I think I can finally forgive Tim Burton...
Way back in 1989, still high on the fumes from Frank Miller’s groundbreaking comic mini-series The Dark Knight Returns, I waited in line outside the theater in Foam Lake, Saskatchewan anticipating the movie event of the year: Batman. Never mind that Burton had cast Michael Keaton—of all people—in the lead role. Ludicrous as that decision was, I was still faintly confident that Nicholson’s turn as the Joker and Burton’s penchant for spooky set design would lift the film above such absurdity. I realized the movie wasn’t based on Miller’s script. But surely Burton had learned something from the popularity of Miller’s complex, quasi-criminal portrayal of the caped crusader. Surely.
One hundred and twenty-six minutes later, I stumbled out of the theater into a world that suddenly seemed dark and confused. As I peered at the streetlights, strange, multi-colored haloes danced before my eyes. The faces around me melted like wax, dripping down into the gutter below, and my friends’ voices transformed into demonic growls. As I staggered down the street, parents clutched their children, women screamed, and grown men stepped to the side. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in a store window and realized that I had indeed become a monster, a pariah. But somehow I couldn’t bring myself to care. “They blew it,� was all I managed to mutter as I trudged down the trash-strewn alley. “They had it right there in front of them, and they blew it…�
Sixteen years later, my sojourn into a Burton-inspired hell is finally over. Like Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins, I have emerged from my self-imposed exile and become a fully functioning member of society once again. Wiser, stronger, and more focused, I have regained my confidence that evil truly can be overcome by good. All it takes is a few men and women who are willing to stand up to injustice. Thankfully, director/writer Christopher Nolan, co-writer David S. Goyer, and the rest of their creative team are exactly that kind of people. Their example has inspired me to become such a person as well…
So Tim, you’re off the hook—for the moment. Judging from the previews, I suspect your version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory may bring an end to the détente all too soon. But once again, until that movie comes out, I will continue to give you the benefit of the doubt.
HJ Batman Begins Links
—Overview
—Photos
—About this Film
—Spiritual Connections
One hundred and twenty-six minutes later, I stumbled out of the theater into a world that suddenly seemed dark and confused. As I peered at the streetlights, strange, multi-colored haloes danced before my eyes. The faces around me melted like wax, dripping down into the gutter below, and my friends’ voices transformed into demonic growls. As I staggered down the street, parents clutched their children, women screamed, and grown men stepped to the side. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in a store window and realized that I had indeed become a monster, a pariah. But somehow I couldn’t bring myself to care. “They blew it,� was all I managed to mutter as I trudged down the trash-strewn alley. “They had it right there in front of them, and they blew it…�
Sixteen years later, my sojourn into a Burton-inspired hell is finally over. Like Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins, I have emerged from my self-imposed exile and become a fully functioning member of society once again. Wiser, stronger, and more focused, I have regained my confidence that evil truly can be overcome by good. All it takes is a few men and women who are willing to stand up to injustice. Thankfully, director/writer Christopher Nolan, co-writer David S. Goyer, and the rest of their creative team are exactly that kind of people. Their example has inspired me to become such a person as well…
So Tim, you’re off the hook—for the moment. Judging from the previews, I suspect your version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory may bring an end to the détente all too soon. But once again, until that movie comes out, I will continue to give you the benefit of the doubt.
HJ Batman Begins Links
—Overview
—Photos
—About this Film
—Spiritual Connections
21 Comments:
i remember watching with great anticipation tim burton's batman. as we stood in line (granted, to tell you our frame of mind, we started at noon for a 10 pm showing), we discussed how we only wanted batman to be better than the first superman movie.
we were perfectly happy because at least batman was dark, intense, brooding ... and wasn't the 60s batman. we felt like as comic fans, we were being treated seriously.
so i was always grateful to tim burton's vision. lousy story-teller (someone try to argue that batman returns isn't a theme without a plot), but a wonderful vision.
You're definitely a "glass half-full" kind of person, Maurice, which is great. You're right, the first Batman was miles better than the old TV show (which is still good in its own way). So perhaps I should have been happy with that as well, viewing it as the first step in a fifteen-year process rather than expecting them to "get it right" first time out.
Yeah, you're right, Kev. The "first" Batman movie (dir. Tim Burton, 1989) WAS crap!!
But - WHY would it take anyone "fifteen years" - and five frickin' attempts - to get a frickin' comic book franchise right?!?!
(If indeed they HAVE. And Maurice just hit the nail on the head about "Batman Returns" - it was a "theme without a plot", all right!
But do you know WHY they produce SO many movies in modern times, Maurice, that are all surface and "image" and no substance?
I know why! IT IS DIRECTLY BECAUSE SO MANY MOVIEMAKERS GET THEIR START IN THE ADVERTISING INDUSTRY. I kid you not.)
(By the way, you guys might like to know - well I have returned all energised, full of fight and p*ss and vinegar - from my fight with the troll at "In These Times" blog - don't you dare go there and lead him back to this forum, I don't want him on here, and believe me, neither do YOU! WHAT a poisonous individual! (And I thought I was bad! Truth is, I'm really just naughty, as everyone here knows.)
Well, I'm in fighting mood, as ever, and I'd just like to say for the record (Maurice!) how I DESPISE male comics fans who "want to be taken seriously" or "who want their genre to be taken seriously".
It just sounds SO pompous and bogus, guys! REALLY it does!!
I KNOW what you mean, in a way - but LOOK at what happens when you take science fiction, a particular sf universe or your role as a sf moviemaker TOO seriously!! "Revenge of the Sith" is what happens, which is what you, Kevin, have dismissed as being totally without a sense of humour or proportion!!
I mean, HOW many "Star Trek" fans, for example, do you get saying: "Hey I hope they take us SERIOUSLY this time?"
It seems to me, that if you're something like a Trekkie, you're happy in your own universe... Whereas blokes, and it IS mainly blokes in recent decades, who identify with a comic book hero such as the Batman, do so because they want to be seen as somehow "big", "macho"... the latter being the crux of it!!
