it's really pretty bad filmmaking. characters, plot, action sequences, everything about it is lumpy and unconvincing except heath ledger. and he's unconvincing too when he has to provide "depth" (that really horrible bit of dialogue where he has to explain his scars). i liked the ferryboat bit, which didn't have any confusing action for nolan to try to sort out. swooping over hong kong was pretty nifty, except that they had to invent a whole 10-minute sequence to justify about 30 seconds of cool footage.
― tipsy mothra, Friday, 1 August 2008 03:54 (fifteen years ago) link
everything about it is lumpy and unconvincing except heath ledger. and he's unconvincing too when he has to provide "depth" (that really horrible bit of dialogue where he has to explain his scars)
uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh wtf
― deeznuts, Friday, 1 August 2008 03:56 (fifteen years ago) link
Nolan's action sequences are fantastic. they only suck if you're sitting on the right side of the theatre in the front row. try not to bring pipes to the theatre next time.
― Bo Jackson Overdrive, Friday, 1 August 2008 03:57 (fifteen years ago) link
i just hate to see people settling for so little in their big-budget thrills. between this and casino royale, it's like people are impressed just to see a lot of crane shots and "moral ambiguity."
all 3 bourne movies are at least 2X better than the last two batman movies (as a point of comparison).
― tipsy mothra, Friday, 1 August 2008 04:00 (fifteen years ago) link
Condescending, party of one!
― Bo Jackson Overdrive, Friday, 1 August 2008 04:01 (fifteen years ago) link
i think bourne vs batman would be a great debate (someone brought up the bourne flicks earlier) but youre argument seems totally agenda-ridden, i mean you DID get that the joker was totally BSing, that the 'depth' of those sequences was meant to work on a couple levels, & that 'that really horrible bit' happened like 3 times in the movie, right?
― deeznuts, Friday, 1 August 2008 04:02 (fifteen years ago) link
yea, unless we're to believe he got his scars both from sticking a knife in his own mouth AND his father, quite coincidentally! :)
― Bo Jackson Overdrive, Friday, 1 August 2008 04:04 (fifteen years ago) link
yes he was lying. he always lied! or did he! he was just like us, but more honest. or was he? so meta.
the nolans always have terrible dialogue. (they got away with it in memento because who cared about the dialogue?) not that i'm claiming any great things for, say, the bourne dialogue. the relative lack of dialogue in those movies is one of their strengths.
i'm mostly just puzzled by all the things being glommed onto this movie, which is pretty gummed-up to begin with. i didn't hate it, it sort of held my attention intermittently, but the story did nothing but get stupider as it went and man people just don't know how to bring a blockbuster in under 2 hours anymore do they?
― tipsy mothra, Friday, 1 August 2008 04:14 (fifteen years ago) link
*waiting for examples of said dialogue*
― Bo Jackson Overdrive, Friday, 1 August 2008 04:16 (fifteen years ago) link
i mean really, all the white-knight-dark-knight stuff culminating in the final portentous voiceover, i was actively embarrassed to be in the theater. whatever gary oldman got paid to say that, it wasn't enough.
(xpost, but there you go)
― tipsy mothra, Friday, 1 August 2008 04:18 (fifteen years ago) link
what were you expecting in a comic book movie, David Mamet?
― Bo Jackson Overdrive, Friday, 1 August 2008 04:19 (fifteen years ago) link
no, not at all. but you can't call it a great movie on one hand and then turn around and say of course it's lightweight nonsense what-do-you-expect on the other. (which maybe you aren't saying, i don't know, it's a long thread.)
― tipsy mothra, Friday, 1 August 2008 04:26 (fifteen years ago) link
hay i seen a hollywood movie (that really horrible bit of dialogue where he has to explain his scars) atleast X 2 yu mean
― Sébastien, Friday, 1 August 2008 04:28 (fifteen years ago) link
just dropping by without context. can someone pls link to that thread that resume long threads%?
― Sébastien, Friday, 1 August 2008 04:29 (fifteen years ago) link
i expect comic-book movies to be incoherent nonsense, i just hope for them to be better-made and less overbearing.
