I say something very similar in my own review, forthcoming in the next NR, which takes the possibly daft point of view that over the long haul, Tim Burton's interpretation of the Batman saga - especially Batman Returns - will hold up somewhat better than Nolan's mega-grossing effort. (And the box-office numbers are stunning: Watch your back, Titanic.) This is not to say that The Dark Knight isn't a remarkable achievement in certain ways. But I think you can feel the strain as Nolan labors, sometimes successfully but more often not, to transcend the genre he's working in, whereas Burton was content to have fun within the lines, making the most of his material's essential two-dimensionality rather than struggling against it. His Batman movies don't kinda-sorta want to be The Godfather; they just want to be Batman movies. And I think they're slightly better for it.I don't want to start any fights with devout fans or besotted critics. I'm willing to grant that "The Dark Knight" is as good as a movie of its kind can be. But that may be damning with faint praise. There is no doubt that Batman, a staple of American popular culture for nearly 70 years, provided Mr. Nolan (and his brother and screenwriting partner Jonathan), with a platform for his artistic ambitions. You can't set out to make a psychological thriller, or even an urban crime melodrama, and expect to command anything like the $185 million budget Mr. Nolan had at his disposal in "The Dark Knight." And that money, in addition to paying for some dazzling set pieces and action sequences, allowed Mr. Nolan and his team to create a seamless and evocative visual atmosphere, a Gotham nightscape often experienced from the air.
But to paraphrase something the Joker says to Batman, "The Dark Knight" has rules, and they are the conventions that no movie of this kind can escape. The climax must be a fight with the villain, during which the symbiosis of good guy and bad guy, implicit throughout, must be articulated. The end must point forward to a sequel, and an aura of moral consequence must be sustained even as the killings, explosions and chases multiply. The allegorical stakes in a superhero are raised -- it's not just good guys fighting bad guys, but Righteousness against Evil, Order against Chaos -- precisely to authorize a more intense level of violence. Of course every movie genre is governed by conventions, and every decent genre movie explores the zones of freedom within those iron parameters ... "The Dark Knight" has some advantages from being the second movie in a series, with less need for exposition and basic character development, and its final act is less of a letdown.
Instead the disappointment comes from the way the picture spells out lofty, serious themes and then ... spells them out again. What kind of hero do we need? Where is the line between justice and vengeance? How much autonomy should we sacrifice in the name of security? Is the taking of innocent life ever justified? These are all fascinating, even urgent questions, but stating them, as nearly every character in "The Dark Knight" does, sooner of later, is not the same as exploring them.
« Brief Hiatus | Main | The Case Against Re-Re-Remarriage » The Limits of Batman28 Jul 2008 08:32 am
A.O. Scott, on the box-office juggernaut:
Comments (53)
yes. Silly. Burton nailed it? odd thought process. 
I love Smith, but I think he's wrong when he says that tdk simply states "serious themes" over and over again without taking them anywhere. It's clear that, at the end of the movie, no matter how good the populace of Gotham maybe, a significant level of deception is required to effectively govern them. At the beginning of the movie, Batman - who has been effectively enforcing the law; eg has been Gotham's sovereign - desperately wants to transfer his power over to Harvey Dent. That is, batman wants sovereignty to move out of the shadows and into the light of day so that it can be subject to public scrutiny and the law (Batman, as a vigilante, obviously is not). But, of course, at the end of the movie Dent has been corrupted, the dream has died, and Batman has to make a choice - either let the truth be known or deceive everybody and keep the ideal of publicly-accountable-sovereign alive. Batman decides he has to be the hero Gotham needs, not the hero he'd like to be (Dent, pre 2face), and this requires becoming an even greater villain than he was before, publicly - though we of course no the truth. As in Memento, Nolan seems to be really interested in the theme of necessary deceptions. In TDK, this theme takes a political form: we all need to believe that our rulers should be subject to our laws, but the reality is (sadly) quite different. I think this goes well simply pointing in the direction of some moral ambiguities - the movie actually gives a pretty disturbing answer to them.
Let The Dark Knight contrarianism begin! I'll follow Ross, Dark Knights good but its no Batman Forever. Joel Schumaker really nailed the franchise able to effectively merge the form and function of film into an opaque, sometimes explicit tapestry of greed, death, and sanity. Some might question how exactly you can have an opaque and explicit tapestry? Hell if I know, but thats more of a commentary on Shumaker's brilliance than on my metaphorical muddle.
