Batman carries on beginning in ... The Dark Knight

yeah absolutely. i really hope nolan makes a trilogy and that this the "dark" middle part...wondering where this arc is going...seems like a very pessimistic place for it to end. then again, i've interpreted nolan's other films as having pessimistic endings. the prestige also has the theme of the illusions we keep for our own good.

hell, doesn't memento end in a similar fashion? i can hardly remember.

And thus you, Ryan, become part of that very film.

now where were we

http://www.brownbatterystudios.com/sixthings/images/tutorial06/final.jpg

This doesn't necessarily make it pro-Bush, but I'd argue that, if the analogy holds up, it's more sympathetic than condemnatory. It's a tragic story, and while Bats has his flaws, he's still our (dark, conflicted) hero protagonist.

or maybe the film implies we need a different kind of hero? or that our heroes - whether they are bush or batman - are not equipped to handle the challenges before them? the general tone of hopelessness throughout the film seeems to lend it to such conclusions.

I think that kind of summary conclusion will have to wait until after we see where he goes with the third one (presuming there is a third one and that Nolan directs it).

but at the end of tdk, the remaining good guys are all caught in some kind of falsehood. batman/gordon are lying about dent, alfred's deceived batman by burning rachel's letter, even fox could be said to be compromised by helping batman "just this once" against his princples. everyone's personal integrity (including batman's) is in tatters.

as far as i can remember the only honest hero in the whole movie is tiny lister jr.

x-post -- Yeah, that third film idea is not yet set in stone, though of course the sheer success of the film makes it clear there will be one. If Nolan does it and he wants to push the ideas he's already put in place even further, that could be astonishing.

batman's a believer in dent's promise, but he comes to realize that dent's methods are not up to the task. only batman's ability to operate outside the system can end the joker's reign of terror. this echoes the bush attitude that human rights are great, but they should be discarded when the chips are down.

I might buy this line of rhetoric if the film supported it in the slightest. Batman bends over backwards to make Dent the hero throughout the movie; if he is repudiating anything, it is himself. Everything he does is in service of making himself irrelevant; that doesn't jibe at all with the idea that Batman doesn't think Dent's methodology is not worth pursuing. In fact, taking the rap for Dent's freakout is an explicit renunciation of Batman's methodology; he turns himself into a criminal in order to protect the path he sees as the way the city should go forward. (Whether anyone buys it is a whole separate issue.)

A slightly different variation on the Bush:Batman question. If Bush is Batman, who is the Joker? Asking within the analogy, it's clear that the Joker has to be your generic Islamic terrorist, which makes the Batman/Joker dichotomy problematic. I don't think Bush poses himself as the same as Osama Bin Ladin, just for good instead of evil. I think the US government likes to pose themselves as legitimacy V. illegitimacy. And no matter how you determine Batman's moral station in the flick, he's certainly illegitimate.

yeah, I don't really buy my own argument here, since batman never explicitly repudiates dent's approach at any point.

however, there is the gap between what comes out of batman's mouth and what he actually does, which is basically motherfuck a bill of rights.

xpost to dan

which is basically motherfuck a bill of rights.

haha!

And no matter how you determine Batman's moral station in the flick, he's certainly illegitimate.

-- Mordy

I didn't mean legitimacy of principle. I meant actual legitimacy. As has been restated on this thread numerous times, he exists outside the law. This is definitionally illegitimate.

I think you guys saw a different Batman movie than me. In the one I saw shit blew up and it was fun.

xpost: Gotcha. Morally uncompromised, legally illegitimate.

In the one I saw shit blew up and it was fun.

Oh right, this one:

http://thecarter.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/batman_und_robin_usa_1997_b01.jpg

BB, were you using the bathroom whenever the film brought up nuance outside the scope of blowing things up?

I think you guys saw a different Batman movie than me. In the one I saw shit blew up and it was fun.

that's okay you can talk about that one here too

OK cool

goddamnit we need a spoiler tag so i don't have to spend 45 minutes reading the thread after i finally getting around to seeing the movie that's already been out for over a week in the states.

anyway all i really want to know is this: who of you voted to blow up the other boat? eh? c'mon, who's with me?!

The line for the IMAX showing I'm seeing in an hour is crazy. Glad we came here early.

FWIW, I liked this one much more than Batman Begins.

been out to lunch with this thread for a while, but contenderizer basically otm throughout

In the hallway en route to the IMAX screen:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3177/2717851875_2d99abb2ff.jpg

Wow and very cool.

There were similar snippets of Joker dialogue on other mirrors but that one caught my eye in particular.

Look at this idiot

Oops

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080729/ap_en_ot/odd_joker_arrested;_ylt=Asg2BvuGUkI7Yk.XtNDX7iNX24cA

Isn't that C-Man?

much like Michael Clayton I dislike movies that find it necessary to illustrate moral ambiguity with plot frenetics and excess. Isn't there an entire department of competent DAs that can fill the place of Dent? He certainly wasn't competent in Internal Affairs since poor Gordon still has crooked cops on staff. I can't help but think that any Escobar-era Columbian judge would find the whole lot of them to be, well, pussies.

