So, which is better and why... BB or TDK???

[suarezguy]

And what about the next time that a DA or other government official cracks under pressure or is revealed to be different from his image? Given how bad a lot of the cops were in the film, its not very clear why they should have faith in the system other than that the alternative is worse.

I'm not the biggest fan of BB, but it did give a pretty good examination of Bruce Wayne, branching to include Rachel, Ra's and Crane, and the realistic style was OK, gave a sense of actually happening. I felt TDK took the focus off of Bruce, Ledger wasn't so great and the themes were mediocre.

 

[BigFoot]

I really need to see TDK again before I can decide. Bring on the Blu-ray!

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

BATMAN BEGINS is the better movie, although they're both great. Some of that has to do with putting "Batman Begins" into its historical context with the other Batman movies. So much of the Burton/Schumacher films focused casting the newest flavor of the month as some randomly chosen villain from Batman's rogues gallery. Batman himself was a bit of a cypher who just kind of showed up to fight the bad guys. Then "Batman Begins" comes along and changes all that by putting the emphasis almost exclusively on Bruce Wayne. We get inside his head. We learn where he came from and what exactly drives him to do what he does the way he does it. And I think that Christian Bale (probably the greatest leading man of his generation) lets you into Bruce's head in a way that is consistently compelling and effective.

"The Dark Knight" runs off the rails a little bit because it kinda goes back to what the Burton/Schumacher movies were doing and loses the focus on Bruce Wayne because it's spending so much time developing the Joker, Lt. Gordon, & Harvey Dent. Not that these aren't interesting characters in their own right but I came to the movie to see more of Bruce Wayne's story and I never felt that I was able to get into his head this time. Even Batman as an action hero felt a little superfluous here. Nolan wasn't making a Batman movie. He was making a crime drama about Lt. Gordon & Harvey Dent with Batman really only showing up for the perfunctory action scenes. I'm hoping that this will be amended in "Batman III" and we will start getting a clearer picture of Bruce Wayne's story again.

As far as bullshit technology goes, I'd say the microwave emitter in "Batman Begins" & the cell phone sonar in "The Dark Knight" are about equal on the B.S.-ometer.

As far as villains go, I feel that Ra'a Al-Ghul tied into his movie's story & themes better than the Joker & Two-Face. Tom Wilkinson's Carmine Falcone was far more interesting to watch than Eric Roberts' Salvatore Moroni (because one of these actors is Tom Wilkinson and the other is Eric Roberts).

I feel that there must have been a better way to resolve the Joker's character than to just leave him hanging there. I think he should have died somehow. Either he slips out of the rope that Batman tied around his foot and falls to his death or he's shot by a vengeful cop or maybe he's killed by Two-Face back at the hospital. That last option certainly would have saved us from the heavy handed "social experiment" with the 2 ferries.

And while I think that Ledger's immersive performance as the Joker is clearly Oscar worthy, I'd just like to point out that Cillian Murphy never needed make-up to look creepy.

 

[Christopher]

As far as bullshit technology goes, I'd say the microwave emitter in "Batman Begins" & the cell phone sonar in "The Dark Knight" are about equal on the B.S.-ometer.

Tell me how the cell-phone sonar violates basic physical law or directly contradicts itself in how it's portrayed, rather than simply having issues with logistics and practicality.

As far as villains go, I feel that Ra'a Al-Ghul tied into his movie's story & themes better than the Joker & Two-Face.

I thought the Joker and Harvey/Two-Face worked very well thematically. The story was about a struggle between order and chaos, belief and nihilism. Batman and the Joker were at war over the soul of Gotham City, with Harvey as the embodiment of the struggle. Certainly the film integrated the two villains' stories better than previous Bat-films did.

I feel that there must have been a better way to resolve the Joker's character than to just leave him hanging there. I think he should have died somehow. Either he slips out of the rope that Batman tied around his foot and falls to his death or he's shot by a vengeful cop or maybe he's killed by Two-Face back at the hospital.