It has been the KILLER for ALL true romanticism in comic books!!
Frank MILLER is not a flippin' romantic. He WORSHIPS Ayn Rand, like that troll I just got away from! Ayn Rand, I never read her books before, but now I've researched her all over the net, suffice it to say, her ideas were PSYCHOTIC. Atheistic capitalism in its worst form. I HATE that cow! How CAN she call herself "romantic"? Well, that's the sort of thing neo-fascists copy!
A story that somehow mocked the modern superhero "ideal" (MAYBE from the point of view of the VILLAINS, just as I previously suggested - ie, KNOWING but not cynical a la Alan Boore) and turned all on its head again, would be a good idea!
Anyone past 12 who looks to either comics heroes or sci-fi movies to BOLSTER their own sense of their own masculinity - IS A BIG DOPE!
By the way, Kevin, I hid my true identity from the troll on the other forum by posing as a Canadian - and it worked! Thanks!!! Ha ha ha ha!
I make a good Canadian. And, after all, they use most of the same spellings as Brits do. (Are there any major differences?)
Oh, and I haven't found that useful piece of research I said I was looking up for you... I'll get back to you on it.
Liz: Great to have you back! I was starting to worry. Glad to see you're as fiery as ever. I think you have something there with the directors coming out of the ad industry. They tend to think people have the attention span--not to mention the intellection--of a flea. Dying to hear your comments on "Batman Begins." Your idea about turning the superhero ideal on its head is a good one. I'm actually in the initial musings on a graphic novel or mini-series idea that I would like to pitch to DC. It is centered around the character of Bizarro, and I think it would be ideal for doing what you're talking about.
As for Ayn Rand, never read her, though I've meant to. To tell you the truth though, I've never heard anyone rave about her. Most people are quite critical of her, probably for the same reasons you are.
As for wanting to be taken seriously: Even though geeks are happy in their own little worlds (that's why they're geeks, they don't like the real world) there's nothing a geek loves more than his/her day in the sun, their one chance to have the rest of the world looking to them for answers rather than the other way around. Hero for a day.
K
What!? No Burton!?
Sorry folks, but someone needed to say this in response to all the Burton baggers that seem to have come out of the wood work after the release of the new Batman movie.
I am a big Batman fan, and I thought Tim Burton's take on the Dark Knight was well worth the effort. You have to remember that every second artist has a new way to interpret the look of batman, and most of the writer's have their own slant on hw they like to portray him. While I agree that Tim Buton's vision of Batman was by no means the diffinitive one, I also must agree that any departure from the 60's Tv show which was both bogus and sad, must by definition be a good move.
Bob Kane was really the only person who knew what Batman was supposed to be from the beginning, and it would seem that at least in some respects, Burton captured something that had been lacking in the generally accepted public opinion of the Caped Crusader so long obscured by that television travesty. I am most impressed by this new offering to the Batman saga, which at once has not only continued in the vein of Burton's truly Dark Knight, and taken him away from that ridiculous Clooney debacle, but also redefined his beginning into a new (and even more true) direction. B.
Oi, Ben!
You might like to know - that contrary to what some naive teen guys on things like Yahoo! Movies state, when they moan on and on about how nos. 3 and 4 in the Batman series were not "serious" enough... (sigh)!!
BOB KANE ACTUALLY PUT HIS NAME DOWN AS CONSULTANT ON ALL FOUR MOVIES. If you stayed long enough in the cinema to see that, or bought the videos and watched the credits right to the end.
DID Bob Kane REALLY know all "what Batman was supposed to be from the beginning"??
Thing is, like the creator of Superman, HE had a collaborator, namely Bill Finger! (I'm formulating some interesting "conspiracy" theories about him. and their partnership! All to my evil little self!)
But anyway, Bill Finger has NEVER had the credit he deserves, largely because of historical/legal reasons.
AND, after the first couple years, Kane was running something more akin to a studio... all sorts of people had an input. THEN there was what went into it in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s... ALL had an impact on what we are seeing today. Both the comics and the TV series did, I mean to say.
(Because I and I alone it would seem, have researched this - yes I am going to brag - I can pick out dozens of little bits of the TV series that the moviemakers actually BORROWED for their plots, and turned around another way.)
Anyone who thinks the TV show can be dismissed purely as "both bogus and sad" is PROBABLY that themselves (I speak as a critic!) or they are very young, naive and dumb.
But then I tend to have a very LOW opinion of most male "comics nuts" nowadays anyway!!
Your mothers and fathers had more sense, Yankees.
Kevin - "Bizarro" - c'est quoi? Sounds fascinating. You tell me how you make that pitch and I'll be all ears. (Damn, where IS that credit card?!)
Best of luck on that.
So THAT'S "what a geek wants". Hmmm.... But the "Trekkie" type geeks are NOT looking to Captain Picard or the Ferengi or any of those (pretty brilliant!) characters that they have on STNG to make themselves appear "macho".... They just want to enjoy the characters as characters. They don't care what their friends think, I don't think!
NOW I know who/what Bizarro is! (See, if you don't have a comics store near you...)
But there's always the web! Looked it up on the web, and he's like, well he's like a spoof comics hero, isn't he?
Someone at some "independent" house seems to have invented him; however they allow his writers to license more "famous" characters, and he spoofs them or joins with them in more spoofy adventures - yeah? There's some anthology of him advertised at hillcity-comics.com
He looks like Superman crossed with Homer Simpson, yeah? As if Matt Groening drew him, which I don't think he does...
Yeah??
I think I geddit now! Why not? 'Bout time "Bizarro" spoofed all the superheroic pretentiousness.
