Film director who enjoyed success with St Elmo’s Fire, Flatliners and Falling Down

Joel Schumacher, who has died aged 80 of cancer, made the less advanced track from costume designer to film-maker. As a director, the style and swagger of his snazzy strikes often helped mask some unsophisticated needlework. He was an opportunist rather than a visionary- a “pop culture sponge”, as he situated it in 2000, adept at capitalising on a fad, from disco movies in the 1970 s to superhero extravaganzas in the 90 s, when he took over the Batman dealership for two films.

“I’m not humiliated about anything I’ve done, ” he said in 1993, though admittedly this was before Batman and Robin( 1997 ), which he quoth as the closest he had come to selling out. He apologised for that film in 2017, though not for controversially adding rubber nipples to the hero’s breastplate both now and in Batman Forever( 1995 ). “Maybe I was just naive but I’m still glad we did it.”

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Read more: theguardian.com