Batman carries on beginning in ... The Dark Knight

Which comic book movies with exploding shit and big moral dilemma debates do it better? Cos I haven't seen one I've enjoyed more.

Superman 3

for the record amateurist is over-analytical as hell

i liked x-men 2 a lot, both on its own and in terms of capturing the tone and moral themes of the comics. i don't remember if the crow had any big moral dilemmas, but it definitely blew a lot of things up and i enjoyed more than the bale batmans.

people in having different opinions shocker...

i don't remember if the crow had any big moral dilemmas

Did have a dead guy in clown makeup, though.

My post was specifically spurred by darraghmac's "there is no point to discussing this movie" post, which I found fatuous and unthinking

i don't think i've made any such post- i've been discussing the movie for the past week with everyone else on here, so you've either confused me with someone or misread me.

and, as far as summer blockbuster/superhero movies go, it's certainly had a lot worth discussing, so i really don't know where you've gotten that from.

I don't find Mike Leigh's dialogue particularly "realistic."

You're American!

the prereogatives of the genre whereby the superhero is defined by his essential goodness

Ok, this is absolute nonsense. Maybe, MAYBE if you're limiting it strictly to "major studio, major publisher comic book movies," but outside of that, it's so far off the mark as to be laughable. Seek ye one Wolferine for starters.

People keep calling the film incoherent and I don't understand what they mean because I don't think I misunderstood anything in the film.

I didn't notice than when the Joker is shooting at the police convoy from the truck, the truck has the slogan "laughter is the best medicine" on it, but the Joker has drawn a big red S so that it says "Slaughter is the best medicine" instead

also Dent was using the double sided coin and saying "tails you die" to the schizophrenic guy, so he was never actually going to kill him

So the early word is that it's *still* at number one in America. And sometime in the next few days it'll beat Burton's Batman in inflation-adjusted numbers.

Haha, okay, this is ridiculous -- the aimed-at-preschoolers official book adaptation of the movie. It's, um, different.

http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e222/nlb_muffin/the%20dark%20knight/Batman%20Saves%20the%20Day/bmansavesday_08.jpg

Actually there are apparently a couple of books like this out there that reinterpret certain scenes. Dear me. I wonder what the pencil trick turns into.

crayon trick?

seriously though, the clown mask on the right looks similar to the one The JOker wore in the bank robbery.

DETAILS, FUCKERS, DETAILS!

The Dent / Arkham nutter scenario is about the only one, and it's also more about not killing him (or anyone) (and especially not leaving justice to chance) than it is about not pummeling the shit outta him with fists.

I thought it was also as much a "because if you're seen to be killing a schizophrenic how;'s that gonna make you look, dumbass?", for whatever self serving purpose that might have implied.

I liked this film and I'm really not into the franchise. It was relentlessly loud and blammy and a lot happened and it was suprisingly long but I had little to complain about. Except maybe the "he's the darko knight" monologue at the end, which felt just a little glurgey.

Hahah the darko knight? Amusing typo.

He takes the mask off and it's really Jake! Incest! Almost.

Frightening.

I WISH it was Jake.

Actually he'd make an interesting Batman.

Nah, substitute Jake for Maggie and having Christian Bale and Aaron Eckhart fighting over Richard Dawes's affections.

"He was going to WAIT for me, Alfred."

"That's what they all say, sir."

I would never tolerate Jake talking to me about another guy.

In this case it would have been Christian.

Talking to you that is.

Brokeback Gotham.

actually Jake G was the frontrunner to play Batman before Bale got involved. what could have been etc...

he's great at almost being superheroes, what with his almost Spiderman

Fuck it, let's just have Jake play Robin in the next film and make that age-old homosexual subtext totally and utterly fucking overt.

Too lazy to read the whole 2500 post thread, so I'm just gonna jump in and say: his was a GREAT thriller, is already at #3 for US box office of all time at $442K (could surpass Stars Wars' #2 if it cracks $461K - which it will, even if it doesn't surpass Titanic's $600K)... and oh-so-significant: is #1 on The IMBD Top 250 already due to the fanboys haha.

That's all you really need to know, and if you didn't like it you're gonna be on the wrong side of history (as you're going to keep hearing about this goddamned "little comic book" for a long time to come - especially with the Heath Factor).

But this drives me nuts - apologies if it's been discussed upthread -

http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB121694247343482821.html

*this not his

Worrying that F Miller has the let's-kick-Islamic-terrorist's-ass outlook on rumored sequel, but he did write 300 after all. Ugh

I direct you, and anyone else with a Batman = Bush tizzy going on, in either direction, here - http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/010555.html

Radcliffe Joker-casting rumors for Batman Begins 2 start NOW

-- latebloomer (posercore24...), July 28th, 2006 3:09 PM. (latebloomer)

-- the doaple gonger (nickalicious), Tuesday, 1 August 2006 11:37 (2 years ago) Link

hmm?

Thx Scik Mouth - " What neocon readings of the film must overlook is that this is exactly the same in geopolitical reality: far from being unpalatable but necessary, the Iraq misadventure, Guantanamo Bay, extraordinary rendition etc have either achieved no results or made things worse."

if Heef hadn't died they could've been on some Killing Joke shit in the next one with Batman in Arkham desperately trying to convince the Joker to call a truce before they kill each other

That's all you really need to know, and if you didn't like it you're gonna be on the wrong side of history

but this is a comfort!

Either you're with us or against us@@@!

Anyway all of this isn't just "comib book fantasy" anymore m' lads, all superhero powers are becoming TEH REAL THANG:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26128485/

Scientists closing in on invisibility cloak
Using artificially engineered materials to redirect light around objects
The Associated Press
updated 6:48 p.m. PT, Sun., Aug. 10, 2008

WASHINGTON - Scientists say they are a step closer to developing materials that could render people and objects invisible.

