Batman carries on beginning in ... The Dark Knight

also the technology seemed a bit too magical or something... or it just reminded me of like 80s movie techno deus ex machina stuff

I don't know, the entire point of Batman is ninja ass-kicking + magic technology + oh shit he crazy, so that whole thing didn't faze me at all.

^likes this post

i don't understand why you are still saying these things to him over and over. you are comnpletely correct, and everything you say is 100% truth bomb but he's just going to come back with some false tautology like "harvey dent is ludicrous because i think his character looked silly with makeup and also i think that maggie gyllenhaal wouldn't be his type anyway" and you're back to square one.

Yeah, arguments based on opinions are like houses on sand.

― B.L.A.M., Thursday, December 18, 2008 1:03 PM (3 hours ago)

because that's clearly the point being made!

also i agree about the cell phone thing! especially since it led to something as ridiculous as that particular technology. it didn't take me out of the movie and make me dislike it (and i honestly forgot about it until it was just brought up) but damn that was eye-rolling. it was just a weird conflict, and then nothing came of them having this conflict, for no reason, and the scene was kind of dumb in the end and it was utterly forgettable.

^^ this

was not necessary

it was less the nature of the technology than the narrative shit it kicked off

regardless i think we all agree that AW should see the movie -- its v v good imo

yeah it is worth it for heath ledger sliding down a pile of money and than lighting it on fire as far as i am concerned

it reminded me of the waterboarding scene in iron man, just some shit cummin outta nowhere to make u b like 'hmm this makes me think~'

nah i mean that'd be like the batman brutality scene in the jail to me, would be analogous.

i got a kick out of the movie trying so hard to Say Something about every ongoing conflict in modern usa life 2008. but my taste in that kind of thing is sort of perverse (deadwood lol) so ymmv.

xp heh

The flipside to "oh shit he's crazy" is "but he knows this"; the argument would have escalated had Bruce not made Lucius the custodian of the phone array, but Bruce being smart and generally decent (if crazy) knew he could get use out of it that one time as long as he promised Lucius that he could destroy it once The Joker had been caught. Besides, it's not like he couldn't reresearch and rebuild it at a later point if he didn't want to! The conflict basically was put off because the need go after Joker BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY was paramount.

I basically saw that whole scene (and the bits that led up to it) as foreshadowing for a much more fascist Batman in movie #3 (a move also made easier by his decision to embrace the outlaw role to protect Harvey's reputation/inspirational power).

^likes batgirl

can't lie, ws

Why does Nolan hate Batgirl/Barbara Gordon so much that he wouldn't even show the child version of her in this movie? That's what I found weird.

my nightmare of this thread repeating itself wholesale when the DVD was released has come true

except there was less tuomas bashing before

the whole suggest ban thing is turning ilx into some lord of the flies / crucible type shit

house of un-suggestiban activities

have you now or have you ever been a member of the troll party

BURN THE TROLL BURN HIM

once he's gone we'll look for the next nail sticking up

hammer 'em down

's cool

my nightmare of this thread repeating itself wholesale when the DVD was released has come true

except there was less tuomas bashing before

the whole suggest ban thing is turning ilx into some lord of the flies / crucible type shit

― Edward III, Thursday, December 18, 2008 9:48 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

sorry i disagreed with your beloved finn

they came for deeznuts and I said nothing etc

The thing that annoyed me about the cell phone tracking thingummy was the visual aspect, it kinda gave me a headache.

see i think a major fallacy of your argument, tuomas, is the idea that because TDK is dark & serious that it is somehow "realist." it's no more realistic than a joel schumacher batman. there's nothing REALISTIC about any of these movies at all. nolan's is as much a fable as a tim burton batman movie, just in a different key. i agree that superhero stuff works better as fantasy, but fantasy does not have to = goofy or funny. most fables and fairy tales are pretty f'ing dark.

Yes, I do realize DK is a fantasy, just like Burton's Batman is. However, there are different ways of doing a fantasy story. Burton is more interested in using the characters as archetypes and pays less attention to character psychology. Nolan's approach has much more to do with individual psychology; hell, about half of BB was spent explaining the psychological reasons why Bruce Wayne wants to be Batman. Now, I felt that within this more psychological, more "realistic" approach (I'm not using the word "realistic" here to say that DK is less of a fantasy, rather than to describe a certain aesthetic and narrative approach that is more prominent in the Nolan Batman movies than in the Burton movies, and which generally ties with "realism" as applied in art) Dent's transformation to Two-Face didn't feel credible. In less realistic and more fable-like stories, like Burton's Batman movies or many Batman comics, this wouldn't have been an issue, because psychological explanations are less important in them.

