Fans have been dissecting Batman & Robin for over 20 years trying to figure out exactly how a franchise that started off so promisingly with Tim Burton’s classic 1989 original had suffered so badly from the law of diminishing returns that just over a decade later Joel Schumacher and George Clooney combined to deliver one of the worst movies ever made.
On the screen, there’s absolutely nothing even remotely exciting about the film, but the tales from behind the scenes are full of interesting tidbits that have largely been revealed by Clooney himself, who isn’t shy when it comes to letting his feelings on the project be known. The actor admits he gave a terrible performance in a terrible movie, and is more than open to addressing the many failures of the critical and commercial dud.
Of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Mr. Freeze was a pun-laden disaster from the first second he appeared, and Clooney is no fan of the quips, either, but the 59 year-old also made the surprising admission that the two top names in the cast never filmed any scenes opposite each other, despite the edit convincing audiences otherwise.
“We never even saw each other. It’s a big, monster machine, and I just sort of jumped in and did what they said.”
Schwarzenegger picked up a $25 million paycheck for his efforts, and he was only required to be on set for six weeks of the four month shoot, so he never actually met Chris O’Donnell until the movie’s premiere. By all accounts, though, the action icon had a great time on Batman & Robin, as Jon Bon Jovi would visit during his downtime so they could smoke cigars together, while his 23 minutes of screen time and 27 ice-related puns worked out to a rate of over a million dollars for every 60 seconds he was in the pic and $925,000 for each terrible joke he cracked.