― tipsy mothra, Friday, 1 August 2008 04:30 (fifteen years ago) link
"yes he was lying. he always lied! or did he! he was just like us, but more honest. or was he? so meta."
huh??
i really want to take my by now probably typical 'youre getting way too philosophical & ignoring the viscerality that is this formats best & primary means of speaking to its audience' tack but id get accused of being a rube
in defense of that line of argument though: the first scene wasnt about depth or explaining the jokers origins (maybe, to some extent, it was intended to be deceptively so) - it was about making us wonder what the fuck he was about to do to this dude, & keeping us on the edge of our seats while we waited to find out. the second scene (iirc, there mayve been another in between or after) was meant to do the same as far as maggie g's charcter was concerned, while expanding the complexity of the joker - if youre so intellectually distant from the movie that you didnt give a damn about its more visceral aspects, i dont know why you bothered to pay for it, except to tell people as much
― deeznuts, Friday, 1 August 2008 04:36 (fifteen years ago) link
if youre so intellectually distant from the movie that you didnt give a damn about its more visceral aspects, i dont know why you bothered to pay for it, except to tell people as much
because everybody including my brother, ilx and manohla dargis told me it was better than it is. and i love my brother, i like ilx and i don't have anything against manohla dargis. i just ain't feel it. i don't begrudge warner bros. my $11, but having spent it i'm allowed to say it's a pretty dull event.
― tipsy mothra, Friday, 1 August 2008 04:49 (fifteen years ago) link
well, it was no Goodbye, Dragon Inn...
― rockapads, Friday, 1 August 2008 05:00 (fifteen years ago) link
fewer steamed buns, for one thing.
― tipsy mothra, Friday, 1 August 2008 05:03 (fifteen years ago) link
i do agree that this movie was too long. the hong kong sequence was nifty but will probably be fast forwarded when i buy the DVD.
another big issue i had, and i hope this isn't any kind of spoiler alert at this point in the thread, is that the whole plan with the bombs on the ferries is just impossible to plan in advance. i try really hard to suspend my disbelief for villainous schemes in comic book adaptations, but the idea that he knew the city would be evacuated on these ferry boats, and had the manpower and foresight to load hundreds of barrels of gas or whatever it was onto them was so ridiculous i found myself wanting to rewind to figure out what i missed. i guess the bus backing into the bank thing was pretty bad that way, too.
― rockapads, Friday, 1 August 2008 05:03 (fifteen years ago) link
i liked both this and BB, but agree that they don't touch the Bourne movies. and frankly they didn't come close to bringing me the kind of joy I felt the first time i read Batman: Year One and The Long Halloween, either.
― rockapads, Friday, 1 August 2008 05:06 (fifteen years ago) link
I don't really understand needing to compare the Bourne vs. the Batman films - beside that they came out during the same era, are of high overall quality and star power, and have some absurdly overdirected fight scenes, they don't exactly live in the same universes, you know?
And dear Lord, don't ever pay attention to Manohla Dargis, she is terrible.
― Nhex, Friday, 1 August 2008 08:15 (fifteen years ago) link
compare and contrast "no, I shoot the bus driver" and a bus immediately ploughing through the wall vs trying to blow up a hospital with the detonator in his hand and it not going off and him mashing the keys over and over and looking really stupid
― MPx4A, Friday, 1 August 2008 09:27 (fifteen years ago) link
the latter still raises questions about his ability to make explosives be everywhere tho
― MPx4A, Friday, 1 August 2008 09:28 (fifteen years ago) link
When he drove out of the bank into the convoy of other buses, didn't one of the other drivers think "hey there's a bus driving out of a bank, and lookie here's a load of police cars coming towards the bank, that's a bit sus..."?
Could've done the boat thing with a more modest and undetectable bomb, instead of a whole engine room full of oil barrels.
― ledge, Friday, 1 August 2008 10:36 (fifteen years ago) link
Hadn't the Joker mined the tunnels leading out of the city (or done something to them, at any rate) so he knew the ferries would have to be used for the evacuation. Of course, how he arranged to get one ferry full of convicts and another full of civilians was the major leap of logic for me.
― Stone Monkey, Friday, 1 August 2008 11:59 (fifteen years ago) link
It wasn't neccessary to prove his point that it was so, would've worked as well with two ferries of civilians. It was a nice bonus I suspect.
― chap, Friday, 1 August 2008 12:01 (fifteen years ago) link
I think the key thing people are forgetting is that this is a film.
― Scik Mouthy, Friday, 1 August 2008 12:29 (fifteen years ago) link
I knew if this thread went on long enough all the joy would be sucked out of this movie.
― jon /via/ chi 2.0, Friday, 1 August 2008 12:46 (fifteen years ago) link
A thread either dies a hero or lives long enough to suck all the joy out of a movie.
― Alba, Friday, 1 August 2008 13:07 (fifteen years ago) link
i try really hard to suspend my disbelief for villainous schemes in comic book adaptations, but the idea that he knew the city would be evacuated on these ferry boats, and had the manpower and foresight to load hundreds of barrels of gas or whatever it was onto them was so ridiculous i found myself wanting to rewind to figure out what i missed.
-- rockapads, Friday, August 1, 2008 1:03 AM
-- Stone Monkey, Friday, August 1, 2008 7:59 AM
Yes, when the Joker makes his announcement, you see a bunch of people sitting in a bar watching it on TV, and they all start to run out in a panic, then he says that perhaps he's mined the tunnels and bridges, and everyone comes to a stop, not knowing how to proceed.
