Uma Thurman says ‘Batman & Robin’ ‘was actually made for children’

There’s always been debate that the superhero genre lacks the maturity and sophistication to be considered real film art for adults, but Uma Thurman thinks her 1997 film Batman & Robin was straight up Sesame Street.

“My kids are obsessed with Batman & Robin. They love Poison Ivy,” Kelly Clarkson told Thurman on Monday’s episode of her daytime talk show. “It’s the one that was actually made for children,” Thurman explained.

It’s hard to believe that anything Joel Schumacher made was “made for children,” let alone was even appropriate for children to watch. But Thurman might have a point. Batman & Robin is tonally much lighter than Matt Reeves’ and Christopher Nolan’s Batman films, and it’s arguably less explicit content-wise than Tim Burton’s duo of films — at least where violence is concerned.

“Well, my kids love it,” Clarkson enthused.

Batman & Robin was hit with a PG-13 rating before its release, certifying it as less than appropriate for kids. But there’s credence to the claim that it was designed as children’s entertainment.

There was such parental backlash to Tim Burton’s violent 1992 Batman sequel Batman Returns that A Closer Look host Faith Daniels invited “USA Today‘s junior movie critic, 10-year-old Danny Slaski,” onto the daytime show to discuss it. “It was very violent, it was a total attack against kids, the whole movie. Everything that kids love was used against them,” Slaski said.

When Batman Returns underperformed compared with its predecessor, Warner Bros. replaced Burton with Schumacher, hoping for the next film to win back the trust of America’s children.

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Batman & Robin is a far less gruesome film, but one could argue that what it lacks in violence it makes up for in sexual provocation. Nearly three decades on, viewers are still baffled by costume designer Jose Fernandez’s decision to adhere erect rubber nipples to various costumes. “I wasn’t thrilled with the nipples on the batsuit,” star George Clooney told Rolling Stone in 2014, “You know that’s not something you really think about when you’re putting it on… Batman was just constantly cold I guess.”

Burton also admitted to being confused over “children’s movie” Batman & Robin including such frankly sexually suggestive elements: “I was like, ‘Wait a minute. Okay. Hold on a second here. You complain about me, I’m too weird, I’m too dark, and then you put nipples on the costume? Go f— yourself.'”

On the subject of costumes, Clarkson brought up Batman & Robin during a Halloween-inspired discussion about Thurman’s various cinematic costumes, from Kill Bill‘s The Bride to Batman & Robin‘s Poison Ivy. Thurman remembered the sleek Poison Ivy jumpsuit as “really difficult actually. Because it was all rubber, and we had to pull it on, like imagine the worst pair of airplane tension hose you ever got into in your life.”

“It was the original, the meanest sort of Spanx imaginable,” Thurman joked. “But it was fun and creative!”