Batman carries on beginning in ... The Dark Knight

hay guyz im still confused how they nevr explained how Twoface lost his blackness between Batman and Batman Forever

Robert Downey Jr was busy?

don't you diiiiiiiiiiiie on me!

love ppl upthread going "give me several examples of bad dialogue", like yes i'll just dig out the shooting script i happen to have a copy right here, in my ass

gotham crime lords = most stereotypical black criminal and eastern european criminal and italian criminal ever! does gotham have a mob with an affirmative action program? or are there three entirely separate crime syndicates who actually just are really cool with each other and cooperate? christopher nolan's next movie should be an adaptation of 'river city ransom'

in terms of filmic rhetoric some of this felt so so so pat - here is some drama and a big 360 camera swivel! here is the joker, he is a bit crazy, this bit is on handheld camera! (this latter interesting because of the fake camcorder footage bits with him also - can't work out if they're meant to comment on each other or if nolan didn't think about it enough for that)

playboy bruce not a patch on playboy tony in iron man

it's a BATCAR no look it's a BATCYCLE = not as good as equiv. sequence in batman forever

-

it felt like quite a short two hours and forty minutes, though

love ppl upthread going "give me several examples of bad dialogue", like yes i'll just dig out the shooting script i happen to have a copy right here, in my ass

yea, cuz we were obviously expecting verbatim 5 minute sequences of dialogue for examples......:eyeroll:

or are there three entirely separate crime syndicates who actually just are really cool with each other and cooperate?

Oh man, I hate to be mister uber-nerd here, but this is actually covered in the direct-to-dvd animated prequel, "Batman: Gotham Knight." Basically yeah, Batman makes the Russian and Italian mobs agree to divvy up their activities in order to stop ongoing inter-mob violence.

i took that list of "criticisms" to mean that criticism, in order to be effective and meaningful, has to sorta key-in to what a work of art is trying to do and trying to say.

i think that's not really true. criticism can take a lot of forms, and critics aren't captive to the intent of the artist. but in any case in terms of TDK i don't think observations about narrative, stylistic and moral incoherence are really "missing" anything that the nolans are trying to say. it's just a matter of noting (or asserting, if you like) flaws in the conception and execution of the whole enterprise. you either don't agree those flaws are there, or you think they're offset by other virtues within the movie, which is fine. but it's not that people who think it's crash-bang nonsense are refusing to engage with the vision of the auteur. they just have a different opinion than you. (an opinion like, chris nolan is the most overrated hollywood guy since shyamalan.)

of course, you can say whatever you want about the movie! and you're welcome to do so...im not having a problem with any opinions. im just a little frustrated with how flippantly they are expressed. i could take one look at the sistine chapel and proclaim it "stupid" after one glance and then walk out....and no one can fault me for that, it's my opinion! but all anyone can do when confronted with that is shrug it off i guess....

fwiw, what im looking for is basically how you criticized the portrayal of Gotham, which strikes me as good criticism, even if im not sure i agree.

i understand. part of it i guess is that i think the movie doesn't really warrant much weighty analysis. i just don't think there's a whole lot there.

(i have been in the reverse position on other movies -- like there will be blood, which i think is sort of genius even though it has its share of incoherence and which i've defended partly on the same visceral grounds that some people are lauding the dark knight. i understand the view of morbz and others that there isn't really much going on in TWBB -- i just disagree.)

(or marie antoinette, for that matter)

The idea that a negative assessment of a film, in order to be valid, must specifically engage with and forcibly negate whatever positive assessments exist is hilarious. Thank you for that.

Anyway, "escalation of chaos" as a theme/strategy doesn't excuse narrative incoherence. If it did, Rob Zombie's Halloween remake would be a good film. And it isn't.

wow thank you for not being able to read

it's easy to take oneself out of an interpretative relationship with a work of art and simply proclaim it "brainless"....and it's perfectly valid to do so too!

Isn't it a mark of good thinking to engage with things on their own terms, unless those terms're unacceptable? I fucking loved this movie, for what it was and how it showed itself.

today the part of deeznuts will be played by tispy mothra

can safely say that probably no other comic book movie has inspired this much intense debate...which is very cool.

Is this the longest single movie thread on ILX?

I just got invited to see it at Imax. I will now be going a fourth time. I have never seen a movie four times in a theatre before. my Regal club card is happy though.

it's easy to take oneself out of an interpretative relationship with a work of art and simply proclaim it "brainless"

what if your interpretative relationship with a movie leads you to the suspicion that it doesn't have much going on in its stylish little head? like, i see all the gestures at relevancy in dark knight -- terror, torture, surveillance, the trade-offs between security and liberty, the conflict between means and ends -- but they mostly end up seeming like ... gestures at relevancy. they acknowledge some set of moral tensions, but they don't illuminate them any more than your average pundit round-table on cnn.

but so ok, i don't expect social relevancy of comic-book movies or even think they're a particular plus. on the visceral entertain-me side, like i said, i think a lot of the action sequences are not particularly well handled -- they go on too long, at a sustained pitch of frenzy that becomes monotonous, and the editing is kind of murky. (major exception is the ferry-boat scene, which i think is good and has more actual tension than most of the movie.) so i don't think that's rejecting an interpretative relationship. it's just feeling sort of unfulfilled by it.

Which, as I said earlier, comes down to the fact that you don't really like this movie and a lot of other people do seem to like it, quite a lot. And neither understands the other enough to fully empathise / change minds. And would should either?

no, of course. criticism pro or con isn't really about changing minds anyway, right? just a chance to talk about something.