Haven't seen the Dark Knight, but I have to agree with Ross that Burton's first two Batman's remain the best comic book movies ever. (The first Superman is behind, but it kind of falls off after Superman gets to Metropolis.)
I don't care for Burton much. Possibly these are even worse though, I haven't seen them. "Batman: The Animated Series" is my favorite Batman related thing. I guess "Mask of the Phantasm", so far, would be my favorite Batman movie but it's not quite as good as I remember.
1. I think it's really criminal that the great Batman/Joker storyline gets elbowed out by the rushed, wasted Two Face storyline. Get rid of the Two Face stuff, keep Aaron Eckhardt as Harvey Dent, and have him lose half his face at the very end of the movie-- setting up a great Two Face story for next time. As it is you have these wonderful performances from Bale and Ledger that get lost in a two and three quarter hour movie, you've used Batman's two best villains and short-shrifted both. 2. People talk as though there are some plot holes. There aren't some plot holes; there are many, many huge, gaping plot holes. I don't understand why more people aren't talking about this.
What Ross fails to mention is that the Nolan series is more faithful to modern Batman continuities and themes that were established when Frank Miller first published The Dark Knight Returns. Batman does not have to fight the villain at the end like he did in the '89 version because, well, clearly that wouldn't be much of a fight, and Batman doesn't kill people. That rule is so essential to Batman's mission and to the movie (and, if you accept Dent as dead, he actually did break it), that to have Batman break it in the first Burton film actually makes the character into a tragic figure, not a heroic one, without even acknowledging that a tragedy has happened (this is, of course, explored in Batman Forever to an extent, making it the only interesting idea to emerge from any of Joel Schumacher's movies). The idea that the Nolan movies are less fun than the Burton films is based on the idea that an army of inexplicably armed penguins is cooler than seeing Heath Ledger's Joker push Aaron Eckhardt's Two-Face over the edge while cross-dressing as a nurse.
Personally, I'm a little confused by this. Why would a critic rip on a director for trying to push the boundaries of a genre??? I mean, isn't the point of art to challenge you in some way, or make you think another way? See things from a different perspective? The Burton Batman films are not Batman films as much as they are Burton films featuring Batman characters. I mean, the villains get more screen time than Batman...whose name is in the title! There's a little bit of flawed logic in the above comments..though these are only my opinions, and what do I know? But to put down a film for trying to push the limits of its genre is a little silly.
Burton didn't make Batman movies at all, he made Tim Burton movies. He made Batman as Edward Scissorhands. Nolan is far more faithful to the source material than Burton ever was, so for Ross to praise Burton for just trying to make a "Batman Movie" is just untrue. Nolan tried harder than any director before him to make two real Batman movies that were faithful to the comics. Just look at "Year One," "The Killing Joke," and "The Long Halloween" and you'll see exactly what Nolan used as the skeleton for his films and for his themes. When Ross publishes posts like these, I begin to wonder if he's ever even READ a Batman comic. Especially in arguing for Batman Returns. The Penguin in that is a grotesque monster played with absurd over-the-topness. Let's also not forget that with a rich source of potential villains, Burton made the ultimate villain. . . Max Shrek. It's okay for Ross to say he LIKES the Burton movies more, but for him to argue that they feel more like Batman movies or that Burton was more faithful is just uninformed and wrong.
I agree with Freddie. The movie was pretty good, and all the performances enjoyable, but Dent's transformation into Two-Face was pretty much wasted -- and made the Joker storyline anticlimactic -- and way, way too much of the plot made no sense. Plus, as has been amply noted elsewhere, basically every action scene was completely incoherent visually.
When Contrarians Attack! I love the original Burton Batman flick... but unless my memory is failing me, Batman Returns was a dull, bloated mess that nobody really liked. And Schumacher's Batman movies were an embarrassment to Western Civilization. Does anyone care to explain what virtues these movies have that make them superior to TDK? Because I ain't buying it.
