Batman carries on beginning in ... The Dark Knight

yea this kind of thing has already been repeated countless times wrt Spidey, BB, V for Vendetta, etc - it's getting real old and doesn't really mean anything much anymore. imo film reviewers are lazy and saying that a film transcends its roots is just their way of saying "This is a fucking awesome movie."

Superhero movies by necessity needs the cheap thrills and spills - can you imagine one where the hero sits around in their tights and have long, intense conversations about morality or the limits and ethics of vigilantism? (lol someone make this happen). Really the only question is whether a particular superhero movie delivers or not is whether it gives the audience more than standard "good guy meets bad guy, they fight, some shit get blown up, good guy wins" plot and manages to capture some of the nuanced storytelling that comic-book fans already know the genre is capable of.

i hear the next movie in the franchise will be directed by pedro costa

well one of the repeated uh tropes of the current crop of superhero movies is that they signpost their MORAL COMPLEXITY at some point and then find a resolution, because it has to involve someone in a cape / leathers / mechanical exoskeleton punching things, that involves either total handwaving denial or a slide into incoherence.

as some people on thread may know the whole OOOH LOOK ITS SO DARK, ITS MORALLY COMPLEX AND PEOPLE GET SHOT aesthetic is one that people have been having arguments over viz. comic books for twenty years or so now, actually. "grim and gritty" is largely recognised as cliché at best, travesty at worst.

as for "movies are intrinsically more creative and just plain better than other media" bullshit i have been hearing that from philistines since i was fourteen and it can GTFO tbh.

xpost who? /:

was looking forward to this then heard "punk rock joker" come out of bale's mouth.

haha amateurist.

"grim and gritty" is largely recognised as cliché at best, travesty at worst.

well yeah. But I think TDK works because it's so focused in what in wants to say. take-away the signposting (the Bat-voice, the darkness, and yes, the somewhat trite mantras) and what you still get is a movie about the difficulty of being a crime-fighter in a batsuit unbound to rules and laws.... when trying to do good things, you get in the way of other people like lawyers and cops who are also trying to do good things and they in turn get in your way. and worse, you push the bad guys to see how far they can go.

but.. I'm a comics dilettante at best and even I know this isn't saying anything really new. I'm more inclined to agree with omar upthread that TDK works because it tells this story well, which is frankly more than you could ask for in a 2-hour plus superhero movie. Does this mean it "transcends the genre"... I'm not so sure.

focused in what IT wants to say.**

oh i am almost certainly going to see this, after wall-e it's my second most looked forward to big budget thing of the year. trailers i have seen make it look three or four times more camp than i was expecting already, though.

the films inevitably come down hard on the side of vigilantism though (largely by the requirements of the genre--this is equally true of the so-called "adult" batman revisions by alan moore and frank miller), so i feel like the vaunted seriousness and self-consciousness are typically just window dressing.

i'd like to see a pixar batman more than the self-serious murk this film seems to be promising (sure, sure, it's possible i'll end up liking it more than i expect).

XPOST

good method to watch TDK, everytime a character says something in low pensive tones, yell "WHY. SO. SERIOUS?!" at the screen.

i was excited for this movie about a year or so ago, now meh.

"i'd like to see a pixar batman more than the self-serious murk this film seems to be promising"

ugh

im sure you guys are all very happy you werent pulp novel nerds in the 1940s

"these hollywood directors & critics just dont understaaaaaaaaaand, man!"

huh? did i say anything about comic books?

there are two equally stupid arguments against this film being made on this thread & sometimes i conflate them

a)not true to its source/not better than its source
b)not enough ironic distance for me to be comfortable with it
(c) film critics really like it)

as some people on thread may know the whole OOOH LOOK ITS SO DARK, ITS MORALLY COMPLEX AND PEOPLE GET SHOT aesthetic is one that people have been having arguments over viz. crime novels for twenty years or so now, actually. "grim and gritty" is largely recognised as cliché at best, travesty at worst.

-- thomp, Thursday, July 17, 1946 9:16 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

this is why kiss me deadly is a parody!

jk it is actually a parody for totally different reasons, are you one of those people that takes noir VERY SERIOUSLY as an HIGHBROW AESTHETE? if so, you should be shot.

ha fuck no, im one of those people who thinks this looks like a badass movie

are you one of those people who think 'adaptation' was gods greatest gift to filmmaking?

I'm sure this has been mentioned, as I haven't read the whole thread, but in discussing critical reaction to this I think it's important to be specific about when someone is putting The Dark Knight into the context of "super-hero" COMIC BOOKS and when it's being put into the context of "super-hero" comic-book MOVIE ADAPTATIONS. Which are not the same thing.

