Batman & Robin director Joel Schumacher recently marked the 20th anniversary of his film by apologising for it.

This is what happens now, when people make something fans hate. They have to play contrite and take all the blame, and then the internet will allow them to move on. Once they eat their humble pie, they are abased before the gods of Twitter and some dude who writes for Vice. (Ed note: or Junkee, we’ve totally been part of it. Sorry.)

Well, screw that. Schumacher has nothing to apologise for. Batman & Robin may be rated at just 10 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and rubbished by many (including the cast), but you shouldn’t believe the haters. Batman & Robin is actually a really fun movie.

Butts, Puns and Rubber Nipples

Batman & Robin was Schumacher’s second swing at the series after Batman Forever, a movie that actually deserved its mixed reception. That one earned its 40 percent on Rotten Tomatoes by trying to blend the dark and brooding gothic version of Batman with the bright and campy version, just like Tim Burton’s Batman movies, which never really worked. (Burton’s trademark teen goth visuals and love of melodrama didn’t mix well with the quips and gadgets and hammy bad guys. They were popular at the time, but imo we had lower standards for superhero movies back then.)

To really get Batman right you have to commit to one interpretation or the other. You either have to be 1960s Batman, all novelty deathtraps and kid sidekicks, or grim Batman, like The Dark Knight Returns. The latter was a comic book in which an aged Bruce Wayne comes out of retirement to kick everyone’s arse including Superman’s.

Batman & Robin went in the other direction. It’s the closest thing to Adam West’s Batman that isn’t a cartoon, though it’s plenty cartoonish. Instead of “BIFF” and “POW” and “KO” popping up on the screen, there are musical stings to accompany the punches and sound effects straight out of Hanna-Barbera.

When a cop gets knocked unconscious, there’s a sound like a ball hitting a hollow coconut. Characters fly around on strings like they’re in a production of Peter Pan, everything glows like an Alienware laptop, and the performances are pure pantomime.

People wanted The Dark Knight Returns, but instead they got The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Is it silly? God, yes. But it’s also a really good time. There are harmless slapstick fights with ridiculous bad guys. Mr Freeze has an ice hockey team and Bane speaks in grunts (he is also played by wrestler Jeep Swenson, whose claim to fame was having the largest biceps in the world; at his funeral they were measured one final time between the eulogies and cremation). Uma Thurman plays Poison Ivy like a cross between Mae West and Julie Newmar, at one point emerging from a gorilla costume to launch into a Busby Berkeley number in which she walks over the bodies of musclemen.

Arnold Schwarzenegger delivers the most puns (in a movie full of them), turning almost everything Mr Freeze says into a reference to the weather and clearly having a top time doing so. Schwarzenegger has never been happier in his life than when he said “Let’s kick some ice!” Who are we to deny him that? Look at his little face.

Even the costumes are over-the-top. Every gang in Gotham has a theme, dressing like droogs out of A Clockwork Orange or Victorian-era fops. Alicia Silverstone’s Batgirl wears a costume with high heels because of course she does, but the objectification goes both ways with butt shots of both George Clooney (as Batman) and Chris O’Donnell (as Robin) before we’ve even seen their faces.

One of the most controversial things about Batman & Robin was that the title characters had costumes with nipples on them. It’s a pretty petty complaint that says a lot about the boys’ club it came from. Nobody who hates the rubber nipples was mad about Batman Returns putting Catwoman in a bondage suit.

As Poison Ivy says in this movie, “There’s something about an anatomically correct rubber suit that puts fire in a girl’s veins”. Like everything about Batman & Robin, the sexuality is taken to over-the-top extremes.

Cartoonish, silly, and camp were not qualities fans wanted from Batman in 1997, however. They wanted legitimacy, they wanted Hollywood and the critics and their mums to see that a man in a Batsuit could star in a serious work of dramatic fiction. They wanted The Dark Knight Returns in movie form, but instead they got The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Batman’s Balancing Act

Though it made over $US100 million past its budget, Batman & Robin was seen as a failure and plans for both a spin-off Robin movie and a sequel called Batman Unchained were scrapped. That’s a damn tragedy — not least of which because Batman Unchained would have featured The Scarecrow and Harley Quinn, and Nicholas Cage and Madonna were being tapped for the roles.

Imagine how unhinged those two would have been as Batman villains. We never got to see Madonna play Harley Quinn because nerds got angry about rubber nipples.

But even the many and vocal haters of Batman & Robin have something to thank it for. The bright and silly film was necessary to set the stage for the grim and serious versions that would come next from Christopher Nolan. Without Batman & Robin, we would not have got The Dark Knight.

After three movies of grave and gritty Christian Bale though, it should have been high time for the pendulum to swing back the other way. Instead we got Sad Batman grumping his way through a Zack Snyder movie where he shoots a tonne of bad guys and not even one of them is dressed like a Victorian-era dandy. Snyder’s attempt to top Nolan for seriousness gave us a Batman who just plain murders criminals with guns, brands his logo onto the ones that live, and appears to be saving his facial expressions for marriage.

Batman Vs Superman also kills off Robin before we even see him. His empty costume hangs in the Batcave covered in Joker graffiti, because the Boy Wonder is too goofy a concept for such a desperately serious version of Batman.

In The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon wrote about how characters like Batman operate as substitute father figures and Clooney’s Batman — who delivers dad jokes in the fight scenes and hangs around Wayne Manor in a bathrobe — was very much that. In Batman & Robin, Robin and Batgirl are there for the audience to relate to; they earn their place by his sides, like kids who get to join in on the fun.

Heaven forbid a Batman movie have anything in it to appeal to children, or anything that resembles fun.

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Jody Macgregor lives in Melbourne. He writes about video games for PC Gamer, Rock Paper Shotgun, and ZAM and he writes about music for The Big Issue, FasterLouder, and inthemix. He tweets about nonsense at @jodymacgregor.

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Love film and TV? We’re holding our inaugural Video Junkee festival in July, a new annual event for lovers and creators of online video. Video Junkee is on July 28 & 29 at Carriageworks in Sydney, featuring keynotes, masterclasses, screenings, interviews and more. Tickets are on sale now.