As I think the article points out, many of the "suits" misread what made TDK a good movie. The folks at WB/DC apparently thought it was the movie's tone. They then presented a string of movies that imitated TDK's tone without TDK's acting, directing, and script. This has all but ruined the Superman franchise. Wonder Woman, is of course, the obvious exception.
Grimdark is perfect for Batman but absolutely the wrong choice for Superman, which was the big problem with
Man of Steel and the Superman portions of
Batman v. Superman.
Although DC has also done a handful of Marvel-inspired movies.
Green Lantern feels like it's trying to be
Iron Man. Wonder Woman borrows the ancient mythology & fish-out-of-water aspects of
Thor and combines them with the World War setting, evil German scientist bad guy, & ethnically diverse commando squad of
Captain America: The First Avenger. Suicide Squad went through some last minute re-edits to give it more of a
Guardians of the Galaxy vibe.
Justice League went the extra mile of getting the actual director of
The Avengers to reshoot much of the movie.
That and most of the philosophies presented in the film as absolutes (Die a hero or inevitably become a villain) are outright garbage.
Only a Sith deals in absolutes!
However, I think in terms of impact, Burton-Bats would be number one. I'd argue that the pop-culture ubiquity and proliferation of superheroes/comics really started with 89, as you can trace the lineage through TAS and DCTAS, to the X-men cartoon and X-Men video games, through the X-Men and Spidey films.
Agreed. Granted, we wouldn't have
Batman (1989) without
Superman (1978) but
Batman was really the first watershed moment to the superhero movie genre, which got subsequent boosts from
Spider-Man &
The Avengers.
2008 is kind of an odd year.
The Dark Knight was the bigger movie of the moment and had a huge pop culture footprint at the time. Even now, I still see spoof videos online. But
Iron Man launched the eventual juggernaut that is the MCU
AND managed to turn Robert Downey Jr. from Hollywood pariah to the most highly paid actor in history. As an actual movie,
Iron Man is a bit more meh. But it set the tone for an entire universe of films which has already reached 20 movies and counting!
Superman had done this to a point, but it, so to speak, was either unable to or chose not to extend its serious tone throughout the entire film, especially when it came to its treatment of Luthor, Otis, and Eve.
There was also Christopher Reeve's overly goofy portrayal of Clark Kent.
That also didn't sit well with me and felt half-assed. They easily could have covered up the few murders Dent committed, it's not like there were witnesses saying Harvey killed anyone.
Of course, I also felt Dent being some "White Knight" was also unearned. He was more a figurehead while Gordon and Batman did the real work.
I found the over philosophy surrounding Harvey Dent to be suspect. So.... the voters of Gotham are willing to support laws that throw violent mobsters in jail and deny them appeals but ONLY because they believe that D.A. Dent has an unsullied, unassailable reputation? If not, they would continue to let their city be run by the mob? Right........
Or, to quote the Rifftrax: "Oh, come on. Most people don't know what the D.A. does or what 'D.A.' even stands for."
The critique on Populism is nigh-nothing, the whole thing about Dent's crimes being exposed was nonsensical because at no point does anyone stop to think "Wait, what if Bane is lying to us?"
God, I love this scene! It so perfectly encapsulates everything that's batshit retarded about the philosophy of the Nolan movies.
No, they just had no real competition at the time. Put the Nolan movies out against a full force MCU and they wouldn't do as well.
I think there's something to that. The competition certainly felt a lot thinner back in 2008. The MCU was just barely getting started.
Spider-Man &
X-Men both suffered from crappy 3rd movies.
Superman Returns was a non-starter. And most others around that time were just ranging from "meh" to "blegh!" (
Catwoman, Daredevil, Elektra, Fantastic Four, Ghost Rider, Hulk). (Personally, I love
Daredevil but I acknowledge that that's a minority opinion.)
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.
Tim Burton once said that
Batman (1989) is structured the way it is because Batman is an introvert while the Joker is an extrovert. I think that makes sense.
Meanwhile,
Batman Returns is more of a gothic fairy tale/revenge story about Catwoman trying to kill Max Schreck. Batman is just her love interest. Now, whether you like that or not depends mostly on your taste for gothic Burton stuff. Personally, I think it's the best comic book movie ever! (Or maybe 2nd behind
V for Vendetta.)
Still, I would agree that the Burton/Schumacher
Batman movies tended to put a lot more emphasis onto the villains than on Batman himself. Then Nolan came on the scene with
Batman Begins, a movie that's nearly all about Batman and explaining who he is and why he does what he does. It was quite refreshing. Unfortunately, it seemed like Nolan lost interest in the character after that.
The Dark Knight is trying to be a gritty crime drama about Jim Gordon & Harvey Dent trying to take out the Joker with Batman mostly just showing up for the perfunctory action scenes. Then
The Dark Knight Rises is more about Gotham City as a whole, with most of the focus on Commissioner Gordon & John Blake.
I would also argue that Nolan's portrayal of Gotham City got sloppier as the movies went on. The Gotham City of
Batman Begins felt very unique and not quite like any other actual city on Earth. In
The Dark Knight, it was basically just Chicago with a few bits of New York geography thrown in.
The Dark Knight Rises was a hodgepodge of Chicago, New York, Pittsburgh, and even L.A.! (I don't know about anyone else, but seeing Library Tower in the background in some scenes really took me out of the movie.)
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.
Yeah. WTF was up with that? So much of the appeal of
The Mask of Zorro was the sexual frisson between Antonio Banderas & Catherine Zeta-Jones and that was completely missing from the sequel!