TDK feels more like a good, epic crime procedural (HEAT is the movie it evokes, strongly) than it does like any other comic-hero MOVIE. I'm sure there are plenty of comics -- Batman comics probably — that have the same feel/tone. But none of the super hero movies quite do. If it rises above it's form (and I'm not sure it does -- I like X-Men 2 best of the comic adaptations I've seen), it's the form of the movie-adaptations, not of comic books themselves.

just came back from a midnight screening.

yeah, it ruled. that is all.

i need to rewatch this though. i was forced to sit in the front row, the theater was so packed.

does batman really say punk rock joker?

i don't think so. i don't remember him saying it. but i missed a lot of little things.

does christian bale ever have his shirt off? that is pretty much all i care about.

so fuckin tired of superhero movies, don't care how 'dark' or 'innovative' they are. i just want to see some super-physiques, feel me

he impales the joker and two-face with his cock, but he has his shirt on.

this was the shit

whoever plays the joker next should kill himself before the role cuz he isn't topping ledger

robert downey jr in blackface cameo was A++ too

i just saw this, it was pretty good. all i'll say about it is that it could've been about 1/3rd shorter and less complicated. heath ledger and gary oldman rule. christian bale's "batman voice" is terrible, though.

does robert downjey jnr really cameo in blackface?

it's 45 minutes too long. it thinks it's a brooding, morailty tale, with all gray and no black or white, which it's not. it's actually got a bit of ayn rand in it, which i found tedious. the acting is all well done, but the characters themselves are much less interesting than in the first one... though to be honest, i don't think any of the roles were especially demanding. and to top it all off, maggie gylenhall looks like the fish man from hellboy. seriously.

i'd like to see a pixar batman more than the self-serious murk this film seems to be promising . . . .

Pixar shouldn't just be making films for the kid market, anyway. Everytime I'm sitting through a Pixar film with my wife and daughter, I think: ''You know what would be great? A Pixar version of Jaws.''

YES

A friend raised a question I'd never thought of ... why don't they call Caine ALFIE the Butler?

"'Ello, sir... Black rubber again t'night? Ow, the birds really go fer that, eh? Fair nuff."

Or Caine as Harry Palmer: "Going out? I was just about to make an omelette. Do us a favour and bring us back some tinned mushrooms. And get the expensive ones this time, cos there really is a difference in the flavour."

...or as Charlie Croker: "You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off! Not flatten a street full of cars and fill an apartment block full of bat droppings."

Or as the old hippie in Children of Men: "Joker, eh? Think you're funny, eh? Come on, pull my finger."

see, none of those are short for "Alfred"

How about the film ending with a real cliffhanger ending, with the Batmobile balancing on the edge of a cliff and Alfred says "Wait a minute, I've got an idea"? Oh never mind...

Saw this in IMAX last night. Really good, though strangely derivative of No Country for Old Men and Saw. Take those three movies and you've got a thesis on the American psyche in this decade, I guess.

I loved the heavy Mies van der Rohe influence on the interiors (which fits with the whole Chicago skyline). Also interesting how careful Nolan was to exclude any easily identifiable landmarks (Sears Tower, Hancock Tower, etc.) and focus on the more anonymous ones.

In IMAX, the Hong Kong section was especially amazing.

This film was shot before anyone but festival audiences saw No Country for Old Men, oui?

i tink i might see this tonight, i am very excited

not to get too OT here but is "saw" actually worth seeing eazy? usually mainstream horror movies come out & every year theres a couple where people are like but this ones DIFFERENT & SPECIAL in some way & every time theyre not (in my experience)

True. No idea if NCfOM the screenplay was circulated much before then, or if it's just (coin)cidence.

I've only seen enough of Saw clips to know it's a manclown taunting people and setting traps for them from afar.

But... The joker IS a 'manclown' and two-face DOES make decisions based on the toss of a coin, these are established characters devised way before 'saw' or 'no country' and as such it's bullshit to suggest they are derivative of the saw bloke and anton chigurrrrrrr.

Great movie by the way, a big step up from batman begins in my opinion.

And the pencil trick was just brilliant!

Reminiscent of Saw??????

y'know Batman villains and their traps, etc.

kinda foolish to say this is derivative of sources that are actually predated by all this stuff in the Batman mythos (coin-flipping, death traps, etc.)

saw and no country for old men = "IT IS DARK AND OSTENSIBLY NIHILISTIC"

yea i didnt make the connection b/w jigsaw=joker & two-face = chigurh, that doesnt really hold water

i always thought chigurh's coin fetish was pretty lol two-face.