So it begins...DC Ent Universe announcement next week?

Yet the studio has shackled them in some ways like with the "no female leads" rule (esp in animation), and pulling the plug on anything OTHER than more Supes and Bats. Not because they lost money on WW and GL:FF, but simply that they didn't make it fast enough to suit them.

Or the (at least perceived) flop that convinces them to abandon the larger universe for more Supes and Bats in LA as well. Even that is not guaranteed, given that SR did good box but got killed by it's bloated budget (bloated by Hollywood accounting, not the filmmaker).

 

I'D like to see them dip into the "solid 2nd tier" they claim they have and take a chance on Green Arrow, Dr Fate, etc.

Some argue that GL is a dip into the 2nd tier, but I've always seen him as a solid A-lister.

 

Honestly, I think it's because their characters are more iconic that they have such troubles. Marvel has always had more realistic expectations of exactly what a superhero property is when you move it to the movies, and how ambitious to be - which is really, not very. They seem to tend to think of a film pretty much the same way they think of a 3 issue comics story. They don't overreach.

That is, they've been careful to do character-focused adventure tales without being hampered by a desire to be THE MOST EPIC DEFINITIVE VERSION OF THE CHARACTER EVER!!!!! DC/ Warner's problem is, was and perhaps always will be that they lead with Superman: The Movie, which did manage to be epic in tone and ever since then they've been trying to rebottle that lightning. Which is why Batman Begins saved their asses - it was a tight, character-focused film that did not attempt EPIC as tone. Even TDK didn't try for EPIC but went instead for the tone of a taut police drama.

Hopefully it's a lesson they'll take to heart from here on out. Figure out what genre tone you want for a particular story about a particular character (one of the nice things about superheroes is that they can be very flexible, tone-wise) and stick to it like glue for each individual project. Even Marvel lost its way in the threequels for this very reason - they lost their focus on tone.

As for shared universe stuff - it faces the same problem. Ensemble pieces are limiting tone-wise, by nature. You can basically do The Dirty Dozen, Ocean's Eleven or The Magnificent Seven for tone when it comes to ensemble adventure tales. There's not a ton of room for other models (though I probably missed a few).

 

When I go to a movie I want to see a good movie, period. I don't give a damn about inter-movie continuity.

 

^But it's an added layer of fun for those of us who do, and that isn't a bad thing.

Lapis, I take your point about Superman. That film set a high bar indeed.

 

I totally disagree. Begins WAS epic, the most epic of the Batman movies to date. Nolan & Goyer were aiming for a Superman the movie style epicness, as well as a James Bond type sense of style. That's why you had a globe-trotting Bruce Wayne, international locations, an all-star cast, an internationally based villainous organisation, 3 main villains. That was way more epic than the previous movies, all of which were set exclusively in Gotham.

 

I disagree as well and found "Batman Begins" to be epic as well...it wasn't' an action piece like "Dark Knight" was but even focusing on Bruce it had epic moments and sequences that had a profound effect on me as a Batman fan. I like to categorize the two films like this: "Batman Begins" is a Bruce Wayne film. It follows his journey from a scared young boy who lost his parents in a traumatic incident to his quest to become the world's greatest crime fighter. "The Dark Knight" in contrast is a Batman film. It focuses on Bruce's sacrifice of a normal life in his ongoing war on crime. Batman has become an obsession and the Joker is the linchpin in the film that enhances this concept to a tee.

 

I think what Lapis was trying to get at is that despite the very large scale, Batman Begins was still very much an intimate, personal, character-driven film. Yes, the villain's big plan was trying to gas Gotham, but Batman's character arc was very much internal and centric to the plot.

 

^ That's fair enough, but many of the best epic movies have retained the sense of the personal. From Ben Hur (his friendship/ emnity with the Stephen Boyd character), Gone With the Wind (Scarlett & Rhett against the backdrop of civil war), The Godfather (family dynamics and a mafia war) to The Empire Strikes Back (space battles, lightsaber duels and - I am your father/ I love you - I know). The two aren't mutually exclusive.

 

At the risk of putting words into people's mouths, maybe "mythic" describes what Lapis was trying to say.

 

^ That works fine - I would try not to get hung up on the word. Because I'm not talking about how it affected the audience, or how powerful it was emotionally - but tone.

According to the Literary Terms & Poetry Glossary, tone is "the manner in which an author expresses his or her attitude; the intonation of the voice that expresses meaning. Tone is the result of allusion, diction, figurative language, imagery, irony, symbol, syntax, style, and so on."

S:TM was epic in tone because of its imagery, symbology, syntax and style. For instance it made very explicit allusions to Kal-El as Christ allegory such as the shot of him standing up from the wreckage of his space ship which referenced numerous medieval works of art showing the Christ child. It cast Jor-El as God the Father. It was fond, in the first two acts anyway, of sweeping long shots of the sort you find in Lawrence of Arabia and Lord of the Rings. These things create an epic tone - larger than life, beyond the realm of mortal men.

In contrast Batman Begins, while involving globetrotting, kepts its shots almost excluisively tight on the character of Bruce Wayne, even when he's tackling the icy mountain - it was nearly claustrophobic in its visual syntax. It made no effort to equate Bruce with any force of nature or religious figure - quite the opposite, it showed him consciously, humanly, seeking to adopt such an image as a tool. So even though you get the lovely shot of him standing in the midst of the cave with the bats whirling around - the movie wasn't giving you any of the oft-used Batman "I AM the Night" business - it was showing a young man conquering his personal fears and bending them to his personal will. It focused on his limitations as a human man, the imperfect tools he used to create the illusion of being a force of nature - but the audience was in on it, so it doesn't fold us into the illusion.

Compare that to Batman '89 - first shot of Batman is as mysterious figure on rooftop, hearing screams from below, calmly melting back into the shadows, unhurried - supernatural. The first long shot of Gotham is from a perspective far away and the city looks like a Rube Goldberg concoction of labyrinthine, even impossible buildings. In Batman Begins, the only long shot of Gotham comes as Bruce looks out the window a plane, and it looks like any other city when anybody approaches from a plane. Different syntax.

You could maybe make a case for Joker's impossible strategies in TDK having a touch of epic, if the rest of the movie wasn't so clearly focused on feeling like a police procedural.

Am I managing to be any clearer about what I mean?

 

I think so. I like the Nolan films, but my favorite is still the first Tim Burton film because of its whole larger-than-life, operatic, pulp-Gothic atmosphere.

It was more "mythic."

 

I understand what you're trying to say Lapis. There are definite structural and character tone differences between the two Burton movies and the two Nolan movies, not to mention visually how they look. To me I think both "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight" were pretty damn epic and mythic, I think the sequel was just starting to explore the mythic elements of Batman and the third film will delve deeper into the concept. Think Nolan really wanted to focus on building up Bruce Wayne's character arc, and now that has been done he can conclude it and add new elements to it with the addition of what will be assumed will be new rouges and characters. Hope that makes sense.

 

Lapis, how would you judge "Mask of the Phantasm" on those terms? (Still the best Batman movie ever made, by the way..."