TV/Movies Megathread

[Neil]

Bane should be more interesting than the Penguin--shouldn't he?

Should he?  They're both pretty generic.  At least the Penguin has a history of capers and some time in the grey area.  Bane was just a smart guy that they gave some steroids who had a plan for breaking the Batman.  Then he was defeated and became a second-rater.  And then, when it looked like he might actually become something more in the Secret Six book, DC decided to torpedo their entire comics line.

[Kleves]

Now we are two, time to build a bandwagon.

Ide and Viking: united against good taste.

[FunkMonk]

Now we are two, time to build a bandwagon.

Ide and Viking: united against good taste.

The dynamic duo of bad taste.

[Ideologue]

Anyway, is Batman Returns the best Batman movie?  These days you can't talk about the Burton films in a vacuum, so I won't try.  What struck me upon seeing this buried classic for the first time in over a decade is that the Dark Knight Rises, with tweaks, is about 70% badly cloned from Batman Returns, and at one and a half times as long and ten times as pretentious, fails to be half as entertaining.  Seriously: 1)guy with an army that lives in the sewers (Penguin here, Bane there); 2)a completely bogus bid for respectability (dark horse mayoral candidate here, revolutionary Fauxccupy hero there); 3)Catwoman played as broadly as humanly possible as a feminist subversive (Pfeiffer here, Hathaway there); 4)lawful evil force what tries to co-opt chaotic evil force and predictably fails (Shreck and Penguin here, Daggett and Bane there); 5)a public set against Batman, until it's not (Batman framed by the Penguin here, a holdover from the dumb ending of Dark Knight there; and 6)all story movement lubricated by copious amounts of total bullshit (too numerous to specify in each).

I guess the difference is, as bugnuts crazy as it is, Batman Returns manages to still retain believable character motivations and chains of causation that hold up to at least a little scrutiny.  I wish Tim Burton had gotten to make three Batman movies (producing Forever notwithstanding, nor Forever being reasonably good without his direction).  See, Burton's weren't plagued by whatever issue Nolan had with providing a third act that wasn't crap.  Nor do they harbor such a haughty self-importance (not just code for being overly long, although clearly Nolan believed he was giving us our generation's Das Boot and Lawrence of Arabia).  They're also arguably better shot, and feature a non-crybaby Batman.  And most damningly, the Nolanbat films always start out with more potential, and better foundations, but by the end he's done far less in more time than Burton did with less, and perhaps less interesting, material.

Bane should be more interesting than the Penguin--shouldn't he?  But you watch the movies that you have, not the ones you wish they'd made.  A

Dude, you're supposed to eat that big bowl of cheese, not freebase it.

The problem with Nolanbat is that it's just as cheesy, but it expects you to take it seriously.  Microwave train?  Fear gas?  Wiring every corner of a working hospital with bombs in the span of a day, no more?  A guy getting half his face turned into the Cryptkeeper's, in lieu of a believable slide into madness?  Bridges that had to have been built fifty years ago laced with concrete full of explosive by men tapped to do so six months previously?  A fusion reactor turned into a thermonuclear device?  These are all tremendously retarded things, presented as SOCIALLY AND POLITICALLY IMPORTANT and made all the more preposterous by doing so.  Even then I'd be able to forgive it if it had something to really say, which it doesn't.  IMPORTANCE is nothing more than an aesthetic choice in the Nolanbat movies--an empty one.

This fundamental hollowness been pervasive in all of them and a tremendous problem in all of them except, maybe, Dark Knight--and there only because of the Joker, the world's greatest character for the world's laziest writers, an entertaining as all hell* raving lunatic who is yet and unaccountably able to organize men and materiel in a war against society.

*Well, at least if you see the Joker once every decade and a half.  As a comic reader, one will see him far more often, and--believe me--the appeal wanes.

Now we are two, time to build a bandwagon.

I gotta cop that I'm still on the general Nolan bandwagon though.  I've heard that he's doing a Howard Hughes biopic, focusing on the last days--the crazy days.

Please cast DiCaprio please cast DiCaprio please cast DiCaprio

[katmai]

Now we are two, time to build a bandwagon.

Ide and Viking: united against good taste.

The dynamic duo of bad taste.

No shit. I've come to ignore Ide's reviews as they are clearly so, so, so wrong.

[Ideologue]

Bane should be more interesting than the Penguin--shouldn't he?

Should he?  They're both pretty generic.  At least the Penguin has a history of capers and some time in the grey area.  Bane was just a smart guy that they gave some steroids who had a plan for breaking the Batman.  Then he was defeated and became a second-rater.  And then, when it looked like he might actually become something more in the Secret Six book, DC decided to torpedo their entire comics line.