I definitely disagree. One thing BB didn't quite get right is that Batman isn't a killer. The Joker was the embodiment of death in this film, and part of Batman's moral triumph over the Joker was that he refused to kill him, just as the Gothamites in the boats triumphed over the Joker by refusing to kill each other. Killing the Joker would've been giving him what he wanted and admitting that his way was the right one.

Besides, Batman did kill Harvey, however unintentionally, and it's that tragic choice that motivates his wish to be declared the villain at the end. If the Joker had died shortly before, it would've undermined the impact of Harvey's death.

And I would argue that the Joker can't die, because that would make him too human. What Tim Burton did fundamentally wrong with the Joker was to make him a human being who had a life before the Joker and who was able to die. Nolan's Joker, like the comics' Joker, is a purer evil than that -- he has no identity, no past, no arc, but is simply an embodiment of entropy. He's a cipher, a force of nature, an unkillable idea. He's already on the scene before the movie starts, and he's still lingering as the movie ends, because entropy is always there, a constant that must be defeated time and again if order is to prevail.

 

[Lapis Exilis]

I think it's difficult to judge one movie better than the other, for both are rather flawed masterpieces, and they differ so completely that, even as they are part of the same story, each is really its own animal.

That said, in response to your observation Tulin that people say TDK is the better movie but BB is the more enjoyable - that's easy enough to explain. TDK is exhausting and relentlessly depraved. The only pure characters end up dead (Rachel) or traumatized (Jim). The hero is twisted and the people he's supposed to be protecting are brought to the brink of utter despair. The most he can manage to do is to constantly place himself in the line of fire to take the brunt of the damage, and when he fails at that (with Harvey) everything falls apart. While there are moments of triumph, they are all tempered by the taste of chaos. And, most of all, the audience is cleverly tricked into greatly enjoying the hideous playfulness of the Joker, which produces a kind of repressed guilt that tends to eat at your unconscious for a long time after you leave the theater. BB, on the other hand, is a much more straight-up traditional heroic story about a man who manages to overcome and reshape his darker impulses, which makes you feel comforted and satisfied after you leave because it matches your expectations of simplistic notions of good triumphing over evil.

I must take issue with some of your criticisms, Christopher, or at least the premise from which they proceed. BB is not realistic - at least its plot isn't. What exactly is realistic about the scion of a wealthy family giving up his plot to murder the killer of his parents only to find his way into a Bhutanese prison where a mysterious man shows up to invite him to join a monastery of ninjas who have operated across the history of Western civilization to destroy the world's great cities, so he decides to go home and dress up as a bat to fight crime? In the middle of that, complete with impossibilities like "memory cloth" that makes it possible for a 200 lb man wearing 60 lbs of armor to hang glide through city buildings, it's a microwave emitter that distracts you because it's not realistic enough? That seems very selective.

There may be some play in the argument that Nolan's naturalistic tone and style conflicts with both movies' fantastic premise and plots, though personally I think that tension is a huge part of what makes these really interesting movies and bravura directorial efforts, but is one part of BB really less realistic than the rest of the story? I’m with you on the rather clumsy action set pieces, but I never have gotten the microwave emitter criticism. It receives as much of an explanation as the memory cloth, and is about as likely, but many people get really hung up on that former without even blinking at the latter.

Back to the original question, is BB or TDK better? TDK has more levels to it, managing to not only be an excellent Batman story, but also to touch a timely chord, and explore some seriously archetypal material regarding our ideas of the heroic, so for that reason it may be the stronger work of art. But it's harder to watch for that reason as well, so as to which is "better", it depends on what your criteria for better is. Do you mean the movie that is meatier, or the movie that you're more likely to pull off your shelf and watch more often?

 

[stj]

There are no cell phones in the building where the hostages are kept. Or if there are, the hostages should have been able to call for help! It's just an excuse for copying Daredevil's sonar vision.

