Re: The Dark Knight

iJim wrote:

The cell phone gut bomb, for example. He had to know 1), a cop was going to be in the room with him, 2) over power him and take him hostage, 3) hope the gut bomb guy would be in the same cell he was taken to, 4) that he wouldn't be taken to a hospital sooner, 5), that he would be close enough to NOT get blown up when he triggered the bomb, but that everyone else would be knocked out, 6), that he'd even get the phone in the first place.

You're missing the part where the Joker has his (and the mobs) goons seeded throughout the entire police force. I think they could have managed to swing a couple things to get the plan to line up (See previous post about plans)

Last edited by BigDamnArtist (2012-02-25 22:41:33)

ZangrethorDigital.ca

Re: The Dark Knight

Posted this in another thread so figured might just copy and paste it here on my thoughts:


Doctor Submarine wrote:
Mushroomer wrote:

Additionally, you guys should do Begins around the time Rises hits in July. #obvioussuggestion #hashtagsoutsidetwitter

Huh. That got me thinking. I don't remember when, but Trey once made the comment that Batman has no arc in The Dark Knight. "In Batman Begins he becomes Batman. But in Dark Knight he's just Batman. He's Batman at the beginning and Batman at the end." That's reflected in the titles. Dark Knight is the only title of the trilogy without a verb, and the only one (so far, at least) where Batman doesn't change as a person. Maybe Batman will develop as a character in Rises.

Well, true though at the very end when taking responsibility for the killings committed by Harvey, he did change. As was said by Ras in Begins, "If you make yourself more than just a man, if you devote yourself to an ideal, you become something else entirely." And there was a line in TDK to that effect that Batman had to be somebody who could take the heat for the better good of the city.

It is true the character stays the same but his challenge was to resist the change (i.e. succumbing to The Joker and breaking his one rule).

About Rises:

  Show
From what I read about the plot in Rises, this will come back to haunt him... It should be interesting as it apparently takes place 8 years after the events in TDK which will, if my math is correct, make Bruce around 40 given at the end of Begins he was 30, events in TDK I believe took place 2 years after Begins so adding another 8 will give Batman 10 years on the job.

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Re: The Dark Knight

Here's the thing with the Dark Knight. I really like the movie, but I think that quite honestly, if you cut the last 40 minutes out, and ended it with batman standing over the destroyed ruins with Rachel dead, it would be an absolute, bonafide great movie. It would take extreme balls to do this, and I understand why they didn't go that way, but I think you have a perfect 2 hour batman/joker film in there, and then instead of a perfect ending, we suddenly restart and its like a two-face short-film attached to the end.

I don't buy Harvey-Dent's transition, they do as much as possible to set it up throughout the movie, but there simply isn't enough time because they're trying to do too much, and as a result I don't really buy the turning point hospital scene.

I also really, really don't buy the Ferry sequence. The first half of the movie works so hard at being grounded and realistic, yet this whole situation just comes out of no-where, and its incredibly contrived. How did the joker get all those explosive barrels on those Ferry's un-noticed? Why is Gordon stupid enough to decide to move all the prisoners? He gives a half-assed justification that makes no sense. You're worried the Joker might try to break them out, so instead of leaving them in the highly secured prison, lets start transporting all of them to god-knows where, even though the Joker just ambushed a prison transport literally yesterday.

The cell-phone bat-vision system kind of arrives out of no-where. I think its a stupid thing to introduce in the first place, and while I like that they address the privacy issues of it, batman is breaking so many laws already, you have to wonder why he wouldn't just keep that thing around. The movie is basically saying "Well, it's ok to wiretap the city, as long as we just do it this one time", and I don't know that I buy that argument. Either don't use it to begin with, or keep it running so you can stop the next villain from coming along.

I do really like the final scene with Gordon/Batman/2-face, I think it works really well, and is a quite powerful, I just feel like it would work better as the end of a 3rd batman movie that was a sequel to Dark Knight.

Also, someone brought up how the Dark Knight basically endorses the ideas/policies of the Neo-cons. I agree, but I actually have zero problem with that, because the entire idea of a vigilante super-hero like Batman is inherently Neo-con, so I think its very unfair to criticize the movie for political reasons. Conservative values make good action/adventure stories (see most of the 80s/90s action classics), that's an inherent fact, so I don't think its an issue.

