How Batman & Robin's Director Guilted Arnold Schwarzenegger Into Playing Mr. Freeze
"Batman & Robin" is an infamous movie, in no small part thanks to Arnold Schwarzenegger's turn as the villainous Mr. Freeze. Was the casting of such a big-name star a mandate from Warner Bros? Nope! Director Joel Schumacher personally chose Arnold for the part. Reading Akiva Goldsman's script for the film, Schumacher found the dialogue for Mr. Freeze, intended to be "Shakespearean," to instead be "hysterical. In my head, I was reading Freeze's dialogue as Schwarzenegger."
So, Schumacher called up Arnold and asked him to play the part. As Schwarzenegger recounts in "The Making of 'Batman & Robin' | Behind The Scenes."
"Joel Schumacher came to me and said that he would like me to play Mr. Freeze. 'I would not direct the movie, because I only can do this movie if you play Mr. Freeze.' So, what are you gonna do? I mean, screw up a whole movie? He made me feel like I would make this whole thing fall apart if I'm not part of this. So he made me feel like, you know, King Kong. So I said to him, I called him the next day and said, 'You know something, Joel? I'm going to do Mr. Freeze.'"
Schwarzenegger says he'd enjoyed the previous Batman movies and "was always interested in of course playing the ultimate villain in one of those movies," and so Schumacher's call gave him the push to finally actively pursue such a role.
With Arnold on board, Mr. Freeze's dialogue was rewritten to be mostly ice puns and one-liners: "Let's kick some ice!", "Cool Party!", and incorrectly declaring, "What killed the dinosaurs? The ice age!" (Victor Fries may be a scientist, but he's no paleontologist).
So, was Schwarzenegger indeed the glue that held "Batman & Robin" together, as Schumacher predicted? Not exactly.
Batman & Robin vs. Mr. Zero
Let's put Mr. Freeze's history into its full context. He debuted in 1959's "Batman" issue #121 in the backup story, "The Ice Crimes of Mr. Zero" (by Sheldon Moldoff and Dave Wood). Yes, in his initial appearance, he was called Mr. Zero.
In this nine-page tale, Mr. Zero is already a criminal and he regales his origin to his henchmen with flashbacks; he was a scientist who invented a "freezing gun" but was accidentally dosed in the chemical solution he used. As a result, he's unable to breathe outside sub-zero temperatures, hence why he wears a suit to keep his body temperature low. With his disfigurement in one hand and his new invention in the other, he did what anyone in Gotham City would do — become a supervillain.
Mr. Zero was intended as a one-off villain. Moldoff's story even ends with his frozen condition being cured; Batman unleashes steam to thaw out himself and Robin from Zero's iceblocks, and when it hits the villain, it restores his health. The final panel of the story is Mr. Zero smiling at this good fortune while Batman declares, "Let's see if the law can straighten out your distorted mind."
Why wasn't Mr. Zero forgotten by history? The 1960s "Batman" television show, starring Adam West as the Caped Crusader. The series' fourth two-part episode, "Instant Freeze/Rats Like Cheese," loosely adapted "The Ice Crimes of Mr. Zero." However, it reinvented the villain, giving him an ice-colored suit (rather than the flamboyant pink-and-yellow costume of Mr. Zero), blue-tinted skin, and a new name: Mr. Freeze.
Mr. Freeze appeared in three episodes (played first by George Sanders, then by Otto Preminger, and finally by Eli Wallach). Then, in 1968, Mr. Zero returned to the comics in "Detective Comics" #373 (by Gardner Fox), now bearing the name and look of his TV counterpart.
Mr. Freeze's Heart of Ice
Mr. Freeze got a boost thanks to the 1966 "Batman," but he was still quite one-note. All he wanted to do was steal diamonds, freeze people solid, toy with Batman, and deliver countless ice puns along the way. However, this wouldn't be the last time an adaptation reinterpreted Freeze.
Enter "Heart of Ice." Written by Paul Dini and aired in 1992, this was one of the first episodes of "Batman: The Animated Series" which proved the series' craftsmanship was more than a typical Saturday morning cartoon. The episode stuck with the basics of Freeze's original origin but turned it into a tragedy. Here, Dr. Victor Fries was using cryogenics to save the life of his terminally ill wife, Nora. When his employer Ferris Boyle found out he was stealing company resources, he pulled the plug on Nora and pushed Victor into the chemicals that created his sub-zero condition.
With this wrinkle, Freeze finally had a motive to become a supervillain after his accident — and what a motive it was. He's not interested in typical larceny, but in getting revenge on Boyle and (eventually) finding a cure for Nora's illness. In "Heart of Ice," he gets a simple line that hits the Shakespearean heights Goldsman's "Batman & Robin" script failed to grasp:
"Think of it, Batman. To never again walk on a summer's day with the hot wind in your face and a warm hand to hold. Oh yes, I'd kill for that."
If it weren't for "Heart of Ice," Mr. Freeze would never have been a big screen villain. In an ouroboros of recursive influence, "Batman: The Animated Series" spin-off movie "SubZero" was made to tie in with Freeze's silver screen debut (it released in 1998, a year after "Batman & Robin.")
However, that debut tried to have its cake and eat it too.
Mr. Freeze in Batman & Robin
"Batman & Robin" tries to meld the pre and post "Heart of Ice" portrayals of Freeze. He is deeply in love with his wife Nora and his goal is to find a cure for her illness while she sleeps in cryostasis. However, he otherwise behaves like a corny supervillain. The movie also removes the revenge story that defined "Heart of Ice," so his pain feels less visceral, and instead has him out to steal diamonds like in the 1966 "Batman." Arnold Schwarzenegger is a great movie star, but a dramatically limited actor. You usually hire him to bring the cheese (Schumacher certainly did), not heartwrenching drama.
"Heart of Ice" takes itself seriously while "Batman & Robin" does not. There are some ice puns in the episode too (see the episode's opening monologue, where Freeze declares "Revenge is a dish best served cold"), but thanks to Michael Ansara's sinister, robotic performance as Freeze, they feel ironic, not indulgent. Then there's the presentation; Freeze is giving an achingly tragic music box leitmotif, pulled from the snow globe he keeps to remember Nora. The show itself empathizes with him and so never lets his admittedly silly villain gimmicks derail the pathos.
Even the design pales. "Batman: The Animated Series" uses a simple, robotic look (first designed by "Hellboy" creator Mike Mignola), with red goggles to contrast with the blue-and-black suit. In "Batman & Robin," Freeze looks like an overdesigned action figure, drenched in chrome lit with blue neon.
I'll refrain from beating this dead horse any further, and just say Schumacher understood the (campy) movie he wanted to make, hence why he cast Schwarzenegger. He should've in turn realized "Heart of Ice" was not the appropriate source material.