I think Mr. Scott has fallen to this notion that a comic book movie needs to transcend to a sequel. Why? Why can't a director or screenwriter alike tell a complete story without trying to allude to an ongoing storyline? I felt the movie was about as complete as can possibly be. Not all aspects of the social nature pertaining to "what type of hero Gotham needs” needed to be explained. There is such a thing as information overload. As for the ending, we are talking about a fictional vigilante. Therefore, the character can't live within the confines of the law. It is that very fact that allows him do what law enforcement can't do.
Let me say that I loved parts of it and many of the performances; I just wish to god they had trimmed out like 30 minutes-plus of the movie and cleaned up some of the plot holes. OK, so spoilers, obviously. Someone help me with this one. This is what I wrote in an email to someone this morning: " I mean look at Lao. He's a device to introduce the entirely unnecessary "Batman goes to Hong Kong" sequence, which I guess shows off some cool Bat-moves and introduces the lame cell-phone sonar gag (which exists merely to introduce the government surveillance theme, which exists merely to give Morgan Freeman something to demonstrate his gravitas). Later Lao exists to give the Joker a reason to intentionally get arrested (because somehow he knew that someone on that one remaining battered police vehicle would still be mobile enough to get out and arrest him), so that he could... make his one phone call, so that he could blow up the cell-phone bomb he has implanted in one of his cronies, who he has made sure got arrested and placed in the same lockup where Lao is being held-- the lockup, that is, the Lao is being held because... they don't house other criminals there who will kill him. Except, I guess, for the Joker and his gang. Of course, his plan would have been foiled by the cop not giving him his one phone call, but luckily they left this criminal who had murdered dozens and terrorized Gotham in a holding cell, with no handcuffs or shackles, alone in a room with a single middle aged cop, who had the keys. Or maybe the door was just unlocked. This move was made, by the way, by the same Gotham PD that stuffed about a hundred cops into the holding cell that the Joker's bomb-laden goon was in. That way the Joker could take the cop hostage, so he could... demand his phone call, thereby calling the phone-bomb in his buddy so that the building could be blown up from inside. So that he would be free to kill Lao in the chaos, so the mobsters could go free, so that the Joker could promptly burn their cash and feed them to their own dogs."
I would definitely agree that Tim Burton's first Batman movie was the best in the franchise, because it took place in a stylized, evocative, and decidedly fictional realm. This dark setting was strengthened by the characters, seedy caricatures of noir archetypes. Nolan instead reaches for a "gritty realism;" save the realism for movies about like, reality dude.
is there a way to win with these people? seriously. you can't make a movie that's great, the explores themes, and still does it's business -- and none of which was easy to pull off -- and not come away with criticism like that. simply put, it can't be all things to all people, and we only seem to be hearing the "negative" reviews out there because the positive ones are so overwhelming. but what's with the whole: "The climax must be a fight with the villain, during which the symbiosis of good guy and bad guy, implicit throughout, must be articulated" stuff? really? it's called DRAMA. ever see Spike Jones & Charlie Kaufman's ADAPTATION? at the main character complains that he wants to make a movie that doesn't have a climax and other such things because they don't reflect real life. the character ends up being scolded because he points out that such things DO HAPPEN IN LIFE, and that SUCH THINGS are the stuff of good drama. I'm bored with those who refuse to let themselves be engaged by something fun, good, or entertaining from popular culture, JUST BECAUSE they want to take some POSH high-road when really all it's just an excuse for bland bald cynicism.
Batman is a hero that breaks the laws of the government, but lives by his own moral code which he never breaks, even Superman, that shining beacon, often referred to as a boy scout has killed, but not the Batman, for all of his willingness to bend the laws and fight dirty he never crosses that line. In addition while he may bend the law to protect, he still knows when to step back from that line that seperates guardian from dictator. Many have compared his sonar system in the movie to Bush's surveillance system, however there is a big difference, Batman used his system with the intent to capture the Joker, while preventing more death, and then had his system destroyed. Bush however has set vague goals and distractions from the main goal in order to justify the permanent usage of that system. Is Batman morally Ambiguous, not at all, he always acts within the spirit of justice, just not alwys within the letter of the law.
Rock on, theDaveKnight.
There are no plot holes. There are just a bunch of losers who take a movie too SERIOUSly...
Batman Returns?? Seriously? Well, I'm not bothering with Grand New Party after hearing that.
I fail to see why Batman -- or comic books, for that matter -- have limitations that exceed those of any other medium or any other fictional character.
