Batman ForeverSave

The film opens in Gotham City with Batman (Val Kilmer) responding to a hostage crisis at Gotham's Second National Bank, where Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones) has trapped a hostage and a guard inside a steel vault filled with sodium acid. Two-Face's split-personality presentation (his face's right side appears normal while his left side is a heavily-scarred, exposed-musculature mass) and his coin-flipping decision-making mechanism are introduced through the opening confrontation. Batman rescues the hostages through coordinated rooftop-and-helicopter intervention, but Two-Face escapes the scene. The opening establishes Two-Face as Batman's primary villain and includes the picture's introduction of Batman's signature combat-vehicle the Batmobile in its new Schumacher-redesigned form.

Bruce Wayne's civilian life is established through a parallel introduction. He has been operating as a wealthy industrialist-philanthropist whose Wayne Enterprises corporation maintains Gotham City's primary corporate presence. The corporation's research-and-development division employs Edward Nygma (Jim Carrey), a brilliant but socially-awkward inventor who has developed a working prototype of a neural-frequency manipulation device. Nygma's device, when worn by a subject, transmits the subject's brain activity directly into Nygma's own consciousness, allowing him to access the subject's intelligence and memories. Wayne's professional rejection of Nygma's invention (he correctly identifies its ethical implications) becomes Nygma's psychological trigger for his eventual supervillain identity.

Nygma's response to the rejection is calculated revenge. He resigns from Wayne Enterprises, establishes his own independent technology corporation called NygmaTech, and begins manufacturing consumer-grade versions of his neural-frequency device for retail distribution. The device, marketed as the Box, allows users to experience richer-than-life television entertainment through direct neural-stimulation. The unspoken side effect: every device user becomes a passive cognitive-data source for Nygma's central network. Nygma is harvesting Gotham's collective intelligence and mental energy through the consumer-distribution of his invention. His emerging supervillain identity is the Riddler, signature-marked by his signature green-question-mark imagery.

Two-Face's continued criminal operations bring him into intersection with the Riddler's emerging operations. The two villains form an unstable alliance: the Riddler will provide Two-Face with intelligence-gathering and technological-support; Two-Face will provide the Riddler with physical-violence muscle that the inventor cannot supply himself. Their first joint operation is the kidnapping of a young trapeze artist named Dick Grayson (Chris O'Donnell), whose entire family-of-performers has been killed in an attack at the Gotham Circus designed by Two-Face. Dick survives but is left orphaned; Bruce Wayne offers him refuge at Wayne Manor.

Bruce Wayne's relationship with Dick Grayson is the film's primary character-development throughline. Dick's grief at his family's deaths produces immediate adversarial behavior toward Bruce, whom he initially blames for his family's deaths because the Wayne Foundation had been the circus's sponsor. The gradual development of mutual recognition between the two characters parallels Bruce's growing acknowledgment of Dick's potential as a fellow vigilante. Dick discovers Bruce's secret identity through his own investigations at Wayne Manor; their adoptive-father-adoptive-son relationship is gradually formalized through Dick's training to become Robin, Batman's young vigilante partner.

Bruce Wayne's romantic-life introduction is structured around Dr. Chase Meridian (Nicole Kidman), a Gotham-area criminal psychiatrist whose pre-Batman professional interest in his psychological profile becomes a personal romantic interest. Their relationship develops in parallel to the Batman-and-Robin partnership development. Meridian's professional analysis of Batman's motivations provides the picture's exploration of Bruce's grief over his parents' deaths, an emotional throughline that influences his eventual willingness to adopt Dick Grayson as his own ward.

The Riddler's broader plan is the construction of a Gotham-area receiving facility that will allow him to aggregate the cognitive data collected from every consumer Box device. The facility's planned location is the Riddler's privately-financed Claw Island fortress, an underground installation accessible only through coordinated cable-car arrangements. The Riddler's accumulated cognitive aggregation will, when complete, transform him into a super-intelligent telepathic figure capable of mentally dominating Gotham's entire population. The picture's third-act crisis is structured around the imminent activation of the Claw Island facility.

Batman's pursuit of the Riddler's operations is complicated by the Riddler's coordinated psychological-attack campaign on Bruce Wayne's civilian identity. The Riddler, using accumulated cognitive data, has identified Bruce Wayne as Batman; his attacks include Riddler-themed clues left at Wayne Manor, gas-bombing attempts on Wayne Manor's interior, and the manipulation of Wayne Manor's staff. The Riddler's threats culminate in the kidnapping of Dr. Chase Meridian and the destruction of much of Wayne Manor's central facility, forcing Bruce to confront the Riddler at Claw Island.

The Claw Island third-act sequence is the film's primary action setpiece. Batman and Robin's coordinated assault on the underground facility brings them into combat with both the Riddler and Two-Face. The facility's interior is designed as an elaborate riddle-themed combat course, with question-mark-themed environmental hazards, neural-frequency disruption fields, and Two-Face's standard armed-thug security force. Batman defeats the Riddler through a coordinated overload of the central cognitive-aggregation system, which produces a feedback loop that breaks the Riddler's mental connection to his consumer-Box network. Two-Face is killed during the same engagement when Robin tricks him into flipping his decision-coin in a context that produces fatal-fall results.

The film's epilogue establishes the new status quo: Batman and Robin as Gotham's officially-recognized partner vigilantes, Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson as the formal-civilian-Wayne-family duo, and Dr. Chase Meridian as Bruce's continuing romantic partner. The Riddler is delivered to Arkham Asylum, where he is shown in the closing scene believing himself to be Batman. Batman Forever grossed $336 million globally on a $100 million budget, the franchise's commercial peak. The picture's broader-commercial-appeal direction encouraged Schumacher's subsequent continuation with Batman & Robin (1997), whose substantially more-cartoonish presentation effectively ended the franchise before Christopher Nolan's 2005 reboot. Val Kilmer's tenure as Batman ended with Forever; George Clooney took over for the Schumacher-directed sequel.

Jim Carrey's Riddler performance was widely praised as one of the picture's most-distinctive individual elements; Carrey's commitment to the role's manic-comedic energy elevated what could have been a thinly-developed villain role into one of the era's most-recognized comic-book-film performances. Tommy Lee Jones's Two-Face interpretation was more controversial; some viewers praised the actor's commitment to the split-personality presentation while others found his performance excessive in comparison to the source material's more-grounded character interpretation. Director Joel Schumacher's visual sensibility, including the picture's prominently-deployed neon-lit Gotham architecture and stylized costume designs (including the often-discussed addition of nipples to Batman's combat suit), drew immediate critical attention and became one of the era's most-discussed superhero-film visual choices. The picture's commercial success despite its substantial tonal pivot from Burton's prior Batman films confirmed the broader-commercial-appeal direction's audience-economic viability, even as longtime fans of Burton's interpretation publicly objected to the shift. Nicole Kidman's Dr. Chase Meridian role provided the picture with an unusual female-lead character whose professional credentials matched Bruce Wayne's intellectual register; the casting of Kidman, who was emerging as one of the era's most-prominent international actresses, added significant prestige value to the production's marketing. The picture's commercial peak status within the franchise was widely cited as evidence that mainstream audiences preferred the broader-tonal direction, although critical retrospectives have increasingly recognized the picture's narrative weaknesses behind its surface appeal.