Researchers have demonstrated for the first time that they were able to cloak three-dimensional objects using artificially engineered materials that redirect light around the objects. Previously, they only have been able to cloak very thin two-dimensional objects.

The findings, by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, led by Xiang Zhang, are to be released later this week in the journals Nature and Science.

The new work moves scientists a step closer to hiding people and objects from visible light, which could have broad applications, including military ones.

People can see objects because they scatter the light that strikes them, reflecting some of it back to the eye. Cloaking uses materials, known as metamaterials, to deflect radar, light or other waves around an object, like water flowing around a smooth rock in a stream.

Metamaterials are mixtures of metal and circuit board materials such as ceramic, Teflon or fiber composite. They are designed to bend visible light in a way that ordinary materials don't. Scientists are trying to use them to bend light around objects so they don't create reflections or shadows.

It differs from stealth technology, which does not make an aircraft invisible but reduces the cross-section available to radar, making it hard to track.

The research was funded in part by the U.S. Army Research Office and the National Science Foundation's Nano-Scale Science and Engineering Center.

still don't understand how that works

that kpunk article is smarter than the wsj piece, but almost as hapless. there is not a moral or ideological through-line in the movie. the total-information system is the best example: this is awful! yes, but just this once! well, ok! like a lot of things (see also the superficial debates over torture) it gives the film a little political buzz (ripped from the headlines!) without saying anything much.

and the idea that people need a HERO to believe in regardless of the truth, if it makes me think of anything, makes me think of pat tillman and jessica lynch. except the movie presents it with a straight face, without bothering to wonder if it even makes moral sense (it doesn't). that conceit mostly exists in order to make batman's "sacrifice" seem necessary and bold rather than like the masochistic martyrdom-seeking gobbledygook it is.

xpost: but i would like one invisibility cloak, please.

but mostly i don't see a lot of upside in subjecting the movie to those kinds of analyses, because its ideas -- such as they are -- can't stand up to it.

agreed w/ gypsy moth that there is no consistent ideology that's evoked by the film. but i mostly liked how the k-punk article is just refuting Klavan's self-pitying claims in the first place. Since let's face it: douchebag has a new book out and what better way to promote it than a) concoct this pseudo-grand-narrative of Hollywood's egregiously unjust "grey-listing" of conservatives (with the obligatory appearances on O'Reilly & Glenn Beck) and b) playing to his retrograde fanbase by stealing headlines and slapping them onto the biggest block-buster of the decade? see also here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/08/AR2008080802876_pf.html

or rather, i should say that was *my* favorite part of the k-punk article. i can't vouch for its veracity or effectiveness in subjecting the poor film to a post-Kantian analysis or reading ....which is what the rest of the post tried to do. i think.

that conceit mostly exists in order to make batman's "sacrifice" seem necessary and bold rather than like the masochistic martyrdom-seeking gobbledygook it is.

maybe. but i've realized that probably the best way to take the final scene is in the context of the conversation about caesar very early in the movie. it's batman's "george washington" moment, giving up power for the sake of the system that he wants to support.

I said it upthread, but one of the best ways to understand the movie (and, im finding, the last 3 decades of the comic books) is through the motifs of the Western--in fact i'd say something like The Searchers is a direct influence on the movie. Like, say, when John Wayne scalps an indian.

so one thing i keep feeling when i think about this movie is that yes the war on terror stuff seems like window-dressing because it IS, it's just placing old narratives in a new box. but these are extremely powerful ideas and they've been around for a while.

Superhero movies are TOTALLY Westerns in terms of pop-cult theory narrative structure, etc.

sure but i think say the searchers and unforgiven and red river have actual moral structures -- they really weigh questions of revenge, violence, loyalty, etc. in a coherent and complicated way. the conflicts are made palpable in the writing, the performances and the filmmaking. i heard some talk about those things in the nolans' clunky dialogue, but they weren't delivered on in the structure of the story or the strength of the performances. the only strong performance in the movie is ledger's, and he doesn't really present any moral quandaries at all, he just dances through and above them.

well, except for the ferryboat scene, which is like i said i think is the best section of the movie in terms of building moral tension. it's gimmicky, but it's handled pretty well. (it doesn't really fit into the movie's larger framework, though, its idea that either harvey dent or batman has galvanized the city into a new sense of moral possibility. instead it plays on the old idea of a fundamental decency that will always defeat an anti-moral force like the joker etc etc. if anything it makes a case that the city doesn't need a hero -- a potentially interesting idea that is of course just left dangling because the only real point of the scene is to give tick-tock tension.)

Well, actually I think the film(s) do(es) make that point, that Gotham doens't need a hero; that's kind of explicitly what Batman begins is about - Ra's Al Ghul thinks it needs raising to the ground, Wayne thinks it needs saving. And by the end of TDK, Batman and Gordon agree that, in the absence of Dent's hero, the city needs a villain, which Batman becomes. And the whole idea of escalation raises the idea of whether Gotham needs a hero - it certainly suggests it doesn't need one like Batman.

I'm wondering if the (Nolan) Batman films raise moral questions but don't provide answers, don't really judge the characters' actions, but instead leave the audience to judge.

Not necessarily immediate relevant but this 2005 interview with Nolan is one of the best I've read from him and, in light of where TDK ended up, of interest.

That's pretty much how I view it; the film isn't trying to give an answer.

if anything it makes a case that the city doesn't need a hero -- a potentially interesting idea that is of course just left dangling because the only real point of the scene is to give tick-tock tension.

If you want to get nitpicky about it, the point of that scene is to create a massively huge diversion for Harvey.

I read that Nolan interview Ned just linked sometime last week - it is indeed fascinating.