“Celebrating” 20 Years Of Batman & Robin

Hellbent For Leather

Okay, I’m kind of continuing the thought from the previous page, but there’s no way we can press on without addressing dem nipples. Honestly, I thought the costumes in this movie looked pretty good – even the silver suits that were there only to sell toys – as long as you removed the damn nipples.

Had you watched the bonus features included on the two-disc DVDs or Blu-rays for the Schumacher directed films, then you’d know his reasoning was that he thought these “anatomically erotic” suits reflected those of the physiques boasted by the Greek gods, therefore it just seemed like a logical step to take.

Quite frankly, I think neither he nor the folks working in the costuming department were to blame. No. The real culprit here was Alfred Pennyworth, so keep up with me because we’re about to forget there’s a line between fantasy and reality.

Remember when Batman asked Robin who his tailor was upon seeing his newly minted costume in Forever, prompting Alfred to say he “took the liberty”? Well, there you go. It’s obvious that he’s a decades old veteran of the Gotham fetish scene (hey, I’m not judging – I have friends into that stuff) and has a knack for sizing up people, with an emphasis on their more, um, generous proportions.

One not need look any further than the carefully crafted asses that’d put Carmine Infantino’s Flash to shame or Robin’s codpiece in Forever, which, to this day, makes me wonder how it didn’t earn that movie an NC-17 rating. Or the fact that he drew up two costumes for his own niece in very short order that had “follow me to the Genitorturers concert” written all over them.

Knowing that Batman normally dresses like a creature of the night in order to instill fear in the superstitious and cowardly, I can only conclude that modus operandi doesn’t hold true in this continuity. Rather, his strategy is to place his foes in such a heightened state of arousal that they won’t be cognizant enough to put up a fair fight.