Batman carries on beginning in ... The Dark Knight

i mean he becomes a CHRIST FIGURE at the end of the film for fuck's sake

the entire point behind Batman's character is that he is a "good guy" in the loosest sense of the word; the books and cartoons have been talking about the razor-thin line that separates him from the people he's chasing almost his entire existence. He is ostensibly a "good guy" but clearly one cast as crazy as the people he's hunting down. You're right in the sense that Bruce's moral compass is the focal point for his craziness so it's highly unlikely that he's going to go on a murderous rampage. There is a while lot of evil, fucked up shit you can do before you get to the murderous rampage part and most of the movie revolves around The Joker tempting him down that path time and time again.

Also, The Joker positioned himself in the jail so that he'd have the opportunity to take out the Hong Kong dude. It's not wholly realistic that he'd be that successful at manipulating people but that'ns a stylistic choice I enjoyed.

i don't really think they presented bruce/batman as being a sociopath, or at least all the familiar structures of identification/projection were in place with him and there was never ever any real doubt as to the enormous gulf separating him from the joker. i guess i feel like the genre's prerogatives just subvert even the hardiest attempts to create significant ambiguity on this count. (this was true of nearly all of the "revisionist" comics by moore, miller, et al as well.)

and honestly this was hardly a hardy attempt.

maybe i just wasn't attuned to what the film was trying to do, dramatically, with the wayne/batman character. but i feel that the attempts at moral shading were largely manifested in the rather unconvingly little monologues periodically delivered by major characters, but weren't truly embedded in the plot dynamics, therefore they didn't feel very essential or convincing.

sorry for poor word choice, bad grammar, typos, etc.

otm xp

fwiw I thought the monologues were terribly grating and not even especially well written

People keep calling the film incoherent and I don't understand what they mean because I don't think I misunderstood anything in the film? Like, Gordon asks Batman "who are you going for?" re; Rachel / Dent, and Batman says "Rachel", and Gordon gives his men the address the Joker gave for Dent; what's to misunderstand?

Re; Joker's omniscience; he's a very clever guy who's spent six months rigging the city and positioning himself so he can get 'a date' with Batman and drive the city mental while doing it. Yes, it's a film with realist overtones in many ways, but it's still about sociopathic ninjas and evil genius psychopaths; The Joker has pretty much always been painted as an evil schemer and mastermind in the comics, it's how he works; he sets up traps and lets people walk into them. The kerfuffle with the hospital generator and the failure of the ferries to blow up show that not all his plans always work. I also think the cellphone-stomach guy is probably just one of many devices Joker put into play "just in case".

I can't say any of the monologues bothered me, apart from Gordon's very last speech over the montage, which contained two heroic allegories too many. If you want amazing realist dialogue, watch a Mike Leigh film; THIS is a comicbook movie where people blow shit up and debate BIG MORAL DILEMMAS.

Re: Bruce as sociopath - maybe not in classic terms but HE DRESSES AS A BAT AND NINJAS FUCK OUT OF PEOPLE WITH NARY A THOUGHT FOR WHY THEY'RE BEING BAD, and then justifies it by pretending he's cleaning the city up which HE MOST ASSUREDLY IS NOT and that failure to do so, in fact that inspiration of escalation in criminal behaviour, is what the whole film is about; I personally cannot think of much more sociopathic behaviour. Isabelle Huppert putting broken glass in a piano prodigy's pocket and having rape-sex with younger men? That's also fucked up, but in a different way.

THIS FILM IS NOT A REALIST FILM. IT IS A FANTASTICAL ACTION-DRAMA WITH (for many of us) ENOUGH QUASI-CONVINCING EMOTIONAL / MORAL MOTIVATIONS THAT IT TRANSCENDS BEING DIE HARD 4.0. It's as realistic as 24 is.

WITH NARY A THOUGHT FOR WHY THEY'RE BEING BAD

I remember the batman interrupting and chastising harvey dent when he's interrogating one of the joker's henchmen after the assassination attempt on the mayor and saying just quit it because he's from arkham and is mental

I think what Nolan's set up in Begins and hammers home in TDK is that Batman is naive and deluded and that the people in his life tolerate it because he pays them money. (notice: Fox and Alfred aid & abet Batman, they are on his payroll; Rachel disapproves, she has her own job)

The Dent / Arkham nutter scenario is about the only one, and it's also more about not killing him (or anyone) (and especially not leaving justice to chance) than it is about not pummeling the shit outta him with fists.

don't forget in Batman Begins, not too long before he became a vigilante hero, Bruce Wayne was standing in a courthouse ready to shoot Chill in broad daylight.

he seems to still be searching for an identity, after all, it was Rachel Dawes scolding and slapping him that sort of forced him to see the error of his ways, and then he put thousands of motorists in danger just to save Rachel towards the end.

and he does seem to be somewhat careless and cavalier about what he blows up. woulda been interesting to see a Hancock markup on the movie.

"MY HYBRID PRIUS!!!11 YOU BASTARD!"

THIS is a comicbook movie where people blow shit up and debate BIG MORAL DILEMMAS.

right. but, contrary to your mike-leigh-fan strawman, some of us just didn't think it was a particularly good or well-executed comic-book movie where people blow shit up and debate big moral dilemmas. i get the feeling you can't understand how anyone could take the movie on its own pop-pulp comic-book terms and still not love it, but i guess you just have to take my word for it that it's true.

