i'd just like to nudge in here to say that symbol man's right

Inception's basically the new Matrix. A cool semi-outside the box action flick.

I think the Dark Knight was much better than the Dark Knight Rises because you've got a much more compelling villain & much better action scenes.

If Nolan has elevated Batman to another level than why is Tim Burton's Batman movie far superior?

I suppose Cronenberg's real point, and the one I think el Symbols is also making isn't that DKR or any blockbuster superhero movie is necessarily un-intelligent but that there's an inevitable limit to how intelligent it can be - which I suspect has more to do with it being a blockbuster than a superhero movie. I'm obviously not saying that coming from the arthouse makes a film intelligent by default (I've seen numerous arthouse films that were far dumber than numerous blockbusters), but a director would likely find it easier making an uncompromisingly intelligent film in that environment than at say Fox. If that's the kind of film they want to make. Which obviously Cronenberg does.

Nolan effectively has to smuggle any of his more thought provoking content into his films, behind the backs of executives concerned with audience forecasts, merchandising deals, etc. That wouldn't happen (as much) at an indie company, but then an indie wouldn't be able to finance the kinds of films that Nolan ultimately wants to make. Some directors are motivated more by creative freedom than others. Some prefer the challenge and facilities (and to a small degree money) that the big studios offer, and they accept the compromises to their creative freedom that comes with that. A good or even great director needn't be the one with the most freedom, though. And history shows us he rarely ever was/is. I'll take a Fritz Lang B Western over any self indulgent Hal Hartley movie, all day long.

Burton'a films are not superior at all. Granted, they are beautiful films, and ...Returns was my favorite comic-based movie ever for many years, but they do not stand the test of time. Looking back, Nicholson'a Joker was atrocious, and the story lines for both films are thin and ultimately quite weak.

Tim Burton is a flash filmmaker who cares much more about style than substance. I think he did a great job of helping batman become a more realistic and serious kind of hero, but not even Danny DeVito's (kind of horrifying) Penguin changes the fact that Burton's films are exactly the type of movies that Cronenberg's criticisms actually apply to.

Nolan's films are every bit as human and powerful as anything Cronenberg's ever made. .. in my opinion at least. But what do I know really? I'm biased, because I'm a life long comic fan, and I've been waiting for someone to put together a worthy Batman adaptation my whole life.

I agree, the limits are a function of Hollywood and high expectations. I'm sure Nolan had to make many compromises due to these factors. Competition with Avengers/spider-man, topping TDK, etc. But I think he did an almost perfect job with what he had regardless.

I agree, but the issue isn't that one explores psychological elements while the other doesn't but how intelligently or sophisticatedly they're explored. Cronenberg is a more 'intellectual' filmmaker than Nolan so it follows that his films tend to be more intellectually interesting. That doesn't make him a better director than Nolan (in my opinion he isn't) or the Fly a better film than DKR (quite the opposite). They just excel in different areas.

here's how the dark knight tries to be serious but fails:

1) in the 2nd movie the batman has the power to listen to every cellphone, right? but does he ever struggle with the temptation to become a fascist? does he spy on his girlfriend, jerk off to the neighbor's conversations, look at girls in the toilet? no he doesn't-- he just tells his loyal servant to turn off the system, which the loyal servant faithfully does. the goodies and the baddies are always predictable. yes, there's the scene at the boat, with the bombs, and that was okay, and memorable, but funny thing that wasn't batman the character making a difficult decision. he's one-dimensional, just misunderstood. okay maybe nolan made him two-dimensional but he's still not human.

2) in the more recent one, there are some 99 percenter allusions, they even manage to "occupy" wall street, but the heroes are the millionaires with their charities-- funny thing about hollywood liberals, they feel sorry for the poor but think only they can save them.

3) same thing with the subtext that bane and his lady master are some sort of al-qaeda who only want to destroy new york, i mean gotham. (i had forgotten how well choreographed this airplane hijacking was by the way). but is there any question again of who are the baddies? no. worst off, while al qaeda want western forces out of islam's holy sites, this "league of shadows" only wants some sort of twisted revenge for the fuck of it.

3a) And again it's not Batman who doubts about the use of the energy source-- oh no, he always knows right and wrong. IT's jus the other people who betray him. Black/white superhero morality = adolescent.