(Y'know, I was once, years ago, thinking of writing a spoof of "Dark Knight Returns"... But I realised it would be too much like attempting to spoof "Mein Kampf." Frank Miller doesn't provide us a coherent enough storyline or "strong" enough characters - apart maybe from the fascistic hero - to spoof. All these works are so... insubstantial at their fundamentals, that's what I always instinctively felt. Whereas people COULD manage to spoof the 60s TV Batman - even though it's inherently difficult to do a spoof of a spoof - still, they managed OK with "The Man from Uncle"!! Because it was a nice strong "meme". (Both 60s Bats and Bond, which U.N.C.L.E. was spoofing.) People who watched it could instinctively "grasp the idea" after about 30 secs - like me with Bizarro!!)
If it's a lot of pretentious bombast, nobody can really find the centre anyway, because it doesn't have one to find, all image no substance.... d'you dig??
Do Canadians write "centre" or "center"?
You know, Liz, I have been writing for American markets for so long that I don't even remember how to spell "center/centre" in "Canadian." I think it's centre. In general, we go with the British spelling.
As for Bob Kane, I was about to say the same thing. First, he did not work alone. Second, I don't believe that the creators of such things always realize the full potential of their creation. It takes someone analyzing it from a distance to do that. Take Swamp Thing for example. Comic book giant Len Wein created him, but (and Liz is going to love this) it took Allan Moore (in my opinion) to help Swampy reach his full mystical potential in the mid-1980s. So the germ of a good idea was there, but the comics code and other restrictions held it back for a while.
Speaking of fanboys, I just received a review copy of "Comic Book Culture" from the University Press of Mississippi. It's a scholarly look at comic book culture and the people who create it, including and especially fanboys. So watch for that review sometime in the next couple of months as well.
PS: A spoof of DK. Now that is a good idea!
That so, Kevin?
I too have been practising writing in "American", too, but I've been doing it on other sites, not this one. (I know all the spellings. All - well I hope, all. I've been practising throughout the 90s.) I love American slang and have mastered most of that, I think? (Whenever I find something in any book that discusses differences in word usage, I always make a very strong mental note of it!)
But, I find that language in the US is as much regional (And class!) as anything else.
Like, "bloody" is marked as a British swearword in dictionaries - but middle-class Americans seem to use it a lot!
One book said that Americans use the words "named for" (eg. a person), whereas the British almost exclusively use: "named after"... But I've heard/read BOTH used by Americans.
Americans tend to say: "I need a ride" rather than "I need a lift" - but again, I think this is regional. Don't people in Maine and other places on the East coast say "lift"? (For a car journey where someone else is doing the driving?)
British say "p*ssed off", Americans say "p*ssed" (at) - but do they NEVER say the former? (For "angry" - about sth.?)
Fascinated by language and language differences. One day, if things go better rather than worse, I plan to pass myself off as an American - just to see what that's like... (I'll need a dialogue coach for the accents though. I'm already picking out my favourites. My father thought the Bostonians spoke well! Dad always liked a bit of class.)
Football is soccer, petrol is gas... It's easy enough!
I could do it! I could learn to be American. I already know more about America (never having yet set foot there) than Neil Gaiman does. Guy on another site as good as admitted I did.
You'll hear my voice sooner or later though, chaps, because I plan to put some sound recordings on my blogs! (If I can get them on there.)
You're going to be surprised, Kevin - pleasantly, I hope!
Anyway, here's my first blog. It's not got much on there yet.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/lizfrombritain/
I might use that as my webpage identity... Until I add other links!
YES, Kevin, a spoof of DK(R?) MIGHT indeed be "a good idea"?? Possibly even commercially. I mean, LOOK how many
"spoofy" Saturday morning cartoons there are now - Power Puff Girls, Fairly Odd Parents, Super Duper Sumos... (I loved the idea in the lattermost cartoon of an "Evil, Inc."!)
But would it be satisfactorily ACHIEVABLE? Because of the factors I've mentioned?
By my high standards??
Maybe by slightly more sophomoric ones, it would be...
Anyway, you don't seem yet to have dared put up the paean to Frank Miller's (by me behated) Magnum Opus yet...
When I see WHY you like it...
Then maybe we can spoof it up together!
Still have to read "Swamp Thing" by Alan Moore!
(The thing IS, I tend to like the OLD-time, less complicated, "corny" versions - like that movie they made of Swamp Thing that was definitely NOT Moore-influenced! OR, better yet, like the Seventies "Incredible Hulk" series. My mother used to love that, too!)
And Alan Moore REALLY had it with me, well before the 90s in fact, as soon as he wrote that stupid "introduction" to DKR where he slavers all over Frank and likewise praises sf writer Philip Jose Farmer for creating a cannibal version of - sigh - Tarzan, which Moore - sigh - says is "realistic"!
(Not to MENTION "Killing Joke"! The least said about which, perhaps the better! I'm glad no-one on this site seems to like it, including Maurice...)
See - I had this in the earlier 1980s, as well! NUTTY sf writers started coming forth then, as well as all the talented ones. Me, I took my best school pal's advice, and AVOIDED the (later) PJF, and went for Julian May instead!
Hey, Kevin!
I've just recently seen and now reviewed "Batman Begins", as you can see under the relevant section. And I've titled the review, a French paraphrase, "C'est un peu magnifique, mais ce n'est pas un film Be-De!" (Meaning it's a little bit magnificent, but it's not a comic book movie!)
Sub-title: "Come back, Tim Burton, all is forgiven!"
WHY? Because I HAD to conclude, in the end, that although B.B. was far more detailed and "sincere", THAT in the end, was its downfall, as it was even MORE pompous, and certainly more boring, than the works by Burton!
Which had SILLY PLOTS, both of them... (B.B. wasn't that much more clever). But they had that EMOTION, that tension between the hero and the villains, and that exploration of backstory, equally tormented villain to balance tortured hero - that worked nicely! To us sado-masochists!!
I didn't believe the Joker - but at least they made a stab at him. The Penguin WOULD have been believable - if they didn't put in all that stuff about kids and circuses. But I got off on the Catwoman's portrayal in that movie... I could see myself as her!
