing to us at dynamicdullpodcast gmail.com or by visiting us on facebook instagram or twitter you can find links to all of our accounts by visiting our website dynamicduel.com and on our site you can also find a link to our patreon page where we offer bonus content and our very own marvel vs dc card game called dynamic duel war check it out right after this episode our lowest tier is only two dollars a month also a dynamic duel is a link to our merch store where we sell t-shirts hoodies stickers and more with our dynamic duel no prize artwork and this week i’ll be drawing mr freeze the good version not the movie version yeah in this movie we’ll lead into our next episode when we’re gonna review another batman film it’s the new animated movie coming out called batman soul of the dragon it looks really good it has like a 70s kung fu kind of vibe going on and we believe that it’s the origin story for batman in the new dc animated universe so be sure to tune in next week guys uh we want to remind everyone again to please subscribe to our show if you haven’t or please leave a rating or review please on your platform of choice sharing the show on social media or in person is also a big help for us but that does it for this episode we want to give a big thanks to our executive producers ken johnson jace crump john strarovsky john spees isaiah bethune zachary hepburn and john betchinina for helping make this podcast possible we’ll talk to you guys next week up up and away true believers