It's true that Bane has less of a useful lifespan than the Penguin.  His reason for existence is, basically, one story, or two depending upon your count: the breaking of the Bat and Batman's subsequent return (Azrael totally should've been in DKR), with greatly diminished returns afterward unless you take him in a new direction, as Gail Simone did.
But this isn't a problem a film franchise needs to face, at least in the short run.

I would say he is more interesting than the Penguin, the comic version of which I always found dull.  The Batman Returns iteration is pretty great, but hamstrung ultimately by the nature of the character--he's never going to be a real physical threat to Batman, and isn't likely to be smarter.  Contrariwise, it's a coin flip as to who would win any given fight between Bane or Batman and Bane is also about as smart.  I'd also argue Bane was one of the least generic Batman villains for the simple reason than Bane was one of the comparatively few lucid ones.  I mean, it's him and, what, Ra's?  Deadshot, if he counts?

And also there are few luchador-themed supervillains.

[Sheilbh]

I also relish Ide's reviews.

Just watched The Devil's Backbone.  Don't know if it or Pan's Labyrinth is my favourite Del Toro.  Great, great film though.

[Ideologue]

Now we are two, time to build a bandwagon.

Ide and Viking: united against good taste.

The dynamic duo of bad taste.

No shit. I've come to ignore Ide's reviews as they are clearly so, so, so wrong.

OK, go watch Battle Royale II.  Since I'm wrong about everything, that must be the best movie ever made.

Anyway, has anyone seen Cloud Atlas yet?  Meant to catch a matinee this afternoon, but I reckoned I'd wait and see if my GF wanted to see it Wednesday or Friday.  It's got a future scene where they speak a radically evolved version of English!  I mean, opinions may differ, but that sold at least one ticket for me.

[Ideologue]

I also relish Ide's reviews.

Does "relish" mean "hate" or is the "also" a typo?

Edit: is Devil's Backbone the one with a kid with a sack on his head?

[katmai]

I also relish Ide's reviews.

Just watched The Devil's Backbone.  Don't know if it or Pan's Labyrinth is my favourite Del Toro.  Great, great film though.

They are well written, it is just his horrible conclusions that are wretched.

[Ideologue]

Now we are two, time to build a bandwagon.

Ide and Viking: united against good taste.

The dynamic duo of bad taste.

Oh, and mark my words, dudes, in ten, maybe twenty years, the Nolanbat films will have been reevaluated and be considered vaguely embarrassing overstatements of the late 00's zeitgeist, akin to Top Gun except not as fun to watch.

[katmai]

The all Reeses diet has destroyed your brain.

[Neil]

It's true that Bane has less of a useful lifespan than the Penguin.  His reason for existence is, basically, one story, or two depending upon your count: the breaking of the Bat and Batman's subsequent return (Azrael totally should've been in DKR), with greatly diminished returns afterward unless you take him in a new direction, as Gail Simone did.
But this isn't a problem a film franchise needs to face, at least in the short run.

I would say he is more interesting than the Penguin, the comic version of which I always found dull.  The Batman Returns iteration is pretty great, but hamstrung ultimately by the nature of the character--he's never going to be a real physical threat to Batman, and isn't likely to be smarter.  Contrariwise, it's a coin flip as to who would win any given fight between Bane or Batman and Bane is also about as smart.  I'd also argue Bane was one of the least generic Batman villains for the simple reason than Bane was one of the comparatively few lucid ones.  I mean, it's him and, what, Ra's?  Deadshot, if he counts?

And also there are few luchador-themed supervillains.

I tend to count Knightfall and Bruce's return as one long story, so Bane was only there for the one story.

To be fair, it is rare that a villain was a real physical threat to Batman in and of themselves.  In the first three Batman movies there isn't a single villain who can really match up with him.  Nolan had both Ras and Bane.  The thing is that the comic book guys tend not to be supervillains, but rather gangsters.  As such, they don't really match up well with a guy who could hand Superman his own ass.

If you stretch Batman's villain pool a little deeper, you could throw in Deathstroke as a lucid villain, and Darkseid is most certainly lucid.

[Neil]

Oh, and mark my words, dudes, in ten, maybe twenty years, the Nolanbat films will have been reevaluated and be considered vaguely embarrassing overstatements of the late 00's zeitgeist, akin to Top Gun except not as fun to watch.

You know, Ide might have a point here, even if he's overstating it.  These movies do have a certain feel to them, a certain flavour of drama.  Who's to say that it might not fall out of favour in time.  Especially since in 20 years they'll probably have rebooted Batman at least twice.

[Darth Wagtaros]

Batman messed up Darkseid years ago.  Didn't defeat him but gave him a working over and impressed Darkseid enough to give him a quick death.