But the best villain by a long chalk - for me, anyway, must be Jim Carrey's Riddler, in the movie which Schumacher directed and Burton produced.
Because we could see the whole thing. And we were made to identify with him all the way, as we were with the Batman.
And Burton at LEAST has a sense of fantasy - and he employs imaginative set designers - which ALL half-decent superhero or sci-movies, from Star Wars and Superman, back in the 70s, did!!
If you don't do that.... you're not making a superhero - or a sci-fi movie. You're making some kind of weird new hyperrealistic non-reality movie!!
Anyway - how do YOU think that Tim Burton "blew it", the first time? Or did he blow it on both occasions?
Other than casting Michael Keaton? Who I agree was the most ugly, stunted, wimpy Batmensch I ever did see... but Burton couldn't pick someone too tall for the role, because he'd picked Nicholson as the Joker, who is quite short... So... Limitations...
The Joker, as we know in the comics - and cartoons - is a tall, and strapping fellow! I've seen estimates of his height range from 6' 1'' to 6' 5''! (I don't think he's THAT tall as the last example - would make him into a basketball player!!)
But what if they managed to find a tall actor - who LOOKED a bit like the Joker of the comics... to play him in the next movie? (Which as we KNOW is going to feature the Joker!)
But would Nolan WANT to?? I mean the Joker is fun, exaggerated... and all Nolan seems to want to produce is post-modernist "realism"...
I really was surprised, particularly at the paucity, unimaginativeness of set design in B.B.! Check out my review! Nolan's Gotham needs some better town planners - and someone to clean the L-train (OK, monorail) up!!
Now, Kevin. Instead of being such a cowardly creep (yes, I can resurrect the insults, if you really WARRANT them! I'm harder than YOU are any day of the week!) as you were on your own review page of the movie - but yes, we know, you don't want that spoiled; and you want to leave plenty of room for the comments of multitudes there... mind you, I left plenty of room and time for other people to monopolize the discussion.. and they didn't, on there! So, you REVIEWERS might all like Nolan's movie, but it doesn't seem to have attracted that much interest from the public - that use this site, at any rate. I've seen more activity on the old Buffy pages.)
So DELETE me! I dare you!
But first of all, you can come up with some good answers to the points I raised above - the condensed version.
I didn't say I really disliked the movie; I thought I wrote a very fair review of it overall - which is to be seen on my blog, folks! Roll up, roll up!!
http://www.livejournal.com/users/lizfrombritain/
Or just click on my nickname above. It's the link I'm currently using.
I just thought that Batman Begins was a let-down in surprising ways, that no review prepared one for, and that I therefore wasn't expecting - eg, the sets. I could have stood exactly the same script, with better sets!
And comic-book realite - come on, people!!
(Though there IS one guy who to my mind managed near enough that, so far; it was quite a well-known writer called Steve Rasnic Tem, and it was in a prose story called "Vulture", about Oswald Cobblepot/The Penguin... published in the second volume of the Bantam Books series "The Further Adventures of the Batman"! Check it out, maybe you'll see what I mean.)
They'd have to get the POLITICS a bit more sound first! Oriental ninja sects + 1 Frenchman (or perchance was he Canadian? Ah!...) who we didn't even know was he meant to be the real Rh'as Al Ghul or not in the movie, causing economic disasters!
Pull the other one, boys!
More like the G8 and the neo-liberals: THEY'RE the real League of Shadows, the true, Western home-grown variety, and I bet that Michael Moore, when he went to see that movie, thought the very same thing!
YES and I wish I could live next door to him!!
And THIS time, maybe, Kevin, when you post on the blog you'll put your brain in gear and not just the delete key!
Ah, Liz. COMMENTS BELOW IN CAPS.
Now, Kevin. Instead of being such a cowardly creep (yes, I can resurrect the insults, if you really WARRANT them! I'm harder than YOU are any day of the week!) as you were on your own review page of the movie - but yes, we know, you don't want that spoiled; and you want to leave plenty of room for the comments of multitudes there... mind you, I left plenty of room and time for other people to monopolize the discussion.. and they didn't, on there! So, you REVIEWERS might all like Nolan's movie, but it doesn't seem to have attracted that much interest from the public - that use this site, at any rate. I've seen more activity on the old Buffy pages.) THE DELETION HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH COWARDICE (I DIDN’T EVEN READ IT BEFORE I DELETED IT) AND EVERYTHING TO DO WITH REMAINING CONSISTENT TO THE BOUNDARIES I LAID OUT EARLIER—REMEMBER, THE 500-WORD LIMIT? I AGREE THAT THERE AREN’T A TON OF PEOPLE COMMENTING OUT THERE, BUT PERHAPS THAT MIGHT CHANGE IF THE OTHER COMMENTS WERE SHORTER. JUST A THOUGHT, AND PERHAPS NOT A VERY GOOD ONE.
So DELETE me! I dare you! DONE.
But first of all, you can come up with some good answers to the points I raised above - the condensed version. SEE? THIS IS A GOOD IDEA. GIVE US A TASTE THEN TELL US WHERE TO GO IF WE WANT MORE.
I didn't say I really disliked the movie; I thought I wrote a very fair review of it overall - which is to be seen on my blog, folks! Roll up, roll up!!
http://www.livejournal.com/users/lizfrombritain/
Or just click on my nickname above. It's the link I'm currently using.
I just thought that Batman Begins was a let-down in surprising ways, that no review prepared one for, and that I therefore wasn't expecting - eg, the sets. I could have stood exactly the same script, with better sets! I DIDN’T PUT A LOT OF THOUGHT INTO THE SETS. I’LL CHECK THAT OUT NEXT TIME ROUND. I WILL CONCEDE THAT BURTON PROBABLY DID A BETTER JOB, SEEING AS HE USED TO BE AN ART DIRECTOR.
