Batman & Robin

Skippable, and it is the most famous failure in the genre. Everything the previous film did, this does more of: more neon, more vehicles, more costumes, a hockey match, ice puns delivered at volume, and a design department briefed to make the suits anatomical, which produced the detail everybody remembers.

Joel Schumacher has apologised for it publicly and repeatedly, which is rare and to his credit, and has said plainly that he was asked to make something toyetic and did. George Clooney has made the same joke in interviews for twenty-five years. Arnold Schwarzenegger was reportedly paid an enormous fee to deliver one-liners through blue makeup.

There is one thread with something in it. Mr. Freeze's motive is a wife in cryogenic suspension and a disease he cannot cure, which is a genuinely sad idea borrowed from an animated episode that handled it beautifully, and the film buries it under ice jokes. Uma Thurman is the only performer pitching to the film she is actually in.

It performed badly enough to cancel a planned sequel and the character did not return to cinemas for eight years, which is how Batman Begins came to be a complete reset. Watch it as a historical object.