 

[Christopher]

That said, in response to your observation Tulin that people say TDK is the better movie but BB is the more enjoyable - that's easy enough to explain. TDK is exhausting and relentlessly depraved. The only pure characters end up dead (Rachel) or traumatized (Jim). The hero is twisted and the people he's supposed to be protecting are brought to the brink of utter despair. The most he can manage to do is to constantly place himself in the line of fire to take the brunt of the damage, and when he fails at that (with Harvey) everything falls apart. While there are moments of triumph, they are all tempered by the taste of chaos. And, most of all, the audience is cleverly tricked into greatly enjoying the hideous playfulness of the Joker, which produces a kind of repressed guilt that tends to eat at your unconscious for a long time after you leave the theater. BB, on the other hand, is a much more straight-up traditional heroic story about a man who manages to overcome and reshape his darker impulses, which makes you feel comforted and satisfied after you leave because it matches your expectations of simplistic notions of good triumphing over evil.

I think TDK is a heroic story in a similar way, except the "hero" of the piece is Gotham City. It's Gotham that goes through the process of overcoming its darker impulses and embracing a nobler path.

True, TDK isn't as good a Batman story, because Batman is almost secondary to it, but I think it's a more solid piece of filmmaking.

I must take issue with some of your criticisms, Christopher, or at least the premise from which they proceed. BB is not realistic - at least its plot isn't. What exactly is realistic about the scion of a wealthy family giving up his plot to murder the killer of his parents only to find his way into a Bhutanese prison where a mysterious man shows up to invite him to join a monastery of ninjas who have operated across the history of Western civilization to destroy the world's great cities, so he decides to go home and dress up as a bat to fight crime? In the middle of that, complete with impossibilities like "memory cloth" that makes it possible for a 200 lb man wearing 60 lbs of armor to hang glide through city buildings, it's a microwave emitter that distracts you because it's not realistic enough? That seems very selective.

Well, shape memory materials are actually a very real technology. What we were shown in the movie was years ahead of the state of the art, but was simply an elaboration on something that actually exists. The gliding did stretch plausibility, but the underlying concept was grounded in solid futurism.

I don't insist that a story be actually realistic, just that it feels plausible and minimizes the suspension of disbelief. If you present something implausible but offer a credible enough rationalization that the audience is willing to accept the possibility for the duration of the story, that's enough. As George Burns said, "The key is sincerity -- if you can fake that, you've got it made." Most of BB was presented convincingly enough that I didn't have to work very hard to suspend disbelief. But the whole microwave-steam-poison thingy was a couple of orders of magnitude more implausible than anything else in the movie. It exceeded the rest of the film's established threshold for suspension of disbelief, and so it pulled me out of the story. And it was just plain stupid on multiple levels. On top of which, it was just one ingredient in an unnecessary, overblown, silly climactic sequence.

I’m with you on the rather clumsy action set pieces, but I never have gotten the microwave emitter criticism. It receives as much of an explanation as the memory cloth, and is about as likely, but many people get really hung up on that former without even blinking at the latter.

It isn't even remotely as likely. Memory materials are real. They exist, in nascent form. And they don't violate any laws of physics. The microwave-emitter business isn't just unlikely, it's ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE. Microwaves cannot boil water unless they're confined and amplified by an enclosed chamber. Even if they could, they'd kill humans as well. And a microwave field of that intensity would generate enormous electric potentials on metal surfaces and cause lethal electric arcs all through the city, killing people and burning out electronics. Not to mention that it would probably be impossible to generate a field of the necessary intensity without using a small nuclear bomb to power it.

The memory-fabric glider-cape is merely a slight exaggeration of something that's theoretically possible. Memory fabrics can exist, and gliding on air is a known, real phenomenon; the only flaws with what was shown are in terms of minor details of scale, function, and logistics. The microwave emitter as depicted in the film is pure magic and violates many fundamental principles of electromagnetics, thermodynamics, and sheer self-consistency. It's like the difference between, say, KITT's turbo boost in Knight Rider and a flying carpet. Turbo boost is silly; a car can't jump without a ramp. But at least a car is something that can exist in principle, and most of its functions are realistic and believable, even if aspects of them are exaggerated. It's vastly closer to reality than a flying carpet.

