Batman ForeverSave

We open in Gotham. Two-Face / Harvey Dent (Tommy Lee Jones) — a former Gotham district attorney whose face was scarred by acid during a courtroom prosecution two years earlier — has been waging a personal vendetta against Batman for his role in the original courtroom-acid incident. Two-Face has been splitting his criminal operation across Gotham's organized-crime networks, using his signature two-headed coin to decide each operational decision. The opening Gotham bank heist sequence — Two-Face robs a Gotham Trust vault while Batman attempts to intervene — establishes the film's tonal-pivot from Tim Burton's gothic-darker register to Joel Schumacher's substantially-lighter aesthetic.

Bruce Wayne meets Dr. Chase Meridian (Nicole Kidman) — a Wayne Foundation-funded forensic psychiatrist who has been profiling Batman as a patient. She has been working with Gotham PD on the Two-Face manhunt. Chase is romantically drawn to Bruce immediately; she is also professionally fascinated by the psychological-profile of Batman that her research has been suggesting. She does not yet realize Bruce and Batman are the same person. Their professional-collaboration and romantic-tension develops across the film's middle act. Kidman was 28 years old at filming and was widely-cast based on her commercial-leading-actress credentials.

Edward Nygma (Jim Carrey) — a Wayne Industries researcher in the company's experimental cognitive-research division — has been working on a mind-reading helmet device. He has been seeking Bruce Wayne's personal sponsorship for his project. Bruce dismisses the request: the device would essentially allow corporate interests to harvest individual thoughts without consent. Nygma is fired by Bruce after he attempts to demonstrate the device against the corporate-ethics objection. Nygma decides to use the device for personal revenge against Bruce — and against Gotham broadly.

Nygma transforms into the Riddler — a green-spandex-suited supervillain whose specific aesthetic combines question-marks and electric-energy effects. He has been recruiting hired-criminal-staff to assist with his mind-reading-helmet rollout: a network of Gotham residents who voluntarily wear the helmet in exchange for monetary compensation. The helmet collects their broader thought-patterns; Nygma's central processing system harvests the collective-intelligence-data. He intends to use the collective-thought-harvesting to manipulate Gotham's broader political-and-corporate decision-making.

Meanwhile, Dick Grayson — a young circus-acrobat performer whose entire family (the Flying Graysons) was killed by Two-Face during a Gotham circus performance — has been taken in by Bruce. Bruce, recognizing Dick's parallel-trauma to his own parent-loss, has been mentoring him at Wayne Manor. Dick discovers Bruce's Batman identity through unauthorized exploration of the Batcave. He demands to become Batman's partner. Bruce initially refuses; Dick is too young, too emotionally-volatile, and too connected to his vengeance-motivation. Dick eventually wears him down through emotional-persistence.

Dick Grayson becomes Robin — Batman's protégé. The dynamic adds tonal lightness to the film. Robin's costume — red, green, and yellow — is deliberately-vibrant and visually-distinct from Batman's all-black aesthetic. The two-character partnership reshapes the film's broader tone: where Tim Burton's Batman duology had been characterized by Bruce's-solo-grief, Schumacher's Batman Forever introduces character-camaraderie that softens the franchise's broader emotional register. Bruce, mourning his parents and Dick's parents simultaneously, finally accepts his Batman role as therapeutic-grief-processing rather than vengeance-driven obsession.

Two-Face and the Riddler team up. They have been operating in parallel through the film's first act; their alliance is the mid-act-twist where their broader criminal operations canonically-converge. Together they kidnap Chase Meridian and trap Robin. The Riddler has been broadcasting his collective-intelligence-helmet rollout to Gotham residents via television commercials; the rollout has been generating substantial Gotham-public engagement (Riddler-helmet-ownership at 15%-of-Gotham-population by film's third act). The Riddler's specific operational-goal: replace Gotham-political-leadership with himself through the harvested-thought-intelligence.

The final battle features the Riddler's giant mind-reading apparatus on Claw Island — Riddler's specifically-engineered headquarters where the harvested-thought-intelligence is being processed. Batman and Robin infiltrate Claw Island. The choreography combines practical-stunt work (the island-set required substantial practical-construction) with extensive CGI augmentation (the mind-reading apparatus's specific visual effects). Two-Face has been waiting in the Claw Island laboratory with Chase Meridian held captive. The third-act battle is approximately 22 minutes of screen-time across multiple Claw Island locations.

Batman defeats the Riddler by using his own mind-reading helmet against him — the helmet's collective-intelligence-processing creates a feedback loop when applied to its inventor, overwhelming the Riddler's broader psychological capabilities. The Riddler is left in a permanent mental-breakdown state; he is institutionalized at Gotham's Arkham Asylum at the film's conclusion. Two-Face dies during the Claw-Island battle when his two-headed coin is intercepted by Batman during a decision-moment, causing Two-Face to canonically-fall to his death from a Claw Island platform.

The film closes with Batman accepting Robin as his permanent crime-fighting partner. Chase Meridian decides to keep their romantic-relationship private — she canonically-understands Bruce's psychological-need for the Batman-as-grief-therapy identity to continue. Chase remains in Gotham as Bruce's girlfriend across the broader Schumacher-Batman-franchise continuation. The film's final scene — Batman and Robin running into the Gotham night against the bat-signal-projection — has been canonically-referenced as the foundational image of Schumacher's Batman aesthetic.

Commercial and critical reception. Batman Forever grossed $336 million worldwide on a $100 million production budget — strong commercial success and the franchise's highest-grossing pre-Nolan-era film. Critics responded mixed (Rotten Tomatoes 38%); reviewers generally praised the film's commercial-tonal-pivot from the Burton-darker aesthetic but criticized the narrative-coherence-issues. Val Kilmer's Batman performance was widely-criticized; Kilmer would decline to return for Batman & Robin (1997). The Schumacher-aesthetic established here would continue into Batman & Robin (1997) — which would prove substantially-more-catastrophic.