I have more to say about
Batman & Robin. In conclusion, we could unravel the universe's puzzles and mysteries by talking about the movie
Batman & Robin, in fact. There was another class I took, in the summer of 2016. It was called
Studies in American History: The 1960s Through Film. One of the core themes we approached was Hollywood as the world's dream factory. In the class, we watched and discussed many 1960s films, studied 1960s history and culture, made connections and links between the two, and wrote graded essays. We got into the counter-culture and rise of hippie culture. Interestingly, at the same time I was taking that course, the The Top 100 Movies of the 1960s Countdown was going on here, hosted by @
Daniel M . It was virtually sheer luck that I chose to take that class, and then several semesters later take the Hollywood Cinema class with the theme of the postmodern in 1990s films I mentioned in my
Batman & Robin post. What I learned about it all is that postmodern ideology was what evolved out of the hippie culture, the flower children who had been hippies grew into the postmodern worldview. It's like a big picture that we touched on, and I've tied together and thought about since. For example, in the Hollywood Cinema class, we watched
Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, which of course is full of postmodern ideology and focuses on the writer Hunter S. Thompson who witnessed, participated, and wrote about that crazy 60s and 70s hippie environment.
So what the hell does any of this have to do with
Batman & Robin (1997)? Well I believe all that hippie culture about remaking the world, which grew into the postmodern philosophy, is implanted and ingrained in Hollywood films and pop culture. There are many principles to the postmodern, but one of them is that it claims to oppose all "meta-narratives" which attempt to universally explain the world and existence through vehicles such as religion, history, and rejects notions of objective reality and truth. To transition straight to the topic at hand, films, I find it interesting to consider the power that films and the film industry holds. The movie industry conditions us to identify what qualifies as good or worthwhile in film, against what is silly, unworthy, or unimportant- through institutions such as the Academy and other film award events. The movie industry wants to tell us the audience what the good movies are. So do the movies have power over you? Or do you have power over the movies?
That's why I want to erase everything about what I'm told the "great" movies are, whether from some film institution, or by some collected score of a movie's rating by some unknown algorithm system which holds some opinions as weighing more than others, along with vote-rigging through puppet multiple accounts for producing some final internet score. I want to throw all that out the window. And watch with fresh eyes. For example, when I watched Batman & Robin this weekend, I was reminded of seeing this movie in the theater, when I was ten, with probably my best childhood friend. It was maybe a year before my family moved to a different city. Anyways, this was a fun experience, seeing this movie in the theater with my childhood friend. After the movie, we were walking around a sports store, I think it was Sports Authority, and that R Kelly song "Gotham City" played. It was 1997, before I had any concept of internet, and I recall making the connection, oh, that was the song in the end credits of the movie. That's neat. But I had no concept of going and finding the song again, to listen to. I had forgotten about all of this, until I watched the movie again. It is a happy memory. I still don't know if I said everything about Batman & Robin. Maybe more will come. I also wanted to post these two pictures from the movie. The first is of Poison Ivy and Mr. Bane in an alley-way. The second is of a rundown Ice Snow Cone shop with the batmobile parked in front, from the movie, on the fence are signs that read:
Poison
Danger: Do Not Enter
No Trespassing
Warning! Keep Out
The End (for now) by Nostromo
) Also caught Batman Forever and Batman & Robin in theaters and loved both. Even had a Batman & Robin poster overlooking my bed, so rubber nipples were the last thing I saw before closing my eyes every night. Then it became uncool to love those movies because of their silliness, but something tells me I might love them again if I watched them now, and your excellent write-ups on Batman & Robin only added to that suspicion. I think Batman Begins and The Dark Knight are great movies, but in general I'm not a fan of this serious, dramatic tone in comic-book films nowadays. Batman v. Superman was a joyless slog, in my opinion. Never been a fan of Ben Affleck as an actor, so whether he wets @cat_sidhe's panties or not, I think he's done a poor job with his portrayal and comes across bored and disinterested. 
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