It's better than rejecting anything wondrous in favor of selling out and going 100% "grounded".
Audiences who were ashamed of comics, maybe.
The Dark Knight - Ten Years On
- Thread starter dahj
- Start date
It's better than rejecting anything wondrous in favor of selling out and going 100% "grounded".
Audiences who were ashamed of comics, maybe.
I think I've seen this exact same sentence from you about a thousand times...
You ask someone what 2+2 is, you're gonna keep getting 4.
We assume you are a person, not the personification of math.
Well, along with the whole "grounded" sell-out approach the Dark Knight movies didn't bother exploring real internal conflicts because Nolan only really cared about the villains. Batman should've been outright enemies with Gordon for a long time and clash with Alfred and Lucius Fox a LOT more.
And instead of going after only mobsters, he should've been doing stuff like trying to take down the Commissioner and the Mayor (both corrupt and involved in crime).
And instead of going after only mobsters, he should've been doing stuff like trying to take down the Commissioner and the Mayor (both corrupt and involved in crime).
But that would have been super grounded, I thought your whole thing is that "grounded is bad"?
I'm a huge Batman fan but I hated The Dark Knight and its sequel (Begins was okay). I agree with the poster who said it tried to be profound but failed. I can barely consider TDK and TDKR as comic book movies. They're more like boring action crime movies that think they're smarter than they really are. Not a comic book universe I want to immerse myself in.
Everyone knows Batman : The Animated Series is where it's at when it comes to Batman
Even its movies Mask Of The Phantasm and Return Of the Joker blow TDK universe out of the water
Everyone knows Batman : The Animated Series is where it's at when it comes to Batman
Even its movies Mask Of The Phantasm and Return Of the Joker blow TDK universe out of the water
Although I consider Batman Begins to be garbage and TDKR about the same, I think The Dark Knight really is as good as its wildly acclaimed reputation. That said, in historical film/media landscape terms, it's not the most important comic book movie to come out that year; Iron Man is. Nor do I think enough time has passed for it to be due for a cultural or critical re-appraisal... unlike the movie that turns 20 years old today!
Yep, today's the 20th anniversary of one of the greatest adventure/Californian history/pulp hero films of all time, 1998's The Mask of Zorro! Everyone is invited to come over to my house tonight for an HD projected screening of the film, Mexican food and drink, and dancing - if I had a house to do all that in, that is. I can't even watch my blu or HD copy of the movie tonight, as I have other plans (*sigh*). Well, maybe in 2023, for the 25th Anniversary... which'll be a Monday, damnit. Oh, well, I'll still totally throw a Zorro party in my house-to-be that weekend. Five years to get one! Here's to specific, achievable Life Goals.
But, seriously, this film is an absolute classic, and it pains me that it's not getting tributes across the geekosphere, an Honest Trailer (not even an Oliver Harper retrospective!), and big-screen screenings this week. Zorro originated in a pulp prose story, not the comics page (though he first appeared onscreen less than a year later), but I still think The Mask of Zorro deserves to be mentioned in the canon of the greatest superhero/pulp hero adventure films, right up there with The Dark Knight, Iron Man, X2/First Class/DoFP, and indeed the MCU as a whole.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I gotta go carve some Zs on the walls of certain banks, DC federal buildings, and for-profit prisons. Where are you, Zorro?! We need Good Hombres like you more than ever...
Yep, today's the 20th anniversary of one of the greatest adventure/Californian history/pulp hero films of all time, 1998's The Mask of Zorro! Everyone is invited to come over to my house tonight for an HD projected screening of the film, Mexican food and drink, and dancing - if I had a house to do all that in, that is. I can't even watch my blu or HD copy of the movie tonight, as I have other plans (*sigh*). Well, maybe in 2023, for the 25th Anniversary... which'll be a Monday, damnit. Oh, well, I'll still totally throw a Zorro party in my house-to-be that weekend. Five years to get one! Here's to specific, achievable Life Goals.
But, seriously, this film is an absolute classic, and it pains me that it's not getting tributes across the geekosphere, an Honest Trailer (not even an Oliver Harper retrospective!), and big-screen screenings this week. Zorro originated in a pulp prose story, not the comics page (though he first appeared onscreen less than a year later), but I still think The Mask of Zorro deserves to be mentioned in the canon of the greatest superhero/pulp hero adventure films, right up there with The Dark Knight, Iron Man, X2/First Class/DoFP, and indeed the MCU as a whole.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I gotta go carve some Zs on the walls of certain banks, DC federal buildings, and for-profit prisons. Where are you, Zorro?! We need Good Hombres like you more than ever...
