What Could Have Been: Joel Schumacher's Batman Unchained

I honestly feel bad for Joel Schumacher. He wanted to bring the Batman films back to its darker roots, but WB insisted on making them more light-hearted.

Jack Nicholson’s Joker, Danny DeVito’s Penguin, Jim Carrey’s Riddler, and Nicolas Cage aa Scarecrow, all in one movie… we were robbed of one of the greatest ensemble cast of all time

Schumacher made plenty of movies that show me he could have done a serious Batman movie: Falling Down, The lost boys, Phone Booth, and 8mm as some examples.

The story certainly seems like it had great potential, but imagine how expensive all those cameos would've gotten. Silverstone was not comfortable in that Batgirl costume and wasn't eager to return, so, I'm not surprised she was written out. I do agree that it wouldn't be impactful having Clooney's Batman going up against Nicholson, DeVito, and Pfeiffer. That's IF Clooney stayed on. He quickly moved onto films like Out of Sight, Three Kings, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and Ocean's Eleven, establishing his star power and charismatic screen presence. I can't see his career without those major stepping stones being the same.

Batman and Robin is an irredeemable turkey, but I will contend till my final breath that the production designers knocked it out of the park. Gotham has never looked so phantasmagoric before or since. If these visuals were paired with a movie that took itself seriously, we could've gotten a visual, if not necessarily narrative, masterpiece.

They just should've let Tim Burton continue. He can make movies that have a proper balance of dark and campy, like Beetlejuice. Scarecrow, Man-Bat, Killer Croc, and Clayface would've been perfect villain additions to Burton's universe, since Burton usually makes scary films.

After Batman & Robin's reception, even with a darker tone I'm 100% certain that audiences would've seen Clooney in the batsuit again and went "No thanks". Even Batman Begins struggled at the box office years later with people still associating Batman with Schumacher's goofy tone. No way a sequel to Batman & Robin would've done well.

People need to realize if it wasn’t Joel, the studio would’ve hired another director to do it. I appreciate looking back now Joel’s aesthetic to the Batman franchise as I grew up fascinated and just wowed as a kid of all the colors, action, and dare I say, it’s campy acting. It has a place in the Batman universe，just another rendition. I’m not mad at Joel nor wish someone else had directed it AT THE CURRENT TIME OF BATMAN’S POPULARITY. Thank you Joel.

Side note: I never understood why parents complain that a movie is marketed to kids when the same movie is PG-13. It's the rating of the movie, which is advertised! 🤷🏽‍♂

It’s amazing just how badly WB fumbles the ball with their DC properties to this day

Now I’m really interested in seeing Nick Cage as Scarecrow and seeing what he would have done

It's weird that the plot was focused on this Batman overcoming his "fear of bats". What fear? If Clooney was meant to be a continuation of Keaton and Kilmer, neither of them had any problem around bats in their films, and neither did Clooney in his. Kilmer even said about his childhood flashback seeing the bat in the cave "I was scared at first, but only at first." Keaton even had a pet bat in a little cage. What was the writer talking about?

Heard of the story and I thought that the concept was brilliant. It's unfortunate that it never came into fruition 'cause everyone agreed that, "Batman & Robin," was too much. Fun Fact: Batman & Robin is part of the reason why Tim Burton's, "Superman Lives," was cancelled.

Great video, as always! To your point about the Joker confrontation with the Clooney Batman possibly not working as intended because it wasn't Keaton, I don't think audiences in the late 90s were as concerned about shared universes and alternate timelines as they are today. Hardcore Batman fans didn't have the platform to voice their displeasure far and wide like they do today with social media, and shared continuities weren't a part of superhero movie marketing like it later became with the MCU. I think if Clooney were to have donned the Keaton/Burton era costume, at least for that specific scene, I think it would have worked.

Circa 1997/98, I read that Jeff Goldblum (and even Howard Stern, although that may have been apochryphal) were being looked at for The Scarecrow, and that Jenny McCarthy, who Joel Schumacher had wanted to play Sugar in Batman Forever, was also being looked at for Harley Quinn, alongside Madonna and Courtney Love. It's interesting that Cage was considered for Scarecrow, seeing that this is roughly the same period they were thinking of making Superman Lives with Cage as the lead.

This series is one of my favorite on YouTube atm

That first draft Batman Unchained script is amazing. I wish they had made that. I remember a contest on the Batman and Robin VHS tape for an extra part in the fifth Batman movie.

I always felt it interesting how Batman Forever incorporates some elements from Burton's Batman Continues (such as the Riddler as the main villain), Batman Begins has elements from both Batman Unchained and the Aronofsky's script, while Reeves's film has few elements from Affleck's movie (like the psychological approach). There's a continuity between all the Batman movies that you can see only if you look at the unproduced ones.

Well said and you know what this would have been pretty good this could have been the best Batman film of the Schumacher films.

Batman and Robin did serve a certain purpose - little kids did love it! My sons watched it tons when they were little - and to young for The Dark Knight etc.