It's funny, I've always put most of the blame for the failure of B&R on Akiva Goldsman. While he did help write Batman Forever, which I enjoyed, I've hated almost every other original screenplay he's written. (Lost in Space? Practical Magic? *shudder*)

In general he seems much better with adaptations.

Anyway, after Batman Forever, it seemed clear to me that Schumacher could direct, so I was forced to assume that the problem lay elsewhere. Akiva was one possibility, the incredible load of characters another. Both Batman Forever and Batman Returns suffered from character overload to some extent. Catwoman's arc really should have very little to do with the Penguin, and Two Face and the Riddler are both designed to be writ large, to have one playing second fiddle to the other is tragic. But despite the overload both (IMHO) more or less worked.

B and R, on the other hand, had 3 villians (Dr. Freeze, Poison Ivy, and Bane), made the most significant one the person who couldn't act (Arnold), and included Bane for no reason other than that he had been involved in recent comic book happenings. (Happenings that weren't mirrored in the movie at all, of course.)

Throw in the addition of Batgirl and the "Alfred is going to die" story line, and the thing was doomed to failure unless they were going to ship it to theatres in installments.

I hadn't realized until this article, though, how much of a "killing the goose that lays the golden eggs" kind of deal this was for Warner Brothers.