And comic-book realite - come on, people!!
(Though there IS one guy who to my mind managed near enough that, so far; it was quite a well-known writer called Steve Rasnic Tem, and it was in a prose story called "Vulture", about Oswald Cobblepot/The Penguin... published in the second volume of the Bantam Books series "The Further Adventures of the Batman"! Check it out, maybe you'll see what I mean.)
They'd have to get the POLITICS a bit more sound first! Oriental ninja sects + 1 Frenchman (or perchance was he Canadian? Ah!...) who we didn't even know was he meant to be the real Rh'as Al Ghul or not in the movie, causing economic disasters!
Pull the other one, boys!
More like the G8 and the neo-liberals: THEY'RE the real League of Shadows, the true, Western home-grown variety, and I bet that Michael Moore, when he went to see that movie, thought the very same thing!
YES and I wish I could live next door to him!!
And THIS time, maybe, Kevin, when you post on the blog you'll put your brain in gear and not just the delete key! ENGAGING BRAIN… NOW.
--
Posted by Liz the Brit to Reviews by Kevin Miller at 7/03/2005 05:40:43 AM
But actually, I LOVED watching the movie, Kevin, and am greatly looking forward to the sequel...
You KNOW I love all things Batman! Even if I don't really like the individual modern "expressions" of the archetype that much: the archetype himself means so much to me!! Handsome Bat!!! Joy of my childish/teenage heart!
And - if a movie, like Nolan's is at least prepared to be MORALLY SERIOUS.... then all kudos to it. I might NOT get the visual benefit of all the sets... (ACTUALLY I think that in that respect, Burton's second effort, "Batman Returns", was best, plus the third entry in the series, "Batman Forever"... the sets just got better and better every time, I thought... even if the scripts didn't, for the fourth one... we still got this VERY distinct mental picture of a town that it might be possible to visit; a "real place" and a "city of the imagination" at the same time! I always thought Gotham WAS real: and the movies did one thing for me: they made me seriously think (as did that story by Tem that I keep citing!) about what it would be really like to live there; and my mind exercised itself on that point, fruitfully I like to think, for AGES on and off....)
Yeah, as I was saying: with the Nolan films, I might not get the visual benefit of the sets, and have THAT sort of magical-realism to feast on... but at LEAST I don't have to worry about the moral immaturity of a hero (and a scriptwriter) who can save someone in one scene, then in another, drop a bomb down a villain's pants/down a manhole where opponents are hiding/blast them with his car's rocket exhaust... Oh, WHAT? I kept thinking, all throughout "Batman Returns", where this kind of stuff features...
And then in the FINAL scene of that movie, attempt to prevent the Catwoman from killing the villainous Max Shreck, her former boss and would-be-murderer... why does Batman care about this? I cynically thought: Because Shreck is rich and the other guys aren't: so that is why the scriptwriters think he would plead for the life of Shreck, the crooked businessman... Class interests! Which also, intriguingly enough, came out in "Batman Forever"... but I bet the writers didn't consciously intend them to!
No - I bet they didn't! (Well, OK, in B.R., it might be because he's solicitous for the Catwoman as well, which he really IS at that stage, and he wants to save her from becoming a murderess... but where is the moral CLARITY, if the hero's already done things in the movie which aren't much better?)
There WAS no clarity, come on now was there, in the 90s!!
But if Nolan can get PAST all that moral uneasiness and lack of compass... the only thing he made Bats do is LEAVE Ducard to die... which in a way, though not desirable from the moral point of view, was understandable... Bats was at the end of his tether.... Maybe Ducard should have been shown escaping on his own.
Anyway, IF Nolan can pick the RIGHT GUY to be the Joker... someone who is "believable" in one way (that is to say, FAR OFF from the bravura-ham-actor performance of Jack Nicholson!) and yet... has that... feyness... that the Joker has, and that SOME people on IMDb are already noticing... there ARE some observant comics fans out there... yeah, there's hot discussions going on there on the subject of Batman movie sequels! Which is why I bring them up!..
If Nolan can do all THAT - and make his Joker 1) believeable, ie, a jobbing criminal and robber, as he was in the ORIGINAL comics 2) a bit of an aesthete! This is where the "artistic creature of imagination" comes in... actually, the Joker in the Golden Age comics was said to be very hot on jewels, especially DIAMONDS... maybe if we gave him a bit of a "bling-bling" fetish, in modern terms, hmm? (Something enjoyed by both gay men and blacks - and LATTERLY, by the "aspiring" working class... there's another little theme to grind on!) 3) OK, a bit of a nasty murderer to go with that - it will give Harvey Dent the chance to prosecute him, won't it, as I (and the guys on IMDb) discuss elsewhere... though I want him to murder MILLIONAIRES, this time; MILLIONAIRES, not kids, women, homeless or poor people, thanx very much, screenwriters! I think showing a criminal who has a hatred against THE RICH and privileged would be a VERY realistic thing to do... especially, seeing as you COULD "motivate" the story, by SAYING (get this - I MUST post it on the other movie site 'cos I know people will be interested!) that HE, the Joker as is, has something against this wealthy gemstone collector, (who appears in the original comics, which David Goyer seems to be interested in referring to, at least!) and kills him as well as robs him, because the latter/his family, (in my movie script, rough draft!) OWNED the chemicals company which DISFIGURED The Joker as is/"Red Hood" as was.... Ah, SEE!!! THAT would make a (good) story!!
(Though it seems much too sensible and socially-concerned to find its way into modern Hollywood action territory.)
But that connection would be the ONLY thing you needed to add, to "original" Batman comics, to make EVERYTHING make perfect sense! Instead of making nonsense out of it, like Sam Hamm did!!
