Prequel good or bad?
- Thread starter dan_bevan
- Start date
He uses those to blow up stuff, not people.
Neither did he fire his guns at the baddies in Batman '89. Although he did blow them up with the bomb that rolled out of his wheel.
Then again, in BB we did see Bats just demolish countless police cruisers in such a way that I refuse to believe he didn't hurt or kill someone. To me, him bulldozering the cops down with his tank seemed out of character. Alas, I know I am in the minority.
So, when he was flying in his "batwing" and firing his machineguns at the Nickol-Joker... he was doing that for what reason, exactly? Granted, with all that ordnance, in real life he'd have turned the entire city street into a slaughterhouse, yet somehow Jack Nickolson pulls out a handgun and takes him down with it... I assume that was intended to be "funny?" Didn't work for me, but apparently the audiences liked it. Oh well...
Yep...
No, HURTING people is not "out of character." Batman will beat people within inches of their lives... break bones, turn their faces into bloody pulp... but he never crosses the line... he never kills. And he never uses firearm. Tranq darts, little bladed weapons, bludgeoning weapons... sure. But his goal is not to kill, it's to terrify.
That is the thing that the '89 Batman got "mostly right." And the thing that Batman Begins got completely right.
Not a thing out of character for Batman to leave people hospitalized. Just so long as they can recover. And it IS worthwhile to note that the most "threatening" event... the Batmobile running over a police car... they made a point of showing that the guys in that car survived. I didn't see a single casualty in that film, except for Ra's... and let's be clear, if you know anything about the comic book character of Ra's Al Ghul, you know that this wouldn't necessarily be the end for him (although they did try to "bypass" the whole Lazarus Pit thing by making it a "legend" in this movie, they didn't specifically contradict it).
"Star Trek" is already dead.
This movie stands a chance of creating a new "Star Trek" that has a future on screen. Worth at least one shot.
I was referring to the Batmobile firing off weapons.
We saw one or two cops survive the tanks smashing. There were several others that we didn't know what happened to them. Whether they survived or not, I don't know. The whole chase sequence, while cool, just left a bad taste in my mouth in context of the movie.
Ah, well...I'm not fanatical when it comes to if a movie depicts that character 100% correctly. I know what I like and don't.
btw, despite our side conversation, I did like BB.
I thought Batman (1943) and Batman and Robin (1949) came reasonably close to the feel of the comics. I haven't read much of the pre-New Look Silver Age Batman, but Batman (1966) seems fairly congruent with what I have read, that is, silly and fun.
Except in a couple of early stories, like the Mad Monk storyline. And Year Two. And The Dark Knight Returns. The last is not exactly a minor story that can be dismissed as irrelevant to the character, especially in the late 1980s.
And, of course, he did try to shoot Joe Chill with a gun. In Batman Begins.
I wish I had machine guns and rockets on my car, and I don't even have a plane.
It's true to some of the source material that Goyer, et al, selected. It's not true to the entire Batman mythos--much of which is not even true to itself. And BB isn't even entirely true to the source material that it did use. League of "Shadows," anyone? Henri Ducard collecting flowers in the mountains? Joe Chill assassinated on the courthouse steps? And where was Zorro?
^
^^In the first Batman Comics story (Detective Comics No. 27), Batman did NOT have any problems with using a gun or killing people (he killed a guy by breaking his neck, and felt no remorse). He broke a lot of necks in some of those early comics, breaking the neck of one minor minion by stomping on it with his boot. In Detective Comics No. 47, he used a machine gun attached to the Bat-plane -- and lots of bullets -- to kill someone (although he did feel remorse that time). This was, in fact, the only time he killed using a gun.
Batman DID later evolve into the "character with conscience" we know today...but wasn't 'Batman Begins' about an early Batman?
^^In the first Batman Comics story (Detective Comics No. 27), Batman did NOT have any problems with using a gun or killing people (he killed a guy by breaking his neck, and felt no remorse). He broke a lot of necks in some of those early comics, breaking the neck of one minor minion by stomping on it with his boot. In Detective Comics No. 47, he used a machine gun attached to the Bat-plane -- and lots of bullets -- to kill someone (although he did feel remorse that time). This was, in fact, the only time he killed using a gun.
Batman DID later evolve into the "character with conscience" we know today...but wasn't 'Batman Begins' about an early Batman?
Batman did a little shooting at the Joker in "The Dark Knight Returns."
Yeah, well... if the movie was intended to be "Monty Python does Batman" it would've worked. As a rule, I love humor, but mixing genres like this doesn't work for me. You can't REALLY combine the dark, brooding seriousness that Batman has pretty much always had with the silly slapstick stuff that people associate with the 60's TV Batman. The mixture just didn't work for me.
It's fine if you enjoyed it. I didn't. I enjoyed the serious portrayal in Batman Begins much more. And I'm looking forward to seeing a really GOOD "Joker" portrayal... which should be utterly horrifying without ever really being "funny" to anyone but a total psychopath.
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