I really enjoyed the Batmans, but my point is-- serious art asks serious questions about human life. Batman does not ask serious questions except for that boat scene with his version of the well-known "prisoner's dilemma". Wish the rest of the movie plus the other movies had more been like that, but no, we got cartoons, and the usual black & white morality while letting go of the big questions because blockbuster audiences would get headaches.

compare this to a history of violence, where you look at someone who can be a good nice family man and also a brutal killer, and you wonder if you can ever come back from war, where you look at the strained dynamic in a marriage (both sex scenes were added by cronenberg), and the movie doesn't end in some happy hollywood ending when everybody is happy, the man just gets a plate of food and it just opens the doors to a whole new set of questions-- yes, you who were a stranger are now one of us again, but what happens next?

this is the kind of shit that makes a difference between an action blockbuster and film as art.

for some reason, todd field's "in the bedroom" has been popping into my head, and i don't know what this means but i'll put it out there in case someone feels like watching it.

okay i gotta go to work but yeah. character and depth make for good stories, and ambiguity is good for art.

Revenge for the fuck it? I think you're selling Nolan short here. The league of shadows restores a type of "balance" to society that draws from theories on the doomed nature of civilization that date back to Freud. They represent the inevitable downfall that Freud believed was the result of the formation of civilization itself. I'm not saying TDKR is "Freudian" but I think the league is a more complex idea in Nolan's universe than you're making it out to be.

there was once a mercenary, who fucked a princess, they threw her inside a pit, she gave birth to a baby that grew up kinda cute and with no deformities considering the lack of vitamin D and the possible abundance of rats, and now she wants to blow up a city thousands of miles away with everyone inside it because batman defeated her insano daddy who claimed he wanted to clean the world but really wanted to get even with people who had nothing to do with it for having his family thrown into a pit? wtf.

revenge: watch "in the bedroom" & let me know how you like it.

We could go on forever finding films like In the Bedroom, which are obviously more intellectually coherent than DKR was ever going to be, but it's like comparing a fast food meal with a gourmet one. There's no point comparing a Whopper with some £25 burger you can order at a top scale restaurant (or in the case of In the Bedroom, a nice bistro). So if DKR was a burger, it'd be one of the best Whoppers that Burger King has yet produced, under the inevitable constrictions that come with creating a burger in those conditions). That'd put it ahead of the competition but only if we accept that competition is a Big Mac or (and even this is stretching things) a Zinger Tower Burger. In that sense, the worst that can be leveled at Nolan is that he's ended up making a slightly pretentious Double Whopper that could've maybe done with having a bit more cheese. I'd personally agree with the need for more cheese but in all would say he's made a damn fine burger, within reason.

Not alone at all. I entirely agree. There isn't really a problem with the film so much as with its biggest fans and its staunchest critics equally trying to turn it into something it isn't.

Oh, a Zinger Tower Burger:



Think of it as the Iron Man of fast food burgers (in a good way)

I wasn't trying to be snarky with my Inception comment, by the way. I just genuinely would be interested in hearing your thoughts. To me it's much more than a "Matrix with dream-type-stuf." I would be truly interested in hearing a concise and intelligenf argument against it being the best kind of film anyone would expect from a US blockbuster.

ah yeah the best kind hamburger movie sure it could probably be. i tried to get it at my local redbox the other day but it wasn't there. and right now my netflix queue is kinda busy as i only get 1 dvd at a time and entourage is on the way. but i might catch it soon if time permits.

blockbuster = hamburger as demoño sez. and yeah, i loves me a good hamburger-- but it's just not foie-gras!

mmmm... foie gras! damn you, france. damn you for creating such deliciousness so far away from me.

still, i love burgers. i'm gonna fry some up tonight!

anyway, almost forgot:

@ demonrail - that's stuff with the crispy crust is not a burger but some sort of chicken patty! unless it's some sort of scottish concoction like the deep-fried mars bar, yeah? do the scots batter & deep-fry burgers too? dangus...

[quote=foreverasskiss]you people are a bunch of fucking nerds. [/url]

fuck yeah. and proud of it.

[quote=foreverasskiss] fuck batmanb.\\ god fucking damn!!!!!
\\\


i wish there was that too, in addition of this bullshite as you call it. doesn't have to be mutually exclusive (it could be a thread orgy, where the reader reads a bunch of threads on all kinds of subjects. OMG HAWTT.)

anyway, about threesomes, nerd or not, all i have to say is that they are overrated. much better is to up & fuck the girl or man you actually want to fuck instead of concocting a 3-way as an excuse.

some dude i know used to have threesomes with another guy. i think he just wanted to fuck the other guy and couldn't bring himself to do it, so instead they touched dicks through a girl.

in my case, i've only done that with 2 girls, and thinking back there was always one girl too many. i'm not being a square, i just like it better when fucker + fuckee give each other their full attention instead of competing for attention.

happy now?

