Batman Forever unfortunately fell prey to the past superhero film convention that villains must be camp. I think a lot of studio execs of that time period probably came up during the Silver Age comics and had the Adam West Batman in their head as a template. So they felt that camp villains were what the audience expects and craves. (I.e., they felt the subject matter is based on a comic book, something geared toward for children, after all. It's fanciful, whimsical material, etc.--not something any reasonable adult would want to take seriously.) Even Batman (1989)'s Nicholson Joker, although genuinely chilling at times, still featured many comedic flourishes. It wasn't really until 1998's Blade, followed by X-Men in 2000 that we saw CBMs truly break free of the obligatory corny, camp villain genre convention. The following X-Men films, Spider-Man, and Hellboy solidified this. And Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy cemented it.
Now we tend to look back and want to cringe at camp villains. But let's face it, Jim Carey and Tommy Lee Jones were cringe-worthy as hell in Batman Forever. Just terrible. Interesting, though, that those deleted scenes and Val Kilmer's performance in general reflects a movement toward the more serious dramatic approach to Batman that Nolan ran with full tilt.
Take it easy breh.
