Batman carries on beginning in ... The Dark Knight

batman has always been more of a necessary evil kind of hero, which is why he's much more interesting than, say, superman.

Also, one thing emphasized in some comics (although this doesn't appear in DK, AA or LH) Bruce Wayne in his public persona is indeed a shiftless layabout - but that's a disguise too! He works behind the scenes through proxies on social programs like free clinics, underprivileged youth, all levels of education, etc. He's careful about the social and political implications of the corporate activity he funds (Lex Luthor has been a rival in this respect.) And so on. This has nothing to do with the movie, of course, which def. tries to have its cake and eat it too by having Wayne recognize Batman as a totally fucking fascist thing that he wants to step away from, but also gives him all the best clothes, chicks and toys.

In the film the chicks are clearly a decoy - there is no evidence that BW does anything with them except stepping out of choppers. Maybe I'm wrong - maybe he is supposed actually to be a womanizer? I didn't really get that impression; he seems hung up on Rachel D anyway.

The word 'fascist' is very carelessly thrown around in discussions like this. Fascism arguably involves a strong state, military spending, law & order, patriotism, perhaps the persecution of minorities. Batman's heroic-crime-fighting-outlaw-secret-identity-vigilante-(who doesn't kill or use a gun) doesn't really have much to do with that, I don't think.

A lame source, perhaps, but the wiki entry on fascism:

"Fascism is a term used to describe authoritarian nationalist political ideologies or mass movements that are concerned with notions of cultural decline or decadence and seek to achieve a millenarian national rebirth by exalting the nation or race, and promoting cults of unity, strength and purity. ... but the following elements are usually seen as its integral parts: patriotism, nationalism, statism, militarism, totalitarianism, anti-communism, economic planning (including corporatism and autarky), populism, collectivism, autocracy and anti-liberalism (i.e., opposition to political and economic liberalism)."

Most of that has very little to do with Batman, I think. It would make as much sense to call Superman a fascist icon (he's more 'patriotic', after all - Batman almost never refers to America or the nation) - but it probably wouldn't be worth doing that either.

Okay, fascism maybe isn't exactly accurate. But he's still a wealthy and powerful guy using his own resources to impose his vision of social order by circumventing the legal and political systems. That's not exactly truth justice and the american way.

Your last point is part of my point: 'truth, justice and the American way' sounds more like a fascist slogan than anything Batman has ever said.

In the film the chicks are clearly a decoy - there is no evidence that BW does anything with them except stepping out of choppers. Maybe I'm wrong - maybe he is supposed actually to be a womanizer? I didn't really get that impression; he seems hung up on Rachel D anyway.

this was explained as decoy behaviour in the first nolan batman.

legal system != justice, hence dark, violent, vigilante satisfying superheroes.

batman's big i'm-watching-you computer is admirably 'fascist' or at least orwellian (i guess those are difft things)

people are saying pretty otm things. bale/batman is pretty boring, not particularly sympathetic. joker is fantastic, and far more interesting. maggie g is great. and cute. oldman is similarly good (as usual).

this is really stunning on imax

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http://goodcomics.blogspot.com/2006/02/why-frank-miller-is-fascist-writer.html

i thought there were some missteps--overwrought, not-particularly-well-thought-out speeches and dialogue about justice, truth, heroism chief among them--but the filmmaking was so tight and well-paced that i didnt care (or, just as soon as i was getting really annoyed with some bit of dialogue, theyd cut to a sweeping shot of the city)

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You genuinely thought this movie was well-paced, max? It turned downright slovenly in the last 45 minutes.

yeah by well-paced i mostly meant just as soon as i was getting really annoyed with some bit of dialogue, theyd cut to a sweeping shot of the city--the end drags on a little long and once joker is out of the picture i was just sort of zzzzzzzzzzz

has anyone noticed how much better the sequels to most of the recent superhero movies are than the original? spider-man 2, x2, now this? and then the third movie usually sucks.

i don't think either of those films were better than the originals. i didn't see the third of either.