meaning what-- pure deliciousness or drama and horror?


okay, but who is #3? another chick or sum dood? cuz to me there's a big difference. hmmmm.


well yeah that's what happens, ha ha ha.


if you want more deliciousness that's just natural. if you want more gut-wrenching pain yeah maybe you're a pervert ha ha ha.


k but does she want you + husband to bone her in tandem or what? you haven't specified


why. do you remember getting blue balls? fuck, they hurt so much. why suffer.


you're a grown-ass man. find a woman.


lol don't be a retard. you're just going after the wrong thing.

fuck the married woman in the ass with no husband present, so you can get it out of your system, and then fuck off. no?

read some classic spanish theatre. i'm serious.

lol....fucker...and fuckee.

Simple answer is don't do it. I've limited (read zero) personal experience of threesomes but imagine they'd work best when there's no romantic history between partners. But even then It still seems like one massive mindfuck to me. Just promise us you'll wear a Batman outfit if you do decide to go ahead with it.

lol dude, maybe you should grow some balls and walk away from that mess!




batman coming out of the batcave wins the thread

Maybe that's what I like about Burton's Batman. It's a comic book movie. It's heavily stylized. The characters are a bit bigger than life. It's a fucking comic book with a masked hero running around in tights fighting crime.


And I don't know that you want to go into the whole plot superiority thing. I find that the worst thing about Nolan's films are his convoluted shitty plots & the best thing about his films are the cinematography (which is where TDK really shined, a long with the soundtrack & Ledger's acting.) Where Inception shined were with the special effects, the music, the art, and the cinematography.


Neither Burton or Nolan really can come close to Dead Ringers or Videodrome, both movies that affected me on a physical level as well as a very deep psychological level. The philosophy and psychology in any Batman movie is pretty kindergarten level, even Ledger's Joker's nihilism.

I watched The Dark Knight again this morning and I ultimately have to agree. I'd still say that its lack of depth has more to do with it being a blockbuster than anything to do with its subject matter, but I did find, this time around, that apart from a couple of scenes, it was all a bit juvenile, and especially in the case of Ledger's Joker. He's an undoubtedly charismatic movie villain but not a particularly interesting one.

And you're dead on about the real stand out in all of the films being the soundtrack and the cinematography.

Just out of interest, given the inevitability that someones gonna carry the batman franchise on, which director would you like to see take over after Nolan?

McG obvs.

let us know how that whole thing works out

Takashi Miike

I have four directors in mind that will probably sound equally ridiculous:

Paul Thomas Anderson- For a high quality, ultra intense, deeply gritty Batman, more true to life than Nolan's (if that's possible)

Nicholas Winding Refn- for an ultra violent, heady, noir Batman

David Fincher- for more epic, 3 hour blockbusters that still come off as relatively good films. Possibly for a 1940s, heavily stylized Batman.

Ridley Scott- for a Justice League movie to rival Avenges. Blockbuster Batman that is bigger than life, and an overall film that is BIG but still meditative and serious.

Four totally different takes on the character.

A Better Question:

WHO DO YOU THINK COULD PLAY BATMAN/BRUCE WAYNE, NOW THAT BALE IS OUT? ??

Nicholas Winding Refn would be freaking cool.

Mads Mikkelson as Bruce Wayne!!!

Omg....yes. Gigi is my hero.

Refn would be great for a direct Frank Miller adaptation, like Dark Knight Returns. Just ridiculously violent, cerebral, and bloody as hell. A true R rated Batman.

Watched this again. Batman Rises has exciting stuff, but holy fuck the plot holes were insane. I got more pissed off this time than the last time I saw it. Bane is a bullshit villain. stupid fucking accent. stupid mask. The guy playing Bane probably had a voice like Mike Tyson. It is obvious that the people behind these movies never read any Batman shit as fans, as kids.

Having Ras Al Ghul's daughter Talia be "unmasked" then killed within ten minutes is such bullshit. what a shitty movie.
talia is a long running character in Batman. killing off characters is something the movies do because they think (know?) that people are stupid fucking sheep and have to see the bad guy die or else the good guy did not win.

How did batman put so much flammable stuff on the bridge to make the burbning bat signal? It must have wasted several days of his time. How did he fly back to US from the pit he escaped from? how did he have money?

stupid fucking movie. all flash and no substance. just as cheesy as the batman TV show, but with no sense of humor.

Fuck these stupid batman movies.

How did hanging from a rope heal Batman's broken back?

How did Batman swim back from 5+ miles out into the ocean after he ditched the batplane with the nuke attached? How did he survive the boiling cauldron of death he turned the ocean into?