This is all just another example of critics being critics. They really don't know what else to do if they are not criticising. When a critic has the audacity to tell everyone else the way something should be, it is really insulting to intelligent movie-goers and is a real ego trip for the critic. A.O. Scott's "holier-than-thou" attitude is so snooty that it gives me a headache reading anything he says. Look at the first like of his commentary:"I don't want to start any fights with devout fans or besotted critics..." READ:"I really enjoy pissing off you people who are dumber than I am..." Poking holes for the sake of poking holes. Heck, Mr. Scott (and now Ross for riding his coattails) is more like the Joker than he might like to admit. Talk about being a dog chasing a car.
Batman Returns was damn fun, and I agree that in a certain, peculiar way...that element was slightly missing from The Dark Knight. It created a new cinematic world around Batman, not putting Batman into the real world. Both films are fine, with Dark Knight being the better 'experience' for many, but don't trash the guy for stating what many of us feel. Sometimes we want to escape from reality, not have it put forward for us.
Sounds like Scott just doesn't like superhero films. Our modern myths. Good luck naysaying that need in the human psyche. The burton films sadly are so Burton, he eats the mythos with his own visions. Nolan I think will be the more enduring, because he brings it near to real life.
Do you people remember Batman? Have you seen it in the last 15 years? The joker walked around town with a guy in a muscle shirt, listening to bad 90's music on a boom-box. Horrible.
"Tim Burton's interpretation of the Batman saga - especially Batman Returns - will hold up somewhat better" Every so often, I'd feel an urge to see a Batman movie, so I'd pop in one of Burton's or very less often Batman Forever. But it wasn't really what I wanted to watch. What I wanted to watch had not yet been made, so I made due with what had been. Now, with Dark Knight, I have the film that I wanted 19 years ago. How often did any movie buff actually think to themselves, "I really am fiending for the 1989 Batman movie!"? Never? The older Batman films, quite frankly, didn't even hold interest much past their release. I agree that Batman Returns was the best of the original bunch and I'd give it a solid B as far as Batman stories go; Batman itself was an okay Joker story. Dark Knight is one of the finest Batman stories ever made and I believe that that alone will allow it to endure.
The Dark Knight is one of the greatest movies ever made. I had to see it 3 times before I made of my mind if I liked it or not. Best superhero movie of all time for sure
Ross could not be more wrong. Anyone who honestly says that Burton's versions of Batman are better is someone who themsleves doesn't understand Batman.
Let's call a spade a spade and acknowledge that yes, Nolan made a fantastic superhero movie imbued with enough socio-political commentary to stand on it's own. Heath Ledger's performance was indeed amazing as many reviewers both positive and negative have suggested, and perhaps merits an Oscar nod. However, this was a superhero movie, and while I appreciated Nolan's message(s), I found it pretentious and condescending that he insisted on hitting the audience over the head with it so frequently. He was aiming for everyone (particularly a certain breed of fanboy) to say "OMG, a mass-market commerical movie CAN make a statement, and Christopher Nolan is like totally genius." While his efforts deserve a chuckle, in creating a fictional world they made it too realist and post modern...no American cities are that dystopian, and especially not New York.
Did Tim Burton have a gun to your head when you wrote this?
Well, despite what the Obama-worshipping, America-hating, Freedom-bashing internet poser trolls are trying to instill on the world, the audiences for the most part, the vast majority, rather liked this movie, as they did all the previous movies, so I'll have to draw the personal conclusion that it comes down to a matter of personal taste which one you liked best. All great things point to Batman.
People who like the Burton Batman usually don't seem to have been Batman fans before the release of that movie.
Whoa buddy, I'm in the same boat as you Night_Bird on Dark Knight being a good movie, but George Bush, loving freedom, and Tim Burton's rendition of Batman are all mutually exclusive. Move along, son.
One thing that is so great about Batman (as opposed to Superman) is that he gets reinvented at certain cultural moments. So, my question is why is there a need to compare Burton to Nolan, each version spoke to the culture that it was created in. Its not like we are looking for the definitive Batman movie here, there are always going to be more of them, someone will come after Nolan, and put his twist on the character. I think that Ross' analysis that Burton will fair better overtime is evidence of that unique virus that infects certain intellectuals with regards to Pop culture. The idea being that it is more intellectual to find fault with something that is highly acclaimed, because it seperates the learned movie critic from the thoughtless masses who truly enjoy the film. Like I said in my first post (where I so horribly misspelled Joel Shumacher's name)is that Ross is being contrarian for the sake of it. PS LaFollette I was being sarcastic about Batman Forever.
