THE DARK KNIGHT Post Release - Page 63

I think he could top it, though I can't specifically imagine how. But I definitely think it can be done.

If he unleashes more of his overall film-vocabulary, but has it deal with the character of Batman, I think he could make a cooler film. I don't think I'm wording that very well, and I'm at work so I can't sit here revising it.

Basically, I don't know that he could ever hope to make a more awesome villain than the Joker, but I definitely think he could make a more purely awesome film dealing with the character of Batman.

The difference between Begin's constant explanation of everything that Batman does, and the Dark Knight's presentation of a Joker who executes elaborate plots with no explanation reminds me of Amadeus. You have the only good Salieri, who can't write one note without extended experimentation and consideration, and you have the true master Mozart, who simply breathes and makes works of genius. Obviously the mediocrity vs. genius thing isn't a theme of TDK, but I like thinking about that dichotomy.

I think Batman as a character is pretty much done now. There's really not that much too him and all that he had was examined in Begins.

You have to look at it this way - since TDK was a phenomenon Warner Bros. is going to want a repeat. Any person with basic logic and reasoning skills could list off a plethora of reasons why that's just not going to happen, but that's now how they see it. And not only is the studio going to want TDK 2, so is the general public who propelled this thing over $500 million domestic. Without the hype surrounding a situation like Ledger's (not to mention the Joker is a draw by himself) I just don't see the film being as popular.

Could it be a better film? Possibly. There are a hundred stories that you could think of for a good Batman film like bringing the character back to street level crime and forget about the Looney Tunes villains, but that won't happen either. I think it's best to just leave it be. Of course, that idea is ridiculous as the thing did make a bigillion trillion dollars, so we're getting another one regardless of the creative forces behind it.

I don't think it's quite that drastic, but I definitely see what you're getting at.

I'm having a hard time putting what I'm thinking into words, but I didn't mean exploring the "character/motivations" of Batman, I meant more like: making a simply bad ass film (in terms of the art form) that just happens to deal with Batman. I think Nolan can really play with the art/format of a film, and he could stretch that further and do better, all while having that film be about Batman (as opposed to something like Memento which is about... some guy).

While I'm certainly not refusing to acknowledge the effect Ledger's death had on the awareness for TDK, I think many people do give it too much credit.

Batman is one of the most popular characters you could make a film franchise out of, and after the success and good word of mouth from Begins, I think this film was destined to be huge regardless. Would it have been AS HUGE without the death angle? Surely not, but I don't think it would've been too far behind either. I think it still could've and would've broken $400 million without Ledger dying. But, this argument could obviously never be settled, so...

EDIT: I read your last few sentences wrong. I thought you said if Ledger wasn't in it the film would have still broken $400 million. So... Nevermind.

The moment I saw the credits for TDK start to roll, I knew that I couldn't really watch Batman Begins ever again. TDK was just so much BIGGER than the first movie in almost every way that I'd watch BB and just think, "Aw... how quaint."

Spike makes a great point about the difference in how the two films handled the story. I hadn't thought about that. And now, all I can think about is the old man in Wayne Tower who couldn't stop thinking about stuff that was gonna blow. 5 times, I think.

I agree that while Batman may be 'done' as a character, I think there is potential in exploring his relationship with Gotham City and its citizens. At least, that's the hope that the ending of TDK leaves me with. I said this earlier in this monstrous thread... Don't try to top TDK at its own game. Make a totally different film. I think that's what joeypants is saying. But I'm also not totally holding my breath for the same reasons Eric stated.

I don't think another Batman film should be made for another ten to fifteen years.

If Nolan gets some help in the action-directing department he can surely top TDK.

It isn't that Batman as a character (his inner workings) needs more exploration (he's the immovable object, remember), but the way that other criminals, supporting characters, and the city as a whole (unstoppable forces, at it were) bounces off and reacts to him is worth continuing.

Action isn't the key to a decent Batman film though. Batman Forever and Batman and Robin have probably the best fight choreography in the entire series, doesn't stop them both being vaguely awful.

I do think the Nolan's perhaps played their 'Batman's presence destroys Gotham' card a tiny bit too soon to be honest. I mean if you were wanting to do something with the Batman you could have shown the city's criminals slowly escalating in intensity and desperation over a few films.

True, but it can't hurt something that's already a good character and plot driven flick.
I can see this point. The load may have been blown a little. Since Nolan doesn't seem to plan for the next installments (that's what he says), he mainly tries to include the best he can in the entry presently. The huge success of TDK may cause him to plan a step or 2 ahead. Course, Batman stills needs a reconciliation with the city he protects. 3 act structure and the hero's journey, film trilogies blah blah, etc etc.