Last edited by bullet3 (2012-02-26 05:52:29)

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Re: The Dark Knight

In case there's some who haven't seen it, here's someone doing a hatchet job on dissecting the editing of the truck chase in The Dark Knight...

http://vimeo.com/28792404 or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=801sR_U1Xkw

Last edited by avatar (2012-02-26 10:09:04)

not long to go now...

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Re: The Dark Knight

Re: my game v. movie idea:

The Joker as an in-world character that's always ten steps ahead of the audience and in-world opposition?  Sounds like an intellectual Mary Sue for Nolan. There's an obsession with the idea of the "mastermind" in his work. The scene from Dark Knight Rises before Mission Impossible 4 leads me to believe Bane has become that super-manipulator character. Seems like Nolan's only interested in being as antagonistic and subversive to expectations as possible.

Last edited by paulou (2012-02-26 18:58:03)

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Re: The Dark Knight

That guy makes some decent points in that video, but a lot of his points are either really debatable (Dent in the back of the truck) or minor continuity issues that may or may not be due to poor planning on the director's part.

Good recording, guys. I unfortunately missed most of the movie due to sleepytime, but what I saw I liked a lot. Good intermission as well.

http://flockdraw.com/upload/10636nk4pncgsg4ogss.png

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Re: The Dark Knight

Heh, Charlie Brooker.

https://twitter.com/#!/charltonbrooker/ … 4598746113

Batman fans are actually *happy* his parents were murdered; otherwise Batman wouldn't exist. How fucking selfish can you get?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree … r-new-year

Kick-Ass, that was a good one. Iron Man, fair enough. But now we don't need any more superhero films. Especially not pretentious ones. There's a new Dark Knight film out this year. Calling Batman "the Dark Knight" is like calling Papa Smurf "the Blue Patriarch": you're not fooling anyone. It's a children's story about a billionaire who dresses up as a bat to punch criminals on the nose. No normal adult can possibly relate to that, which makes his story inherently boring, unless you're a child, in which case you can enjoy the bits where he rides his super-bike around with his cape flapping behind him like a tit. The scenes where some improbable clown-like supervillain delivers a quasi-philosophical speech are even worse, incidentally.

Tip: if you want to make your bad guy interesting and menacing and exotic, don't waste hours gluing prosthetic dice to his eyelids and giving him a name like "the Quizzlestick". Just show him masturbating into an oven glove while watching earthquake footage on CNN. Then you've got my attention. And automatically made a film worth watching.

Re: The Dark Knight

Xtroid wrote:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree … r-new-year

Kick-Ass, that was a good one. Iron Man, fair enough. But now we don't need any more superhero films. Especially not pretentious ones. There's a new Dark Knight film out this year. Calling Batman "the Dark Knight" is like calling Papa Smurf "the Blue Patriarch": you're not fooling anyone. It's a children's story about a billionaire who dresses up as a bat to punch criminals on the nose. No normal adult can possibly relate to that, which makes his story inherently boring, unless you're a child, in which case you can enjoy the bits where he rides his super-bike around with his cape flapping behind him like a tit. The scenes where some improbable clown-like supervillain delivers a quasi-philosophical speech are even worse, incidentally.

Tip: if you want to make your bad guy interesting and menacing and exotic, don't waste hours gluing prosthetic dice to his eyelids and giving him a name like "the Quizzlestick". Just show him masturbating into an oven glove while watching earthquake footage on CNN. Then you've got my attention. And automatically made a film worth watching.


And here we witness the douchebag in it's natural habitat.

ZangrethorDigital.ca

Re: The Dark Knight

BigDamnArtist wrote:
Xtroid wrote:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree … r-new-year

Kick-Ass, that was a good one. Iron Man, fair enough. But now we don't need any more superhero films. Especially not pretentious ones. There's a new Dark Knight film out this year. Calling Batman "the Dark Knight" is like calling Papa Smurf "the Blue Patriarch": you're not fooling anyone. It's a children's story about a billionaire who dresses up as a bat to punch criminals on the nose. No normal adult can possibly relate to that, which makes his story inherently boring, unless you're a child, in which case you can enjoy the bits where he rides his super-bike around with his cape flapping behind him like a tit. The scenes where some improbable clown-like supervillain delivers a quasi-philosophical speech are even worse, incidentally.

Tip: if you want to make your bad guy interesting and menacing and exotic, don't waste hours gluing prosthetic dice to his eyelids and giving him a name like "the Quizzlestick". Just show him masturbating into an oven glove while watching earthquake footage on CNN. Then you've got my attention. And automatically made a film worth watching.


