Batman carries on beginning in ... The Dark Knight

the one voice of honest reason amid the blind hyperbolic masses

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.

GO WATCH EVIL FRENCH / ASIAN SHLOCK MOVIES, STUDENT PERSON

scik i agree with you more or less utterly about this movie, i was doing something there known as "holding up a mirror"

I was taking the piss, Louis. I know yr a graduate now.

the one voice of honest reason amid the blind hyperbolic masses

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.

this movie looks like some old bullshit to me

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.

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

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.

all three of those are really good, Moore one is probably the silliest

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?

yeah he is and the book is good but its pretty tossed off. it is not representative of his work in general at all.

(beyond its reliance on narrative/graphic symmetry - a trick he uses fairly consistently)

Killing Joke is really good as a non-Moore comic, I think. It's just that with Moore's name attached, fans get really disappointed.

as Moore says "its just a Batman Annual"

Pretty much with tipsy here. I thought it was an okay film, but by no means a great one (speaking as someone who has no strong feelings either way about the superhero genre). Plot was an incoherent string of implausible schemes; Dent/Two-Face was a pointless character who contributed nothing more than a nice piece of gross-out SPFX; Bale as Wayne was okay, Bale as Batman was laughable; fight scenes were inept and far too plentiful; the oppressive brutality and seriousness made the comic-book contrivances seem glaringly ridiculous; and the last hour was a slog. The film does raise some interesting philosophical and political questions, and a lot of the acting was top-notch (fine work from the supporting players and a star turn from Ledger), but that's all I got out of it. Want to see it again, but mostly 'cuz I'm sure I must have missed something.

Felt the same way about the LotR movies, though, so maybe it's just that I don't like fun.

I'm more or less with you, contenderizer. It occurred to me a few days ago that I didn't discuss Dent/Two-Face much in my review; but a "nice piece of gross-out FX" plus (I'd add) "most purely symbolic figure in the film" is a good way to go.

incoherent, pointless, laughable, inept, ridiculous, brainless, nonsensical, embarassing...these are the problems with the movie?

ok, that's just a bit hyperbolic, don't you think? you can dislike a movie without actively insulting everyone who did like it!

i mean i dont really get why everyone has to either think it's a genius perfect masterwork or a brainless incoherent mess. surely it's a work of art/commerce that deserves at least a slightly more measured response?

yes, maybe a few thousand more posts

i will MURDER those who dislike it with my bare fucking hands

Wet Nap?

You can dislike a movie without actively insulting everyone who did like it!

-- ryan

ok, that's just a bit hyperbolic, don't you think? you can dislike a movie without actively insulting everyone who did like it!

Where'd you get that impression? Do you need air?

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 like some comic-book movies and i even used to buy comics in my tender teen years. first couple chris reeve superman movies are good, i liked the 2nd xmen movie, i even liked the crow. and like i said on the tim burton thread, i liked batman returns. what i think all of those are successful at to varying degrees is creating a coherent world for their characters and plots (however basically silly they might be). so the gotham of batman returns and the detroit of the crow are these totally artificial places but they seem fully imagined (and set directed). when you're going to mount these kind of pop-myth morality plays, you need a good stage for it. characterizations are almost by definition going to be two-dimensional, but you can be colorful and engaging and imaginative in two dimensions, which heath ledger obviously demonstrates but nobody else even comes close to.