There are no cell phones in the building where the hostages are kept. Or if there are, the hostages should have been able to call for help! It's just an excuse for copying Daredevil's sonar vision.

Umm, weren't the hostages tied up?

And at most, that's a practical/logistical objection. It doesn't mean that the underlying concept violates any basic laws of nature.

 

[Lapis Exilis]

I think TDK is a heroic story in a similar way, except the "hero" of the piece is Gotham City. It's Gotham that goes through the process of overcoming its darker impulses and embracing a nobler path.

I don't see Gotham embracing anything except a lie. One convict acts nobly, but a bunch of "good" citizens nearly blow up another boat, and as has been argued around here, it's as likely that they do so out of cowardice (no one wants to get their hands dirty, even the loudmouth who accuses others of that very thing), as out of any sort of nobility. The story is a complete downer.

True, TDK isn't as good a Batman story, because Batman is almost secondary to it, but I think it's a more solid piece of filmmaking.

I never said TDK wasn't as a good a Batman story. I think it is an excellent Batman story, equal to BB on that score in every way.

Well, shape memory materials are actually a very real technology. What we were shown in the movie was years ahead of the state of the art, but was simply an elaboration on something that actually exists. The gliding did stretch plausibility, but the underlying concept was grounded in solid futurism.

I don't insist that a story be actually realistic, just that it feels plausible and minimizes the suspension of disbelief. If you present something implausible but offer a credible enough rationalization that the audience is willing to accept the possibility for the duration of the story, that's enough. As George Burns said, "The key is sincerity -- if you can fake that, you've got it made." Most of BB was presented convincingly enough that I didn't have to work very hard to suspend disbelief. But the whole microwave-steam-poison thingy was a couple of orders of magnitude more implausible than anything else in the movie. It exceeded the rest of the film's established threshold for suspension of disbelief, and so it pulled me out of the story. And it was just plain stupid on multiple levels. On top of which, it was just one ingredient in an unnecessary, overblown, silly climactic sequence.

How else did you expect a superhero movie to end? An overblown action sequence was inevitable, and in fact the wriiting would be designed so as to get to exactly that point. It's required. And we can argue suspension of disbelief all day and it won't matter as it is an entirely subjective thing. But I sincerely doubt anyone in the audience was all that aware of any nascent memory materials. If you want to jump from it's "solid futurism" to posit being able to imagine a memory material able to act as a hang-glider with nothing more than an electric current, then it's also solid futurism to posit focused microwaves that don't need a chamber. Both proceed from basic physical possibilities and create impossible events with them.

Meanwhile, the details of the tech are not even my point. The entire plot of BB is complete fantasy that requries huge suspension of disbelief to even begin the story. Ninjas in mountain monasteries affecting the history of civilization? A rich boy dressing up as a bat and becoming an effective vigilante? It's all way over the top as all superhero stories are. So long as the story follows its own internal rules, I just don't see why the emitter is so much more outlandish than anything else in the movie, most of which is outlandish.

I know I'm not going to convince you or anyone else who finds that hard to swallow, but I still say it's a very selective criticism.

 

[Christopher]

Well, I could argue you're being equally selective, but there's no point to that. All I know is, BB doesn't work for me because it feels inconsistent in tone, whereas TDK is more unified and satisfying. Even without the intellectual analysis of the microwave idiocy, the climax of BB just doesn't work for me as an action sequence or as a climax to the story that precedes it. Even just in terms of tone, the business with Gordon and the Batmobile and the missiles was too comical and felt tacked on by some studio dictate. And I have huge objections to Batman leaving Ra's to die, which is profoundly out of character. I've been talking mainly so far about the single aspect of the climax that I found most problematical, but there is very little about the climax that worked for me at all. I find it noisy, stupid, overcomplicated, and unsatisfying. That's my visceral reaction, and everything else is just analysis after the fact.