Contrarian? Maybe. Flat-out lame? Definately.
This is crazy talk.
I want to see Jervis Tetch, the Mad Hatter, in the next Batman.
His Batman movies don't kinda-sorta want to be The Godfather; they just want to be Batman movies. And I think they're slightly better for it. Maybe The Dark Knight transcends its genre and maybe it doesn't, but I don't get the argument that it's impossible for a superhero movie to transcend its genre. In the process of arguing that superhero movies are genre dreck that cannot transcend their conventions, A.O. Scott mentions that the supposedly silly Western genre produced great films. Douthat sneers at The Dark Knight for trying to be The Godfather--itself a genre movie that transcended its genre. These don't seem like thoughtful critiques.
In response to 'berger', I think the chief thrust of TDK should expounded on further (I just saw the movie and am still trying to sort it out - bear with me). AO Scott's comment that the move does not explore its themes pissed me off as well.
Then get back on that boat of yours, Brandon, and GO HOME AND STAY HOME. And I'm NOT your son, and neither is anyone in America.
I know it's a film critic's job to look for the smallest chink in even the best movie's armor, but it still drives me crazy. Here's a film that's fun, interesting, holds true to the source material, and has been praised by even the most unlikely of sources, and still, these guys have to say something negative. Why can't they simply sit back for once and say, "Wow, this is a good movie," and leave it at that?
Following up on the analogy to Westerns, it's worth pointing out that there are plenty of great Westerns - "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," "Once Upon a Time in the West," "Unforgiven" - that transcend the genre, provide great entertainment, and explore deeper themes. Yet all of these movies have flaws and "plot holes" and moments that stretch credulity. There are few movies of any genre that achieve perfection.
Okay, this turned into the longest blog comment in history. At first I hesitated to submit it, but then I figured what the hell. Those of you who make it to the end will be rewarded with my eternal gratitude. I fail to see why Batman -- or comic books, for that matter -- have limitations that exceed those of any other medium or any other fictional character. I'm more or less with you on this. But I do think there are a couple issues with comics/superheros that may make it harder than usual to make serious art within the genre. The first is the fact that comics are serials. So they tend to trail off into ridiculousness as, over years and decades, the same characters confront each other over and over again and the heroes deal with the same dilemmas. Eventually things get so absurd that you get things like Crisis on Infinite Earths just to reset things back into some semblance of plausibility. To make serious art you pretty much have to discard the serial element of comics, since serious drama tends to be self-contained. Even something like the Iliad, which begins in the middle of the Trojan War and ends before the war does, tells a story in which two heroes square off and one is the decisive winner. If Hector had to come back every few issues to serve as a foil to Achilles then things would get silly very quickly. I think The Dark Knight did a good job dealing with this. Obviously, because Ledger's dead, it's hard to imagine them continuing the story of the Joker. But, that aside, the film ends (in my opinion) with Batman winning a decisive physical victory and the Joker winning a decisive moral/psychological victory. It sets up a sequel without requiring that Batman and the Joker "settle things" in a new movie or continue to confront one another forever. The other big obstacle to a "serious" superhero movie is that, if the heroes and villains have superpowers, it creates all kinds of weird moral, psychological and even theological problems that even great art probably can't address For example: "How does someone like Superman, with virtually unlimited power, maintain his astonishingly noble moral code, when it seems likely that any real individual would be corrupted by that power?" The answer in Superman movies seems to be, "Just as we accept that there is an individual who can fly, we also accept that there is an individual who is incorruptible." (I'm not all that familiar with the Superman comics, though, so maybe this is addressed in interesting ways and I haven't seen it.) Batman gets around this by having the hero simply be a very well-funded and well-trained man who has no super-powers. And his enemies may be freaks and crazy people, but they aren't super-human, either. So there's a better opportunity to tell stories that are plausible in the context of the world as we know it. That applies to all Batman stories, not just Nolan's, but I think Nolan has the right idea in trying to take advantage of the opportunity (exploited already in some of the comics) to go for realism rather than cartoonishness. One thing I didn't like about Scott's take on the "limits" of the superhero genre is that it's very easy to imagine a superhero movie that avoids the conventions he describes (e.g., a superhero movie that has a subtle-enough narrative and nuanced-enough characters that its themes would be clear without the need for a lot of expository dialogue during the climactic fight scene). Another thing that bothers me is that he seems to think something like the need for a climactic fight is a "limitation" of the genre. Why? Hamlet, for example, ends with a climactic fight scene in which--through action and dialogue--the main characters spell out their responsibility for the moral corruption of Denmark and the resulting carnage. To state the obvious, The Dark Knight ain't Hamlet. But I don't think sneering at "genre conventions" is a convincing critique of any work of art of entertainment.