I've been thinking about that; my guess is that because each 'first' film almost necessarily needs to deal with the origin of the hero in question, that the first films exist almost from the get-go as introductions before you get to the actual story the director wants to tell. Also, the first film is a training ground for testing out new ideas. By the third film, everyone's too comfortable with what can be done, and so quality control, in the form of "can we manage this?' being answered with "yes" but not countered with "should we bother?", evaporates and "pile on the villains" one-upmanship cuts in, and you get Spidey 3 or The Last Stand.

Does that make sense?

yeah thats what i was thinking too

But anyway, all Joker's talk about pro-Anarchy, anti-Planning = utter hokum as he has by far the most complex Plans of anyone in the picture. I can only excuse this as lies that he tells Dent to try to make him go bad.

i dont remember the speech that well but i thought this was less that joker doesnt have any plans and more that he makes plans without a point--he's less 'anarchic' than he is, like, 'anti-utilitarian' or something. there are no ends in joker's world.

maybe these movies should all be made-for-tv miniseries instead

http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Movies/07/22/bale.questioned.ap/index.html?eref=rss_latest

This is mental if it's true.

and you could replicate max's imax experience by sitting really really close to the tv

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haha yes, the cover of today's evening standard says "police question batman"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1037174/Batman-star-Christian-Bale-arrested-assault-claims-brought-mother-sister.html

I know he thinks he's a bit method, but this is stupid.

would love to see an HBO gotham mcu series, so long as there are super-villains

my guess is that because each 'first' film almost necessarily needs to deal with the origin of the hero in question, that the first films exist almost from the get-go as introductions before you get to the actual story the director wants to tell.

it makes sense, but i think i enjoy the origin part of superhero movies more than the soap opera love stories etc that sequels bring into it.

xpost maybe his mum and sister were planning a heist.

"I'm sorry, son, but Heath's performance is just better than yours."

maybe her tea's just not up to alfred's standard.

Entirely possible.

still, vigilante tea-inspired punishment beatings? bit much.

But he's still a wealthy and powerful guy using his own resources to impose his vision of social order by circumventing the legal and political systems.

Just like everybody else, ever. The purpose of every major character in these stories is to examine which rules stick and when and why to break the rest. Suggesting that a billionaire with nearly limitless resources should be a stickler about adhering to the legal system if he really cares about justice is some blinkered wishful thinking Rachel Dawes shit.

Ken Lay would agree.

yes, ken lay was very interested in justice and crimefighting, which is why he's such a popular and fascinating superhero character.

maggie g is kinda sexless

likes:

ledger - was concerned he'd be ripping off sociopath performances of filmdom past wholesale but he truly did his own thing. oddly enough, he reminded me only of cagney at certain points. the fact that his performance was one-note (but what a note!) actually helped to keep him from completely running off with the movie. I wasn't thinking "poor dead heath ledger" while watching it, but today I was struck by the fact he *won't* be returning for the sequel, which is total sadface. ah well, at least he left on a high note. joker in nurse outfit blowing up hospital was alltime perverse + delightful.

brought the gritty - much flatter than the previous batman, which suffered from marrying its bleakitude to outlandish, contrived situations. the policier vibe gave this one stronger footing. the relentless pace actually felt relentless.

zeitgeisty - the moral dilemmas of declaring war on terror weren't just superficial frosting, they were baked in. nothing it had to say about the morality of fighting crime was particularly astute (hoary old cop/criminal duality) and perhaps we will look back and laugh but I like the way it continually returned to the topic without getting didactic about it. a little bit of ambivalence goes a long way.

dislikes:

terminator action porn OD: from the supersize-it school of filmmaking. there's more soda in this cup than you could ever possibly drink, but that's okay, it's BETTER cuz there's MORE. around the 37th kidnapping is when I put my head in my hands.

pandering: some of the playing to the crowd was creaky, e.g. editing beats for audience reactions, dorky comic relief, made in china lulz no thanks

batman, why him growl? - okay, I know bale did diff bw/bm voices in the last movie, but this was ridiculous. perhaps it was an attempt to show batman becoming animalistic due to the devolving situation (definitely thought it became more pronounced as the movie went on) but no, that didn't work.

