Reasons why the newest Batman movie sucks (many Spoilers)

The BBQ Pit
21

Hush! Don’t you know it’s the greatest movie evah!

FWIW, I thought Kung Fu Panda was a better action movie than The Dark Knight. It was better written, better acted, and had cooler fight scenes THAT ACTUALLY MADE SENSE! The characters were deeper and ACTUALLY CHANGED over the course of the story! And when the big bad guy was defeated at the end you felt the sense of joy and triumph that a good summer blockbuster is supposed to deliver. Not all bummed out and brutalized because everything is meaningless and stupid.

Meh. And when did Batman get all whiny and emo? “Boo hoo, I’m turning into the thing I hate, poor me.” If he’d manned up and run over the Joker with his Bat-cycle when he had the chance … now that would have been a Dark Knight I could get behind! I wanted to see him get all Joe Don Baker on clown boy’s ass. Give us some real vigilante justice … not all this lukewarm posturing.

22

Yeh. I was hoping he would slide sideways and extend his boot for the grandest, 120mph dropkick in the history of awesome.

23

If you want to see a super-hero act like that, go rent Punisher. Batman doesn’t kill people. He doesn’t even wreck them if he can avoid it.
He was whinier than he should have been.

24

Uh, well, no, it didn’t, it looked like…Batman standing on a pile of rubble. If that was 9/11 imagery, then so’s this.

And once again: what’s a “post-9-11 theme”? “The world is not a terribly safe place”? “Some people are monumental assholes”? “Sometimes bad things happen”? Those aren’t exactly new ideas.

25

I remembered one other big reason this movie has me seeing it in a lesser light every time I attempt to reflect on it. My expectations were considerable but not unrealistic, and I wasn’t exactly expecting “the greatest movie ever” like the fan and media-based hype circus would lead you to believe. Here’s the realization which occurred to me … all of the major scenes and action sequences were shown in trailers. I never had the movie spoiled for me and all the dialog and plot points were unknown to me going in, so it’s not like I went in knowing what would happen. They blew their load on the trailers and exclusive clips. I had already seen all the juicy bits … the Tumbler chase, the semi truck rollover, all the best lines from Joker and Alfred, the tossing of Rachel off the side of a building, etc. etc.

The only thing they managed to keep secret was the left side of Harvey Dent’s face. There was really nothing to put me on the edge of my seat because I’d already seen the vast majority of it through any number of promotional outlets. They didn’t really have an exciting sequence that wasn’t already shown in the trailers. Does the hype and oversaturation of footage result in a bad movie? Maybe not … but it left very few surprises.

26

Hm. There’s a couple of complaints I want to take issue with. I don’t mean to say that people are wrong for complaining about them, but I think I might be able to provide a defense for some.

For one, yeah, the shakey cam is overdone in the fight scenes. The quick cuts, I think, are intentional. Nolan made the conscious decision to frame fights like Batman’s fighting style - quick motions that confuse and dizzy an opponent. Batman’s whole modus operandi relies on getting a certain reaction from the bad guys. In his first fist fight with the Joker, following the speech Alfred gave about not understanding a madman, the cuts and confusion came on both ends. In the second, Batman stayed calm and collected and fought Joker using a different technology instead of trying to control his reactions.

Regarding Batman being “whiny and emo”…meh? Batman’s always been whiny and emo. His parents were murdered in front of him and the entire first movie was about how he buried that for years. More to the point, he worries constantly about whether his parents would approve of what he does. Everyone in the world who knew his secret but Alfred gave up on him, of course he’s not going to act like everything’s roses and sunshine.

I’d also like to point out that the movies have decidedly different focuses. The first movie was about Bruce Wayne and Batman - while it’s hard to fathom why a second Batman movie wouldn’t be about the same thing, I think they’re fairly different beasts and I appreciate both. Dark Knight is more of an objective look at Gotham and how it relates to its heroes, its villains, and its leaders. Batman tried to be all three, to the extent that fear was a major part of his job. In Dark Knight, they were separated in to three distinct characters. It would be very hard to tell the story without them. Joker’s analogy about how he’s just a dog chasing a car is apt - he has no idea why he wants to prove that Gotham is beyond redemption, he just does. Contrast that with Ras in Begins, who provided reasoned arguments for the city’s destruction based on the same logic, and you get what Nolan was going for. Batman beat Ras the standard super hero way; he beat him up, fled the scene, and happily ever after. He lost to the Joker, because in the end Joker proved his point with Dent, even if he didn’t succeed in his plan. Joker, like the dog chasing the car, never did catch it, but he showed he could chase after it if he wanted.