Nice points, Charlie. While I agree with most of it, I would add the following: --I don't think the movie avoided the problem of episodic-ness. In fact, it went on too long, with too many battles between the Joker and Batman. The movie could have ended with less or even more battles without really affecting the story. The birth of Two-Face also seeded the sequel and only added to the sense that more of the same or similar will follow. --I think the main dramatic flaw of the movie, as you alluded to, was evident in the fact that the characters had explain the moral or the story, and did so in simplistic and rather trite terms (even a writer as good as Tolstoy is not at his best in the explanatory parts of War and Peace; that's why you tell a story rather than write literary criticism). --Finally, I think the Iliad suggests a nice solution to the superhuman powers and episodic problems -- and one which the movie seemed like it was going to take up, but unfortunately did not. The Iliad interweaves the immortal and superhuman gods with the stories of its mortal heroes. It's always really the story of the mortal hero that is most poignant, because his human vulnerabilities bring home the great themes of love, death, the quest for fame and justice, the longing for home. I thought the movie was going to do something like this by interweaving the stories of Batman the superhuman fighter for just and Dent the human figher for justice, allowing each one to provide counterpoint and contrast to the other. By making the Dent story just another birth-of-comic-book-villian/hero story, I think the movie dropped the ball on doing something really interesting.
Fair points. I like that they're noting that Batman's vigilantism is a symptom of the city's problems, and that Batman can only "win" if he is no longer necessary. That provides a chance for a more interesting characterization of Bruce Wayne, which they explored in this movie. Will he ever be willing/able to NOT be Batman? Maybe they missed an opportunity to explore those themes on a more down-to-earth level with Harvey Dent. But I think the real human center of Gotham is Gordon, and with any luck they'll give him a central role in the next movie and explore these themes more. On a different note, the one moment in the movie in which Ledger's death weirded me out was during his final speech, when he talked about the classic Batman/Joker dynamic in which they fight forever because neither can kill the other. It created some kind of weird and unintended dramatic irony in which the audience knows more about the possibility of future Batman/Joker showdowns than do the characters and the actors.
By the way, to address the original assertion that "over the long haul, Tim Burton's interpretation of the Batman saga - especially Batman Returns - will hold up somewhat better than Nolan's mega-grossing effort": both of Burton's Batman movies have been virtually forgotten; people probably remember Nicholson, the set design, and the music. Those films have already not held up--they didn't provide a memorable take on the Batman character and they weren't all that memorable as movies. Maybe Nolan's films with also be virtually forgotten in 20 years, but it's hard to imagine them being more obscure than Burton's. The one thing those films really had going for them, that EVERYONE remembers, is Nicholson. Given Ledger's performance--and the fact that it was his final performance--I'm not sure people in 20 years will be saying, "Yeah, at least the first Burton movie had Nicholson as the Joker--nothing in Nolan's movies matches THAT." Of course, it's possible that the current series is so popular and well-received because it fits with a pessimistic and dour public mood, and that people will look back in a few years and just find them sour and creepy. But even then they'll be interesting cultural artifacts. The Burton Batman's cultural significance had to do with the marketing campaign, not the movie itself (which, by the way, I do like).