But that would have been super grounded, I thought your whole thing is that "grounded is bad"?
At least it would've made for a better movie, in that instead of being about the villains and Batman merely reacting to them here he'd be the proactive one and most of the conflict would be internal stuff between him and Gordon and him and Alfred.
Although I consider Batman Begins to be garbage and TDKR about the same, I think The Dark Knight really is as good as its wildly acclaimed reputation. That said, in historical film/media landscape terms, it's not the most important comic book movie to come out that year; Iron Man is. Nor do I think enough time has passed for it to be due for a cultural or critical re-appraisal... unlike the movie that turns 20 years old today!
Yep, today's the 20th anniversary of one of the greatest adventure/Californian history/pulp hero films of all time, 1998's The Mask of Zorro! Everyone is invited to come over to my house tonight for an HD projected screening of the film, Mexican food and drink, and dancing - if I had a house to do all that in, that is. I can't even watch my blu or HD copy of the movie tonight, as I have other plans (*sigh*). Well, maybe in 2023, for the 25th Anniversary... which'll be a Monday, damnit. Oh, well, I'll still totally throw a Zorro party in my house-to-be that weekend. Five years to get one! Here's to specific, achievable Life Goals.
But, seriously, this film is an absolute classic, and it pains me that it's not getting tributes across the geekosphere, an Honest Trailer (not even an Oliver Harper retrospective!), and big-screen screenings this week. Zorro originated in a pulp prose story, not the comics page (though he first appeared onscreen less than a year later), but I still think The Mask of Zorro deserves to be mentioned in the canon of the greatest superhero/pulp hero adventure films, right up there with The Dark Knight, Iron Man, X2/First Class/DoFP, and indeed the MCU as a whole.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I gotta go carve some Zs on the walls of certain banks, DC federal buildings, and for-profit prisons. Where are you, Zorro?! We need Good Hombres like you more than ever...
Mask of Zorro was retroactively completely ruined by the absolutely awful Legend of Zorro.
How so? It is still a good movie all in its own right.
I think Tim Burton was the one who only really cared about the villains. Michael Keaton could have taken the role fully down a Christian Bale path that it hinted at if he actually were given the sort of screen-time Nolan later invested in him.
Nolan treated the Batman universe like The Godfather or The Sopranos. Every scene was intended to be a set-piece of dramatic conflict, like the big schism between Bruce and Alfred.
Nolan's films are really drama first, superhero second.
You always get the sense that Nolan is trying desperately to make the characters feel like they could be real people rather than larger than life. It's depressing at times, but not as hopeless as Zack Snyder's nihilism.
Nolan is very fixated on obsessive characters. Bruce Wayne obsesses on being Batman just as Bale's character obsesses on besting his rival in The Prestige, etc... That's his way of trying to draw the audience in. Give the protagonist a goal and make them apply a laser-like focus on it and then watch the rest of their life crumble around them as a consequence of that tunnel-vision. They say write what you know and that seems to be a good analogy for the plight of the struggling artist.
It's not the only possible interpretation of Batman, but it's a pretty good one.
That would be an absurd statement even if Legend in any way retconned Mask, as Spider-Man 3 did 1 to some degree - but it didn't, at all.
(Also, I think Legend gets something a bad rap. It's a PG movie that I think ~6-year-olds might well enjoy. Trouble is, when Mask is PG-13 and much more adult/less slapstick, it's weird and discomfiting to see a sequel pitched to a significantly younger audience. If anything, we expect the intended audience to be older, not younger. Besides, Legend has one stone-cold classic moment, when Alejandro cuts a Z in the villain's shirt and growls: "So The Devil will know who sent you." Dammnnnn!
)
Except no one ever asks you what 2+2 equals. They're always sitting around having casual discussions about long division and you just show up and start shouting '2+2=4!!!!!'
Seriously, I love the MCU more than any other comic book movies and I don't even entirely disagree with all your arguments, but your 'grounded/ashamed of comics' obsession is as ridiculous as it is tiresome. Not all movies have to be the same and your personal preferences don't define good filmmaking.
Like they did with Robocop 3
And of course, the most grounded aspect of the whole thing was the thousands of years old Ninja cult that went around clandestinely toppling entire civilizations throughout history.
Kor