And in this version, to make it fit in with what they've already put, of course, you could simply leave the Batman OUT of the "Red Hood gets disfigured" story, (which MUST have taken place,of course, otherwise there's NO explanation for the Joker!), but just tell the story in flashback/reconstruction if you film it at all, rather than just referring to it.... mind you, they'd have to have at least one shot of it!! And say that the Red Hood went to the factory on his own; and was surprised by the police, the factory owner, the whoever, and THAT is how it all happened... you don't NEED the Batman to be part of the Joker's disfigurement: fans like it, but morally I think it's incidental, as the Batman did not WANT the Joker to fall in, or anything....
Anyway, Nolan's burnt his boats, if he wanted the Joker's disfigurement to be caused by his Batman... it couldn't have been, in THAT chronology!!
Anyway, originally the Joker has just killed the factory owner and one or two people who he hates... but THEN he could be prosecuted by the ambitious young Harvey Dent, who wants to send him to the electric chair, in this cinematic version of the story, of course that's how it would go....
(Wouldn't it be interesting - and kind of compromising - if in a NEW version, Harvey could be SHOWN to have "brought his fate down upon himself", NOT, this time, by nobly going after the Mob... but purely for the sake of his own AMBITION, by trying to prosecute a criminal (the Joker) who, say, Gotham authorities are ALREADY just about prepared to accept as a nutter and to put him in the booby hatch for his murders, because he did them because he was disfigured, say... but the young Dent didn't want to ACCEPT that, and in THIS my very own scenario which I made up right now, thought that he could build A REPUTATION AS "A TOUGH YOUNG D.A", by "proving" that a mad, disfigured man was SANE, and thereby sending him to his death by injection or by the chair? (Bet Gotham has the electric chair for the - rare - instances in which it puts people to death - it would go with the gothicness of the place! They're gothic liberals, REALLY... interpret that as you will!)
Yes, sending him, a madman, to his death, just in order to prove young Harvey's reputation: as the conservative "rising star"!!
But the Joker wasn't prepared to ACCEPT that.. and he's also very cunning, so he realises that ONE way in which he can PROVE his own insanity, for when he is recaptured, as Joker knows he eventually must be, though he has escape plans aplenty just like in the old days of comics... Well Joker realises that the one way he CAN prove that he, Joker, is an INSANE rather than a sane criminal, and therefore not legally liable for his capital crimes, is to DISFIGURE the respectable D.A., Dent, and to render him mad in precisely the same manner... ie, to turn HIM into an embittered criminal by means of disfigurement! Which we as good comics fans know, if Dent IS disfigured by whatever means - by the rules of comics, is the ONLY outcome possible!!
Yes, Dent WOULD turn into the criminal Two-Face - and that goes double if it was another costumed criminal who disfigured him!
(Hey, I'm beginning to LIKE this idea! It's FAR better than that of Alan Moore's load of old nonsense; and although the idea of Joker disfiguring Dent IS NOT MY OWN - it's the movie fans - the motivation I've just provided for Joker to do it, is fine, sterling and logical!!)
And wouldn't the above story in a movie just make the conservative D.A. ambition-led types THINK, for a change...
Anyway, some people on IMDB want the Joker to be the one to disfigure Harvey Dent in the next movie, as they think it will tie all the characters together neatly... Patly, I agree, but yes, it would work, as a movie story.
(Joker WOULD, really, hate the guy who prosecutes him and threatens him with death.. he would, indeed, HATE Harvey for that... if Harvey ever tried it in the comics nowadays (SAY they made a story, in which Harv regains his sanity and is reinstated - it DID happen before, in old comics...) IF they tried to make him prosecute the Joker in COMICS.... say Harvey were to do it, again for his own SELF-INTEREST, in my imagination: to prove he's SANE and to get let out of Arkham for good, or something: buy his way back by favour into the Gotham establishment... (God, I'm currently getting plot ideas better than J K Rowling - I DARE you to say they're no good, Kevin and Maurice!) boy would the Joker be sour!
He'd do just anything to revenge himself... but in THAT situation, well, he already views Harvey as a sort of friend/ally, doens't he... so a prosecution (say if Harvey tried to prove the Joker SANE... good Gaia, J. WOULD be furious, and it would be a terrible thing to do, still, you know public prosecutors - look at Kenneth Starr! Hey, why am I giving all my good ideas away where DC dimwits can see them??) by Harvey of the Joker in comics, would be seen as a terrible betrayal by the latter, and the Joker HATES betrayal... just as much as I do, and more... So no, don't let's go there....
I couldn't prosecute my old cellie or ward-mate... could you???
Maybe middle-class Americans could. Some of them are a bit heartless... have no class feeling... do anything for advancement.... etc.
But in the movies, in a state where none of the characters KNOW each other from before - they could write anything! (Without getting into the more complex emotional areas I have just mentioned.)
And THEN I suppose the Joker can escape from the court in the postulated movie and go on a "rampage"... but I HOPE we don't get anything as pointless as Hamm's original Batman movie story!!
Do ALL these action movies nowadays, HAVE to have the plot of: "Villain threatens the WORLD/the entire city", anyway, for the viewers to find them interesting? I don't think they do...
Maybe the writer could make it that the Joker went after Bruce's girlfriend Rachel, the D.A.: that would give the Joker (in heterosexual mode - the day these movies actually dare to discuss the OTHER side of his sexuality, I shall gasp in amazement!) the chance to do an "Aha, me proud beauty" routine with that actress or similar female...as someone, AGAIN, seems to have posted some kind of a mock-up photo of him doing, on guess what, IMDB...
But I don't want any disfigurements of women or anything like that. It would be funnier if she decided to go along with him!
(But you'd need Harley Quinn for that - and you'll never get HER into that movie!!)
And if this is deemed to be too long, Kevin: delete it, I don't care. Sue me! (No, don't, actually - unless you want me to have a Joker revenge reaction!! We passionate jesters!!)
I just thought some of these ideas might be interesting to people. Let them have a read, then wipe off if necessary.
Kevin? I know this was a long ramble, but it contained some good ideas!
Like - a real REASON for the Joker to disfigure Harvey Dent - IF that's what the writers want to put in the new movie!!
