CHALLENGE: Rewriting Joel Schumacher's Batman films

[TMC1982]

Since Joel Schumacher himself is planning on rewriting his own Batman films (including the unmade Batman Triumphant), I figure that he might as well try to do the same thing here. The only rules are that you have to use the exact same characters as before and you can't simply scrap things and start all over.

 

[Jochimus]

Since it's been a while since I've seen either one of them, I took the Wiki synopses for both of them and basically reworked them a bit, altering some things, omitting some things, rewriting some things, and in the case of "Forever" even incorporating a few deleted scenes:

BATMAN FOREVER

The film's opening scene is a news report that shows how Harvey Dent became Two-Face: While he was prosecuting Sal Maroni, Maroni threw acid in Harvey's face while Batman tried to stop him but failed. At Arkham Asylum, Doctor Burton discovers Two-Face's escape, encountering his psychologist hanged in Two-Face's cell with "The Bat Must Die" written in blood on the wall.
In Gotham City, Batman stops a hostage situation in a bank caused by Two-Face. However, Two-Face escapes; during the fight scene between Two-Face and Batman, they both struggle for control of the helicopter, and Two-Face accuses Batman of being "a killer too", a direct reference to Batman having killed the Joker, the Penguin and several of their respective goons. Two-face then manages to escape by the parachute, after Batman realizes he has locked the steering wheel into position. Edward Nygma, a researcher at Wayne Enterprises specializing in technologies geared for mental and psychological therapy, uses this situation as a platform with which to develop a device to beam one’s consciousness directly into another person's brain; Bruce Wayne - with whom Nygma is obsessed - rejects the invention, noting that it "raises too many questions", and Nygma angrily resigns from his position after using the device to kill his supervisor Fred Stickley, forging his suicide note . After meeting Batman-obsessed psychiatrist Dr. Chase Meridian, Bruce invites her to a charity circus event. There, Two-Face and his henchmen storm the event in an attempt to draw Batman out by threatening innocents, and in the process murder The Flying Graysons, a family of circus daredevils who attempt to stop him. The youngest member, 16-year-old motorcycle-riding escape-artist Dick, survives and throws Two-Face's bomb into the river.
Bruce assumes responsibility for Dick and allows him to stay at Wayne Manor. Dick then declares his intention to kill Two-Face and avenge his family's murder, and when he discovers Bruce's secret identity as Batman, he insists on becoming his partner, "Robin". Meanwhile, Nygma becomes a criminal known as the "Riddler", a master of puzzles and quizzes, and forms an alliance with Two-Face. The two work together to steal capital for the mass production and promotion of Nygma's device; the construction of NygmaTech follows, as Edward Nygma is seen with a hard hat helping with the construction of his headquarters on Claw Island. During the casino robbery, the security guard Riddler fails to punch out is then brutally beaten, presumably to death. Batman follows the robbery signal on a tracking device in the Batmobile. He shows up at the crime scene and finds he is at the wrong place (a beauty salon), in which a room full of girls gawks at him. The Riddler had been throwing Batman off the track by using his apparatus on Claw Island to mess with the Batmobile's tracking device, thus giving Riddler and Two-Face moments of free rein over the city.
Using his device, Nygma can read and control people's minds, and steal their intelligence quotient. At a business party, Nygma deduces Bruce's secret identity after Two-Face attacks the party and nearly kills Batman, but Robin arrives just in time to save his life. Meanwhile, Chase realizes her love for Bruce surpasses her obsession with Batman. However, Two-Face and the Riddler later converge into Wayne Manor. The Riddler enters the Batcave and destroys most of the equipment, and he and Two-Face kidnap Chase, who the Riddler is romantic to, while leaving Bruce another riddle.
After solving the last riddle, Batman and Robin locate the Riddler's lair on Claw Island, where both are separated upon reaching the island. Robin then encounters Two-Face and manages to bring him to his knees; realizing that he’d rather see Dent suffer behind bars, Robin yields, allowing Two-Face to get the upper hand and capture Robin. Meanwhile, Batman manages to make his way into the Riddler's lair, where Robin and Chase are revealed as hostages, bound and held over a watery chasm, giving Batman a choice of saving just one hostage. Robin escapes his bindings, however, and smashes his way out of his tube; Batman saves Chase while Robin manages to destroy the NygmaTech machinery, driving the Riddler into a mental breakdown in the process. During the battle, Two-Face falls to his death. The Riddler is finally sent to Arkham Asylum, and Chase is asked to consult on his case. Nygma offers to reveal the identity of Batman to her, but he believes that he himself is Batman, due to his damaged memories.
The ending, as with the previous Batman films, involves Alfred in the limousine, the camera tracking upward through the Gotham cityscape, followed by a rooftop shot involving a silhouetted hero facing the Bat Signal. When Alfred drives Doctor Chase Meridian back to Gotham she asks him "Does it ever end, Alfred?", to which he replies, "No, Doctor Meridian, not in this lifetime..." The Bat-Signal shines on the night sky and Batman is standing on a pillar looking ahead. Robin then comes into shot and joins his new partner as they both leap off the pillar, towards the camera.

