Yet Dr. Victor Fries and Dr. Pamela Isley remain trapped in cinematic prison, the former shackled by the memory of Arnold Schwarzenegger in his neon blue and silver suit, face painted like a Christmas ornament as he spewed some of the worst puns in film history (“Everybody chill!”). Ivy, meanwhile, thanks to an unhinged performance by Uma Thurman, came across as a car-wreck combination of Mae West and Tex Avery’s Red Hot Riding Hood. Both were deservedly nominated for Razzies for their performances, but did B&R damage those characters permanently as far as the big screen goes?
Mr. Freeze’s Journey from Gimmick to Tragic Figure
It didn’t have to be this way. While Freeze and Ivy have fluctuated between first and second-tier baddies in the pantheon of Batman’s famous, extensive list of villains (often considered the best in all of comics), both were certainly around long enough to earn enough gravitas and recognition within the universe of Batman’s printed adventures. And while the theatrical incarnations of both have failed them, animated and TV versions of the grief-crazed scientist Fries and the eco-terrorist Isley have, with varying degrees of success, done their best to rehabilitate the characters’ images.
Freeze actually made his debut in the pages of Batman #121 (February 1959) as Mr. Zero, created by writer Dave Wood and artist Sheldon Moldoff. Wielding an ice gun that could freeze anything – the same weapon which accidentally doused him and lowered his body temperature so that he must always remain in a cryo-suit—the villain of “The Ice Crimes of Mr. Zero” is not given much in the way of nuance or depth, his motivation for his diamond robberies mere greed. Mr. Zero was mostly a non-entity in the comics for a few years after that, but he gained a whole new following and caché in the late 1960s when he was re-introduced – this time as Mr. Freeze—in ABC’s legendary Batman TV series.
The character was a model of inconsistency on the show where he was portrayed by three different actors with three distinctly different looks—George Sanders, director Otto Preminger, and Eli Wallach—and was basically motivated by greed. But his cryo-suit, ice gun, and inventive traps for the Dynamic Duo, including one memorable episode in which he tried to turn them into Frosty Freezie drinks, made him popular enough that he was re-introduced in the comics, this time as Mr. Freeze.
The real turning point for Freeze, however, came on Batman: The Animated Series when he starred (voiced by Michael Ansara) in the season 1 episode “Heart of Ice.” The Daytime Emmy-winning episode, written by the great Paul Dini, completely rebooted the character, with Victor Fries revealed as a scientist who had placed his wife Nora in cryogenics while seeking a cure for her terminal illness. When the CEO of the company behind his experiments both cuts off Fries’ funding and causes the accident that mutates Fries’ body, he emerges as Mr. Freeze, driven by revenge and grief.
This origin story, one of the best of all Batman’s enemies, instantly turned Mr. Freeze from campy oddity to tragic antagonist and became official canon for almost all his subsequent appearances, including in animated projects, comic books, and, yes, even Batman & Robin. However, his sad story couldn’t generate any pathos in the Schumacher movie thanks to its tone and Schwarzenegger’s ridiculous performance.
ncG1vNJzZmhqZGy7psPSmqmorZ6Zwamx1qippZxemLyue8yoraKdXa%2B8r7GOm5itpZGjerO7waKlZqWiYrOzscSznGaZnpl6sbvIrKanZZmrxm6%2F06KjpWWUmsCmvtWeZKudlJq6scDIqKVo