Hell froze over when George Clooney unexpectedly reprised the role from his career he despises above all others, made all the more shocking by the fact he’d spent a quarter of a century blasting the film in question whenever he was asked about it.

In what was intended to be a star-making performance that elevated him from being a TV actor into a movie star when the transition between screens small and big was a lot harder to navigate than it is today, the E.R. heartthrob was cast as one of pop culture’s biggest icons when he was drafted in to replace Val Kilmer as the title character in Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin.

Unfortunately for Clooney, any dreams he had of overnight cinematic superstardom went up in smoke when the comic book adaptation was savaged by critics, denigrated by fans of the Caped Crusader, and secured a reputation as an abysmal example of blockbuster cinema gone horribly awry.

Clooney was self-aware enough to take it on the chin and profusely apologise for Batman & Robin in the aftermath, constantly offering a withering appraisal of not just his own work, but the film as a whole. “Akiva Goldsman – who’s won the Oscar for writing since then – he wrote the screenplay. And it’s a terrible screenplay, he’ll tell you,” he admitted to Howard Stern. “I’m terrible in it, I’ll tell you”.

The one-time Dark Knight was convinced he’d helped kill off the franchise for good until Christopher Nolan came along to breathe new life into both the character and the reboot in general with Batman Begins, while it even inspired the rise of the Marvel Cinematic Universe after figurehead Kevin Feige labelled Batman & Robin “so bad that it demanded a new way of doing things”.

Of course, Clooney ended up doing just fine after deliberately avoiding effects-heavy fare in favour of carving out a reputation as a multi-talented performer and filmmaker, which has ended up winning him two Academy Awards from eight nominations across six different categories.

Despite his active disdain for Batman & Robin and the effect it had on his career in the immediate aftermath, though, Clooney did the unthinkable when he popped up as Bruce Wayne in the final scene of The Flash, bringing his involvement with the infamous superhero bust full circle.

By his own entirely justifiable admission, “There were not a lot of requests for me to reprise my role as Batman”, not that it stopped him from agreeing to do so when the opportunity presented itself. It might have been cathartic to a certain extent, but just like Batman & Robin before it, Clooney’s return to the world of DC Comics also ended up dying a slow and painful death at the box office.

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