Come anticipate "The Dark Knight Rises" with *BATSPOILERS*

yeah i don't recall any huge plot holes, despite the ludicrous conceits.

some stuff was probably treated too elliptically.

I've been reading the wiki entries on some of these potential villains & the impression I'm left with is that they really, really need to up the level of security at Arkham Asylum.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2010/03/christopher-nolan-takes-flight-with-superman-we-have-a-fantastic-story-1.html

His villain choices to date have steered clear of strongly supernatural or super-science characters (no Man-Bat, Mr. Freeze or Poison Ivy, for instance) but he shook his head when asked if that was a trajectory he would continue. He did however concede one tidbit: “It won’t be," he said, "Mr. Freeze.”

He's writing and producing a new Superman movie too? Oh dear, I hope he isn't gonna do an "edgy" and "psychological" version of Supes too, that would be like the wrongest thing ever! I'd rather see something like an adaptation of All-Star Superman, but I can't see Nolan writing anything like that.

I think the strength of Nolan's Batman franchise is that he's created a bigger Gotham, and one that exists in a larger world in that Bruce Wayne can travel and Batman can go to Hong Kong. It makes sense that you'd see more than one criminal, gang, or villain, although the plots so far have done pretty well with keeping things balanced. I think the weakness of the Batman franchise, especially the earlier film series, was that there had to be some drawn out "Villian A meets Villian B" scene in the film, or that they had to tie together or have the origin story every time.

Maybe that's the win: no (complex) villain origins.

Nolan Batman = take the subtext of the Batman comics since forever, which has been made thuddingly overt at least since Frank Miller '86, and make it more overt and turn Batman into some pseud brainy b.s. And there's also one really, really big car with a really big turn radius.

The Burton Batman movies used space better. They communicated an unseen Gotham through judicious art direction and storyboarding, and they showed (or at least implied) night and fog without being pictorially dark.

I felt insulted by Batman Begins.

I thought the Burton films were good at the time, but there's a lot of characters standing around mugging for the camera. Maybe it's because the age I saw them at, but they seem a lot more cartoony. The Joker bouncing around the art museum, the Penguin doing his "oh what do we have here" intro to Catwoman and providing audience laughs that deformed freak is perving on latex catsuit.

Maybe Nolan's is too WHY SO SERIOUS-business, but I don't mind it. As for the idea that there's "pseud brainy b.s.," that's kind of baked into the franchise. The world's greatest detective, right?

I'd rather see something like an adaptation of All-Star Superman

me too, but this isn't gonna happen

Burton's first Batman movie is an ugly piece of shit

YOU WANNA GET NUTS?! COME ON - LET'S GET NUTS!!!

please Joker, don't make me listen to that shitty prince song again!

i agree that it's not a very good movie but it's not ugly by any means.

Also, Burton movies def. had the best Batmobile

no

yes

best screen batmobile anyway

i honestly don't give a shit about the comics

tbh I don't like the idea of Batman's shit being super-stylized. If he has batarangs shaped like bats, so be it. But the stylized bat logo, the super-stylized car with wings, meh.

Note that I did have the plastic model kit where you had to assemble/paint the Burton-era batmobile, I just think Burton's films (surprise surprise) ended up being about super-stylized decor and villains, and less about the characters and script behind those.

batman returns is really pretty great

guys he is called batman, if his car isn't shaped like a giant bat then I just don't know what to say

if I was batman you'd better believe that my dutch oven is going to be shaped like a bat

honestly i wouldn't mind if they treated the next batman movie kind of like the 1st spider-man movie, that is, a kind of straightforward extension of the basic premise of the franchise/classic narrative, not some psuedointellectual psuedorelevant overpsychologized stuff.

but with nolan onboard that's probably a vain hope.

actually i don't know why i'm posting here; i don't really give a shit.

YOU WANNA GET NUTS?! COME ON - LET'S GET NUTS!!!

Bale couldn't pull this off in a million years.

Also

THIS TOWN NEEDS AN ENEMA!!!

michael keaton is a much better actor than xian bale

^^^^ I might have argued against this before seeing "Terminator: Salvation".