i think in these last 2 batmans, the city isn't particularly conceived in any well-defined way -- batman begins sort of gestured at an escape from new york-type urban nightmare, but in a real creaky theme-park-ride way, and the potentially interesting conceit in the new one of making the city as "realistic" as possible just for me fell flat. not enough people, color, urban personality. it felt like an underpopulated soundstage. beyond that, the story just ... isn't really anything. joker does this, joker does that, bwahahaha. i know it's silly to get into analyzing the motivations of the characters in things like this, but the whole "some men just want to see the world burn" thing is kind of, i mean, who cares? it lets the writers off the hook because they can have him do just about anything without needing any of it to make sense. as for people acting stupidly, pretty much everyone in the movie acts stupidly from start to finish. the ridiculous scheme of having dent turn himself in so they can lure the joker and blah blah blah was just batshit dumb and existed primarily to enable that tractor-trailer-and-batmobile chase -- which went on too long and was not very well edited. the way people kept talking all the time about how crooked gordon's guys were (to set up the eventual kidnapping of dent and rachel) was so clumsy it barely counts as foreshadowing. it was like paint-by-numbers screenwriting. then there's the problem of making dent's moral transformation convincing -- a challenge, but one they totally failed. it was just like, kazam, he's CRAZY. and ... well, you know, i could go on because i pretty much didn't believe anything in the movie even on its own terms, but you get the idea.

Ned's posts and essays have included some of the best defenses of the film I've read.

(xpost)

batshit dumb

and also i don't think calling the movie "incoherent nonsense" is an indictment of people who liked it, or even necessarily of the movie. there are movies i like that i'd call incoherent nonsense. (charlie's angels 2: full throttle!)

xpost: yeah, i liked what ned wrote about it. it was among the things that persuaded me to see it. and i can see where he's coming from, i just didn't feel it the same way.

Yow. Tipsy OTM and then some. Especially this:

...the potentially interesting conceit in the new one of making the city as "realistic" as possible just for me fell flat. not enough people, color, urban personality. it felt like an underpopulated soundstage.

beyond that, the story just ... isn't really anything. joker does this, joker does that, bwahahaha.

it's an good action movie, looks nice, supporting cast are excellent and ledger brilliant. but it's overly long, the lead characters (as tipsy put it) make some baffling decisions just to set up the next set piece, and has quite a few really dumb plot holes- so dumb that they pretty much spoiled it for me.

contenderizer and tipsy OTM

Ned's posts and essays have included some of the best defenses of the film I've read.

Thanks (and thanks to Tipsy) -- I *want* there to be debate about the film. There needs to be, and said give-and-take may not make us budge from our respective positions, but they do illustrate both the film in greater detail as well as our respective reactions and perspectives. Which is a very good thing.

I will I think have one last blog post on it about the sheer spectacle of it in the IMAX format, but not for a couple of days yet.

So anyway, The Mummy: Tomb of Jet Li!

i wasnt taking it personally! i never do. just a little peeved at the excessive rhetoric. but yes i do need air. just a lot of the negative takes on the movie circle around a reductio ad absurdum, and that's bothersome to me because it's the opposite of really engaging with the movie.

beyond that, the story just ... isn't really anything. joker does this, joker does that, bwahahaha.

i mean no offfense, but this isn't a criticism so much as a meaningless snarky aside. seriously, no offense. i just dont get where you're coming from AT ALL with comments like that.

i mean there's like 500 fucking posts of people staking out different ideas on exactly what the story is doing...so jumping in and saying "nah it's just random bullshit" is sorta wtf.

it felt like an underpopulated soundstage

This is actually a big flaw for me when it comes to Batman Returns compared to the first Batman -- the second film felt MUCH smaller.

a villain bent on chaos drives the action, what is so incomprehensible about that. the real story (and I think Nolan agrees) is about the moral compromises necessary to combat such a villain, and the toll it takes/transformation of Harvey Dent. whether or not Eckhardt does a good job of it is debatable - calling him "the most obvious symbolic character" is undeniable - but I think his story arc is a bit more developed than "kazam he's crazy!" Ned is correct in his praise of Dent's speech at the end about what's fair, etc. that was genuinely creepy/moving to me, even if it came a bit too late in the film. The film does seem a bit indecisive as to whether Dent's transformation should be the cruz of the plot, or if it should just let the audience get carried away by the Joker doing crazy shit/blowing things up.

x-post

christ the first Burton Batman is SO TERRIBLE, never understand why people rep for it.

cruz = crux duh

The Penelope Cruz of the plot

Ryan: it's not that the story isn't rich in detail (I'd call it overcomplexified before I'd call it simplistic), it's that it's narratively shapeless. The bulk of the movie consists of the Joker doing some shit, and everybody else going, "Aaagh! The Joker's doing some shit!", and then the Joker doing some other shit, and everybody going "Aaagh!" again, and so on. And so on. It's like watching a fish flop around on deck. While the romantic triangle between Harvey, Bruce and Rachel is coherently structured and thus kinda meaningful, narratively, a lot of the rest is frantic, punch-happy gibberish.

