[SimeSublime]

I remember thinking the Batman movie was quite weird, as I had only ever seen the old tv show before, and didn't even realise it was based off a comic.

[Stongbah]

The business of making it the Joker who did the killing, which is frankly stupid, in all kinds of ways, is Sam Hamm.

It made sense to have Joker do the killing seeing as how they wern't looking to make a franchise, and introducing new characters would just make the plot more complex. I thought it was a great plot twist and my eyes were wide open during that scene.

[reiner]

Anyone remember the Captain America movie?

[SimeSublime]

Urg...I've never ever read Captain America, but he is so much a symbol of patriotic brainwashing that I find even looking at him hard to stand.

[civilian_number_two]

It made sense to have Joker do the killing seeing as how they wern't looking to make a franchise, and introducing new characters would just make the plot more complex. I thought it was a great plot twist and my eyes were wide open during that scene.

Of course they were lookin to make a franchise. The Joker only died because Nicholson had a stric one-movie contract (though it included a clause whereby if a sequel were generated, he would get a percentage of that as well!!!).

And if by "great" you mean "really obvious" and by "plot twist" you mean "lame cliche," then yeah, I figure it had a great plot twist as well.

Anyway, I'm real disappointed noone else wanted to play "fantasy casting" with WATCHMEN.

I say the psychiatrist who interviews Rorshcach is Forrest Whittaker.

[Jordan]

Civillian

Ok, I misunderstood you.

in fact what it did was open the door for the over-the-top silliness of all of its sequels.

The sequels were terrible!!!!!!!!

I've only walked out of the theatre a couple times in my life. And one of those times was during Batman Forever . The one with Arnold as Mr. Freeze. (that was FOREVER, right?)

Anyway, I'm real disappointed noone else wanted to play "fantasy casting" with WATCHMEN.

Never heard of WATCHMEN in my life~

This post has been edited by Jordan: 19 August 2004 - 12:51 PM

[Mike Mac from NYU]

I'll chime in on this topic.

Civilian, I have to disagree with nearly all your points regarding BATMAN. I won;t detail them since I'm short on time here.

Here are the problems that have occured with the comic to movie genre

1. Too many of them are coming out at the same time. BATMAN was so sucessful because it was unique in that it was the only major "comic" movie to come out in the last few years {Not counting the HORRID Superman IV!! and the equally bad DICK TRACY movie}

At this rate were averaging FIVE comic-to-movie films in the last four years!!!!!

The genre is getting as worn out as the "DIE HARD" film genre.

2. The failure with a lot of these movies is that they fail to do what BATMAN and X-Men did. They failed to show us how the Superhero's would exist in the "real" world. The failures of Spiderman and the Hulk were that never for a second did we believe the HULK and SPIDERMAN were real!!!!!!!!

CG takes a lot of the blame.

Sometimes you just need a guy in a suit or green paint!!!!

3. Another problem is the failure of directors to capture the meaning of their subjects. BATMAN and X-men did. The other movies just treated their subjects like "generic" superheros.

4. Casting is another problem. I tend to find the worst superhero movies are the one's that have the worst casting. SPIDERMAN is a case in point. Anyone who has read the comics knows that KIRSTEN DUNST is NOT Mary JAne and that Tobey Maguire is NOT Peter Parker.

Will think up more later.

[Mike Mac from NYU]

Of course they were lookin to make a franchise. The Joker only died because Nicholson had a stric one-movie contract (though it included a clause whereby if a sequel were generated, he would get a percentage of that as well!!!).

Maybe.......but I don;t think you can do that movie or subsequent movies without the Joker dying.

It would take away too much from other villians in the sequels.

Plus, I think all that there was need to be said about the Joker was done in the first movie.

I think if you produce a sequel with the Joker in it. The character starts to become boring and redundant.

[Jordan]

Maybe.......but I don;t think you can do that movie or subsequent movies without the Joker dying.

It would take away too much from other villians in the sequels.

Plus, I think all that there was need to be said about the Joker was done in the first movie.

I think if you produce a sequel with the Joker in it. The character starts to become boring and redundant.

I've never had a problem with Joker's death either. Batman needed to kill him in order to satisfy the audience.

Jail as a punishment only works in Court Room films. It would be anti-climactic to send Joker off to prison.

[civilian_number_two]

Did you guys ever read ARKHAM ASYLUM? That's a great comic book. I think the Joker is a much more interesting villain behind bars than he is flying around town putting poison into soap.

I must have seen a different BATMAN than you did, Mike, because I loved it, but never felt like it portrayed what the hero would be like in the "real" world (and I know what you meant). I think X-MEN, of all things, has come closest to that, after the original SUPERMAN. With BATMAN, I could see they were in a studio the whole time. As for character and motivation, BATMAN always felt more real to me on the page than in that movie.

I think the problem with me and BATMAN is more the movie than my take on it. I read the comics, and I saw the 1966 Adam West film, and I think Tim Burton came a lot closer to Adam West than he did to the comics.

I'll wait to hear why it's really clever, "real" world, and not silly and camp to have him hanging upside-down in the closet sleeping like a bat. =) Should be good.

[Vwing]

I'm going to disagree about the Hulk. I thought he was real enough to be believed. The shots are extremely real in the closeups, and the far-off shots are kind of like King Kong, you can see he's not really there, but it's good enough to suspend disbelief. That being said, even in the long shots I think the Hulk looks great, they did a great job. Bana and Connolley (and of course Sam Elliot) are really good, and Ang Lee's directing is FABULOUS. I love the split-screen stuff, and it is so confidently filmed. I hope there is a sequel as the ending suggested, because I really thought this was a great take on a comic book, but one that was EXTREMELY real, which is why it turned a lot of people off.

