\n<\/p>\n
In June 1995 a pop confection hit thousands of movie screens. It seemed to embody what both boosters and critics have identified as that decade\u2019s end-of-history nonchalance. It was, of all things, a Batman movie. And holding it together, the sturdy straight man surrounded by abject goofiness, was Val Kilmer<\/a>, the actor who died at the age of 65 on Tuesday.<\/p>\n \u201cBatman Forever\u201d was the third movie in a franchise kicked off in 1989 by the director Tim Burton\u2019s brooding \u201cBatman.\u201d Starring Michael Keaton in the title role and Jack Nicholson as the Joker, \u201cBatman\u201d was, by the standards of the time, dark for a comic-book flick.<\/p>\n Burton\u2019s and Keaton\u2019s follow-up, \u201cBatman Returns\u201d (1992), failed to repeat the original\u2019s box-office success. So a new director, Joel Schumacher, was brought in expressly to make what one journalist termed a \u201cBatman Lite.\u201d<\/a> Schumacher was a fan of Kilmer\u2019s portrayal of Doc Holliday in the 1993 western \u201cTombstone\u201d and tapped him as his leading man.<\/p>\n This was not Burton\u2019s Batman. \u201cThere\u2019s not much to contemplate here,\u201d the critic Janet Maslin wrote<\/a> in The New York Times, \u201cbeyond the spectacle of gimmicky props and the kitsch of good actors (all of whom have lately done better work elsewhere) dressed for a red-hot Halloween.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Schumacher favored showy camera angles and a garish color scheme. The villains \u2014 Jim Carrey played the Riddler, Tommy Lee Jones was Two-Face \u2014 were freely permitted to chew the scenery. Batman\u2019s suit had nipples<\/a>. The movie was weird.<\/p>\n It was also a box-office smash<\/a>. It broke an opening-weekend record and eventually brought in more than $336 million worldwide, besting its predecessor by tens of millions of dollars.<\/p>\n In his highest-profile role ever, Kilmer played Batman and Bruce Wayne as stolid. He romances Nicole Kidman\u2019s psychologist with aw-shucks respectability (\u201cChicks love the car\u201d). He combats his antagonists\u2019 ridiculousness with a straight face. His Wayne is tortured and guilt-wracked, and also middle-aged. No longer just a son seeking vengeance, he becomes a father figure to an orphaned young man (who turns out to become Robin, played by Chris O\u2019Donnell).<\/p>\n The outlandishness of \u201cBatman Forever\u201d was recognized almost immediately as emblematic of its era. The next year, the French director Olivier Assayas made \u201cIrma Vep,\u201d a satire of modern blockbuster moviemaking. While the sleek black suit that the star of the film-within-the-film must wear is most obviously a reference to Michelle Pfeiffer\u2019s Catwoman of \u201cBatman Returns,\u201d the gaudy aesthetic is all \u201cBatman Forever.\u201d<\/p>\n There have since been efforts to reclaim Kilmer\u2019s film as something of an unsung masterpiece<\/a>. Vera Drew, the director of last year\u2019s art house independent movie \u201cThe People\u2019s Joker,\u201d credited \u201cBatman Forever\u201d<\/a> as its primary influence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But Kilmer was one-and-done as the Caped Crusader. He did not return for Schumacher\u2019s follow-up, \u201cBatman & Robin\u201d (1997), and decades later told The Times that the role felt like too much of a cipher<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s not about Batman,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is no Batman.\u201d He was replaced by George Clooney.<\/p>\n