On this point, though:

If you want to jump from it's "solid futurism" to posit being able to imagine a memory material able to act as a hang-glider with nothing more than an electric current, then it's also solid futurism to posit focused microwaves that don't need a chamber. Both proceed from basic physical possibilities and create impossible events with them.

Even if microwaves could be somehow made capable of boiling water without a focusing chamber, then why don't they kill people? This is the problem. Fantasy is acceptable so long as it is internally consistent. There is nothing consistent about something that can boil all the water in the city and yet have absolutely no effect on the humans -- made overwhelmingly of water -- that inhabit it. It contradicts itself. And that is what is unacceptable. A self-contradictory assumption is never solid anything, never good writing.

 

[Harvey]

Even if microwaves could be somehow made capable of boiling water without a focusing chamber, then why don't they kill people? This is the problem. Fantasy is acceptable so long as it is internally consistent. There is nothing consistent about something that can boil all the water in the city and yet have absolutely no effect on the humans -- made overwhelmingly of water -- that inhabit it. It contradicts itself. And that is what is unacceptable. A self-contradictory assumption is never solid anything, never good writing.

Not that I buy it, but the explanation I've read is that the water in the pipes reacts to the microwave generator's frequency because it has Scarecrow's drug in it. Flimsy, no doubt.

 

[Lapis Exilis]

Well, I could argue you're being equally selective, but there's no point to that. All I know is, BB doesn't work for me because it feels inconsistent in tone, whereas TDK is more unified and satisfying. Even without the intellectual analysis of the microwave idiocy, the climax of BB just doesn't work for me as an action sequence or as a climax to the story that precedes it. Even just in terms of tone, the business with Gordon and the Batmobile and the missiles was too comical and felt tacked on by some studio dictate. And I have huge objections to Batman leaving Ra's to die, which is profoundly out of character. I've been talking mainly so far about the single aspect of the climax that I found most problematical, but there is very little about the climax that worked for me at all. I find it noisy, stupid, overcomplicated, and unsatisfying. That's my visceral reaction, and everything else is just analysis after the fact.

Which is a criticism I can certainly accept and even share to a certain extent except I give it a pass because I almost always find the endings of superhero stories noisy, stupid, overcomplicated and unsatisfying. It's the big problem of the genre. Don't even get me started on Iron Man which was loads of fun until the ending battle. I mean, the basic premise of supeheroes is it's cool to have people in loud costumes solve serious problems with huge bouts of fisticuffs, which is juvenile and dumb from the get go, even as I mostly find them hugely entertaining.

On this point, though:

If you want to jump from it's "solid futurism" to posit being able to imagine a memory material able to act as a hang-glider with nothing more than an electric current, then it's also solid futurism to posit focused microwaves that don't need a chamber. Both proceed from basic physical possibilities and create impossible events with them.

Even if microwaves could be somehow made capable of boiling water without a focusing chamber, then why don't they kill people? This is the problem. Fantasy is acceptable so long as it is internally consistent. There is nothing consistent about something that can boil all the water in the city and yet have absolutely no effect on the humans -- made overwhelmingly of water -- that inhabit it. It contradicts itself. And that is what is unacceptable. A self-contradictory assumption is never solid anything, never good writing.

Batman's cape is a self-contradictory assumption even without the whole improbability of the hang-gliding aspect. Why doesn't his cape ever get in his way when he fights? Bale has some hilarious comments on this regarding how things went when shooting the fight scenes in TDK...

 

[Christopher]

^^Now you're splitting hairs and being deliberately obtuse to avoid conceding anything. There's nothing self-contradictory in the gliding cape, not in the same sense I'm referring to. It's cheating to redefine words to fit your whims. So I'm walking away from this conversation because you're clearly interested only in rejecting my point of view rather than actually thinking about it fairly.

 

[MyCylon]

The best place to see what havoc a cape can cause is "The Incredibles", by the way .

 

[Lapis Exilis]

^^Now you're splitting hairs and being deliberately obtuse to avoid conceding anything. There's nothing self-contradictory in the gliding cape, not in the same sense I'm referring to. It's cheating to redefine words to fit your whims. So I'm walking away from this conversation because you're clearly interested only in rejecting my point of view rather than actually thinking about it fairly.