BATMAN & ROBIN

Batman and Robin attempt to stop Mr. Freeze from stealing a cache of diamonds. The super-criminal freezes Robin and flees, notifying Batman that he has 11 minutes to thaw his partner. They learn that Freeze was once scientist Victor Fries, who became dependent on a diamond-powered subzero suit following an accident in a cryogenics lab he was occupying to find a cure for his wife, Nora, who was suffering from the advanced stage of a terminal illness called MacGregor's Syndrome.
Meanwhile, botanist Dr. Pamela Isley is experimenting with the strength serum "Venom" to create mutant plants capable of fighting back against mankind's destruction of flora. To her anger, she discovers that her senior colleague Dr. Jason Woodrue used her Venom samples to transform a diminutive prisoner into the "super soldier" Bane. When she refuses to become the mad scientist's partner, Woodrue kills her with animal-plant toxins and chemicals. She transforms into the beautiful Poison Ivy and repays the favor to Woodrue with a venomous kiss before vowing to use her new powers to establish botanical supremacy over the world.
Alfred Pennyworth's fiery-haired niece Barbara Wilson makes a surprise visit after coming home from England to accept a consultant position with the Gotham City Police Department under Commissioner Gordon, whereupon she is invited to remain at Wayne Manor. In reality, Barbara has learned that Alfred is suffering from MacGregor's Syndrome. He is, however, in stage 1 for which Victor Fries had developed a cure before his accident; Freeze’s wife was in a more advanced stage and he has yet to find a cure for that, hence his criminal activities.
Ivy arrives in Gotham City with Bane as her apparent henchman. She interrupts a Wayne Enterprises press conference at the Gotham Observatory where a giant new telescope is being unveiled, exhorting Bruce Wayne to implement a proposal that would use the telescope to safeguard the natural environment, which Bruce summarily declines. She later appears at the Gotham Botanical Gardens fundraiser, seducing everyone present with her pheromone dust, including the Dynamic Duo, who have been present in the shadows to protect a diamond on auction from Mr. Freeze. When Freeze crashes the event as expected, Ivy is repulsed by the damage his cryogenic weapons cause to her mutant flora, but Bane spies an opportunity to turn the two supervillains against each other, destroy the Dynamic Duo in the process, and take over Gotham himself. Despite being captured by Batman and detained at Arkham Asylum, Bane and Freeze escape together.
Bane then proceeds to turn off Nora Fries' life support and makes Mr. Freeze believe Batman did it, thereby persuading him that they should kill Batman as well as the society that created him. Freeze plans to turn the observatory's new telescope into a giant freezing gun to freeze the whole world's population to death. Meanwhile, returning to Ivy’s side, Bane alerts her to Freeze’s plan and she resolves to get to the telescope first and use it in conjunction with the Observatory’s satellites to turn Earth into a giant greenhouse, replacing humankind with Ivy's mutant plants which would mass-produce at an accelerated rate.
Meanwhile, Robin has become infatuated with Ivy and rebels against Batman, just as the villainess planned. He eventually goes to meet her at her garden hideout. Ivy's venomous kiss fails to kill Robin because Batman had prevailed on him to coat his lips with rubber. She tries to drown Robin in her lily pond and entangles Batman in her crushing vines, although they are able to free themselves when Barbara arrives as Batgirl – having discovered the Batcave and decided to create her own crime-fighting persona with the help of a computer simulation of Alfred with advanced AI - and traps Ivy in her own floral throne.
When the Trio arrive at the Observatory to stop Freeze, the criminal has already managed to freeze much of Gotham even while tussling with Ivy. Bane attacks Batman as Robin and Batgirl try to contain Freeze and Ivy; before Bane can bring Batman’s spine down over his knee and break his back, Batman incapacitates him by severing his Venom tube, reducing Bane to a withered state. In the chaos, the telescope is destroyed, but the two younger heroes save Gotham by repositioning the observatory's already-synchronized satellites, using their mirrors to reflect sunlight from outer space to thaw the city.
Batman shows Freeze video footage of Bane’s confession about pulling the plug on Nora during his fight with Batman, but the Caped Crusader reveals that he himself saved Nora. He vows that Freeze will be allowed to continue his research at Arkham Asylum to heal Nora with Doctor Burton’s supervision and assistance. Batman asks Freeze for the cure he created for the first stage of MacGregor's Syndrome for Alfred and Freeze atones for his misdeeds by giving him two vials of the medicine he had developed.
At Arkham, Ivy is joined in her cell by Freeze, who vows to exact revenge on her. Back at Wayne Manor, Alfred is cured and Bruce invites Barbara to live with them and continue helping Batman and Robin fight crime as Batgirl.

...of course, I would still favor a visual and aural continuity with the Burton films since they were supposed to be sequels to those - and that means keeping stuff like the "Returns" Batsuit as well as Burton's Batmobile, Batwing, and Batskiboat, and also retaining Danny Elfman's score and Batman Theme - and basically redesigning everybody from there; I think taking the plot and story itself into a more comic-influenced over-the-top direction, rather than the overall tone and atmosphere, would have sufficiently lightened things up the way WB wanted.