One major reason ‘Batman & Robin‘ (1997) still divides audiences after all these years is that it never commits to a single tone. One minute it leans into colorful, over-the-top camp, then tries to be a serious superhero blockbuster. That balancing act never comes together, and nobody is more aware of this tragedy than lead actor George Clooney.
In a 2020 interview, the actor admitted he still changes the channel whenever the superhero film pops up on television. He even revealed that, years later, he warned another famous Hollywood actor not to take the exact same role, for fear history would repeat itself. Read on to get the full scoop below.
George Clooney Says Watching ‘Batman & Robin’ Still Hurts
Clooney did not hold back when asked about ‘Batman & Robin’ on The Howard Stern Show. “It’s so bad that it actually hurts to watch,” he said, per Deadline. “You’ll be flipping the channels, and it’ll just pop up, and I’m like, ‘Oh no, no, no.’”
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Additionally, Clooney made it clear that he does not blame only himself. At the time, he was simply an actor taking a job on a massive studio production. “It’s a big machine, that thing…At that point I was just an actor getting an acting job; I wasn’t the guy that could green light a movie.”
However, that perspective has not changed how he feels about the finished film. The actor still considers ‘Batman & Robin’ the weakest performance of his career, even after decades of successful films that followed. The criticism surrounding the movie has never really faded either.
Viewers still point to the oversized sets, toy-like costumes, endless puns, and famously exaggerated Batsuit as reasons it became one of the most mocked comic book movies ever made. The fear was so real that Clooney couldn’t help but advise his peers against taking on the Batman role.
Clooney Told Ben Affleck To Stay Away From Batman
Clooney’s experience made him cautious when another major Hollywood star landed the role. In the same interview, he revealed that Ben Affleck asked for advice before signing on to play Batman. Unsurprisingly, Clooney told him not to do it.
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He expected Affleck to run into the same problems he had faced years earlier. Instead, Affleck ignored the warning, took the part, and earned praise for his version of Bruce Wayne. “He ended up doing a great job, and I was wrong,” Clooney admitted.
That moment says as much about the films as it does about the actors. Affleck entered a very different era of superhero movies, one that aimed for a darker, more grounded Batman than the colorful spectacle audiences saw in ‘Batman & Robin.’
Clooney Says The Whole Team Missed The Mark
Clooney has never singled out one person for the film’s failure. During the interview, he said everyone involved recognized that the movie would not work, including screenwriter Akiva Goldsman and director Joel Schumacher.
He recalled Goldsman describing it as a “terrible screenplay,” while Schumacher also understood why the film drew so much criticism after its release. “We all whiffed on that one,” Clooney said. Well, this brutal honesty is one of the interesting reasons the story keeps resurfacing.
While plenty of actors distance themselves from unsuccessful projects or blame the studio, Clooney has done the opposite. He openly admits ‘Batman & Robin’ missed the mark, and he still cannot bring himself to sit through his own performance nearly three decades later.
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