Do people just get instant amnesia when they leave theaters these days, or do they not pay attention if something isn't exploding?
― Pancakes Hackman, Friday, 1 August 2008 14:15 (fifteen years ago) link
yes
― David R., Friday, 1 August 2008 14:16 (fifteen years ago) link
to be fair, it is easy for details to get lost in overlong movies with nonsensical, convoluted plots in which characters repeatedly do dumb things for no good reason except to set up the next nonsensical, convoluted action set-piece.
― tipsy mothra, Friday, 1 August 2008 14:43 (fifteen years ago) link
GO WATCH A MIKE LEIGH FILM, BORING PERSON
― Scik Mouthy, Friday, 1 August 2008 14:43 (fifteen years ago) link
i like action movies. (that's why i mentioned the bourne films in comparison, so as to avoid directives to go watch mike leigh films.)(although i like some mike leigh films, it's true.) but this is just a fitfully entertaining brainless big-budget jumble. it's your basic 2-star movie.
― tipsy mothra, Friday, 1 August 2008 14:52 (fifteen years ago) link
the one voice of honest reason amid the blind hyperbolic masses
― Just got offed, Friday, 1 August 2008 14:54 (fifteen years ago) link
Alfred Soto: I just caught up with with this thread and your recent thoughts and I agree mightily with your comments on Nolan's disinterest in Wayne/Batman and a lot of other things you've mentioned. I think that Nolan is uninterested in probing character motivation in films, generally.
Well, thanks! tipsy mothra also OTM.
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Friday, 1 August 2008 14:56 (fifteen years ago) link
GO WATCH EVIL FRENCH / ASIAN SHLOCK MOVIES, STUDENT PERSON
― Scik Mouthy, Friday, 1 August 2008 14:56 (fifteen years ago) link
scik i agree with you more or less utterly about this movie, i was doing something there known as "holding up a mirror"
― Just got offed, Friday, 1 August 2008 14:57 (fifteen years ago) link
I was taking the piss, Louis. I know yr a graduate now.
― Scik Mouthy, Friday, 1 August 2008 15:00 (fifteen years ago) link
ha. no. it's just, this is a long thread about this movie, i saw this movie yesterday, i like talking about movies. i'm just doing the same thing as the other 150 people here who have commented on it. i don't share the consensus enthusiasm and find it a little puzzling, but i'm sure the consensus will somehow survive that shock.
― tipsy mothra, Friday, 1 August 2008 15:00 (fifteen years ago) link
this movie looks like some old bullshit to me
― and what, Friday, 1 August 2008 15:03 (fifteen years ago) link
well fair enough! just wish you'd made your subjectivity a bit more obvious y'know. :P xpost
Personally, I thought it flew by, and the lack of a formula worked in it favour. It was like an (awesome) extended television drama in its pacing.
― Just got offed, Friday, 1 August 2008 15:03 (fifteen years ago) link
ive seen tipsy comment on other movie threads & he's always insightful as fuck, which is why i'm sorta taken aback by how BORING (no offense meant srsly, but SM is right) his criticisms are: tips i think maybe you unfortunately bought the line that this movie is truly beyond its genre, when its not, it just does it really really fucking well. i get the idea that this kind of movie isnt really yr cup of tea (could be totally wrong) but that you were led to believe this one was truly special or something, & it is (imo), but if youre not willing to buy into the spirit of the genre youre still going to hate it. thats sort of my take on yr criticism anyway, i dunno.
i would like to hear more about how everyones decision making is non-sensical & stupid outside of the set pieces tho, ill probably hate what you have to say & roll my eyes but i dont remember feeling that right now
― deeznuts, Friday, 1 August 2008 18:11 (fifteen years ago) link
I don't know jack about comics but this movie inspired me to buy "batman:year one" and "the long Halloween" and "the killing joke" from amazon! I don't think I've read a comic in 15 years.
― ryan, Friday, 1 August 2008 18:29 (fifteen years ago) link
all three of those are really good, Moore one is probably the silliest
― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 1 August 2008 18:31 (fifteen years ago) link
Year One probably the best thing Miller ever did imho (good thing he didn't draw it)
Ah really? I thought Moore was like the comic genius dude?
― ryan, Friday, 1 August 2008 18:33 (fifteen years ago) link
yeah he is and the book is good but its pretty tossed off. it is not representative of his work in general at all.
― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 1 August 2008 18:38 (fifteen years ago) link
(beyond its reliance on narrative/graphic symmetry - a trick he uses fairly consistently)
― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 1 August 2008 18:39 (fifteen years ago) link