Meet the New Bat-Guys

solidstatemind

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Nov 9, 2008
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ImSkeletor said:
After the Dark Knight I don't think I can trust Nolan. It was one of the blandest movies I have ever seen. I saw it one week ago(for the second time because a friend made me) and I have already forgotten most of it. Actually that is the thing that happens with EVERY Nolan film. I see it, then totally forget about it.(Yes, that includes Inception)
You know, you certainly are entitled to your opinion, but have you ever seen Memento? Because I just don't see how you can maintain that attitude in regards to that film: it is simply the most mind-blowing experience I've ever had at a movie. Fascinating storyline, exceptionally well-acted, brilliantly paced and using a completely novel narrative format.

Now you can argue that it was the exception rather than the rule in regards to Nolan's directorial acumen, but even then, it would invalidate your statement that EVERY Nolan film is forgettable.

Again, maybe you don't like his style, but to claim that Nolan is devoid of talent is just... well, silly.
 

omicron1

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"We shall see what happens... when the world knows your name."

Begins and Dark Knight were at least partly about simultaneously breaking down Batman and breaking down Gotham. For Nolan's big finale, I'd expect him to go all the way here - break Batman physically, emotionally, and intellectually, reveal his nature and identity, break his back and his heart, bring down everything that Batman built up - then let Gotham save its savior. I could see how Bane and Catwoman could play into this (Bane being a physical and intellectual challenge; Catwoman emotional); my main concern if this turns out to be the case is that it would play out too similarly to the Dark Knight in terms of plot structure.

But do note that I don't know any canon outside Nolan's series, so this is solely based on what I noted about the first two films.
 

Badassassin

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First post said it. Bane will be some genius crime lord on experimental government steroids. Not hard to imagine in the Nolan mythos.

What I am worried about is what exactly is in store with catwoman. I mean, Catwoman is barely even a villain. By that I mean she's kinda a flip flopper. I trust Nolan will somehow fit her in nicely, but it would need some skewing.
 

Jeffro Tull

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Gxas said:
Sigh... I was hoping for Riddler... I really was. Or Scarface. Scarface would have been amazing. And fairly easy to do. I'm very upset with the pick of Bane. Sadly, I always knew Catwoman would show up. Just thought it would be Rachel, not actually Selena Kyle. Oh well. Hope Nolan knows what he's doing.
I hear ya man. The Riddler would have been the perfect opposite of the Joker. The Joker in the Dark Knight was privy to placing the elements in front of a group of unsuspecting individuals that could cause a situation to go horribly wrong simply to just see what happens. The Riddler would have been a completely obsessive compulsive character who would meticulously set up a trail of breadcrumbs in order to toy with the bat, and ultimately up the ante to a huge finale that would challenge all the aspects of Nolan's Batman that he have seen thus far.

Bane has the capacity to do such a thing, and lets face it Nolan has surprised us before. I'm sure it will be a good close to the storyline, but will it be better than the Dark Knight? That's the question that is in the back of peoples minds right now. I guess we'll have to see.

As far as Selina Kyle goes, it will be interesting to see how this character is managed. The idea of just playing her off as some seductress, while befitting of the character we all know, would be bland and uninteresting.
 

TetsuoKaneda

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Feb 11, 2009
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BobDobolina said:
ImSkeletor said:
After the Dark Knight I don't think I can trust Nolan. It was one of the blandest movies I have ever seen.
Wow. That's not a description of that movie one sees every day. The relentless pacing and plot holes objections I've heard before, but "bland" is... new. Makes it tempting to ask: what would qualify for you as not-bland?

TetsuoKaneda said:
BobDobolina said:
TetsuoKaneda said:
Anne Hathaway has never struck the right vibe for me.
Hands up everyone who expected Heath Ledger's Joker based on his prior movies.
*raises hand*
Well, I did ask.