And I agree with Civ, Batman's great, yeah, but it just isn't, well, Batman as he should be. Maybe Nolan and Bale will do it, I don't know, the trailer looks good, we'll have to hope. And Arkham Asylum sounds very interesting, I may pick that up, although I haven't read a comic book in a long time. I remember one episode of Batman: The Animated Series (which is SO much better than the movies in capturing Batman) where they briefly showed all of the villains in jail, including Joker, and I thought that was very cool, so an expansion of that sounds very intriguing.

[Mike Mac from NYU]

I'll wait to hear why it's really clever, "real" world, and not silly and camp to have him hanging upside-down in the closet sleeping like a bat. =) Should be good.

I believe that scene was a brief 5 seconds of screen time.

Come to think of it had you mentioned it now, I would have forgotten that scene.

For the record, I don't think it is an important segment of the movie,.

Essentially Vickie Vale is waking half asleep and she catches Bruce 'working out" hanging by a pole upside down by his toes.

Now whether this is humanly possible, or even a necessary physical exercise is beyond me.

But the whole point of that scene was to depict Vickie slowly figuring out his true identity.


Civilian, this was a REALLY, REALLY, REALLY minor scene in the movie. In fact I don;t think the scene even registered with most viewers of the movie.

Do you honestly mean to tell me you watched that movie AND THAT SCENE STUCK WITH YOU AS BONE OF CONTENTION FOR THE LAST 14 or so YEARS????

GEEZ!!

[Mike Mac from NYU]

I'll wait to hear why it's really clever, "real" world, and not silly and camp to have him hanging upside-down in the closet sleeping like a bat. =) Should be good.

Realism?

1. The fact that Batman is wearing "teflon armor" to deflect bullets. This at the time seemed pretty interesting since in the comics.......Batman appears to be fighting crime in blue and grey tights with no deflective properties

If you were fighting crime......how long would you last without

2, Batman is fighting in Martial Arts style. in most comic books the fighting is usually of the "street boxing" variety.

An actual crime fighther in real life today would need to learn various styles of fighting........especially if he has no handgun on him.

The Guardian Angels and various "vigillante" groups stress learning Karate.

3. Batman actually uses guns and military equipment on his vehicles.

The Batjet has missles and artillery guns.........just like a real military jet. Just as the Batmobile has.

Yet the usual credo of superhero's is to not use guns or weapons like bombs.

But if you are going to fight crime..........you really need military hardware to destroy factories and trucks.

4. Even Batman's gadgets are of the realistic type. They are pulley's grapling hooks, powered winches. Actually when you think about it they are microsized versions of ultility equpment.

5. Heck, Batman wears black, not the blue and grey. Only an all black costume makes sense for night fighting. The fact that BATMAN is fighting during the night ONLY is pretty realistic.

How anyone fights crime in blue and grey tights during the broad daylight is beyond me.

6. As BATMAN, Bruce Wayne talks..........very little. Important, cause if he did talk frequently........it might give away his identity. Especially considering he is a well known person in town.

7. Most important.......BATMAN is not CGI. He is a real actor, douing real moves in real time. You can believe BATMAN because you know what you are seeing is actually solid and you can touch!!!!!!!!

[civilian_number_two]

Yeah, all of that is from comic books of the mid 80s. There was a general redefinition of Batman after Frank Miller wrote a couple of books, and for a little while there every writer in the business wanted to take a stab at it. Frank Miller adopted black, armour, military gadgets, the premise that Waynecorp had a munitions R&D plant, Alfred was an army medic; the idea that Batman knew more than karate had been around since the seventies.

The movie, which I loved, liberally borrowed from all of that, and then threw in a lot of goofy punchline-oriented stuff that seemed to come from the tv series. I'll agree with anyne who says it got a lot worse in the sequel. I won't agree with anyone else that there was ever more than one BATMAN sequel. All those other movies feel like a totally different series.

I'm not saying that movies shouldn't have comic relief; even Frank Miller reinvented Alfred as an ascerbic foil to Batman's bitter stoicism. The gadgetry I liked, of course, but there's sometimes a little too much of it, and it was played for comedy more than once. But a key element missing from the comic redefinitions was the psychological realism of the characters, villains included. Writers were really taking stabs at that, and the movie played it all down to "you made me; I made you," and it was all a comic book again, about as deep as your average James Bond. Add to which the Joker is a little too over-the-top, so we don't get any idea of tortured cruelty. Sure Alan Moore's great KILLING JOKE hadn't come out yet, which is just as well, since any screenwriter would have ruined that as well, but Illike Jack Nicholson a lot more than I like his Joker. Here he's just a big goof, dancing around to Prince tunes and defacing paintings because his face went all smooshy.

So no, the hanging upside-down scene is not the only bit that bugged me. I have gone on enough about other details before. However I do concede your argument that the bat-sleep is not an embarrassing or stupid scene because you didn't remember it. I hadn't considered that; it is a point well made.

---------

I agree with everything you say about CGI. SPIDERMAN would have been better with a real actor swinging around on wires in front of a blue screen. CGI is the rear-projection of this decade; it will eventually go away and leave all films made here and now dated in a way that a film made with more conservative effects would not have been (Stop motion has not dated STAR WARS, EMPIRE, JEDI) The only things that date SUPERMAN are the pop tunes and the hairstyles, and fortunately the pop tunes are few.

[Heccubus]

I'm just going to point out that Batman DIDN'T kill the Joker in the first movie. He tried to save him, and the Joker's hand slipped.
I read that somewhere up there, and can't remember who said it, but consider yourself corrected either way.