(Directed by Joel Schumacher from a script by Lee Batchler, Janet Scott Batchler, and Akiva Goldsman; starring Val Kilmer, Jim Carrey, Tommy Lee Jones, Nicole Kidman, Chris O'Donnell, Michael Gough, and Pat Hingle. Released 16 June 1995; (re)watched 2023w28 via Max.)

While Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey still grate on the nerves (it did help, somewhat, to think of them as multiversal iterations of The Joker who happened to collide in this universe) and Nicole Kidman had to make the most of an under-written and -utilized role (she did, after all have to follow Michelle Pfieffer’s legendary Selina Kyle), FOREVER is far more excellent than I either a.) remembered or b.) let the bad taste of its sequel let me remember: amidst an intriguing psychological drama seasoned with cool Bat-jumps from tall buildings and a great car wrapped in something of a prescient story surrounding The Riddler's Apple Vision Pro, the Gotham of FOREVER – I view Schumacher's films to be in their own little universe, separate from the Burton-verse, this great fan trailer and Hamm's BATMAN '89 comic showing us how amazing a Hamm-penned, Burton-directed Billy Dee Williams Two-Face could have been – conjures a cyberpunk BATMAN: TAS channeled through the mind of Grant Morrison and the pencil of Kelley Jones (a pairing which MUST happen at some point), set to the kaleidoscopic music of Eliot Goldenthal's circus-meets-Elfman's-DICK-TRACY-score, and protected by the only cinematic Batman that I can imagine not only needing a Robin – Kilmer's Bat should serve as inspiration for the Gunn-verse's THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD – but surviving a fall from space (as the comics version did several months back in Zdarsky's excellent run). You may fully count me among those who wants to see the mythical Schumacher Cut: it's no masterpiece, but FOREVER is something special whose full canvas deserves to be seen. This one was a joy to revisit.