Frequent Collabators and Risky Casting Choices

I kinda made a fool out of myself in the last Dark Knight Rises thread. and to prevent derailing that thread, I'm going to draw a line of semantics war here in this thread.

My excitement is hampered for DKR  because Nolan is calling back most of his Inception crew. Now, everyone in Inception were excellent -we all pretty much agree to that- and everyone, with the exception of me it seems like, is real excited for the reunion in DKR.

Here's where I'm puzzled: I'm expecting great things from everyone, I even believe greatness is going to come out of it.

But I'm also feeling dissapointed, and I'm thinking as to why that is. I've cited that the casting choices weren't real risky(or maybe "unconventional" might be a better word) as being a factor to why; which isn't completely it. I cited Heath Ledger as The Joker being an example, and I still stand by that. Ledger, prior to that, really didn't play a role like that before and I'm pretty confident in saying that no one thought of him here before he signed on. Now the CHUD boards were pretty open minded with a healthy "let's wait and see" attitude, but Joe and Jane Six Pack? He was just the gaywad from Brokeback Mountain to them, and should be the last choice for the clown prince of crime. Now Joe and Jane Six Pack think no one else should play The Joker EVER afterwards.

I love that.

I remember the Tim Burton parody video that came out when Alice in Wonderland was released. It made him look like one of the most uninspiring filmmakers out there, and there was merit to that. He has been getting very boring, and the guy use to be hailed as an "innovative breath of fresh air!".

Why I bring this up is that I can see that video being remade with Nolan and his crew, say, 6 years from now if he keeps using the same crew and cast over and over again. Remember, we all use to be excited when Johnny Depp and Tim Burton would start a new project.

But here's a flip side: I just got finished watching The Shield, and have gone on to start watching Sons of Anarchy--which has a lot of the same cast and crew from The Shield. This doesn't bother me for some reason as opposed to the not filmed frame of DKR.

Why is that?

(And apologies if this came across as weird with no point)

I'm trusting with a bigger dose of concern that I would usually have. The expectations Nolan has with this 3rd batflick are high, and I don't need to really say that. So, I understand the stakes. Another element of this is that Nolan has said that he doesn't want to make the same movie twice in regards to DKR.

Now, this is where screwy semantics come into play:

Notice how it's said that he doesn't want to make the same Batman movie twice. He just says "movie". Now, I don't want to be a dick, but isn't working with the same cast kinda defeating that statement? One or two returning cast members? That's fine. But the majority of the Inception cast? That's causing me to look like a dick who's trying to spearhead some stupid preemptive backlash campaign. I don't want that, and if someone can pull a quote where he does say -hell, just say that he DID SAY "not same bat flick twice"- I'll go "okay" with less concern about all this.

I'm thinking about this more and more, and I think some of these feelings are due to the volume of attention that Nolan has been given, and there's a big degree of being unfairness about it. I mean, I'm not starting this thread about "The Mamet Mafia" when the same things could be said about that crew. The difference between Nolan and Mamet, in this regard among many, is that one has more exposure than the other.

You're right about Sons of Anarchy. Actors from The Shield are playing against their types that The Shield had established for them.

The PTA/Phillip Seymor Hoffman example is great, and I've given great thought about this as well. Hoffman would undeniably great in The Master, but judging from what I read about the film's plot is suppose to be, and how charasmatic Hoffman's character is suppose to be; I can't help but think the role should be offered to Tom Cruise.

I'm dead serious about suggestion, and it's THAT kind of risk that energizes my excitement for movies(irony of ironies being Tom Cruise has worked with PTA before).

But to answer your question: do I trust Nolan capable of making the right judgement calls about DRK? I'm still on the fence about that, but I will say that his work prior to this has most definitely earned my attention. I'm just trying to measure my high hopes, really.

I've weighed the Scorsese/Dicaprio collaborations in my head as well, and they don't strike me as egegious because each film they made together is unique from one another. The only two that could be *slightly* similar are Gangs of New York and The Departed, but that's stretching it.