As for why they didn’t just blame the Joker’s men, it’s not like Joker was dead. He could have just said something, since he knew who was behind it all along. The city turning on Batman was a satisfactory result for him, though, so he had no need to tell the world about Harvey Dent. He wanted to corrupt the city, not just depress them so they move on.

27

For me Batman is all about “na na na na na na, na na na na na na BATMAN!”. Adam West is Batman. Batman is about BIFF, POW, BAM etc.

This new movie is just like making Santa Scary :slight_smile: Yeah I know the rest of you love DARK batman, I just like Batman as a cartoon come to life. I havn’t seen scary Batman nor will I. I like my Batman camp and in tights!

28

Preferably, Robin’s!

29

OK, first of all, I thought Heath Ledger was absolutely amazing and he will go down in history as one of the great movie villains of all time with this performance. He was definitely the best part of the movie.

My complaints:

  1. The storyline with the Hong Kong guy really seemed like a side track and it should have been completely eliminated from the film.

  2. The super-X-TREME-blue-lazer-vision thing during the battle in the abandoned building with the Joker’s men was really, really stupid. One cut would have been enough to get the point across, but instead every five seconds it was - cut to the blue lazer-vision - cut to the blue lazer-vision - cut to the blue lazer-vision. Ugh! Stupid SFX gimmicks make me want to yak.

  3. It was too long, and I had to piss. I don’t mind a long movie, but they should have an intermission so people can piss and not miss crucial scenes in the movie whenever there’s a movie that’s as long as this one.

30

I just went to the men’s room whenever I felt like it (twice, lotsa coffee!) took my time too, and you know what? I bet I didn’t miss a damn thing.

31

I do agree that it was a little long and that Dent’s arc could have been truncated a little. The movie has some minor flaws, but it doesn’t suck, and it’s worth seeing for Ledger if nothing else.

32

I guess I will remain the only one that does not get Ledger. I saw nothing in his performance that was any better than Jack’s and nothing compared to either Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber in Die Hard or Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs.

33

This is the time-weary apologist’s rationale for covering up simple directorial inability to stage and edit a decent fight scene. It is the dance-movie equivalent of tight-focusing on smiling faces and swirling costumes when the dancing and choreography is second-rate.

34

If you ever watch it again, don’t watch his peformance for the superficial theatricality, but for the layer underneath that. He’s playing a character for whom “the Joker” is a conscious costume. There’s another, more subtle identity underneath the persona he puts on for others. He’s not playing the joker, he’s playing a character, playing the Joker. It gives the character a fascinating sense of depth and realism. I haven’t seen an actor take that angle on a comic book villain before – where the actor gives a sense that the public persona is an intentional performance, and not the entirety of the character. Heath really put some mystique on the character. There’s someone else under there that he isn’t showing to anyone. It’s very subtle, though, implied in split second facial expressions, subtles changes in tone of voice, etc. Like the way he says “No I’m not,” when a character calls him insane. I think there’s also a difference in tone between the conflicting stories he tells about his scars. His first telling hints at having some real anger and hurt behind it. The second telling sounds more like casual bullshitting.

In a way, I think Ledger was trying to imply that Joker had a sort of secret identity just like Batman did. That they were both wearing masks. Both performing. Batman even puts on a fake voice.

If you see it again, imagine that the Joker is someone who goes home and takes the makeup off and becomes somebody else, and I think you might be surprised about how well that interpretation fits Ledger’s performance.

35

I’m not really happy with the notion that the Joker is crazy because he was abused as a child or whatever. Because that’s cliched. I much prefer the idea that he’s a sadistic lunatic just because he is.

36

Well he kept changing his story during the movie it seemed like, so we don’t know if he was an abused child. It seems likely everything he said about his background was a lie. I actually liked that part of the movie.

DtC, I am going to have to try to remember your post when I see it again on cable or DVD. I will look for what you said.

37

But the Joker never says that’s why he’s a psychopath. My impression was that even if his first story was true, it wasn’t the whole story.

38

To add on to what I was saying about the Joker being a sort of costume for the caracter, I think it could even be argued that whatever mysterious person exists underneath that facade is, in his own way, doing exactly what Bruce wayne is doing. Wayne says that he wants Batman to be a “symbol.” I think that’s what the Joker is intended to be too – a deliberate attempt to create a symbol of chaos and terror. The character knows that a psycho clown scares the shit out of people more than just a garden variety psychopath.

39

Uhm, okay.

Both he and Batman tend to attract imitators and followers for different - and sometimes the same - reasons. Joker uses his followers to further his end goals, Batman wants nothing to do with them. It’s when Joker relies on them that he makes headway, but when Batman begins relying on someone else (Dent, in this case), it’s the beginning of his downfall.

40

I don’t think you should take the Joker at face value; he is playing with a full deck.