So, what exactly in his prior oeuvre indicated to you that he could go there? Closest I can think of would be Brokeback Mountain, which at least was a dramatic role, but I didn't see any more range on display there than I'd seen him do anywhere else, and his Joker most certainly came out of left field for me, as indeed it did I think for most mortals. (And promo shots for TDK itself do not count, sorry. I'm asking "based on his prior movies," because I remember having this exact sort of conversation about him as the Joker before any promo shots from the film came out.)
I'm Not There, for one. Brokeback Mountain for two. I think there were at least one or two other ones that went to some kind of dark places, but I can't remember very well, so I'm not using 'em here. Was I prepared for the exact performance? Nnno. Was I willing to buy him completely when I found out he was doing Joker? Perhaps not. But it didn't exactly come out of left field.
 

SamElliot'sMustache

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Woodsey said:
"His recurring theme tends to be no-nonsense masculine professionalism undone by chaotic feminine influence (see: Inception)."

Only the feminine influence is inside Cobb's head and something he's forcibly tried to recreate, so I don't think that holds true - especially since Ariadne is the one who helps him through it.
Great point. I think Mr. Chipman's reading of Nolan's films is off the mark. The 'chaotic feminine' influence can only really extend to Following, The Prestige, and Memento: like you said, Inception doesn't count since it's Ellen Page who helps DiCaprio with his mental problems, while Rachel Dawes was key to Bruce Wayne becoming a hero in Batman Begins, and Hilary Swank was the moral center of Insomnia.

As for the whole 'no sexuality' part of this article, did he even watch Nolan's movies? Sex factored into Following and The Prestige pretty heavily, Robin Williams' character in Insomnia certainly had feelings for the girl he killed, Guy Pearce and Carrie Anne Moss did the deed in Memento, and while nothing about Bruce Wayne's love life is made explicit, his use of 'playboy billionaire' as a cover isn't something that Nolan kept in accidentally (also...what does Bob think Harvey and Rachel are implying with those meaningful lines and handholding in The Dark Knight? That they play checkers together?). Inception I could maybe see where he's coming from, but that's it. Hardly the 'asexual' filmmaker that we're being led to believe.
 

minuialear

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solidstatemind said:
Now, stipulated that you can call into question Nolan's treatment of women, but I certainly have seen plenty of fight scenes that suffered from much poorer directorial skill, and I think it's reasonable to say that as bad as you may think them to be, they aren't so terrible as to derail the rest of the movie.
The fact that there are directors who are even worse at fight scenes doesn't excuse the fact that Nolan usually sucks at fight scenes. And yeah, it can affect the quality of the movie as a whole (see the Matrix trilogy and its painfully slow and stinted fight choreography).

I do apologize for the amount of venom, though. Fanbois who try to tell everyone how things 'should be, according to what has already been written/filmed/etc' really are a pet peeve of mine: it's like those snots selfishly think that their 'cherished memories' shouldn't be messed with, because... I dunno, really-- maybe they think they're the center of the universe? Truth is: events will occur, and unless you are directly involved, your opinion means next to nothing.
They act like that because these are stories they grew up with, and to them it's all sorts of annoying to see the stories reworked in ways that selectively ignore significant parts of cannon. It ruins their sense of what "Batman" is and how he has grown over the years; while they sometimes hold too tightly to those stories, they are completely in the right to complain if a director changes so much about the source material that, to them, the story isn't a "Batman" story anymore, and is just a movie with Batman costumes and names tacked on.

I'd for one argue that Nolan's Batman films are interesting, but they aren't "Batman" films any more than Burton's films were. Batman's often been portrayed as a sexually repressed dude who only seems to fall for the women he has to haul in, for example, and the fact that Nolan crammed Rachel Dawson into the movies wrecks what many consider to be one of the most significant facets of his personality. As a fan of the franchise I am upset that this change was made not just because it's not canon, but because it changes Batman to become something he wasn't, and if he's not going to be Batman, then why the hell does he share the same name?