It's been awhile since I've seen The Prestige, but I don't remember it seeming like it was same ol, same ol from Nolan, Caine, and Bale. It also helped that it had a bunch of other great actors and interesting performers like Andy Serkis, Bowie, and Ricky Jay to help with the technical side of things.

If it's confirmed that Marion Cotillard is not going to play Talia al Ghul, then I might lax a bit on this because I believe that character would kind of be similar to Mal in Inception. Soon as that buzz started is when I started having "iiiii don't know, man" thoughts.

You're forgetting that the two stars of Nolan's first film, Following, also had real small parts in Batman Begins. In fact, Jeremy Theobald played the notorious Gotham Water Power Exposition Guy! Lucy Russell was some party girl that fake laughed at Bruce Wayne's jokes. Very, very inconsequential roles.

The Lucy Lawless/Ted Raimi/Bruce Campbell cameos are just like that, and I even enjoyed those. In fact, the DKR is the only time where I'm catching myself going "oh please, get someone else". I never reacted like this with the Coens, or period, actually. Probably the only other time is with Tim Burton, and we've all discussed that. A lot of my favorite filmmakers make repeat collaborations, and it's just curious that I'm reacting to this DKR casting stuff with a negative gut reaction, and trust me, I would like nothing more than to read these posts 2 years from now and think "the hell was I thinking?".

But right now I still can't shake the "Nope. Don't like the idea" on paper. So hopefully when footage is finally filmed and released, that "the hell was I thinking?" feeling can come sooner than 2 years from now.

I'm hoping you're right about this.

It's just a curious feeling because I've never really had this kneejerk gut feeling(and I'm fully admitting this is just that)before. I'm a big fan of The Coens and Paul Thomas Anderson; filmmakers that are renowned for their use of repeating actors/actresses. This is why I'm personally weirded out about this.

But as a fan of PTA, I do want to bring this up: he didn't really work with any of his usual cast of performers in There Will Be Blood(I'm not counting Paul F. Tompkins), and he dropped his go to guy for scoring duties. Judged against his other works it's a real unique accomplishment, and it's exciting to see a filmmaker evolve. The only constants I can think of are his editor and DoP. That's it.

You bring up a great point about the contrast in characters between Inception and DKR, and I have the same frame of mind when it comes to Hardy playing Bane. The feeling I have right now hit first with that, and it did subside when character confirmation hit, but the feeling came back with Cotillard rumored to play Talia. I'll admit that I really only remember the character from the animated series, but isn't Talia similar to Mal?

I guess that's really my main concern if that's true.

(and I'll cop to saying that not being a big fan of anything Ra's Al Ghul, or anything relating to the League of Shadows, is also fueling these "WTF???" preconcieved notions).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greg Clark 

"Man, I wish Scorsese would stop casting DeNiro in everything! The whole time I was watching Goodfellas I couldn't stop thinking of Travis Bickle. When will he evolve?!" Your problem, time warped to 20 years ago.

I'm giving myself some buffer time in the event that I'm painfully late to the party!

Right!!!

And don't think I haven't thought about that because, trust me, I have.

But Scorsese and DeNiro made some films seperately between each collaboration. This isn't the case right now for DKR.

Double post. My bad!

Ugh. These public browsers are really cramping my style here.

Now I almost want Dicaprio to be cast just so I can say "see...SEE????".

But what's funny is that if he were the only Inception holdover, I wouldn't be having these "iiiii don't know" feelings. Instead they would be "Oh wow. this might be something great because these comic book movies don't strike me as something DiCaprio would be into". But that's not the case, and I guess we are all going to have to just get by with Frank Abagnale being a big fan of the Silver Age era Flash. To stray from my original discussion points here, I wonder what filmmaker Nolan is going to try and mimic with DKR. He did a damn good Ridley Scott and Michael Mann with the previous two, and whatever filmmaker he intends to name drop will probably be the jedi mind trick that will get these strange preconcieved notions out of my head.

Now you're just talking nonsense.