Also, when I said that I liked Burton's more fable-like movies more, I didn't mean that I necessarily want Batman to be less dark. Like you said, many fables are very dark, and Burton's movies are dark too, but they're dark in a different way. I feel that the "grim and gritty" approach pioneered by Frank Miller, and followed by many other Batman stories (including Nolan's two films) isn't a particularly good one, because it tries to insert "realistic" themes (such as an individual psychology) and issues (vigilantism, the political implications of Batman's work) into these stories, which is at odds with the inherently fantastic/fable-like nature of the whole idea of superheroes. I think superhero stories work better when they're closer to LotR or Dracula or Star Wars than Dirty Harry.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Batman's not a superhero.

Eh? He is one of the two or three best known superheroes.

He's a detective, kid.

Normal human being who happens to be a billionaire and a ninja.

No super powers. Which makes him... allegory, or urban legend, rather than myth.

Also, Burton's Batman (the first one at least) is a horrific narrative mess that makes no sense, a procession of unconvincing aesthetic tropes and miscast ideas that has aged terribly.

No super powers. Which makes him... allegory, or urban legend, rather than myth.

Have you ever read superhero comics? There are a kazillion superheros with no supernatural powers.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

― K DEF FROM REAL LIVE (deej), Friday, December 19, 2008 11:28 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Also, Burton's Batman (the first one at least) is a horrific narrative mess that makes no sense, a procession of unconvincing aesthetic tropes and miscast ideas that has aged terribly.

Well yeah, I'm not saying Burton's movie are perfect (though the second one is better than the first, it's the best Batman movie IMO), just that his approach to Batman is better than Nolan's.

I think superhero stories work better when they're closer to LotR or Dracula or Star Wars than Dirty Harry.

http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/captain-america/1-2.jpg

Having watched this for the first time last night, Tuomas completely OTM here, couldn't agree more!

No super powers. Which makes him... allegory, or urban legend, rather than myth.

Have you ever read superhero comics? There are a kazillion superheros with no supernatural powers.

― Tuomas, Friday, December 19, 2008 12:38 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

If they don't have super powers, they're not superheroes; they're comicbook characters.

If they don't have super powers, they're not superheroes; they're comicbook characters. masked adventurers.

http://jordanhoffman.com/wp-content/uploads/watchmen-zack-snyder-update-big.jpg

Good call. Except Ozymandias, who might be considered to have super powers. And that blue dude.

If they don't have super powers, they're not superheroes; they're comicbook characters.

Well, you can call the characters what you want, but I was talking about superhero stories as a genre, and to me it's pretty obvious that characters without superpowers such as Batman, Robin, Green Arrow, or Daredevil are part of the same genre as superpowered characters like Superman, Spiderman, Flash, or Green Lantern. Batman and Spiderman are both masked adventurers with secret identities who devote their lives to fighting crime because a criminal killed their (surrogate) parent(s). The ezistence or lack of powers is not really an essential difference between them.

Daredevil has sonar. Just so long as we're keeping track of powers.

it's very sweet of Mouthy to give Tuomas a pointless argument to be on the right side of for once as an act of Christmas charity.

So far we have three super heroes with no super natural powers. I'm not feeling wrong.

And just to be really pedantic, Green Lantern himself has no powers at all. His ring does.

So far we have three super heroes with no super natural powers. I'm not feeling wrong.

― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Friday, December 19, 2008 10:03 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

maybe you should spend a little time alone trying to get in touch with your wrongness

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superhero

Thread is missing a comicbookguy.jpg

I didn't like batman begins precisely because its realistic and ludicrous attributes don't jive in a satisfactory manner but TDK doesn't suffer from the same issue due to its stringent policier vibe

I swear I said the same thing 5000 posts ago but clicking on show all messages will probably take down the internet

you don't need jpgs when you've got the real thing

xpost

If you're going to make an argument that Batman isn't a superhero, it isn't because he has no innate powers; it's because he's an antihero.

(And even that is changing what with our embrace of gritty realism as virtuous in our storytelling)