Movies

Chris O’Donnell Admits Batman & Robin Hate Was Tough to Take

Chris O’Donnell Admits Batman & Robin Hate Was Tough to Take
Image credit: Legion-Media

Chris O'Donnell and Alicia Silverstone look back on Batman & Robin and the gut-punch moment they realized audiences hated it.

Ask a room full of Bat-fans to name the franchise low point and most will point right at 1997's Batman & Robin. The neon, the puns, the ice skating henchmen — it froze the series for years. Now Chris O'Donnell and Alicia Silverstone are looking back at how brutal that rollout really felt, and how the movie slowly found a weird second life.

The press tour is where it hit them

O'Donnell told Entertainment Weekly that he and Silverstone didn't grasp how badly the wind had shifted until they were out doing interviews. The feedback turned fast, and the vibe went from big studio victory lap to damage control. He remembers the director, Joel Schumacher, being crushed by the reception and just tapping out on the grind of promoting it.

'At one point Joel Schumacher just threw up the flag. He said, "I'm out. I can't do it anymore."' O'Donnell recalled, adding that Schumacher was heartbroken by how it all landed.

For O'Donnell, the backlash was hard to swallow, but he doesn't disown the experience. He says he still feels lucky to have been part of it — sometimes projects click, sometimes they don't, and this one just didn't.

Silverstone said the immediate reaction in 1997 was rough, but over time the tone changed. The movie leaned hard into camp, and plenty of fans — especially a lot of her gay friends, as she put it — later told her it's their favorite precisely because it's so over-the-top. If you vibe with camp, you might actually have a blast with it.

Where Batman went after the meltdown

  • Christopher Nolan rebuilt the brand with The Dark Knight trilogy, starring Christian Bale.
  • Ben Affleck took over in the DCEU and appeared as Batman across four films.
  • Robert Pattinson is the latest on the cowl in Matt Reeves' The Batman. A sequel is in development, with production planned to start next year. Details are thin, but Reeves has teased a villain that, in his words, hasn't really been done on the big screen before. Colin Farrell (Pattinson's Penguin) says he recently read the script and was surprisingly moved by it, calling it both a big entertainment play and a deeper dive into Bruce Wayne/Batman's psychology.

So is Batman & Robin as bad as the legend says? Depends on your tolerance for ice puns and glossy camp. The cast remembers the pain of the initial pile-on, but the movie's also picked up a passionate corner of fans who love it for exactly what it is. Honestly, that's kind of the whole Batman legacy in a nutshell — perpetual reinvention, occasional face-plants, and every now and then, something that hits you right in the Bat-feels.