And here we witness the douchebag in it's natural habitat.

Well, it keeps things in perspective. Bill Maher made the comment in New Rules that kid's movies like Dark Knight shouldn't take the place of social commentary about how we deal with invasion of privacy, torture, and other invasions of civil liberties, etc. You run the risk of infantilzing society if serious issues have to be framed in superhero movies.

Last edited by avatar (2012-02-28 01:10:13)

not long to go now...

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Re: The Dark Knight

What nonsense. Fantasy and science fiction are among the best vehicles for social commentary and always have been.

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Re: The Dark Knight

Dorkman wrote:

What nonsense. Fantasy and science fiction are among the best vehicles for social commentary and always have been.

Agree about SciFi, but I was talking about superhero movies, which are generally more childish than scifi overall.  And Bill Maher was making the admittedly straw man argument that Hollywood movies shouldn't be the ONLY forum for debating social issues. That should be left to Fox News' No-Fact Zonetongue

not long to go now...

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Re: The Dark Knight

But DARK KNIGHT is distinctly not a childish superhero film, unless one says it's childish because it's a superhero film, which is a silly circular argument.

At any rate, some of the most classic social commentary has been in "children's" stories. Gulliver's Travels, anyone?

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Re: The Dark Knight

Superhero movie discussions of social issues are the commentary that America deserves, not the commentary that America needs

Last edited by avatar (2012-02-28 02:44:31)

not long to go now...

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Re: The Dark Knight

That's one of the reasons I have such deep respect for Calvin & Hobbes. That strip was often more topical and hard-edged than the editorials in the same newspaper, and he got his point across in a few panels and speech balloons. He focused more on human nature than the specific issue at hand, and as a result you can apply the strips he wrote during, say, an election season directly to the current debates and they work just as well. While rereading them, a lot of the strips feel like he had to have done them last week, not two decades ago.

<TANGENT="I'm so tired I fucking wrote this shit and realized later that it only barely makes sense. Left in for the lulz">

With comicbook movies, I think a lot of the problem stems from the fact that the comics themselves are often very poorly written. People who like comics would probably balk at the suggestion that "The dark knight returns" is actually a really poorly told story, but it really kinda is. Comic writers tend to be ham-fisted in the way they apply their messages, but I think that has a lot to do with the history and the desire that people have to recreate the things they loved from their own childhood. A lot of the modern writers are feeding off of the sort of comics they read when they were kids. 60's and 70's and 80's comics, for the most part. Many modern comics are kinda returning to that oddly dark 1980's - early 90's style of comics. Granted, I've not picked up an issue of anything in a few years now, so maybe things are changing.

But you know when Marvel starts up a new arm of the company dedicated to 'darker' themes, and the first word in the first book published under that new arm is "Fuck", you know that comics in general are heading into darkland. Superhero comics, at any rate. Modern comic stories focus more on the fucked up psychology of their characters than heroics. Or their fucked up "Jersey Shore" style relationships with other characters. There was a fucking incest subplot going on in one of the X- books for a while.

So when you try to make a movie out of this shit, there's two realities you have to face. 1) the people who read modern comics are going to want to see dark, gritty characters with scarred psyches battle their inner demons and 2) people who don't read comics expect to see something like the old Superman and the old Spiderman. Neither of the two audiences is really expecting to see much social commentary going on, aside from things like "Nazi's are bad" or "Discrimination is bad". You definitely can put heavy social commentary into a comicbook movie (V for vendetta, Watchmen, Superman 4) (no wait, forget Superman 4...), but it's most likely going to hurt the movie's acceptance level because of the whole "This should be escapist entertainment, not a real movie lolwtf" reaction.

I mean, this movie had like one ... poorly executed comment on the sort of big brother tracking shit that wireless devices and phones allow the government to do, and took a kinda oddly neutral stance about the idea, and people bitched about it in just about every review I read. I can't even tell what side of the issue the movie was on. Maybe that's why they're bitching? It doesn't clearly define it's stance on it? I dunno...

</TANGENT>

Point is, putting commentary into a comicbook movie is probably only going to piss people off, and that's going to defeat your commentary. It probably has a lot to do with the much younger and, let's face it, less... intellectual folks that are running out to buy tickets to see Green Lantern and Ghost Rider 2. I'm not saying they're dumb, but they say it themselves thusly: "Just turn your brain off and have fun"

Those people are going to have a strong negative reaction to social commentary...  in pretty much anything...