I'd like to see a Batman flick with a bit more of the detective angle, utilizing Nolan's obvious skills with "puzzle" films. He gave us some in TDK, but I would love more of a mystery ala MEMENTO or THE PRESTIGE (not to derail into part 3 speculation).

thats the sad part, I'm sure some higher ups are just screaming for another script and a release date of 2010

I agree completely on the first part of what you say. Imo Begins and TDK are both supremely awesome movies but none of them features any particular great action. It all comes down to story, character and acting. That's why I believe the only way to top them, is if the action scenes get better.

I have to disagree strongly on your last part though. Personally I think the action (all of it) in the old Batman movies suck beyond almost anything else.

Batman Begins is indeed quaint when compared to The Dark Knight, but it still bugs me that as it is an attempt to rebuild Batman's world from ground level, people describe a few seconds of screen time and some visual cues as unecessary, "torturous details" about how Batman functions as Batman. If anything those details or flaws in those details payoff in TDK with the Coleman Reese character.

I've had trouble imagining how Nolan is going to do his follow-up, but I'm not egotistical enough to think that just because I have trouble seeing it, that he does as well.
If a third Nolan film happens, it won't be as popular, that's a given, but can it be a better film? Certainly. It can be tighter and avoid unwieldy plot devices like the BatSonar. Certain fundamentals of Batman's mythology are shattered at the end of TDK, and there's no easy way to put them back together, so seeing Batman reaffirm his mission and his character with, for example, rebuilding Wayne Manor and giving the Batcave a proper introduction after two piecemeal interpretations would be, I believe, a nice thematic capstone. We're done with seeing Bruce Wayne not want to be Batman, he put his eggs in one basket and the basket got blown to shit, so he's got nothing but his own creation to fall back on now.

There's more you can do, there are characters and situations he can be played against that can yield interesting results. If you had to stop, TDK is in now way a bad place to do it, but that doesn't mean there is nowhere to go.

Your kidding right?

Grant Morrison could teach you a thing or two.

I like your ideas. I also agree with whoever said the next one should actually be a mystery. The Riddler should be someone completely unknown throughout the film... until the end. It's an identity movie. Maybe Bruce Wayne gets so deep into Batman that he looses himself in the mix, so the film could be about findings onself again. Finding the killer. Finding the hero in Gotham.

As far as Riddler, I think it could be interesting if he figured out who Batman really is and defended his criminal dealings from the Dark Knight through psychological torments and manipulations. Make him like a Bill Gates-type: someone so intellectually superior that he could possibly save the city, but instead uses his calculation and brilliance to take apart Batman, and further sully him, for personal gain and sadistic intellectual glee.

I know many a fanboy would go nuts about Batman's identity being revealed by such a foe, but I can see ways in which it could work and provide a deeper look into the ever-decreasing seperation between the man and the masked vigilante.

Or maybe I'm just talking out my ass.

All this fanfic and nobody is fucking? This thread sucks.

If you insist...
http://images.heaven666.org/images/b...obin-sucks.jpg

Knew I should have saved that shemale Poison Ivy pic.

I hate you

God dammit, Johnny.

That photo made me laugh very hard. Thank you good Sir!

Oh and for the rest of you, it's totally SFW*























*if your work is at a gay superhero porn shop!

Alright. This thread is over.

If I had balls, a cut-out of that photo would be my next avatar.

Joel's pitch for Batman 5 no doubt.

But will Bruce play a cd of the Riddler saying "I'll take care of the squealing, wretched, pinhead puppets of Gotham!", clearing Batman's name with the fair-weather Gothamites, while showing off his mad DJ scratching skillz?

You gotta admit, he plays that stinking CD like a harp from hell.

I think we can all agree that MC Batz' skillz are what saved Gotham from certain destruction. And I would not be against watching him do it again, only this time accompanied by beat-boxing and Alfred bustin' moves on a sheet of cardboard.

Oh, and he has to say "You just got served by the goddamn Batman, bitch"!

It’s funny you should mention comedy deleted scenes, because I was talking to someone about the film earlier today and we both came to the agreement that the ‘problem’ with the film is that it felt like every deleted scene was already in the thing.

That's a funny bit - and it brings up an issue I have with the Nolan Batman films. I love 'em, but his Batman is pretty wantonly destructive. Batman is supposed to have a strict no-kill polocy, and he's taking quite a risk blowing up parked cars and machine-gunning glass mall doors.

Or the scene in the beginning, where the auto-piloted Batmobile starts launching missiles around the parking garage in order to 'intimidate.' Hope some late-night commuter wasn't headed for their car at the time, Bats.

That bothered me too until I came to the conclusion that maybe that's kind of the point. There's no accountability or consequences for any of his actions until TDK, and even then he doesn't realize it until the climax. The wanton destruction kind of fits the character as portrayed here.

What doesn't make sense is Gordon allying himself with carnage.