This is actually a big flaw for me when it comes to Batman Returns compared to the first Batman -- the second film felt MUCH smaller.

that's true. burton kind of shrinks gotham down to snowglobe size. but everything inside the snowglobe is of a piece.

(and yeah the first burton one is pretty bad. ledger's joker >>>> nicholson's joker, among other things. but it did have "batdance"...)

xpost: contenderizer otm

contenderizer IS otm, which is probably why im still having some trouble w/ your guys' problem w/ the movie

yeah Batdance is awesome, I will grant you that.

and Ledger never DID fall into the arms of Orion.

narratively, a lot of the rest is frantic, punch-happy gibberish.

This may derive in part from Nolan's attempt to structure the movie around the idea of "escalation"--which can easily seem like a one-thing-after-another kind of plot, but the attempt was, I think, to show how the actions of everyone involved precipitated an equal and opposite reaction. part of the effective horror of the film for me is the feeling of being caught in a feedback loop of chaos and hysteria.

^^^^this is a superb point; I didn't feel like the pacing was mechanical or partitioned, but that the whole thing was a glorious and accelerating mess.

The Joker is a catalyst, it is his very purpose in the narrative to "inject a little chaos", to accelerate reactions and events. To say the plot is incoherent is moot; of course it's incoherent, the person driving it is insane, suicidal, maniacal, homicidal. And also very, very driven.

Agree massively about Batman Returns; Gotham by that film felt empty and fraudulent, like an incomplete theatre set.

Of course The Dark Knight is ridiculous; of course the bus thing at the start is implausible; of course the idea of rigging the ferries with explosives is stupid; of course Dent is a symbolic figure rather than a believable dramatic character; this is all because The Dark Knight IS a comic book movie, but there's no reason why a comic book movie can't also be a great movie, same way a Western or a horror or an animated movie can also be a great movie. The make-up in Dawn of the Dead is ridiculous, and much of the acting is appalling - I still love it and it's reputation is still massive. The Godfather is incredibly long and drags and has much nasty brutality in it (the binlid thing!). NOTHING AT ALL HAPPENS in Citizen Kane. Taxi Driver is just dull, the characters unbelievable and unsympathetic, their actions implausible. The Bourne Identity is good apart from that ridiculous, suspension-of-disbelief-shattering subplot with Mr Eke from Lost. Heat is just a series of high-concept bank robberies; De Niro robs someone, Pacino wonders where he is and argues with his wife; rinse and repeat for THREE HOURS. No Country For Old Men doesn't make any sense and Bardem's character is barely even one dimensional. Every single Wes Anderson film is exactly the same, down to the cast. 2001: A Space Odyssey is completely unintelligible. No character motivation is explored in Badlands. That giant slob monster at the end of Akira MAKES NO SENSE. The Truman Show is completely implausible. Raiders of the Lost Ark is basically just a racist theme park ride. La Jetee is essentially a powerpoint presentation. That toad in Pan's Labyrinth doesn't look real. Many of these are my favourite films.

I enjoyed The Dark Knight massively; it's given me as much food for thought as any movie in recent years; it's also given me a wonderful in-theatre cinematic experience on two occasions, the feeling of participating in a cultural event. Plus, it was a terrific spectacle that thrilled and excited me. If you want plotholes resolving, read the novelisation.

The Dark Knight IS a comic book movie, but there's no reason why a comic book movie can't also be a great movie

OTM!