(i've had my mind changed by criticism before, probably -- in that it maybe gave me a new way of looking at or thinking about something. but more often i can enjoy good criticism of something, like ned's thoughts about this movie, even if i don't share the critic's opinion of the work itself.)

based on the review excerpts you posted before you even saw the film i think your mind was halfway made up before you went into this thing, morbs.

i don't get all that anyway, esp since people can read into shit like this exactly what they want to read. don't even get me started on the dude i overheard talking about how hellboy 2 was probably "john mccain's favorite film".

like john mccain even saw the first hellboy

no, of course. criticism pro or con isn't really about changing minds anyway, right? just a chance to talk about something.

yeah. we'd probably have to get obnoxiously theoretical to really talk about this well, but i think, in short, good criticism simply brings your attention to something you didn't notice on your own. makes it possible to "see" something you couldn't see before. how this affects your subjective feelings about the movie is something different and maybe only related in an indirect way. (like if someone reads a movie as marxist it could either turn you off or turn you on.)

I know when I saw Black Hawn Down, and then learned the truth about the real life counterparts portrayed in the movie, it ruined my initial assessment of the movie

so the new rumor is that Maggie Gyllenhall will be catwoman in the next film. makes total sense (9 lives lolz) particularly since her and Eckhardt are both under contract for two films.

http://www.hollywood-newsroom.com/rumors/angelina-jolie-is-not-catwoman-in-batman-3-its-maggie-gyllenhaal/

Who said that Rachel didn't die? Oh snap.

i would find that easier to believe if rachel at any point demonstrated an affinity for cats, right before her 'death' in TDK she came into physical contact w/ a cat and the explosion resulted in her absorbing cat powers/thinking

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/Pages/confirmbookmark.jsp?action=bookmark&boardid=40&threadid=50130&messageid=1804

Ahem.

*or* right before her 'death'

What started this whole "Catwoman has cat powers" thing? I've heard others confused by this before, but the only instance of this I can remember of this happening was that Birds of Prey TV series. I don't think she had any powers in the previous films or TV series. Even in Batman Returns, it's not like she actually has nine lives.

the Catwoman is supposed to be Selina Kyle, isn't she?

Mostly. Like nearly all comics continuity, there are exceptions.

welp, i just bought the Watchmen graphic novel, so I'll have my hands full for a while....

besides, you got the rumor wrong. It's Jake that is going to be Catwoman.

flipside was in this

Even in Batman Returns, it's not like she actually has nine lives.

I think maybe you should rewatch Batman Returns because she rather emphatically has nine lives in it.

saw it for the second time today, still really good, and seemed better constructed and less murky this time... which i guess means it's pretty clunky and murky if it takes two viewings to clear up.

it struck me that there are a lot of subtle jokes in it, the script could have been played for laffs much more -- i was the only one that chuckled out loud at this:

(talking about the sonar cell phone thing in hong kong)
fox: it sends out a high frequency pulse, imaging the surroundings, like--
wayne: a submarine?
fox: right. like a submarine.

Watched the 1989 Burton Batman last night, for the first time in... I'd say at least ten years, maybe more like 15. And you know what? It looked quite good - Grissom's office for instance was beautiful - although much of Gotham was obviously either painted backdrops or models, they were beautifully done. But it still looked like an expensive theatre set rather than a movie.

Other brief thoughts...

The Batwing was... ridiculous.

Keaton has NO physical presence, and the idea that neither Knox nor Vale knows what the richest socialite / philanthropist in the city looked like was silly. His distractedness was good. Useless as a playboy figure, though.

Nicholson as the Joker... The fact that the sets looked like they were for a theatre production (presumably of Bugsy Malone) was fitting, because his performance was hammy as fuck, and straight out of a pantomime. Nowhere near Ledger. Not even fit to lace his boots. "Bob, don't forget, you're my... main... guhay" with all the weezing and the Cesar Romero suit. Rubbish. Not scary, not deranged. And what's with all the "I'm an artist until somebody dies" nonsense. Both Romero and Nicholson were old men when they played The Joker. That speaks volumes for the character's physicality. How high were his suit trousers? How thick his midriff?

And anyone complaining about narrative incoherence in TDK, well... good grief. None of Burton's first Batman makes any sense. Nothing is explained. There seems to be no narrative order. I don't really know how it fills two hours. And the fight sequences... don't exist, somehow.

Also, we see Batman right at the start, and then not again until nearly an hour in. And that rubber suit. Oh my. I'd love to know what Bale would have thought of wearing that.

The Batmobile is super cool, though.

But other than that... aside from talking about visual effects and performances and nonsensical narrative, there's NOTHING to talk about in Burton's Batman. No moral issues. No plot twists (or even holes; the narrative is that absent that picking holes in it is pointless; it's JUST a hole). No character development. Nothing. Nada. Zip.

Quite good fun though. But in a barely evolved from Adam West kind of way. The set and costume design was better and there were no Biff Pow Blam cards, but other than that... it felt so campy. Admittedly I've never seen any of the Schumacher Batman films, and this might be fabulously dark and involving compared to them, but it's nothing compared to Nolan's interpretation.

^^^ This is why the second Burton Batman movie is so much better.

Recent comment about the first Batman film from a friend off-board: "Every line feels like a non-sequitur."

I love Keaton's Bruce Wayne though.

"My life is really... complex."

i always liked keaton as batman/wayne despite the movies not being all that great

Christian Bale is to Michael Keaton as Brandon Routh is to Christopher Reeve.

But but George Clooney