Been reading about the skyhook used to get him out of Hong Kong...

"Fulton first used instrumented dummies as he prepared for a live pickup. He next used a pig, as pigs have nervous systems close to humans. Lifted off the ground, the pig began to spin as it flew through the air at 125 mph (200 km/h). It arrived on board undamaged but in a disoriented state. Once it recovered, it attacked the crew."

they skipped that part in the movie

we should all do this
http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20080728/capt.a3b842e7294844579da5f34ac136dad0.joker_arrested_dt101.jpg

Already have.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v417/albaalba/ilx/n562993899_592918_928.jpg

Just saw this last night. i enjoyed it, and ledger and oldman are just as good as everybdy says.

would have agreed with most of what contederizer has said wrt the movie's political sympathies, but then the thought occurred to me that if the film really was bush-sympathetic, then the good guys would just have taken out the joker in the street after the awesome truck stunt, and won.

Batman keeps to his 'rule' and this allows the joker (who doesn't have any such rules) to wreak further havoc, and that seemed to be the dilemma the movie posed- is claiming the moral victory worth the extra damage caused in a situation where the opposition have no rules, no geneva conventions, etc?

on a purely film-fan note, i think it should have ended after rachel's death and harvey's awakening, with the joker in custody. the remaining 40 or so minutes was clumsy, muddled and unneccessary, and was in essence a completely different story and tone to what had gone before, and didn't really work for me.

i really had a problem with the joker managing to rig the only three ferries that were being used to transport people from gotham. hundreds of barrels of gas, and, uh, nobody checked the engine room? and his escape from detention just plain sucked.

on a purely film-fan note, i think it should have ended after rachel's death and harvey's awakening, with the joker in custody. the remaining 40 or so minutes was clumsy, muddled and unneccessary, and was in essence a completely different story and tone to what had gone before, and didn't really work for me.

I've heard a number of people say this, and I tend to agree. Except it would probably be better ending after the Joker escapes and Caine has a chance to deliver his line about burning down the forest. Not that I think the film would have been quite satisfactory ending anywhere in the existing line, but yeah, with some work.

The Two-Face transformation was unconvincing and rushed, despite some good work with the Joker in the hospital. His disapproval at Lieutenant Gordon not rooting out bent cops didn't seem adequate fuel for his fire, nor their decision to try to save him before Rachel. Talking of which, that Joker's whole "who will you choose to save and who will you condemn to death" bomb canard made no sense. If it had just been one guy (esp. Batman) it would have worked, but they had the whole police department and Batman at their disposal - there was no problem splitting and heading to both locations. Rachel's just seemed too far away, or the police were too slow.

Generally, this film was far less tightly focused that Batman Begins. I had nothing to consistently grip on to.

http://occasionalsuperheroine.blogspot.com/2008/07/johnny-depp-to-play-riddler-in-batman.html

i was actually looking through the list of batman villains on wikipedia last night since the topic of a third movie came up....having a hard time imagining almost all of those characters existing in the universe created by nolan.

Anyone else notice the resemblance between the spoiler scene where they're trying to prevent a political assassination/Gordon bites itspoiler and the climax of "The Day of the Jackal"?

yeah i was thinking that as i was watching it.

Did anyone ever make it through the 90s jackal?

i was actually looking through the list of batman villains on wikipedia last night since the topic of a third movie came up....having a hard time imagining almost all of those characters existing in the universe created by nolan.

anarky would fit in brilliantly methinks

i was actually looking through the list of batman villains on wikipedia last night since the topic of a third movie came up....having a hard time imagining almost all of those characters existing in the universe created by nolan.

Deadshot would be great. Maybe Bane, if he were done correctly.

Yeah, given the care that's gone into these flicks, I can't imagine they're already casting when a script hasn't even been written yet (but IN A SHOCKER it's not like I have any idea how Hollywood works).

The Riddler or Penguin could work well in Nolan's more muted Gothamverse, tho -- it's not like they actually put Two-Face into his half-purple suit after the accident, or gave the Joker a squirting flower. Still hoping for Catwoman, tho, maybe played by Michelle Monaghan or someone equally attractive / demure w/ some chops.

A Bane / Hugo Strange mash-up could work, tho they already went the "crazy scientist" route. I'd hope they don't go the "I WILL BREAK THE BATMAN" route -- I don't want to know what that would sound like.

I'm surprised no one's suggested MAN-BAT

this was pretty fantastic - too long. definitely would've been nice if they'd trimmed a bit of the fat.

and now to plow through 300 messages....

> I'm surprised no one's suggested MAN-BAT

No one but me.