The temporary death of the suit-up scene.

Geez, what's to say about this scene... hell, this movie... shit, I'll go one further; this director, that's not already been said. (how's that for an elliptical sentence!?) Look, I was never a big fan of the original Batman franchise. At this point, you might be saying, "Well, no shit Sherlock. Schumacher raped its asshole and then forced his shit-stained dick into its unwilling mouth." But when I say I was never really a big fan of the franchise, I mean of every-movie-in-the-quadrilogy.

I remember Tim Burton's Batman being one of the first "event films" of my childhood (preceded shortly by Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade and then soon followed by Jurassic Park). My parents were waiting for me as I left middle school that day. And together with some close friends, we drove to Roosevelt Field shopping mall and waited in line (around the entire building) at the Loews Cineplex. This was the first time in my childhood that I can recall that sort of buzz about a movie. And so when I left the theater about two hours later, unimpressed by and feeling sort of stale on the film I had just seen, I remember feeling like I betrayed everyone... that I was supposed to like this film.

My point with all of this is that I shouldn't care too much that Joel swooped in and ruined this franchise. But Batman & Robin remains one of the first films I actually walked out of early and demanded my money back for. (I learned a valuable lesson that day from the Loews manager: If you walk out during the first hour, they'll give you credit for another movie and possibly even a refund. But if you surpass that first hour, which my friends and I did, you get an awkward shrug and a "tough luck, kid.")

The experience of distaste that led to my walking out of this film started when the kids battled a 'neon gang.' It then amplified when Uma Thurman unleashed that suicide-thought-inducing accent. And it culminated when Arnie made his seventeenth "ice" pun (maybe something like "The Iceman falleth!!" when he tipped over in his ridiculous costume).

But it was suit-up scene - and I shudder to call it that - that was the terminal tumor in this opus.

I've often felt that brands like Calvin Klein assume that all men secretly have a little gay in them when I eyeball the packaging of their underwear at a department store. And that's fine. Marketing and advertising work in mysterious ways. Who knows what's going to trigger someone on a sublime level into becoming a consumer. But I think Joel Schumacher is operating on a very different level of homo-eroticism with Batman & Robin. Not only does he adorn every costume with nipples, but the molded and sculpted chest pieces have reached down to the damn ass crack! So in other words... sublimity is out the fuckin' window, folks!

Let's here what Wikipedia has to say about the gayness in Batman & Robin:

Batman & Robin was released on June 20, 1997, and was critically panned. Observers criticized the film for its toyetic and camp approach, as well as possible homosexual innuendo added by Schumacher. Batman & Robin received 11 nominations at the 1997 ceremony of the Razzie Awards, including one for Worst Picture, and frequently ranks among the worst superhero films of all time.[2][3] After this, Warner Bros. canceled the unproduced Batman Triumphant, and the film series was eventually rebooted with Batman Begins (2005) by director Christopher Nolan.

And so thus began the temporary death of the suit-up scene. Not only was a flaming madman behind the wheel, steering the downfall of this beloved franchise right into the mud, but he was also attempting to drag down our beloved suit-up scene with it. And man, did he come close. I think for a while this particular sequence left such a stink on the suit-up scene, that it almost didn't recover from parody.

Luckily, someone named Christopher Nolan came along.