A REASON for the Joker to murder other people in the story - namely, for the sake of argument, a gemstone collector!
What do you think about my connection (I never run out of them!) between the Joker and "bling-bling", then?
Yes, it really IS in the 1940s comics... only nobody used the word bling then!!
Why does he like jewels so... as he was said to in the old comics? (True!!)
Yup - our Joker has to be either black (don't worry, I've raised this notion with Maurice before! Much to his contempt, I think!), gay - yup - everyone knowledgeable knows about that too....
Or maybe he's what the Brits have taken to calling a "chav"!!!
Do you know what a "chav" is, Kevin??
Apparently footballer David Beckham and "Posh", his wife, both fall into that bracket.
Liz: The reason I haven't answered is that I'm only in my second day back from vacation and still trying to dig myself out.
From under?!
Know what you mean! Have to update my own journal still.
Will Tim Burton forgive you though - for not liking his movies?
I agree with Maurice's basic assessment however - Burton is great on "vision" and visual concept (though over-the-top, from the viewpoint of most people who are not Goths!) but his storytelling ability is VERY poor, overall. Mind you, that's also the fault of the screenwriters he's worked with!
(The best stories he ever tells are the simplest, eg. "The Nightmare Before Christmas", his best film ever IMO. He is better at animation, I always feel; he was trained in animation - he should stick more to animation! He doesn't understand real people enough I don't think.)
So - WHAT was it, that put you off the first Batman movie by him so much... and did you go and see the second, also directed by Burton?
And did this "antipathy" last right through the series of movies, right through "Batman Forever", which he produced, "Batman and Robin", which he didn't... and right up until they rebooted with "Batman Begins", which you gave a rave review to. I liked it pretty much too - I just didn't give it a rave review, just a rather long, analytical, balanced one!
One really good thing about "Batman Begins", I FEEL, was that it didn't attempt to portray Gotham as a city inhabited by Gothic ghouls and evil spirits, "abandon hope all ye who enter here", etc etc... I think that Gotham most obviously DOES have its Gothic aspect, but that it can be positive Gothic as well... explaining this to any degree would take an essay on Gothic (which I have been attempting to analyse, as an artistic style, for years, BTW) and which I won't give here!
But you know, like Gothic cathedrals? The architecture in this style was originally invented to bring LIGHT into ecclesiastical buildings, rather than the dingy colonnades of Greco-Roman times... Where it ever got the reputation for being dark and dingy I don't know. (Mid-Victorian Gothic revival I reckon.)
And you know, like Hogwarts? The wizard school? That, in the movies, is TOTALLY Gothic - and, as in the books, pretty friendly! (Scary but friendly.)
Which is how I like my Gothic!
No; Gotham City in Nolan's portrayal was VERY human and realistic-like... which is why I dubbed it: "A Bat-documentary"!
There was a lot of "grottiness" and dinginess in the city of Nolan's portrayal; but it was realistic and it was also possibly hopeful, for the would-be social reformer; because it portrayed very clearly a city in DECLINE; AND it as good as said to the viewer... "but this OTHER vision was how it formerly was, fifteen or twenty YEARS ago, ie, when liberals were still running the city, when Wayne Senior was still alive... Look, he built a gleaming new monorail; and now all the city authorities and the rich (Republican, I now feel was the movie's implication - but it was a very hidden implication!) movers and shakers have done is to let it fall into disrepair... to let public services decline and allow the mob and drugs dealers to take over!)
You know, it's like I said in the postscript to my blog - which I'm still working on updating - my blog, I mean, not that particular entry... Thomas Wayne MUST have been viewed as a "Kennedy figure", and therefore he and his wife MUST have been assassinated on the orders of the elite, Gotham's or otherwise... that's the only place it's logically possible to end up, if you really want to analyse a story like that!
Incidentally, I am the ONLY person so far I have seen on the web, on any Batman-movie-related board or blog, to MAKE that connection. (But it's so obvious! To the politically informed!)
(Oh, and by the WAY, for the record, I DID have that insight - ie, about who was REALLY responsible for the Waynes' deaths, long before that movie came out, because of my own private Bat-speculations, which were fuelled by my fascination with conspiracy theories... which I have been studying for many years. No, I won't tell you any more, because you don't want to know, and you won't... unless of course any of it makes it into print!)
What does that tell you though, that not *more* people had this flash of insight when they saw the movie and saw the beginnings of a "theory" ie that it was a gangster behind Joe Chill - and who was behind *him*? Ya see - doesn't take much of an intellectual leap. Though most moviegoers and certainly most comics readers don't have the political knowledge that I do!
(Well it's time for them all to wake up.)
Anyway: I have a FEELING that Nolan and his writer might very well have been hip to the above idea; but they "chose not to go there"! (Being basically cowards and in favour of non-controversy - but most movie-makers are these days - but they don't HAVE to be, is every left-winger's assertion!)
Now, if Nolan HAD said that... THEN I would have fallen at his feet!
But OTHERWISE you see... the constant "realism" - which means grot in most cases, doesn't it - did make me fidget in my seat a bit (and think stuff like - if I wanted THIS, ie a realistic movie, I would watch some low-budget arthouse thing by some Third World filmmaker from Iran, or something!)
And it was THEN, you see, that I started missing the SETS and fantasy and overthetopness of the Tim Burtons and successors!! (It's only when they take something away that you miss it!)
I think the PERFECT Batman movie... impossible to achieve, I know! But it would have elements of both fantasy and realism. (You can't deal with such archetypal characters who have visionary experiences - like that of the Batman's descent into the underworld (the cave) without giving it a DREAMLIKE and a symbolic atmosphere - which Joel Schumacher actually ACHIEVED in Forever, which is something that NOBODY gave him credit for - but he used all the right Campbellian terminology... he (and his scriptwriters Scott Batchler and his wife and that other chap) even made the female psychiatrist an expert in dreams!)
