He was 80. https://www.darkhorizons.com/r-i-p-joel-schumacher/ Say what you will about his Batman entries, he was a genuinely good director of other films. Warner Brothers made him do an action-figure friendly take on Bats, but he directed frigging "Lost Boys", and "Flatliners", he could have done Batman as dark or darker than Nolan's. I always felt for the poor guy. RIP, man.
While I don't outright hate Batman and Robin, it is hard to deny it is the worst Batman film ever. I will, however, defend Batman Forever as a genuinely solid--if somewhat farcical--entry in the franchise. It's hard to believe that the same guy who made B&R also made A Time to Kill, Falling Down, The Lost Boys, and Flatliners. He had a great run making a lot of different kinds of films.
Did he do the Nicholson Joker? If not, then he was not a part of the most over the top bad moment in batman. I am not counting Leto's Joker because that was not in a batman movie.
Okay, I don't feel sorry for him anymore. I just heard on the Kevin Smith podcast that Schumaker said he had sex with 20,000 guys in his lifetime. Man, he didn't care what us stupid fanboys thought of him, he was too busy fuckin.
Before HIV was identified as the cause of AIDS (then called GRIDS), one of the theories as to the cause of AIDS was that it was from the consumption of large amounts of semen.
I never cared much for him as a film maker. Lost Boys was cool, but Flatliners was a mixed bag and Falling Down wasn't all that great. His Batman films ruined the franchise for years, and he even fucked-up the film of the greatest Broadway musical of all time, Phantom of the Opera.
Just remember, if it weren’t for the horrible Batman films he made, we might not have gotten the Dark Knight Trilogy.
He fucked up "The Wiz," too I'm older now than Diana Ross was when she did that movie and she was frigging ridiculous. There was a great video on this, but the creator (who is white) pulled it down due to BLM and not wanting to monetize a film that, flaws and all, meant a lot to black culture. Still, some of the decisions in that film are baffling, to say the least. I'm glad NBC did a live version a few years back.
I just read up on The Wiz and I guess Joel Shumacher was heavily influenced by something called the "Erhard Seminars Training" and he filled The Wiz with all kinds of stuff he got from there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhard_Seminars_Training
My biggest gripe? Richard Pryor wasn't cool! I go through the whole movie thinking "Richard Pryor is The Wiz!! That'll make all the suffering through these weak filler songs worth it!! ". *Fart noise* *Womp womp*
