an elevated campiness which earned almost universal criticism among reviewers and even more robust loathing by fans . Clooney ’ s performance was largely derided ; film critic Mick LaSalle , in a San Francisco Chronicle review , wrote , “ George Clooney is the big zero of the film , and should go down in history as the George Lazenby of the series .” Equally venomous were reviews of Arnold Schwarzenegger ’ s rendition of bad pun-spewing Mr . Freeze . The movie was so ill-received that its sequel was canceled and it “ forced the Batman film brand into cinematic purgatory for the best part of a decade ( Proctor 156 ).
In 2005 , Christopher Nolan directed Christian Bale as Batman in the critically acclaimed Batman Begins , a project which did not “ continue along the same narrative trajectory as the Burton / Schumacher films , but strived to ‘ wipe the slate clean ’ and begin again from ‘ year one ’” ( Procter 60 ). Its sequel , The Dark Knight ( 2008 ) had its own counterpublic issues with the casting of Heath Ledger as the Joker , although the actor won a posthumous Academy Award for the role . The Dark Knight Rises finished out the trilogy in 2012 , and with the exception of minor complaints about Batman ’ s “ growl ” and main villain Bane ’ s muffled dialogue through his facemask , fans were generally satisfied with the trilogy as a whole . In “ Dark Knight Triumphant : Fandom , Hegemony and the Rebirth of Batman on Film ,” William Proctor writes , “ Finally , the Batfans got what they wanted : a Batman as dark as the night and as ‘ real ’ as plausibility will allow ” ( 61 ). Undoubtedly , the fan critics would want to protect what they clearly considered the product of their hard-earned public efforts to help steer the Batman franchise .
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