Last edited by Squiggly_P (2012-02-28 04:50:56)

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Re: The Dark Knight

Squiggly_P wrote:

Point is, putting commentary into a comicbook movie is probably only going to piss people off, and that's going to defeat your commentary. It probably has a lot to do with the much younger and, let's face it, less... intellectual folks that are running out to buy tickets to see Green Lantern and Ghost Rider 2. I'm not saying they're dumb, but they say it themselves thusly: "Just turn your brain off and have fun"

Those people are going to have a strong negative reaction to social commentary...  in pretty much anything...

GREEN LANTERN: no social commentary, $220 million worldwide
GHOST RIDER 2: no social commentary, $48 million worldwide (to date)

THE DARK KNIGHT: social commentary, $1 billion worldwide

Not to say correlation is causation, but it doesn't look like a very negative reaction. I think most people who encourage you to "turn your brain off and have fun" for certain movies would be perfectly happy to leave their brains turned on if those movies would give them good reasons to do so.

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Re: The Dark Knight

Perhaps. I propose a larger sample size. FOR SCIENCE!

V for Vendetta: social commentary $132 million worldwide.
Watchmen: social commentary $184 million worldwide.

I would say that both of them are arguably better overall movies than TDK as well. I think so, at least. TDK isn't an especially challenging movie when it comes to commentary. Like I said, I'm not even sure what side the movie takes. You could argue that the way it handles the social commentary is to provide an in-road for either side. "It's wrong to do this" "but it's necessary to do this". That's both sides of the issue right there. And the movie does both of those things.

As for the idea of society breaking down, at the end the movie says "the people have show you that they're not gonna stoop to that level!" The audience says "you're god damn right! We're awesome like that!", but earlier in the movie they had people shooting at and attempting to murder an unarmed man through a bomb threat. People are totally willing to stoop to that level that day. I think that movie sends mixed signals. It's far too busy being an engaging story about a crazy guy trying to make everyone else crazy along with him, and all the commentary stuff is just tacked on. You can basically ignore it and have the exact same movie at the end.

Spiderman 3: no social commentary $890 million worldwide.
Ironman 2: no social commentary $623 million worldwide.

Of course watchmen was also rated R and had a giant blue glowing penis in many parts of it, so the comparison of box office isn't necessarily fair.

Last edited by Squiggly_P (2012-02-28 06:24:14)

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Re: The Dark Knight

Squiggly_P wrote:

As for the idea of society breaking down, at the end the movie says "the people have show you that they're not gonna stoop to that level!" The audience says "you're god damn right! We're awesome like that!", but earlier in the movie they had people shooting at and attempting to murder an unarmed man through a bomb threat. People are totally willing to stoop to that level that day. I think that movie sends mixed signals. It's far too busy being an engaging story about a crazy guy trying to make everyone else crazy along with him, and all the commentary stuff is just tacked on. You can basically ignore it and have the exact same movie at the end.

Here's the thing about that scene that works for me. It is the Joker staring Batman in the face, telling him that he has failed, that no matter what, the people will turn on each other in a heartbeat. Yeah, there were going to shoot a guy with a bomb, but later, when the chips are down, and things are really bad, someone rises up and makes the right decision. In my opinion, the scene works because while the Joker may have beat down Batman, he did not completely beat down the people.

Social commentary in any movie is a mixed bag. V for Vendetta is an odd choice, because the original comic was based out of specific time and place, namely Britain and fear of extremist conservatives. Extending that commentary to today is difficult, in my opinion. Likewise, Dark Knight attempts to take on privacy issues, and freedom versus security which is not just a social comment-it is a common tale told throughout history.

The Dark Knight is certainly not childish-I would have a hard time letting my child watch it, while would gladly let them sit through Adam West's Batman. My point being, Nolan's Batman is as much a commentary on society's view of superheroes as it is a commentary on anything else. Heroes are no longer pinnacles of virtue to me admired-now they are law breaking vigilantes, who are just one stressful event away from a psychotic break from reality. The privacy, security and fear mongering is simply trappings in this dystopian world.

You want to discuss social commentary-lets talk society's current view on heroes and villains.

God loves you!

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Re: The Dark Knight

Maybe I'm being cynical about this but I really thought that one of those Ferries should have blown up (I mean isn't that what makes the Joker such a formidable foe. He knows how people tick and wants to show them what they're capable of) The whole thing just felt insincere and oh so hollywood (especially considering what came before it)

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Re: The Dark Knight

BigDamnArtist wrote:


And here we witness the douchebag in it's natural habitat.

