Batman and Robin (film)/Headscratchers

Even when I first saw this film as a ten-year-old, this bugged me: Why was Mr Freeze carrying around two vials of Macgregor's syndrome medicine in his suit? What possible use could he have for them? Did he know Batman was going to ask for them?
- He was keeping them stored in the most reliable cooler he could think of?
- Why didn't he just market this medicine for more research into finding a cure for the stage of the disease his wife has? And, for that matter, why didn't he market the cryogenic technology he used to preserve his wife? There's no excuse for this version of Freeze to have turned to crime and start holding cities to ransom, and blow all that money on death rays and getaway rockets.
  - Why? Because he's nuts, obviously. Seriously, that's the reason, both in the film, the comics, and the animated series. He isn't quite as cracked up as guys like the Joker or Two-Face but he's not exactly sane either. Even before the accident that turned him into Mr. Freeze he was heavily obsessed with curing his wife's condition. After the accident his obsession kicked into overdrive and he stopped caring about anything except curing his wife. The thing you have to understand about pathological obsessions is the sufferers focus on what, in their minds, seems like the most direct route to their goal. Anything that deviates from that route or adds extra steps along the way is an unacceptable distraction, even if it would produce the same result with a fraction of the effort. Based on this, I'd say that at some point in movie!Freeze's (or The Freezinator as I like to call him) history he was in a position where turning to crime seemed like his only option. For instance, after his accident Freeze may have become unemployable. Rumors of rank incompetence and lax safety standards would swirl around him, damaging his scientific reputation. Universities and private companies would be understandably reluctant to fund a project that already turned one person into a mutant freak, and no doubt they would balk at the expense of maintaining a constant sub-zero environment for Freeze and fueling his diamond-powered suit. After getting rejected enough times and becoming increasingly desperate Freeze could easily have concluded that the only way to get the research money he needed was by stealing it or blackmailing the city for it. And once he goes that far, well, there's no turning back. If he developed the early-stage cure after turning to crime it makes sense that he wouldn't sell it to fund his research. In his (now slightly unhinged) mind, crime is the most direct route to curing his wife. Anything else, including using the early-stage cure to get legitimate funding, is an unacceptable distraction.
- Also, please note that he calls himself "Mr Freeze" instead of "Dr Fries". He feels that he has disgraced his profession and won't use his title of Doctor.
- The question is why would he keep them with him. They are of no use to Nora!
  - A "first step" momento.
  - So that, even if his lair is raided or his notes destroyed, he always has a sample to build on and continue his research.
    - Probably a bit of those, and also a bit of a "sanity chain"... reminding himself that he'd solved part of the problem, he would solve the rest of it, he wasn't just a psycho in a freezer-suit...
Batman and Robin have lazers to melt each other out of ice. Why didn't they think to fire one at Freeze's leg or the bulky power pack on the back of his suit?
- It might kill or seriously injure him, I'd imagine.
- And on the other hand, who says that they can harm anything or anyone with those lasers? All we see them do is heat up water really quickly and melt ice. You know what that would do if you applied it to the outside of Freeze's cold suit? Make it expend slightly more energy than normal to keep him cool. Well, Whoop-de-do.
  - Uhm, power them up?
    - Are you under the impression you can turn a laser pointer into a cutting laser by hooking it up to a car battery?
Where exactly was that bike race supposed to end if the bridge was out?
- I asked the same question when I saw this movie. Maybe the race track has multiple branching paths and the riders are supposed to guess which one is the shortest route, only some of them have a deadly surprise at the end.
- I assumed that it was supposed to end with all the racers dying. Then the bookie (who set the race up) leaves town with everyone's money, safe in the knowledge that the racers all fell to their deaths. It's not like anyone racing here would save a rival, after all.
  - Ooooh, a little bit of Burton's Gotham shines through here. Well played.
When did public appearances become acceptable for Batman? At the same time innocent civilians became bait?
- The whole thing would be almost acceptable if he, as in Batman, as in the only man in the world with technology that can reverse the effects of the freeze ray, had stayed around to thaw out the frozen guests instead of leaving it to a clueless Gordon.
Poison Ivy can kill with her lips but what about her tongue? Even if Robin was wearing rubber lips, her tongue could easily get in and still poison him.
- She's overly confident in her poisoned kiss. It's had an excellent track record so far, and rubber lips were the last thing she was expecting.
  - Still, it'd have to be one heck of a prudent kiss!
Who the hell let Mr. Freeze keep his suit after going to prison the second time, when he's shown that he can freeze people using that instead of the gun?
- Probably the same person who thought it morally sound to arrange him a cell to share with someone (of the opposite sex, mind you) that he would logically want to torture and kill.
- Oh, and probably the same person who earlier gave him a sharp object to carve an ice statuette of his wife with.
  - That's a shiv. He probably made it (albeit only to carve sculptures, not to kill people).
    - But he also put the ice sculpture in a glass. Someone had to have known he had that. And the clock he used as the base.
  - Letting a prisoner have access to a shiv is slightly less of an issue when said prisoner is physically incapable of moving five feet away from his own bed.
- I assumed that instead of putting him in that cell with her, they were just giving him the chance to terrify Poison Ivy for a minute before he goes to his cell, in return for his cooperation and continued work on Mac Gregor's Syndrome.
  - He would most likely make life hell for her simply by making it really cold in her cell. Plants freeze and die in the winter, after all.
    - But then it's still lethal...
      - The guards would remember how Poison Ivy and Bane killed a number of their fellow guards when they busted Freeze out. They probably would enjoy watching her squirm.
      - Come to think of it, it is Gotham after all. The guards are probably all violent, sadistic lowlifes who got a job there because a mafia don is paying off the administration. Those two guards Ivy killed looked pretty shady.
      - The Novelization has Freeze say that he used some of his diamonds to bribe the Arkham guards to let him in for just long enough to kill her.
A BAT CREDIT CARD!? Why would Batman guarantee his own exposure this way?
- Bruce Wayne probably owns the bank that issued it.
  - Or it was a joke.
Uma Thurman is, like, 6 and a half feet tall, right? How did they manage to make her look like she was roughly the same height as the other actors, while she was wearing high heels?
- During fight scenes, correctly sized body doubles. During all other scenes, carefully hidden platform shoes and soapboxes for the other actors to stand on.