Recap: Our heroes fought Mr. Freeze in a museum, then went into a space rocket, then surfed on the rocket doors safely back to earth, and now they are chasing Freeze in a hallway. Usually a chase goes from least exciting environment to most exciting, that way the ante keeps going up, but in this case we went from museum to space to a hallway in a warehouse. Oh, well!
At the terminus of the tunnel lay a boiler room. Despite the heat that had pumped, and pumped, and thrusted, and pumped from it only minutes earlier, much like a marriage that has gone on a good 5 years too long, its internal reservoir was now frozen solid. In its center stood the massive boiler itself, its fiery warmth extinguished, like the passion you once felt for your wife, by Freeze’s cryogenic mastery. It dripped ice, like the words your wife said when she walked out for the last time.
[you’ll have to excuse me, I’m going through a bit of a thing. I’ll come back and clean these pages up later, it’s just that I think the best thing for it is to get it out on the page, exorcise those feelings, and then look back at it later, maybe even laugh. I’ll laugh about this someday, right? The worst event of my entire life so far, possibly not even overshadowed by my own death, possibly only rectified by my own death? That’ll be hilarious later, right?]
As Batman pushed open the door to the room, Mr. Freeze leaped from behind it, slamming the metal portal hard in Batman’s face. Batman stumbled forward, sagging, nearly unconscious from the ferocious blow. Not since he blasted in the daughter of his nemesis in some weird desert palace had Batman been laid low by a powerful force like this.
But even as Freeze raised his gun for the death stroke, which is the term the French use for the last stroke of a handy J (le coup mortel, god, what a romantic language!), a third figure joined the fray. There’s also a French term for this, but I think we all know that one already ;)
Without regard for his own safety, Robin dived toward the villain. Freeze turned and fired, and the daredevil didn’t stand a chance of dodging. He caught the full force of the freeze gun’s beam. Instantly, Robin turned into a frozen sculpture of ice, a fitting situation since both ice sculptures and Robin’s abs are chiseled.
Batman recovered his senses, staring in horror at his frozen partner. Dimly, he was aware of a rumbling far beneath his feet. Something tunneling through the earth—getting closer.
The rumble became a deafening roar—then suddenly the wall exploded in a harsh whine of spinning metal and pulverized brick. Another of Freeze’s drilling trucks was visible in the clearing smoke, its automatic controls bringing it to its maker’s side like a dog coming to its master.
One may be saying, “Wait, hold up, if he has multiple drill trucks with self-driving technology, instead of stealing diamonds, couldn’t he use the money he normally uses on drill trucks to buy diamonds?”
Anyway, Mr. Freeze leaped onto the huge vehicle—wait, again, couldn’t he sell the software that allows a vehicle to drive autonomously, tunneling through the earth, avoiding pipes, basements, all that stuff, and popping up right where its owner is standing? Wouldn’t this net Freeze enough to basically walk up to a Zales, lift up one side of the building, and tip all the diamonds into a big sack he set near the back door?
“Your emotions make you weak. That is why this day is mine.” He smiled, chillingly, no trace of humor in his voice. “Stay cool, Bats.” Ah, well, the trace of humor came immediately after I wrote that there was no trace of humor in Freeze’s voice. Oh, well. This loaner laptop given to me by the studio, which I gather the original Batman and Robin script was written on, has a backspace key that broke off a LONG time ago, so we’ll just have to press on.
In a roar of turbines, he was gone. The massive machine sealed the tunnel behind him with a blast of ice. There would be no pursuit.
Eleven minutes, Batman thought. 660 seconds. Batman tried his damndest to make this fit into the rhyme scheme from that song in Rent about 125 thousand billion jillion minutes, but he couldn’t make it work and filed the riddle away in his brain for later pondering.
Eleven minutes was the maximum time a body might stay alive before the freezing caused permanent and irreversible damage. How does Batman know this? Why, the Batcomputer, of course! By which I mean, “A spreadsheet he kept that catalogued the various shelter dogs philanthropist Bruce Wayne got for his dog sanctuary which he then froze and unfroze until he figured out exactly how long one could push it. The ultimate fate of those dogs is not one that’s pleasant to discuss, but those brave pooches, much like the dogs launched into space, would probably save a human life or two through their horrific deaths. Which was most likely of no comfort to them, it’s not like they could even comprehend what was happening to them as they were lowered into a pit of liquid nitrogen, Bruce Wayne watching over them, giggling.
Batman moved swiftly to his partner’s side and brushed his finger against the boy’s icy skin. He whipped out his belt laser and pointed it at the frozen reservoir.
The slim beam, which threw a symbol of a kitty paw with hearts for toe beans, ate into the ice like a hot wire through butter, not a problematic simile at all because we’ve ALL cut through butter with a hot piece of wire that we obtained by turning on the toaster then smashing it apart to get at the heated wires inside.
The laser discharged massive amounts of energy into the frozen water, and within minutes, it was all melted. A minute more and it started to simmer.
Batman grabbed Robin and eased him to the edge of the now-steaming water. Quickly, he immersed his unmoving partner, who now looked suspiciously like a wax dummy, probably a side effect of the freezing, in the reservoir. Its warmth penetrated and melted Robin’s flash-frozen flesh.
For one dreadful instant, Batman caught his breath. Was it going to work? Or was Robin meant to share the fate of those piles and piles of dog corpses, which Alfred REALLY needed to get around to cleaning up because the odor in the cave was becoming so powerful as to overwhelm guests to Wayne Manor, who assumed someone had accidentally eaten a bunch of raw sea creatures and then just taken a heinous shit. Others thought it smelled a little like a sheep farm, which has its own special, pungent feces smell that is overpowering in a way that few animals are.
It had become a bit of a game in the upper crust world of Gotham’s socialites, going to Wayne Manor and then guessing what the smell might be, but none had yet hit on the horrors that lay below. Lie below? Layeth beloweth.
Then Robin’s head broke the surface. Coughing and sputtering, he looked up at his mentor and grinned weakly: “Did we get him?” he breathed.
Unfortunately, Robin’s line delivery made it such that it was hard to tell whether this was an intentional in-movie joke, that Robin knew damn well they didn’t “get” anyone, which is a little funny, or not a joke at all, but a genuine question meant to entertain only the audience, not any characters in the movie.
This was not helped by Batman’s general lack of energy throughout the story. Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether he’s not amused by a joke or just generally exhausted from walking around in a 40-lb. rubber suit (we’ve all been there, bro!).