Since 1939, when the first Batman comic was released, the Caped Crusader has been a hit with the young and old alike. That explains the stupendous success of all Batman films released to date. An insight into the making of the recently released Batman And Robin, which is already making waves at the US box-office...

BEGINNINGS...

The time: The late 1930s.

The place: New York city.

The characters: Two young cartoonists, Bob Kane and Bill Finger. Talented. Poor. And hungry for fame.

The action: Kane and Finger labouring on two-page humourous spreads for DC Comics. Kane sees Leonardo Da Vinci's notebook drawing of a flying machine with batwings. He sees the silent film The Mark Of Zorro. Then he sees the 1930 mystery film, The Bat Whispers. And inspiration strikes. In partnership with Finger, the cartoonist devises a comic book action hero called The Bat-Man. The first Bat-Man comic, released in May 1939, is an immediate hit. A year later Robin, his partner is introduced.

...and the rest is history. Six decades of interpretation and reinterpretation in comics, movies, TV serials and graphic novels finally culminate in a new take on the action hero in 1989 with Warner Bros.' film Batman, directed by Tim Burton, and starring Michael Keaton as the Caped Crusader and Jack Nicholson as the Joker. It is a box-office phenomenon.

1992: Burton once again stands at the helm with Batman Returns with Michael Keaton as Batman, Danny DeVito as the Penguin and Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman. It is the highest grossing film in USA that year.

1994: The action is now called by Joel Schumacher in a film titled Batman Forever with Val Kilmer as Batman, Tommy Lee Jones as Two-Face, Chris O'Donnell as Robin, Jim Carrey as the Riddler and Nicole Kidman as Dr Chase Meridian. Once again the Batman franchise is the highest grossing film of the year.

1997: Joel Schumacher returns with Batman And Robin.

Batman And Robin is already making waves at the US box-office. Joel Schumacher continues with the grand tradition of the Warner Bros franchise in liberally sprinkling his movie with star dust. Val Kilmer has been replaced by ER star George Clooney as the Caped Crusader. Alicia Silverstone is cast as Batgirl. The role of Robin goes to Chris O'Donnell once again, while the movie presents an all-star cast for the weird new villains of the piece. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the villainous Mr Freeze and Uma Thurman is the gorgeous and scheming Poison Ivy.

There are a plethora of other well-known names, including supermodels Elle Macpherson as Bruce Wayne's female companion who hopes to marry him some day, and Vendela K. Thommessen as Mr Freeze's frozen wife, Nora. Vivica A Fox, who impressed audiences with her performance in the hit Independence Day, plays sex kitten Snow Bunny who tries, unsuccessfully, to warm Mr Freeze's heart.

THE PLOT

Mr Freeze is not a new villain. He has been played three times before by different actors during the popular 1960s Batman TV series. Batman And Robin details Mr Freeze's horrible history. He was formerly a genius scientist of molecular biology. In the process of trying to cryogenically preserve his dying wife, Nora, an accident occurs which transforms his biological make-up. He now has to live as Mr Freeze in a sub-zero suit which requires diamonds to keep the chilly temperature low enough. His life's mission is to gather as much money as he can from the coffers of Gotham City in order to finish the experiments to save his wife. In addition he plans to take over Gotham City and turn it into a city of ice.

Poison Ivy, who eventually teams up with Mr Freeze, is also a transformed human — originally botanist Dr Pamela Isley, she undergoes a terrible transformation due to an unfortunate accident. And now she plans to take over the world so that her flora and fauna kindred can rule and thrive.

Meanwhile, the villainous duo find that in addition to outwitting Batman and Robin, they have another adversary in the form of Batgirl. A quiet schoolgirl by day, Barbara Wilson becomes a daredevil motorbike racer by night, teaming up with Batman and Robin as Batgirl. This is the first time Batgirl makes her appearance in the Warner Bros franchise, but as a comic book creation she was introduced way back in 1961.

This time Schumacher and his writers have introduced a new dimension to the interpretation of the brooding character of billionaire Bruce Wayne, also known as Batman. While all the previous three films based Bruce Wayne's character on his original comic book history of losing his parents at a young age, Batman And Robin moves beyond that. George Clooney's Bruce Wayne has more or less done with brooding. But he is still dealing with loss, and this time his character has to deal with the potential loss of new ties, the new 'family' he has built up around him — such as Robin, his old butler Alfred and Batgirl.