You might wanna check the comments in the link before you respond. Dave Kehr:

“The Dark Knight” is “Dirty Harry” stripped of Don Siegel’s ambivalence and ambiguity. Here again, one madman (Christian Bale’s Batman/Clint Eastwood’s Harry) is posited as the only effective way of combating another (Heath Ledger’s Joker/Andy Robinson’s Scorpio). The two figures are identified as morally equivalent (”You complete me,” says Ledger to Bale, nastily referencing “Jerry Maguire”), but where Siegel’s camera literally recoils in horror at the moment Harry leaps into madness (when he steps on Scorpio’s wound in the football stadium), Nolan seems to embrace, and even romanticize, his hero’s obsessive, abusive behavior. Is the Dark Knight just George Bush with a better outfit, demanding that he be allowed all of the available “tools” to combat terrorism, even if they include torture and eavesdropping? Like Bush, Batman has his own warrantless wiretapping program, but Nolan is kind enough to assure us that, once his goal is accomplished, the superhero will blow it up. Is he suggesting that we can count on the Dark President to do the same?

http://www.davekehr.com/?p=59

Sorry to beat a dead horse but every dramatic hero since the Enlightenment has been free of the normal rules that apply to you and me, by dint of either their profession (cop, private investigator, nobleman, spy, etc) or their criminality (mafiosi, man-on-the-run, etc). It's an interesting rut that Western dramatic writing has gotten itself into, that we can't imagine the sort of heroism we aspire to other than being embodied by someone to whom the normal rules don't apply. Batman is in the basic Scarlet Pimpernel / Zorro mold, a nobleman who disguises himself not so much as to not be caught by the law (since by being noble he is somewhat above the law anyway), but so as to retain his special position in society (and thereby continue his heroic tasks)

Dave Kehr again:

Both the ferry boat and the wrong-rescue scenes are typical of “The Dark Knight”’s strategy of setting up impossible, “Sophie’s Choice”-like moral dilemmas for its hero, and then resolving them through sleight-of-hand: in a bit of reverse racism, a scary-looking black man steps up to make the tough moral choice that a wimpy-looking white guy is unable to handle; Batman arrives to rescue his girl friend, only to find that the Joker has betrayed him (!) and switched locations. In both cases the hero gets to look fine and noble while he wrestles with issues that are then resolved with no moral cost to him. I agree that the movie is not triumphalist, but triumphalism is hardly in style at this point in time. Instead, it substitutes the dark romanticism of the misunderstood outsider, who takes on the sins of the community the better to redeem the poor saps who will remain forever ungrateful to him — a slight improvement over a ticker tape parade finale, but still a self-flattering, adolescent notion.

difference being, in real life you have to decide whether or not you trust a vigilante, and wonder what his reasons are.

batman is just a comic book hero, and we know he's the good guy. i don't think the parallel holds up.

he used the term "reverse racism" = don't listen to a thing the guy says

Batman arrives to rescue his girl friend, only to find that the Joker has betrayed him (!)

is this what happened? maybe i got jumbled, i thought the point was that Batman chose Dent

In real life you have to decide whether or not you trust the rules, too.

I said it could be read as a rather sympathetic critique of post-9/ll government overreach in my review. Didn't take that line of thinking as far as Kehr.

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Hand's writing is so good.

batman seemed kind of fat and super slow in this. especially when the whole first movie was about how batman is a ninja. he really needs to go up a size in that mask

the audience in my theatre cheered when gordon reappeared - in this world, the heroes are celebrated just for *surviving*. I guess I'm getting kind of meta about this, but that seems like a low point for comic book heroics. so it's kind of hard to read tdk as a triumphant celebration of bush policies. have the ostensible good guys (and the audience by proxy) ever been so sadistically thrashed during a comic book movie? does anyone walk out of the theatre upbeat + feeling good about the state of gotham (or the world)?

would love to see an HBO gotham mcu series, so long as there are super-villains

max, have you read Gotham Central? if not, you would probably like it!

It took me a while to figure out that wasn't Renee Montoya tagging along with Gordon all the time.

have the ostensible good guys (and the audience by proxy) ever been so sadistically thrashed during a comic book movie?

It's difficult to think of any action movie in the last 15-20 years where the hero isn't beaten and bloodied by the end of it. We seem to need our heroes punished, with marks all over their bodies.

Thanks, pinefox.