Bale's made a bunch of shit but let's be fair here so has Keaton. They do different things, not sure who I'd really say is "better" as an overall actor but Bale is definitely a better/more convincing Batman. Never once believed Keaton was capable of psychotically beating up criminals, nor could he successfully pull off the vacant yuppie thing that's essential to Bruce Wayne

I thought you were supposed to believe in Bruce Wayne's "psychic wounds" or some such nonsense, and in this Keaton was excellent.

btw Batmanis the only post=Beetlejuice Tim Burton film I can watch.

I thought the Burton films were good at the time, but there's a lot of characters standing around mugging for the camera. Maybe it's because the age I saw them at, but they seem a lot more cartoony.

Hooray! So far only the first two X-Men movies have managed the serious tip.

i think bale works just fine, cos the implication is that there is just not much to the guy.

With Nolan directing there's not much to the comic either.

I really do think the first Burton Batman is just unbelievably ugly - day-glo color schemes, shoulder pads, consistently poor use of shadows and steam to evoke some kind of urban/nighttime environment that never feels believable, cheap shit architecture that looks terribly fake... the whole thing looks like its shot on a series of poorly designed soundstages and it shows. not once is the environment believable or immersive, it all feels false. when people tell me they like this movie I just assume they haven't actually seen it in 20 years.

and this is in addition to the shitty acting, a script riddled with plotholes, etc.

One thing I think Bale did much, much better than Keaton was portray a palpable sense of self-loathing within Bruce Wayne; I don't know how much of this was due to directorial tone and how much was due to Bale actually hating himself and that bleeding through into his performance (it seems like a very common thread through the characters he's portrayed).

Keaton did a much better job of portraying Bruce as someone who could conceivably fit the mold of someone who was the head of a wildly successful technological research company, though; Bale's take seems like a little too much of a fuckup without the proven core of competence shown by RDJ in his (100% spot-on) portrayal of Tony Stark.

Bale just looked vaguely petulant. Keaton genuinely looked as if it hurt him to pucker his mouth in that soul-weary manner.

the burton movies are unwatchable imo

I think the second one's great. the first one's an abortion.

nah

The first one has some pacing problems but is a very good visualization of a live-action cartoon; the second is more of the same with much better antagonists.

(and better pacing, oops)

The Schumacher movies are interesting mostly because they only really succeed when the antagonists don't do flat-out Joker impersonations (which is why Carey's Riddler works better than Tommy Lee Jones's Two-Face and Uma Thurman's Poison Ivy was the best villain out of all of them).

I think we can all agree that if they continue on with the Nolan version, they either better keep him as the director or do some serious quality control. The Burton-originated series got... well, we all know what happened there.

x-post, and apparently Dan is somehow defending any part of the Schumacher crap

basically i think the nolan batmans are the best just b/c i dig the scope and style and the villains are all pretty dope. the burton ones maybe looked kinda cool at the time but now i have no use for them. the schumacher ones...batman forever i remember as competent some of the time but i think that's only because it's not a total mess like b&r.

Val Kilmer was fine as Wayne/Batman. He didn't fit the role nearly as well as Keaton but he did a good-enough job of continuing the tone and he was removed enough to make the Robin situation seem a lot less like gross creepy pedophilia. Tommy Lee Jones did Two-Face completely wrong and no one involved in the film had any idea of what the character was actually supposed to be, so he ended up being a budget Joker. The Riddler was also verging on budget Joker, but since the original character is also kind of a budget Joker, it wasn't as off-putting.

"Batman and Robin" was ill-conceived on almost every level. A smarmy, self-satisfied Batman is never a good one, Chris O'Donnell was way too old to play Robin as so much of a whiny bitch, Alicia Silverstone was completely disengaged from the movie and Arnold played Mr. Freeze less like a scientist and more like The Terminator. Uma Thurman seemed to be the only one who read the script, looked at the costumes and sets and went, "hookay, in order for this to work at all, I need to out-camp the 60s series" and, as a result, her part was the only one that seemed like it matched the movie they were trying to make. Still wasn't enough to save the movie, though.

(sometime I should rewatch all of these movies to shore up my arguments, lol)

Still wasn't enough to save the movie, though.

need to put this in the understatement hall of fame

there was a weird period of time where chris o'donnell was actually a *star*, which i find kind of unbelievable.

mid 90s was a weird time