How come a city of millions always looks deserted? stupid filmmakers. Batman has always been the thinking man's superhero. In these Nolan films batman does NO detective work. NONE. fucking horrible.

Thankfully, in ten years, no one will give a flying fuck.

I hate how Nolan rewrites Batman mythos to suit his stupid tearjerker crap. James Gordon arrived in Gotham shortly before Bruce wayne returned to Gotham and began creating himself as Batman, In the movies, howveer, even though commissioner gordon is like 10 years older than Bruce Wayne, somehow Gordon was there as first responder to the murder of the Wayne parents? and put a coat on batman? and batman tells everyone all the time that he is bruce wayne? he lets catwoman know. Bane knows. Talia knows. ras al ghul knows. the cop Robin knows. goddamn commissioner gordon now knows. NOT SECRET!

Fuck Nolan.

I HATE the stupid, pointless, fucking ignorant shit that is the rotating wheels on the Batcycle. How do the guns and attached electronics not get destroyed every time the full weight of the batcycle rolls across them? How come a cat burglar who doesn't even own a car know instantly how to drive an insane high tech piece of shit like that Batcycle? How does she know which buttos are for missiles and which buttons are for headlamps?

How many cops were killed? Gotham must have lost half their police force. the death benefits alone will bankrupt the city.

How does the city eat when for months there is no food being brought in?

How come in Nolan movies, (what a fucking shit filmmaker) the bad guys are always psychic, able to predict exactly what corner Batman will park in, or what direction batman will fly in from, etc? fucking shitty writing.

Frank Miller penned Year One and they animated that bad boy and it is fucking AWESOME. Makes the Nolan Batman movies look like the piece of ill-plotted shit they are,.

and why would selina kyle, who loves cats more than humans, leave her kitty kats behind?

I saw this maybe three months ago.

I really had to to push my memory to recall who the fuck Bane was.


That is much too generous.

My least favorite part? When Bane has a gun on what's his face and Bane's about to pull the trigger. But he waits. Thinking about errands he has to run later, I guess.

I hated that stupid mask. I hated Bane in the comics and I hate him in the movies. Stupid character. what does that mask do? all they say is if he takes it off there is excruciating pain. does it help him breathe? how does he talk with it on? does it supply some sort of opiate? stupid.

Go watch the animate Year One though. It is very good. so is the animated Under The Red Hood. Good stuff.

also, I HATE that Nolan has the stupid gumption to assume Batman would quit, just cuz of a woman he talks to for maybe 15 minutes? (catwoman) and who repeatedly betrays him?

If that fucksmoker Nolan had actually read Batman he would know that in all reality Bruce Wayne is the MASK, and Batman is who he really is inside. am that it has been that way since forever. That whole "Batman is a symbol, anyone can be Batman" is a fucking LOAD OF SHIT that spits right in the face of everything batman stands for.

Yeah, the plot holes in that film are ridiculous, maybe the worst in any film I've ever seen

It's probably a film best enjoyed by people like myself who don't know much about the comic version. I didn't notice the plot holes but then I just take everything involving a superhero (which I appreciate Batman technically isn't) as plausible just because it's a superhero (even when it isn't).

hey 666, it is an entertaining enough spectacle, and full of "wow!" moments, but as a whole I found it unsatisfying.

Take the much lighter in tone Avengers. They made sure to stick as closely as possible to the actual personae these heroes built up in the comics. Captain America is a doo-gooder extraordinaire, concerned about the common man and injustice, and a man out of time, a man from a "simpler" time.
Iron Man/Tony Stark is an egotist, super smart, and knows it, and a playboy who unlike batman/Bruce Wayne, actually enjoys the playboy life and revels in it.
The Hulk/Bruce Banner is defined by alienation, by the inability to fit in anywhere due to the Jekyll and Hyde nature of his own being. the weakling Banner hates the destruction and horror his alterego causes but that alterego is not external, all that rage and pain and hate and aggression are IN Banner. he just never showed it, hid it.
Thor is a pompous ass. Always was, always is, as befits a god, and a favorite son of THE god (Odin). He sees humans as if they were creatures he needs to care for.
etc. The people who made the Avengers built the story around these traits, creating a self-consistent universe.

Nolan instead takes all the humor, all the life-affirmation, all the caring that batman/wayne has, and reduces it to a myth-symbol, like a christ messianic figure, which is so false. Batman was always the one human who because of hard work, smarts and tenacity, could go toe to toe with any superpowered being. None of this is shown in the Batman movies. Btaman would also always seek to limit the collateral damage that the Nolan movie batman seems to give two fucks about.