THE MAKING OF BATMAN AND ROBIN

The ambitious nature of the movie was reflected in the sets built by the production designers. In Batman And Robin Gotham City is larger than the one seen in Batman Forever. The interiors of all the buildings were expanded to match the grandeur and proportions of the exteriors. Gotham City was eventually built on five different soundstages, and reached gargantuan proportions. The Gotham Museum of Natural History, for example, took five months to build and was about 60 feet high, 200 feet long and 150 feet wide. The new, ambitious Batcave was made of blue-black rock walls and included a huge Batmobile turntable. The Rooftop Botanical Garden was a cast-iron and glass structure on top of a Gotham skyscraper, and was decorated in a jungle theme to serve as a charity ball setting and a location for action. The Gotham Observatory was 75 feet high and had a 40 feet long telescope weighing 20,000 pounds as its highlight. A 300 feet long bridge was constructed for a climactic motorcycle race. Mr Freeze's hideout was constructed in the shape of a huge ice-cream cone made of stainless steel, and known as the abandoned Snowy Cones Factory. While Poison Ivy's lair, known as the Blossom Street Turkish Baths, was a fusion of old Middle Eastern and modern Western art.

The use of computer generated special effects enhanced the sets greatly. In the world of Gotham City the buildings are supposed to be two to three times taller than the largest skyscrapers in New York. Without the use of computer generated images, this would have required the building of miniature buildings 90 feet tall. But what the set designers did was to simply build 30 feet tall miniature buildings, while the special effects crew extended the buildings using computer technology.

It has become a tradition in each Batman film to remodel the Batsuit. Sure enough, George Clooney's Batsuit is sleeker, more flexible, and weighs only a third of what it weighed in the previous Batman Forever. But none of the costumes in Batman And Robin were as difficult to create as Mr Freeze's armoured suit which was designed to give the effect that it was diamond powered and temperature controlled to remain at 50 degrees below zero. In addition it was illuminated from within to give out a blue spectre-like glow. In order to create this contraption the production team actually called in an artist from England who had been schooled in the art of creating armours. The suit, with all its technological gadgets, ended up weighing 45 pounds. But presumably, for a muscle man like Schwarzenegger, it was no big deal to walk around with this weight on his shoulders.

Production designer Barbara Ling was thrilled to have the opportunity to rework the Batmobile after working on it for Batman Forever. She admits feeling that the previous Batmobile simply wasn't large enough, and ended up looking too small on the big screen. So this time she decided to base the famous vehicle on early sports cars like the Jaguar D or the Delahane 165. In addition she wanted to make it a convertible, just as it used to be in the early Batman comics. Barbara Ling's Batmobile eventually became a fully working car that was no less than 29 feet long with racing car components, 22 inch prototype tyres and a Chevy 380 engine, capable of pumping the speed of the car upto 140 mph. Since Batman drives this stupendous car on his own, a similarly impressive vehicle had to be created for Robin. Inspiration struck and the Redbird motorcycle was born. Like the Batmobile it was designed to be extremely long, and was built of fibreglass and carbon fibre, the same materials that are used to build airplanes. An even bigger challenge was building a vehicle for Mr. Freeze. With all his paraphernalia on, Schwarzenegger made such a huge Mr. Freeze that his vehicle had to be of a size which matched up to the grandeur and proportions of the costume. Enter the Freezomobile. It was 26 feet long and an amazing nine feet high with an exterior that reflected the chilliness of Freeze World.

In addition Batman And Robin presents vehicles designed to be used in icy conditions. The Bathammer was 20 feet long and more powerful than a snowmobile. The Batskiff was a cross between a hovercraft and a fan-driven vehicle. And the Batbike was a snazzy and powerful motorbike with ice spiked tyres.

It is obvious that with one of the most successful movie franchises in history, Warner Bros. have succeeded in creating an almost indestructible modern myth. While the Batman movies have only drawn upon the action hero saga initiated so long ago by cartoonists Bob Kane and Bill Finger, directors Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher have added a larger-than-life, futuristic dimension to this international pop icon. It wouldn't be surprising if, a few years down the line, Warner Bros. were still churning out Batman sequels. Indeed Batman And Robin director Joel Schumacher has summed up the obsession behind the Batman culture most aptly in his preface to the revised version of creator Bob Kane's book Batman And Me. "The reveries of children," writes Schumacher, "sometimes become the vocation of adults."