I wonder what Ross means when he talks about a "Batman" movie. What exactly is his standard for what a movie featuring the Batman should be? Questions for Ross: how much Batman material have you digested? Are you a regular reader of the comics? Ever read or hear Bob Kane discuss what he was intending when he created the Batman? When critics like Ross talk about "transcending the genre" of a super-hero work, as do many critics, they usually do so from the viewpoint of someone who has never or barely read the source material, which is the comic books themselves, and who hold the usual prejudices that non-comic readers have of comic books. Anyone who has read the comic knows that rather than this film "transcending" the super-hero genre, it is probably the second film to actually live up to it (the other being Nolan's previous Batman film).
oh my god..its finally happend!! a batman movie thats actually good..ive seen it 4 times already and every time i cant help but go back to the yesteryears where George Clooneys nepples were his greatest weapons as batman..check out this hilarious stand up clip i found the other day..batman gets a black boy wonder!!..funniest stuff ive seen in months
Yikes. First, you get A.O. Scott talking "the limits built into the superhero genre as it currently exists." (See my reaction here.) The limits that currently exist? Sez who? All genre fiction, whether science fiction or private detectives, has conventions and theoretical limits. People push them all the time. Is 2001 just a spaceman movie or is it art? Is Dreyer's Vampyr just another vampire more or is it more? I'm not arguing that The Dark Knight is great art, but Scott did argue that movies based on comic book superheroes can't be art. Now here's Ross criticizing The Dark Knight for not being two-dimensional enough. Wha...? Let's pass over how weak Batman Returns is. Ross is arguing that a "Batman" movie is inherently simplistic. Directors and writers should just acknowledge that and work with it. Sez who? You can argue about how successful Nolan is at striving for meaning, but it's just dumb to argue that it's pointless to try. Comic books can be fun and light. They don't have to be. I recall that both Warren Ellis and Mark Millar took incredibly political turns at the superhero comic The Authority. Commenter Charlie makes the great point that The Godfather -- held up as a serious film -- was based on the gangster film genre, just as the great Fifties Westerns that Scott lauded were genre movies too. But to reply to Charlie's other posts, comic books are serials, but in the last 25 years, writers have stepped outside of the continuity and produced stand-alone works or stories that didn't bother fitting into what had been written before or after. I'm thinking not only of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, but Alan Moore's Watchmen and V For Vendetta, Grant Morrison's Animal Man and Doom Patrol, Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan, and so on. Finally, Charlie's point about the weird Joker/Batman dynamic doesn't seem weird to me; Alan Moore explicitly described this dynamic in The Killing Joke 20 years ago.
Yeah, that's a good point that comics are no longer bound by the convention that they must be serials. It goes to show that the supposed "requirements" of a genre can be modified or discarded--just like The Godfather and, say, The Oxbow Incident did away with the convention that gangster movies and westerns had to have a simplistic good guy/bad guy dynamic and an easily-digested moral. I may not have been clear--I didn't mean that I thought the Batman/Joker dynamic was weird. I meant that, while Ledger completely immersed me in his character for almost the entire movie, it was jarring to hear his Joker talk about the prospect of an endless struggle with Batman. I love that aspect of the Batman/Joker conflict, and it was a little unsettling to know that it can't happen (at least with the same actors) now that Ledger's dead. I can't remember the exact line, but he says something like, "I think we're destined to keep doing this forever," which was a poignant line given the larger context.
I've heard a number of people say that it would be difficult to do a sequel, with Ledger now gone. I find this silly. Chris Nolan had to be convinced to do this sequel. He and his cast are probably likely to only do one or two more Batman movies together. So why would they go back to the same well again? There have been any number of interesting Batman stories over the years: Knightfall, Venom, Gothic, Blind Justice, the serial killer element of The Long Halloween and Dark Victory. I'm not suggesting that Nolan do any of these. But it shows that there are many stories that can be told and many more existing characters that could be used. I happen to think that No Man's Land would be interesting, wherein a major earthquake devastates Gotham and the U.S. government seals off the island and abandons the citizens. Chaos reigns, gangs rule the streets and it's up to Batman and Jim Gordon to try to pull things back together.
Nobody ever mentions the possibility that 20 or 30 years from today, Adam West's Batman TV series will be the most celebrated version.
Ok, by someone who has NOT been around for all the batman movie openings, the batman movies prior to BATMAN BEGINS SSUUCCKKEEDD!! Seriously esp the last few, no one in my generation even thinks as compitent and yes i have seen most of them, (and nearly gagged i mean come-on).
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Silly, silly man.
Posted by MikeyMike | July 28, 2008 8:58 AM