I love the dipshits who actually try to make distinctions between the different plops in the bowl of this series.
Here’s my distinctions:
BATMAN: Corn.
BATMAN RETURNS: Sesame Seeds.
BATMAN FOREVER: Planter’s Peanuts.
BATMAN AND ROBIN: Whiskey, onions, raisins, summer sausage.
They’re all just stinky pieces of crap. The only difference is texture.
Oh yeah, ditto this with all HIGHLANDER movies. Two birds with one stone.
Sez the guy who named himself after a bounty hunter in Star Wars.
There’s some tasty treats in there, boy.
Wow, man. I am, like, so in awe of your rebellious attitude. “They all sucked”… jeez, we haven’t seen such witty attitude since the days of the Fonz.
Was that the one with Jim Carrey in it?
Ah yes, the promise of a new franchise. The conventions of the old TV series and the positively ancient comic book aren’t going to prevent us from making a truly gothic action/horror movie with a seriously disturbed lead and a completely insane villian. Corn is a very rootsy, homey food, a food that can nonetheless be made very different and exciting. As the original Batman movie was.
This is where the series took a turn for the worse. Sesame seeds are different for the sake of being different, much like Batman Returns was violent for the sake of being violent. Splashing black blood around does not make for a scary movie, and it takes more than scenery to be gothic.
The corporation moves in, and the franchise is doomed. Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones were comic villians at best, sheer buffoons at worst, and Val Kilmer may as well have been dead. Planter’s Peanuts are overpackaged, overpriced, and not as good as less-hyped brands. Batman Forever was overpackaged, oversold, and it got lost in its own hype. When the packaging replaces the product, when looking at ads is better than getting the real thing, it’s time to pack it in and move on.
This movie is completely unsalvageable, much like the meal above. It is enough to turn a good reviewer into an anarchist: Destroy the franchise and don’t replace it! When the heroes are simply eye candy, when the villians no longer have any drawing power, any charisma, and when the packaging has completely replaced the product, the movie becomes as senseless and as disgusting as the concoction above. Nothing works together, raisins clashing with onions, wooden characterizations clashing with vapid actors, and nothing can be done to salvage anything. The glory has outrun the franchise.
How’s that for a deconstruction of a stupid flame? I’m rather proud of myself, if a little scared of what my intimate knowledge of some very bad Batman films says about my life. 
I think I agree with the OP, if he’s saying the first movie was crap. It was. It might be “dark” and “edgy” but it’s still crap.
Actually, I would disagree there. All but the first Highlander movie, I would agree, just pretty much sucked. But the first one was a very good movie. They just never should have tried to go beyond that. The story line was never, ever designed to be continued beyond that point.
-Stil
Yeah, yeah yeah. Batman and Robin did suck donkeys, but it did feature Uma in tights. That can’t be a bad thing, can it?
I don’t see how the first Batman was crap. Adam West is a wooden actor, but Cesar Romero, Eartha Kitt, and Burgess Meredith more than made up for it with their bravura turns as…
{voice offstage]
What? Tim Burton? Ohhhh.
The first Tim Burton Batman was welldone. The expressionist sets right out of Dr. Caligari; some funky tunes from Prince, and Jack Nicholson shone as The Joker, the role he was born to play.
The second was also good, with the transformation of Michelle Pfeiffer from mouse to full-on feline bitch an especially juicy ingredient. You also gotta love Christopher Walken and Danny Devito.
I didn’t care for number three as much, as much as I liked Jim Carrey as the Riddler. Tomy Lee Jones just didn’t work for me as Two-Face. He should have been more of a reflection of Batman’s dual nature, but that’s the fault of the screenplay. It also suffered from not being a Burton film. And let’s not forget the scrumptious Chris O’Donnell.
Number 4 was disappointing, especially with the limited acting skills of Alicia Silverstone. Uma was sensational, but Arnold was a terrible Mr. Freeze.
And there’s the biggest problem. I’ve praised the villains, but not the actors who played Batman. It’s not that they are bad actors, not even Val Kilmer–another guy I’d like to bend over a table. None of the movies have really been able to give Batman the haunted, divided character he had in Frank Miller’s graphic novel.
Gobear, Would you agree that “Mask of the Phantasm” was the best of the Batman movies then?
See, for me, this would read as “Movie sets that look exactly like movie sets, never once fooling the viewer into thinking he’s looking at an actual city that existed before the cameras started rolling; annoying tunes from Prince; and Jack Nicholson as his usual, asshole self which resembles The Joker not at all.”
TwistofFate, absolutely. It’s an extraordinary movie which I thought really captured the torment in Batman’s soul much better than any of the live-action films, especially with the long-lost love subplot.
Memo to self: check DVD rack at Best Buy.
Legomancer, we have different opinions and that’s OK. One man’s treasure is another man’s trash and all that. My only quibble is that the critique of the sets is off-base. There is no reason for the sets to resemble the real world because the movie isn’t set in the real world and Gotham City isn’t New York City under a different name. The sets made the city almost a character itself, and the exxaggerated dimentsions of the buildings served to heighten the mood of darkness and despair. You might as well criticize The Nightmare Before Christmas for not resembling the real world.
TwistofFate, absolutely. It’s an extraordinary movie which I thought really captured the torment in Batman’s soul much better than any of the live-action films, especially with the long-lost love subplot.
Memo to self: check DVD rack at Best Buy.
Legomancer, we have different opinions and that’s OK. One man’s treasure is another man’s trash and all that. My only quibble is that the critique of the sets is off-base. There is no reason for the sets to resemble the real world because the movie isn’t set in the real world and Gotham City isn’t New York City under a different name. The sets made the city almost a character itself, and the exaggerated dimensions of the buildings served to heighten the mood of darkness and despair. You might as well criticize The Nightmare Before Christmas for not resembling the real world.
Well, we can’t all be as insightful as your prententious, alienated youth poetry.
Tell me, have you ever kissed a girl?
<thumbs up> AYYYYYYYYYYYY!
Yes, because only someone who has enjoyed the embrace of a Woman can truly appreciate how bad the Batman franchise is.
Which explains why gobear likes it so much.
And he ignores all the responses to the subject he himself brought up to make personal attacks on SPOOFE, not remotely related to the OP.
Thanks, Bossk. I now know where on my list of priorities your posts belong - right below doing a search for old JDT threads. :rolleyes:
“If you are a narcoleptic, alcoholic, 7-year-old, then I can heartily recommend the Batman series entire!”
–Mike Nelson’s Movie Megacheese
This is someone’s sig too but I forget who.
Ooo, a fat, sarcastic Monty Python fan. You must be a devil with the ladies.
Ooh, you’re going to be a fun little toy on these message boards, ain’tcha?