(And I think that the villains have similar visionary experiences, BTW.. yes Sam, if you're reading, this all has to do with your theories of gods and supermen being animated by deities or a Deity, doesn't it... or so they thought in ancient, more magical, pre-existentialist times!)
Yes, I think that the supervillains have similar visionary experiences, when they decide - as some of them (Riddler, Catwoman) actually DO decide - to "take the costume" and don their new identity... I think they have similar weird psychological trips as that of the hero... and that was actually suggested, of the above two villain characters, in "Batman Returns", and "Batman Forever".
Some things these movies just do get right!
Anyway, there was something on the letters pages of my favourite socialist site which was actually POSITIVE to Batman Begins, which I meant to post on the relevant post but forgot... I will go back and look for it again!!
Some socialists (like me, but then I have all sorts of other reasons as well) are actually PRO a character like Batman, *esp. as in the realistic Nolan portrayal* because they see him as PRO-SCIENCE.
Well in an age of what reds call "religious obscurantism".... I'm not surprised. They're RIGHT, actually! He's the most MATERIALIST (no, NOT money-motivated!) and the most realistic, ie, human, of ALL superheroes, I've long thought that.
Yeah, he's a pro-science, self-created superman who fights corruption and whose father was a noted liberal - how about that analysis, Kevin, Sam, Maurice??
But I'm an ol' romantic you see - and NOT in the Miller sense! (Whatever that is.)
No; I want to see a good balance between science and magic in such movies; (and in the whole of our culture) that's what's bothering me.
Liz: I'm sorry, but I think I'm done talking about Batman for a while. However, as for what I didn't like about Burton's movies, it was that they weren't anything like Miller's vision, which I thought was the penultimate achievement when it comes to the Caped Crusader.
Hmmph!
Well, Frank Miller's "Caped Crusader" or "Dark Knight" is certainly something which we both have DIAMETRICALLY opposed views on, Kevin, and it doesn't look like either one of us will EVER budge on them, does it?
In fact, I think it's a subject worthy of a Scientific Study. Namely, WHY do a significant (for surely there are more of you!) proportion of perfectly nice, and socially liberal-scoring Christians, like the very unChristian work of a man who.... well seems to have an immoral imagination, it seems to me? (And it's not like the South Park kind of imagination, either, because it doesn't have the saving grace of farce.)
Yes. Psychology and psychoanalysis are another of my... well, it's more than a hobby; it might just end up being my profession, and then I shall at last have one, seeing as I'm not middle-class and middle-of-the-road enough to join "Fleet Street" with a journalistic position worthy of my abilities. Though I have the qualification.
But that's enough about me! I'll tell you when I finally find my metier, though. Working on it.
I honestly can't see what non-right-wing people can find to inspire them in "Frank Miller's vision", as you put it. Honestly, I can't!
There's nothing that I can find! Well, it obviously seems to have entertained you! Without turning you into a rightist!
You see, I can see why it might lure someone like Sam... because this Batman does spout a few Nietzschean-sounding lines...
But Christians? Naw.
Obviously it did however. In certain cases!
Search me why! Let me just say, if I haven't before, that I asked, at the time, two of my cleverest and most sophisticated friends, one an older woman, the other a young male student and science fiction buff... and neither were impressed.
And I thought to myself - well, if not the two greatest "cultural experts", you might have called them in their own way, don't like it either, than that means that *I'm* not wrong, a couple of these newspaper reviewers are nuts, and that guy in the comic shop I bought it from is a drug addict (he sure looked like one!) and is just trying to fool me.
To get my money!
I would have forgiven Miller, however, by means of simply ignoring him - IF, after that date, comics had not gone downhill all the way, as I saw it - and if this stupid "doom and gloom" ethos had not overtaken comics.
And if it wasn't for him, and people COPYING his outlook, it wouldn't have.
And you YOURSELF have admitted that it has had detrimental effects, and that comics haven't really gotten over this problem to date... of falling sales, because not enough people find them entertaining. There's not getting away from basic facts. (And figures - OVERALL figures.) If I think that someone is responsible for ruining a medium, I will never forgive them, ever.
But then I have a comprehensive philosophy of art! The same thing happened in modern fine arts, BTW... At some point, in the Sixties, simultaneously with or after Pop Art, fine art (painting, scupture) MOVED AWAY from simple abstractism (Henry Moore, etc... all the nice aesthetic stuff!) and towards total avant-gardism = crap.
It reached its low point at the beginning of the 1990s - with Damien Hearst and Tracy Emin and their "Britart". Yes, HERE I blame the Brits!
If you like your semi-namesake so much, then by the same token - you should like stuff like that too. Because it's not revolutionary, it's nihilistic. (And anti-religious). Elephant dung on the Virgin Mary, anyone?
I hate nihilistic art of all kinds. Seeing as I am a REAL socialist and not one of those flabby trendy-lefties, I am at perfect liberty to do so! And I do!
And now, you see, there is in Britain FINALLY a counter-movement to the Saatchi-sponsored con-art, called the Stuckists - they are named after the past participle "stuck", as in "stuck in the past". They're not, really: they're figurative artists who work with modern themes. Some of them are better technically than others. They contain a large number of naive artists. Technically termed!
As they say, anything must be better than unmade beds that cost thousands of pounds/dollars. Why not visit their website for a break from nihilism in general?
http://www.stuckism.com/1999pressquotes.html
Why do you THINK the rich people are prepared to pay thousands and thousands for: Shit in cans, dead sheep, cows or sharks, unmade beds, tents, and dung, though?
Isn't it simply because that STOPS the art world tackling more SOCIALLY-ORIENTED, realistic subjects... and isn't it so that the rich don't have to put pictures of... I don't know what, slums or the Third World (or the atrocities in Iraq, which a couple of well-known artists have only recently started tackling) on their walls, in the name of art collecting?
So nihilism is obviously the easiest option.
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