Flashback 1995:
batmanforever.com Screens
Twenty years ago we launched the first website for a major motion picture, Batman Forever, at batmanforever.com. Here are a few screens from the site and some thoughts, looking back.
Home
The Home page didn’t even say the title of the movie — well unless you count the graphic on the blimp. We thoroughly embraced the environmental metaphor and immersed our audience in Batman’s world of Gotham City.
We assumed that a user would arrive at the site and be intrigued by what we presented and interested enough to explore the world that we offered. Why, you might ask, would we ever think that a user would be so generous with their time?
When this site launched, there were not many sites on the web. Anything new out there that offered something vaguely interesting was worth checking out for the early pioneer audiences on the web. Movies did not get websites by default. Batmanforever.com was one of the first. So we could assume people would explore. And they did.
The Batman Forever site was all about the environmental experience. We dropped our audience into Gotham City. And that’s where the home page begins with a big “Welcome to Gotham” graphic. Then there’s the stylized city itself. Then the skyline suggesting navigation. And that’s it. No text.
We put all of the cutting-edge web technology we had into this site. Server-push images for animation? Check. “Image Map” to link different parts of an image to different places? Oh yeah. That new BG tag in Netscape 1.1 (which the site required!) that allowed us to — get this — add a tiling background image to the entire page? Read on and see how that exciting new tag inspired us to build skyscrapers and secret lairs…
Cinema
We hosted video files and allowed users to download clips. Innovation in its day. On YouTube I recently came across a clip of U2's song from the movie, and the user who uploaded it said that it was the first AVI file that he had ever downloaded from the web — downloaded from batmanforever.com.
I love the “WARNING 5.8 MB” part.
I love this interactive feature as well. Send emails to the characters and they email you back. In character. Fun!
Plus a “Bulletin Board” for comments. Who could ask for more?
Gallery
Most of the pages on the site were “long scroll” pages but this one rotated the path 90 degrees. We sought to allow users the experience of walking through an art gallery and so a horizontal scroll just made sense. Literal “THIS WAY” signpost required for unexpected UI.
Library
Information and notes on all aspects of the production lived in the library because words.
Riddles
Pure fun in the “Riddles” or “Claw Island” section. Some media files here, sound clips, photos, etc. and a secret portal to…
Batcave
More downloads here in the Batcave, more media. Sometimes the site broke it all down by media type (“Cinema” for videos, “Library” for text), sometimes by character (here in the “Batcave” and on the Riddler’s “Claw Island” page) but it was all about exploration, discovery and immersion into the world.
Pretty much what the World Wide Web was all about back then.
For more on the history of batmanforever.com read my article, Batman to Birdman Forever.
