OK, Christopher Nolan is batting .500 with his Batman movies. BATMAN BEGINS was really great with a great balance of action, story and charm. THE DARK KNIGHT was two murders away from being 'terrorist porn', as a good friend put it whose name I will not mention because I'll be taking the ire today. I know saying something bad about THE DARK KNIGHT is considered high blasphemy in geek circles, but Batman getting the crap kicked out of him for three hours by the Joker was about as enjoyable as watching someone kick a dog over and over again.
But there's going to be a third movie of course because THE DARK KNIGHT made an obscene amount of money, fanboys think its the greatest movie ever made (hell some website put it in the top 10 of all time, of course they neglected GONE WITH THE WIND), and leaving the series in such a depressing state that the last film did would be horrible. Nolan said recently that the third movie will be his last and next up he'll be taking on Superman. So Nolan's Batman will be a trilogy featuring Bruce Wayne realizing that he's been trapped in the Nolan-verse due to the Omega Sanction, and while it's a set up from being trapped in ALL-STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN THE BOY WONDER, it's time to go sit in a cave in prehistory since quite frankly that would be a refreshing change of pace for the character.
What the hell is up with me and run-on sentences this morning?
Onward.
So here's where I'm disturbed, by news, not in the usual way. SUPERMAN RETURNS was a flop. Of course it was, it was playing off of movies that came out twenty years ago. Also, it was boring and in parts insulting to my intelligence. Obviously the franchise needs a fresh start. However, when I see statements with the whole "going in a direction no one has before with the character" bit I'm left shaking my head. I don't panic, because that's stupid. No one can make me see the movie. It's not going to fundamentally change how the character is handled forever and forever. Its just a movie.
I'm disturbed because I'm going to have to hear about this damn thing. Geeks are going geek out and, Heaven help me, I got a lot of geeks surrounding me in my life. If Nolan brings the same sensibilities to Superman that he did to the Batman movies and MEMENTO then its going to be a crapfest. I'm not waving a doom and gloom banner. I'm not saying that Nolan has no chance of bringing something fresh and good to the table. What I am saying is that what works for Batman does not work for Superman every time. Nolan did say that he did not want to try to connect the two characters and that's fine. What we don't want to see is Superman doing the grim and gritty thing. It just doesn't work.
Of course maybe Nolan is going to do something fresh with the movies and actually have Superman throw down hard with a decent threat. That's why SUPERMAN II is the best of the series. He had to face something that could give him a good fight. They'll probably have Lex Luthor as the villain, which is fine, as long as he's got power armor that puts Ironman's to shame.
Now we just wait and see.
6 comments:
So, you're saying you didn't like the Dark Knight?
:)
That's what I'm saying. I'm not saying its a bad movie, or poorly made or anything like that, but I didn't like it and would rather de-tick a rabid ferret than be made to sit through it again. Prefer superhero movies that have the superhero actually succeed as oppose to be utterly compromised and fail.
Hmmm. Nolan doing Superman should be really interesting or kind of awful. I agree Superman is a pretty bad character to tack grim and gritty onto, and that seems to be Nolan's forte. Who knows, maybe he's looking to stretch his wings a little bit?
That's what I'm hoping. Just because he does dark movies doesn't mean every movie he does needs to be dark. Hopefully he takes a more fun route.
I guess I just look at the movie differently. In my view the hero was successful in that the Joker pushed him to his very limits, and yet he refused to break with his "code". I thought it followed the lines of Moore's "One bad day" theme line in Killing joke.
Moore and THE KILLING JOKE are really overrated. In the movie Batman got to keep his code, but that's about it. The Joker drove Dent to become Two-Face which led to his death, killed the love interest, and murdered dozens of people. Batman was ineffectual in the film. The boats with the hostages would have been killed too if not for the hostages making their stand. By the end of the movie Batman had lost allies, the woman he loved and his reputation. His code was kept to the point of being stupid, most notably in scene with the motorcycle in which Batman purposefully crashes it instead of running Joker over. Perish forbid he steer a little to the side and just kick him.
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