Which comic book movies with exploding shit and big moral dilemma debates do it better? Cos I haven't seen one I've enjoyed more.

Superman 3

for the record amateurist is over-analytical as hell

i liked x-men 2 a lot, both on its own and in terms of capturing the tone and moral themes of the comics. i don't remember if the crow had any big moral dilemmas, but it definitely blew a lot of things up and i enjoyed more than the bale batmans.

people in having different opinions shocker...

i don't remember if the crow had any big moral dilemmas

Did have a dead guy in clown makeup, though.

My post was specifically spurred by darraghmac's "there is no point to discussing this movie" post, which I found fatuous and unthinking

i don't think i've made any such post- i've been discussing the movie for the past week with everyone else on here, so you've either confused me with someone or misread me.

and, as far as summer blockbuster/superhero movies go, it's certainly had a lot worth discussing, so i really don't know where you've gotten that from.

I don't find Mike Leigh's dialogue particularly "realistic."

You're American!

the prereogatives of the genre whereby the superhero is defined by his essential goodness

Ok, this is absolute nonsense. Maybe, MAYBE if you're limiting it strictly to "major studio, major publisher comic book movies," but outside of that, it's so far off the mark as to be laughable. Seek ye one Wolferine for starters.

People keep calling the film incoherent and I don't understand what they mean because I don't think I misunderstood anything in the film.

I didn't notice than when the Joker is shooting at the police convoy from the truck, the truck has the slogan "laughter is the best medicine" on it, but the Joker has drawn a big red S so that it says "Slaughter is the best medicine" instead

also Dent was using the double sided coin and saying "tails you die" to the schizophrenic guy, so he was never actually going to kill him

So the early word is that it's *still* at number one in America. And sometime in the next few days it'll beat Burton's Batman in inflation-adjusted numbers.

Haha, okay, this is ridiculous -- the aimed-at-preschoolers official book adaptation of the movie. It's, um, different.

http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e222/nlb_muffin/the%20dark%20knight/Batman%20Saves%20the%20Day/bmansavesday_08.jpg

Actually there are apparently a couple of books like this out there that reinterpret certain scenes. Dear me. I wonder what the pencil trick turns into.

crayon trick?

seriously though, the clown mask on the right looks similar to the one The JOker wore in the bank robbery.

DETAILS, FUCKERS, DETAILS!

The Dent / Arkham nutter scenario is about the only one, and it's also more about not killing him (or anyone) (and especially not leaving justice to chance) than it is about not pummeling the shit outta him with fists.

I thought it was also as much a "because if you're seen to be killing a schizophrenic how;'s that gonna make you look, dumbass?", for whatever self serving purpose that might have implied.

I liked this film and I'm really not into the franchise. It was relentlessly loud and blammy and a lot happened and it was suprisingly long but I had little to complain about. Except maybe the "he's the darko knight" monologue at the end, which felt just a little glurgey.

Hahah the darko knight? Amusing typo.

He takes the mask off and it's really Jake! Incest! Almost.

Frightening.

I WISH it was Jake.

Actually he'd make an interesting Batman.

Nah, substitute Jake for Maggie and having Christian Bale and Aaron Eckhart fighting over Richard Dawes's affections.

"He was going to WAIT for me, Alfred."

"That's what they all say, sir."

I would never tolerate Jake talking to me about another guy.

In this case it would have been Christian.

Talking to you that is.

Brokeback Gotham.

actually Jake G was the frontrunner to play Batman before Bale got involved. what could have been etc...

he's great at almost being superheroes, what with his almost Spiderman

Fuck it, let's just have Jake play Robin in the next film and make that age-old homosexual subtext totally and utterly fucking overt.

Too lazy to read the whole 2500 post thread, so I'm just gonna jump in and say: his was a GREAT thriller, is already at #3 for US box office of all time at $442K (could surpass Stars Wars' #2 if it cracks $461K - which it will, even if it doesn't surpass Titanic's $600K)... and oh-so-significant: is #1 on The IMBD Top 250 already due to the fanboys haha.

That's all you really need to know, and if you didn't like it you're gonna be on the wrong side of history (as you're going to keep hearing about this goddamned "little comic book" for a long time to come - especially with the Heath Factor).

But this drives me nuts - apologies if it's been discussed upthread -

http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB121694247343482821.html

*this not his

Worrying that F Miller has the let's-kick-Islamic-terrorist's-ass outlook on rumored sequel, but he did write 300 after all. Ugh

I direct you, and anyone else with a Batman = Bush tizzy going on, in either direction, here - http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/010555.html

Radcliffe Joker-casting rumors for Batman Begins 2 start NOW

-- latebloomer (posercore24...), July 28th, 2006 3:09 PM. (latebloomer)

-- the doaple gonger (nickalicious), Tuesday, 1 August 2006 11:37 (2 years ago) Link

hmm?

Thx Scik Mouth - " What neocon readings of the film must overlook is that this is exactly the same in geopolitical reality: far from being unpalatable but necessary, the Iraq misadventure, Guantanamo Bay, extraordinary rendition etc have either achieved no results or made things worse."