Suuuure, you COULD see it that way. But I think it's pretty obvious that Nolan didn't intend it that way at all. The main point being that Batman's existence escalates everything else, and not that his existence means that Gotham's citizens have to just smile and thank him as he destroys all of their property.

Gordon's not a saint; he's at the end of his rope. " I don't get political points for being an idealist. I have to do the best I can with what I have."

The further I get from the film, the more convinced I am Nolan the storyteller is firmly anti-Batman.

That's kind of what I was leaning towards. The film's about as anti-superhero as it can be and still be played straight.

The main point doesn't negate complementary factors. If Batman isn't thinking through how his crusade will negatively impact the city as a whole--not to mention what you could argue as a narcissitic reason for undertaking the crusade in the first place--parking-ramp debris probably isn't going to bother him all that much either.

I just don't get why Batman can't kill people or cause mayhem. It seems an odd choice to put onto one of the more overtly 'crazy' superheroes. The general weirdness of Batman has been kind of written into the character since The Dark Knight Returns/Batman '89 and as such it seems odd that Nolan and Goyer would obsess over making a character who is already kinda ambigous in his methods a saint in one particular regard.

It makes sense for Spider-Man to shy away from death because the character is written from a humanist vantage point, Spiderman and Peter Parker are inexorably the same thing. With Batman you're dealing with levels of facade at all times.

The further I get away from the film the more I'm convinced that the resolution on the boats was written by someone else.

But the movie never deals with the aspect you're talking about. I actually like your reading of the film. I'm not negating it. Just saying that I don't think Nolan THAT much thought into it. I see all that destruction as Nolan shoehorning in as much action into a sequence in a film that is mostly talking.

That sequence always felt like that to me. I never got why Batman was so convinced that the 2 boats wouldn't blow each other up. As if Nolan tried to give the movie a less cynical tone at the last minute. Nothing in the movie really sets us up to believe that Batman would be so sure of Gotham's goodness.

EDIT: Especially right after he had to speed through the city in a Lamborghini to stop Joker's "Kill the Corporate Weasel Dude" game.

I was expecting for the civilians to detonate their bombs and find out that the detonator was actually on their own boat.

I'm not sure it needs that much thought. I just thought it was thematically appropriate to the character as portrayed by Nolan that Batman would be so reckless. Intentional or no, it only furthers the point the Joker was making (incidentally, without a chance of being noticed by the moviegoers only there for the whiz-bang explosions they received in spades).

I am not a fan of subtext supplanting text (Ferris was just a figment of Bueller's imagination!) No, the film doesn't call Batman out directly on the point, but it's difficult not to see the parallels between the immediate actions Batman takes and the Gotham City he has a hand in creating.

It's a big-ass regard, though, isn't it? I'm also not comfortable with the way you're lumping in "killing" with "mayhem". It's a huge line for a person to cross. (Go ahead and fling the "don't have to save you" jokes my way, but I'm talking one film right now.)

And when you consider that Frank Miller's 80s Batman stories have the character explicitly stating "I'm no killer," being unable to kill the Joker, etc., you're left with "Nolan having Batman not kill is weird because Tim Burton was down with it."

But I also think the no killing stance combined with wanton property destruction/risk of collateral fatalities is probably part of Nolan's judgment against the character. His Batman is an abject failure.

I wasn't talking about Miller writing him as a killer, I was talking about Miller writing him as an overt sociopath. But yeah I get your point.

I don't know...the boat resolution worked for me. It was a tremendous leap of faith that Batman makes and he got lucky. The reason it works is that you see the temptation and you force yourself into that situation. What would you do? What would you think? What would you want to do? It's morally icky thinking. Batman isn't an optimist, but he expects the best from people. He's just lucky that's what he got in the end. Nolan isn't so optimistic, which is why the ending is shrouded with shades of gray.

We're not good people. We're not bad people. We're mixed up. Does the fact that Batman wants to sell Dent as a "good person" make him a bad person? Does the fact that he'd rather lie to the public and make himself a villain make him a good person?

I'm not sure that Nolan is "anti-Batman" as much as questioning Batman's heroics and asking us to do the same. It feeds into the Batman as Bush theory fairly well.

I don't think Miller embraced the "sociopath" angle until Dark Knight Strikes Again, and that seemed to stem from his dissatisfaction at how the DKR books "grim-n-grittied" everything that came after for decades. In DKR Bruce is driven, obsessed, but in control at all times (give or take a somnambulistic shaving). THAT version seemed a logical extension of what you'd do with that character, but without the cynical "Frank Miller hates superheroes" schtick he seemed to embrace later.

Given all that, I've no doubt there'll be a pistol-packing, grim-faced Caped Crusader smoking fools rated R-style in the next 20 years or so.

But the kids loves him!