Fox Developing "Gotham" Young Jim Gordon Series

Fox has set Gotham to air on Mondays at 8pm before Sleepy Hollow.

 

Not convinced. I've seen him in nine or ten movies and I've never come away thinking he's bad, but I've never been hugely impressed either. He's good enough, but...

 

Bale is a fantastic actor in other movies, but I always found his Bruce/Batman to be incredibly dull for some reason. He just never had the magnetic presence that you would expect the character to have (no matter which costume he was wearing).

 

Bale is really good in other movies and I liked his Bruce Wayne as he pulled off the self-centered rich asshole thing pretty well. His Batman? Well, a lot has been said about that over the years.

 

I'll never understand people's dislike of Bale's Batman voice.

 

It sounds like he's gargling glass shards while being strangled?

It's cranking the knob to 11 when a 6 or 7 will do? (See every other actor's take on the Batman-over-Bruce voice.)

It was "auto-tuned" in post to be more ridiculous?

He uses it even when he's around people who know he's Bruce Wayne so there's no need to do it to either cover his true identity or to strike fear into the listeners?

I mean would it really have been that hard for Bale to just drop his voice a couple octaves and be done with it? Did he really need someone to twist his larynx into a knot before shooting to get the right amount of "Jack Palance with a severe throat infection"-iness to his voice?

 

Bale is overrated

 

The rest are a matter of preference, but as for this: YOU NEVER BREAK CHARACTER. Once you put on the mask, you have to stay in the mindset so that you don't accidentally break character in a moment of panic or distraction.

 

A featurette has been released:

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REoELMS5tXc[/yt]

 

So conflicted. Everything about it looks amazing, but then they have to go and bring up the Joker, and I so do not want that. You can do anyone else, but the Joker needs Batman.

 

It looks like this show will essentially flip Nolan's escalation theme around. The villains will emerge and exert a greater and greater influence on Gotham, eventually leading Bruce Wayne to become Batman.

 

Yeah as much as I like the idea of seeing all these villains in their early days (and probably all interacting with each other in various ways), the idea that every one of them was already established and doing bad things long before Bruce even hit puberty (let alone put on a cowl) does seem a little strange. Especially when you throw in the Joker as well.

Part of me almost wishes they could take Bruce out of the picture completely, and just pretend this is a world where Gordon is the only one taking on these criminals. Or at least make Bruce a teenager who's just beginning to train and prepare himself to be Batman.

 

I hate that -- he says "It's not a comic-book world," and then goes on to describe it as pretty much exactly what a comic-book world is. I can't believe that even in this day and age when comics pretty much rule all media, that long-outdated stereotype of what comics are limited to being still has such currency.

I'm sure he's not going to be the Joker, he's just going to be the guy who will someday become the Joker, and his story arc will be leading him toward that endpoint, just like all the others.

 

The kid playing Bruce is thirteen. Why is everyone acting like Bruce Wayne is an eight-year-old?

Yes, that sounds terrible. Do that for anyone else. Never for the Joker.

 

I think by "comic book world" he just means the more overt Burton and Schumacher-style comic book world with the gaudy lighting and crazy costumes, etc.

Although even then I don't think the world looks quite as grounded and real as he seems to think.

 

Because impressions are important, and that's more or less the impression the show's very concept gives off? "If you watch our product for five or six years, Bruce may become old enough to buy Selina some Plan B, 'just in case'."


... What this show should be: set in a universe in which the bugger didn't kill Mom and Pops Wayne, but did kill Bruce. Now Gordon has to fight emerging supervillains in a world that will never have a Batman... or will it? Will Gordon turn to off-hours vigilantism? Will Mom Wayne, increasingly terrified of the dark road her husband is going down, start handing him gizmos on the down low?

 

But that's exactly my point: That's a stereotype that doesn't fit what superhero comics have actually been like for generations. Even when those movies came out, they were far more superficial and fanciful than the Batman comics of the same era. (Indeed, the gritty, naturalistic style of the Nolan movies was inspired largely by the comics that were coming out around the time the Burton and Schumacher movies were being made.) It was an ignorant stereotype then to call that "comic book style," and it's an even more ignorant stereotype now, a generation later, when people should have more awareness of what comics are capable of. I mean, come on, The Walking Dead is a comic book. Maus is a comic book. Comics can be anything. They're a medium, not a genre.

 

Ignorant or not, it IS the term that a lot of people know and use, which is probably why he felt the need to address it.

I don't think it's anything really worth getting offended about.

 

It is always, always worth fighting ignorance. Ignorance is not a stance that should be defended. Especially when it is an unjust stereotype. Stereotypes hurt real people. Comic books are created by talented men and women who put a lot of care and effort into their creations and deserve recognition for it, as well as needing to make a living from it, and ignorant stereotypes about what comics are capable of prevents people from reading them and keeps those creators from getting as much appreciation -- and income -- as they deserve. How is that not worth protesting? Unfairness should always be challenged. Not because I'm "offended" by it -- although I am -- but because it's simply the right thing to do. Truth is important.