Charlie Brooker is a satirist. He is a self-confessed geek with a grumpy old man demeanour. I have no doubt he wrote the piece in a jokey manner, just look at his number 2 entry. It's 'British Humour' innit?

Last edited by Jimmy B (2012-03-01 14:44:05)

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Re: The Dark Knight

Grant wrote:

Maybe I'm being cynical about this but I really thought that one of those Ferries should have blown up (I mean isn't that what makes the Joker such a formidable foe. He knows how people tick and wants to show them what they're capable of) The whole thing just felt insincere and oh so hollywood (especially considering what came before it)

I think the point of the scene is the people who Gotham considered to be scum or expendable (the prisoners) end up making the better choice. But, part of the scene is that the Joker was running out of options. He knows how people tick but he also expects them to think like he does. He pushes Batman to the brink and he expects the city to respond in kind. But one person stands up and decides that he won't let the Joker push them around.
At least, that is what I took away from the scene.

God loves you!

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Re: The Dark Knight

The whole point of the movie is that Batman believes there is hope for Gotham -- for people -- if they have someone to show them the way, and Joker believes that terror reduces people to animals and they will never be more than that. If one of the ferries explodes, Batman is defeated forever, his fight accomplished nothing and there was no point in telling us his story.

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Re: The Dark Knight

Unless of course that point is "Batman was a chump. Don't be like Batman."

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Re: The Dark Knight

I have so much to say about this movie, but unfortunately, I've been busy, and don't have time to rewatch the movie and really go through it. So, instead I'm going to type up something brief from memory. Basically, I split this movie into two halves, pre bullet fingerprinting, and post bullet fingerprinting. Before Batman fingerprints the bullet, the movie is pretty good, and I start to get interested. Then it sneaks up behind my suspension of disbelief with and ax and starts swinging, and doesn't stop, and people start doing nonsensical things. Batman fingerprints a bullet, which is impossible on several levels. The Joker manages to rig an entire hospital to explode with no one noticing, how the hell did he manage that? "Excuse me sir, please ignore us while we run detention wire to all these explosives we've placed around." Terrorist use car bombs for a reason. And while the Joker is doing this, Batman decides to go driving around in his Lambo, and instead of trying to stop the Joker from BLOWING UP A HOSPITAL, instead tries to protect the guy who knows his identity, and just happens to get a chance to. But only because the police decide to take the guy from a perfectly safe building out onto the street, where anyone armed with a car can take a shot at him. And then the deal with the ferries. The Joker says he rigged the tunnels and bridges, so everyone just assumes the ferries are safe? No one bothered to double check? And how did he get all those explosives on with no one noticing? Also, why Batman takes credit for Two-Face's killing spree? Blame the Joker, or any of the other criminals the city is rife with. The list goes on and on.

"ShadowDuelist is a god."
        -Teague Chrystie

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Re: The Dark Knight

All good points. I'm sure apologists can mangle some convoluted answer that the Joker was some sort of cult leader and had inside men everywhere (like Tyler Durden in Fight Club).

These days, with Twitter, someone charismatic with heaps of followers could instantly execute 'Order 66' or whatever. smile

Nolan's fast-paced plot (no repetitions of important plot points, no comic relief interludes), keeps you always struggling to keep up rather than mediate on why x or y doesn't make sense.

not long to go now...

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Re: The Dark Knight

yeah, there are things about that movie you kinda have to ignore. I tend to forgive movies for most stuff so long as they provide me with some kind of reason. Like the rigging of the bridges... You could just assume the cops blocked them off so they could be swept for explosives, and in the time it took to sweep however many bridges and tunnels for explosives, a lot of people decided to just take the ferry. I really do like this movie, and I can watch it cause it's batman and it's a really good version of batman, but it's a popcorn movie. It's the sort of popcorn movie where they give you reasons for the improbable events - even weak reasons - and they set up some of it prior to it being a thing in the movie. That's more than most popcorn movies do, so I am lenient with flicks like this.

Goyer's writing career is kinda spotty, tho. He wrote "Dark City", but he also wrote "Kickboxer 2". He wrote batman begins (he has a screenplay / story credit, so maybe first draft?), but he also wrote "The Crow: City Of Angels". He wrote Blade 2, but he also wrote "Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengence". The guy's all over the place. I can't tell if he's a decent writer and the directors who work on this stuff suck, or if he's a crap writer and the decent directors can make his stories work. He has more misses than hits as far as I'm concerned.

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