I am not splitting hairs, I'm being honest about the basic assumptions of the character in order to point out that there are a number of elements in the story just as impossible as the emitter.

And believe it or not but disagreeing with your opinion does not mean I'm not thinking about your points. But you go ahead and take your toys and go home. I'd rather be talking about the OP question anyway rather than discussing theoretical tech minutiae. I had no idea daring to express an opinion contrary to yours on the believabilty factor of an aspect of the movie would hijack the thread in this bizarre way.

The best place to see what havoc a cape can cause is "The Incredibles", by the way .

So true!

 

[Broccoli]

Even if microwaves could be somehow made capable of boiling water without a focusing chamber, then why don't they kill people?

Because it is made by Batman's company, and Batman doesn't kill!

When it comes to "Big Bad Evil Machine Weapons" in movies, I can typically go with it. It is more of a plausibility thing with me rather than "Can this thing really work?" Now, after the movie, I can start to think about it and probably start poking holes, but I know there is a problem if I am questioning it right away the moment they start talking about it in the movie.

 

[stj]

If using cell phones required full mobility in both arms, then the hostages being tied up would matter. Since it doesn't, leaving cell phones with unattended hostages would be asking them to winkle phones out and push buttons with their toes, or something equally desperate. The idea that no unattended hostages couldn't free themselves in the first place is a practical/logistical difficulty that makes the whole sequence just more dumb fuckery. I amused myself in the theater during yet another mediocre action sequence by imagining the Joker pushing all those people around!

On the other hand, nonexistent cell phones acting as sonar devices is a physical impossibility. I haven't seen one that stupid since BSG Cylons upload minds without a transmitter! There is also the fact that cell phones do not emit or receive ultrasonic frequencies, which is another physical impossibility. And if the audible frequencies are being use, they would be, well, audible. Still another physical impossibility is the resolution of audible sound waves being good enough to produce the real time images shown.

I have no idea why a practical/logistical impossibility is somehow less significant in the first place. For instance, the hysteria over the eavesdropping device was ludicrous because it was instantly obvious that Batman could never listen to very many people at any given time! It takes the National Security Agency with its huge personnel and their voice/key word recognition programs to pose any such threat. A key thematic issue was just stupid, for very simple practical reasons. If someone more knowledgeable in electronics could produce some other kind of impossibility, how would it make it any dumber?

 

[Trubinator]

I prefer The Dark Knight because of Ledger and the superior storyline. Batman Begins was a very good movie in its own right though. The sequel just feels more mature and philosophical.

 

[dru]

The Dark Knight is truly the most overhyped film of the 21st century. It's a giant piece of crap. Too long. Too boring. Too rehashed. Let's rob a bank. Let's crash a posh party. Let's kidnap the gf. Yawn. Ledger was not interesting as a villain or menacing. He wasn't even over-the-top. An ass in life and a hack actor in death.

 

[darkshadow0001]

I think for me I'd have to go with Batman Begins. It was introducing Batman again, and a lot of it was new. New Batmobile, new everything. The movie was different from the previous franchise, as in it had a more of a "real life" feeling then the comic-book outlook the Burton films had. I liked the kind of action Batman Begins had as well. Even though TDK was much more popular it seems, I didn't really think of it as Batman. For some reason, I didn't care for it. I'm thinking of going to see it again at my local dollar theatre and see if seeing it a second time would change my mind.

Another thing I was also disappointed with the Dark Knight was the Batmobile was still the Tumbler. I was expecting it to change like the previous films, and it didn't I thought The Tumbler was cool in Batman Begins, but it just doesn't feel like a Batmobile to me. Even though with some of the disappointments I had with TDK, I will still see Batman 3 when it comes out!

 

[MyCylon]

I prefer The Dark Knight because of Ledger and the superior storyline. Batman Begins was a very good movie in its own right though. The sequel just feels more mature and philosophical.

Interestingly, I see it the opposite way.