Remember that time Nicole Kidman played the brainy but beautiful love interest in a Batman movie? Neither do I, really, though Kidman has a pretty good idea why her character – Dr. Chase Meridian, from Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever -- ranks pretty low on the grand scale of Caped Crusader squeezes.
The Oscar-winning actress was sprinting through her career with Yahoo Movies as part of the site’s Role Recall series. And when they got to 1995’s Batman Forever, Nicole Kidman didn’t have a ton of disdain for the experience, though she does admit:
"I remember going, ‘I wish had more of a role, though.’ It’s great being the girl in the Batman movie…. But I’m an actor and you go, ‘Gosh I want more to do.’ So I would still love to do some sort of superhero movie where I get to do the cool stuff."
It’s rare that the women in the Batman movies got to do much beyond "be rescued" or "die horribly to anger our hero." Yes, Michelle Pfeiffer and Anne Hathaway donned the Catwoman suit for alternate Batman films from Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan. But those are the exceptions that prove the rule carried out by the likes of Katie Holmes, Maggie Gyllenhaal or Kim Basinger in the initial Batman movie. Despite the fact that Nicole Kidman was asked to play a doctor in Joel Schumacher’s first Batman movie, she still had to deal with being dangled like bait as part of The Riddler’s grand trap… like any normal, campy Batman sequence. For real, this is atrocious:
Not surprisingly, almost everyone bailed on Batman after Forever. Kidman ran for the hills. Val Kilmer hung up the suit, passing the cape and cowl to George Clooney. Alicia Silverstone and Uma Thurman stepped into the key female roles for Batman & Robin, and they were humiliated by Schumacher’s excess.
I’m more intrigued by Nicole Kidman’s statement that she’d like to do something else in the realm of superhero movies. At age 47, she might be a little too old to step into the Ms. Marvel role over at Marvel Studios. But DC/Warner is setting up a massive cinematic universe, and there have to be multiple female roles outside of Wonder Woman that Kidman could fill. It could be payback for making her endure the layers of cheese in Batman Forever. Get her on the phone, Zack Snyder. Nicole Kidman’s ready to listen.