Similarly, using Harvey Dent merely as a foil, rather than using the breadth of Two-Face material to craft a legitimately good villain? Just because you slap the name Two Face on that character doesn't mean he's anything like the actual Two-Face, and you can whine all you want about "But Nolan's going in a neewww direction," but I can't see that move as anything but a complete waste of a potentially good villain and an indication that Nolan isn't afraid to simply ignore character cannon in an attempt to make bland and uninspired character foils.

And I could go on about the other things I take issue with in Nolan's Batman adaptations. Yes, Nolan is a good director and he has made some very good movies. But he's not so good at the Batman movies (they are entertaining but sometimes barely deserve to be called Batman movies), and people have a right and a fair amount of reason to be skeptical.
 

The Hero Killer

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I dont quite know how to take these selections. I've never been a fan of Bane and I always wanted Black Mask to appear in the movies. I pictured Michael Jai White's character after getting his face cut by the joker donning the Black Skull and taking over the crime gangs or even Moroni after his car accident.

And even though I like Anne Hathaway as a actress, I was really pulling for Kate Beckinsale to play Selena Kyle/Catwoman. I was hoping for Black Mask vs a resurfaced Two-Face who wants to play judge jury and executioner, while adding Selena in as a love interest for Bruce but Catwoman as a foil for Batman for the final movie.
 

kingmob

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Based on his background, I can envision Bane as a perfect anti-thesis to batman. Basically he will be batman if he'd been down on his luck and not raised by loving parents etc. Simply do away with the metamorphosis and make him as smart and strong as batman. Maybe then give him access to a drug that will increase his strength even more but has detrimental side-effects.

However, for the female lead I would've thought it would be Poison-Ivy, who to me seems very easy to transform to 'real'.
 

Jeffro Tull

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BobDobolina said:
Jeffro Tull said:
The Riddler would have been the perfect opposite of the Joker. . . The Riddler would have been a completely obsessive compulsive character who would meticulously set up a trail of breadcrumbs in order to toy with the bat, and ultimately up the ante to a huge finale that would challenge all the aspects of Nolan's Batman that he have seen thus far.
Uhhhh... that's pretty much what the Joker did. Toying with the hero through cryptic clues and twisted logic, challenging the Bat to hold to his basic morality, leaving chilling hints about his next crime and daring him to stop him... there's an app for that. It was called the Joker.

That's essentially why the Riddler has always been relatively lame; he's never, when you get right down to it, been much more than a poor man's Joker with a less entertaining schtick. Batman had a metric shit-ton of these ridiculous adversaries who would run around scattering clues to prove they could "outwit" him and provide a showcase for his detective skills. All of these were silly villains. Nolan was absolutely right to pass over them.
You kind of misquoted me there. The big thing about the Joker in the last movie was that he didn't have any real plans for how anything would be executed. He would set up huge potentials for events to unfold, sometimes that would include being on the front lines shooting the rocket launcher. He was a self proclaimed "agent of chaos."

The Riddler on the other hand was always more orderly. He would essentially craft a giant puzzle that eventually have a solution. Take that frame of mind and apply it to the same goal, "killing the Batman." I thought that that would be interesting and I was hoping for it. To say that he is an uninteresting kind of downplays how the character could be used as opposed to how he has been used. In Nolan's setting I'm sure he could have delved deep within the fractured psyche of this individual and delivered an interesting story with him, but he wasn't chosen, and I'm OK with that.

As I said last time, I'm sure it will be a good movie. It will be interesting to see the result of these character/ casting choices. If anything that is part of the appeal of these Batman movies, and in a way it has been since the Burton flicks.
 

Woodsey

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SamElliot said:
Woodsey said:
"His recurring theme tends to be no-nonsense masculine professionalism undone by chaotic feminine influence (see: Inception)."

Only the feminine influence is inside Cobb's head and something he's forcibly tried to recreate, so I don't think that holds true - especially since Ariadne is the one who helps him through it.
Great point. I think Mr. Chipman's reading of Nolan's films is off the mark. The 'chaotic feminine' influence can only really extend to Following, The Prestige, and Memento: like you said, Inception doesn't count since it's Ellen Page who helps DiCaprio with his mental problems, while Rachel Dawes was key to Bruce Wayne becoming a hero in Batman Begins, and Hilary Swank was the moral center of Insomnia.

As for the whole 'no sexuality' part of this article, did he even watch Nolan's movies? Sex factored into Following and The Prestige pretty heavily, Robin Williams' character in Insomnia certainly had feelings for the girl he killed, Guy Pearce and Carrie Anne Moss did the deed in Memento, and while nothing about Bruce Wayne's love life is made explicit, his use of 'playboy billionaire' as a cover isn't something that Nolan kept in accidentally (also...what does Bob think Harvey and Rachel are implying with those meaningful lines and handholding in The Dark Knight? That they play checkers together?). Inception I could maybe see where he's coming from, but that's it. Hardly the 'asexual' filmmaker that we're being led to believe.
Well, I guess it depends on what he means by 'no sexuality' - no sex, or no feelings (so sexuality as in hetero/homo)? Because if we're talking feelings, that's the very core of Inception , and you're right, it plays into The Prestige (anyone else think it's underrated by the way?) a lot, especially with Bale's character.
 

Flauros

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Guess Im the only one who thinks Bane is cool. I read the novelization of Knightfall.....it was pretty epic.

I can totally see him nolanized. Even without the implants....a chemical that causes you to go into roid rage and beating people up and killing woman...isnt really that far fetched. Like you said, scarecrow was the first villain for some reason.

As for only billed as selena kyle....i see her being normal...TILL SOMETHING BAD HAPPENS...and at the end she decides to become....THE CATWOMAN...for like 2 seconds....then credits.
 

SamElliot'sMustache

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Woodsey said:
-snip-
Well, I guess it depends on what he means by 'no sexuality' - no sex, or no feelings (so sexuality as in hetero/homo)? Because if we're talking feelings, that's the very core of Inception , and you're right, it plays into The Prestige (anyone else think it's underrated by the way?) a lot, especially with Bale's character.
In that case, even Inception only kinda/sorta fits into Bob's paradigm, in that it has an 'emotions get in the way' theme. (and yes, I think Prestige is a teensy-bit underrated. I found it a lot better than Inception).
 

Keith_F

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Mar 3, 2010
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I don't really have the time to go through the comments today and see if this has already been brought up or if there's already a discussion going back and forth. I just have two reactions I'd like to throw out there.

1) To me, Bane actually makes a lot of sense as a Nolan villain. It is much easier to translate a physically threatening mastermind with a substance abuse problem into Nolan's realistic vision of Gotham than it would be for most of the Batman rogue's gallery. He doesn't need to have tube sticking out of his head for us to identify him (and Bane actually shed his addiction to venom and the tubes that came with it ages ago). What's more, if you look at Knightfall it was actually a fairly twisting plotline where Bane manipulated Batman from the shadows, setting up a complex gauntlet of challenges and biding his time to strike when he was at his most vulnerable. Sounds like perfect fodder for a Nolan script to me.

2) I'm getting a little tired of comic fans of a certain age group dumping on everything that came out of comics in the 90s. Yes there was a lot of crap, but can be said of the comic industry's output during any given decade. Venom did not ruin Spiderman 3. A shitty story that attempted to shoehorn Venom into the last twenty minutes of the movie is what killed Spiderman 3 (amongst many other factors).
 

DTWolfwood

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Oct 20, 2009
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need to get a "Must Trust Nolan" stamp!

I'll hold my judgement till its out. I'm gonna be reserved about it till then. Keep expectations low so that you can only me pleasantly surprised!

On a frivolous note, i kinda wished the 3rd movie would have a totally different name too! I mean Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, y not The Cape Crusader? i mean you would totally screw up that any of the movies are even related in like 20 years XD