Ralph C.
This is the....end.
I went to see the movie yesterday with two of my friends. I thought it was okay, even pretty good in some places. The movie seemed to move fast in places, going from one scene to another at a pretty quick pace, then staying with something longer when it seemed necessary. Ledger's Joker was good, I thought. Oldman's Gordon was good. The make-up job for Eckhart's Two-Face was good, and I thought he was pretty good in the role. I hated Bale's Batman voice-- it seemed even worse than in "Batman Begins"-- and there was a couple of times in the movie that I really need subtitles to understand what he was saying. Freeman's Fox was pretty good, too. Of course, the movie had all of it's explosions and fight scenes and such. It was the big-budget super-hero fare we've all come to expect from Hollywood.
This is really the problem.
My friend was outraged at how bad the film was. He made some points that I could see but one thing he said made me think-- the Batman on the screen wasn't a good Batman. Where were Batman's detective skills, for example? I said something of this nature to him when we were talking about the film afterwards:
The problem was Hollywood.
These films are getting too big, they always have to get bigger and bigger. Larger budgets, larger agendas, the erosion of a character's traits and centers so you can fit more glitz and glamor and explosions and big Hollywood-ish moments and shallow emotions into the films, all in the effort to get as many people to watch it as possible. If you want to make a super-hero movie that doesn't make it possible for younger kids to watch that can be accepted, I suppose. But what I should be outraged about, and I'm not (but slowly getting myself there) is Hollywood. I won't watch Titanic or Pearl Harbor or Independence Day or many of these big-budget Hollywood films because they are shallow-- shallow in story, shallow in emotions-- and have the need to thrill and widen people's eyes, elicit "oooh"s and "ahhh"s, to devastate them with the impressiveness of their huge budgets. I don't usually put up with this in many other genres, but I do in this particular genre.
The problem is I'm still a kid at heart, and that part of me thrills to super-heroes.
I've read comics off and on for years. The kind of super-hero stories I've liked are mostly not the kinds of super-hero stories that you find in these movies ("Spider-Man" and "Spider-Man 2" are two exceptions I can think of, though they lacked something for me, too, but not as much as some other super-hero films). I like a smaller story that's richer in a character's nuances-- Batman's detective skills and intelligent, tactical mind, and his Bruce Wayne persona (Bruce is the costume he wears-- Batman is his secret identity); Spider-Man/Peter Parker's scientific smarts and his intelligence, many times clouded out by his guilt and emotions.... I think what happens with these big films is that the subtleties that made it good on the page have to be lost in the adaptation to the screen because there just isn't enough time for it, and the lack of certain things allows the writers/directors to do things in the film for the sake of the plot. If you leave out certain elements of Bruce's character then you can make him a quitter, a person who can give up so easily, as he did in "The Dark Knight". There's a shorthand in big-budget movie making that is necessary so you can include all the explosions, car chases, human chases and other special effects that are the real things people come out to watch on the screen. "Iron Man" did less of this, perhaps because Marvel Studios, ran by Marvel, themselves, had a hand in the development of that movie. Then they made "The Incredible Hulk", which was more like Hollywood-type film-making.
I guess what I am trying to say, and what was one of the things, if not the central thing, bothering my friend, that really should bother me more, too, is Hollywood. The catering of a story to Hollywood and to all of those people who are caught up in the bigness of the big-budget films. Watching the trailer of "Watchmen", I think we are in for more of that.
It is not easy to adapt works from print to screen. There are always elements that are going to be left out because you just can't fit all of a story or a series of stories, or an arc of stories, onto the screen. I am re-thinking my attendance to some of these super-hero films now. I don't go to many movies, anyway, because of what they will most likely lack, for me. Though the kid in me loves super-heroes and their adventures, I wouldn't be surprised if I find that my attendance at those types of films will be limited in the future, and more focus made on the smaller and lower-budgeted animation productions, which are allowed to include more subtleties in their works, or keep focusing on the print works, themselves, to see if I can find what I want.
To me, the best Batman film in the last twenty years has been "Mask Of The Phantasm". They had everything in that film: Action and adventure, subtle character developments, humor, good acting, good plot and story, the essence of the characters intact (which was a general adaptation of the "Batman: Year 2" storyline from DC back in the mid-1980s). The movie was animated-- and it did all this in under 80 minutes.
Why can't Hollywood super-hero movies do that?
This is really the problem.
My friend was outraged at how bad the film was. He made some points that I could see but one thing he said made me think-- the Batman on the screen wasn't a good Batman. Where were Batman's detective skills, for example? I said something of this nature to him when we were talking about the film afterwards:
The problem was Hollywood.
These films are getting too big, they always have to get bigger and bigger. Larger budgets, larger agendas, the erosion of a character's traits and centers so you can fit more glitz and glamor and explosions and big Hollywood-ish moments and shallow emotions into the films, all in the effort to get as many people to watch it as possible. If you want to make a super-hero movie that doesn't make it possible for younger kids to watch that can be accepted, I suppose. But what I should be outraged about, and I'm not (but slowly getting myself there) is Hollywood. I won't watch Titanic or Pearl Harbor or Independence Day or many of these big-budget Hollywood films because they are shallow-- shallow in story, shallow in emotions-- and have the need to thrill and widen people's eyes, elicit "oooh"s and "ahhh"s, to devastate them with the impressiveness of their huge budgets. I don't usually put up with this in many other genres, but I do in this particular genre.
The problem is I'm still a kid at heart, and that part of me thrills to super-heroes.
I've read comics off and on for years. The kind of super-hero stories I've liked are mostly not the kinds of super-hero stories that you find in these movies ("Spider-Man" and "Spider-Man 2" are two exceptions I can think of, though they lacked something for me, too, but not as much as some other super-hero films). I like a smaller story that's richer in a character's nuances-- Batman's detective skills and intelligent, tactical mind, and his Bruce Wayne persona (Bruce is the costume he wears-- Batman is his secret identity); Spider-Man/Peter Parker's scientific smarts and his intelligence, many times clouded out by his guilt and emotions.... I think what happens with these big films is that the subtleties that made it good on the page have to be lost in the adaptation to the screen because there just isn't enough time for it, and the lack of certain things allows the writers/directors to do things in the film for the sake of the plot. If you leave out certain elements of Bruce's character then you can make him a quitter, a person who can give up so easily, as he did in "The Dark Knight". There's a shorthand in big-budget movie making that is necessary so you can include all the explosions, car chases, human chases and other special effects that are the real things people come out to watch on the screen. "Iron Man" did less of this, perhaps because Marvel Studios, ran by Marvel, themselves, had a hand in the development of that movie. Then they made "The Incredible Hulk", which was more like Hollywood-type film-making.
I guess what I am trying to say, and what was one of the things, if not the central thing, bothering my friend, that really should bother me more, too, is Hollywood. The catering of a story to Hollywood and to all of those people who are caught up in the bigness of the big-budget films. Watching the trailer of "Watchmen", I think we are in for more of that.
It is not easy to adapt works from print to screen. There are always elements that are going to be left out because you just can't fit all of a story or a series of stories, or an arc of stories, onto the screen. I am re-thinking my attendance to some of these super-hero films now. I don't go to many movies, anyway, because of what they will most likely lack, for me. Though the kid in me loves super-heroes and their adventures, I wouldn't be surprised if I find that my attendance at those types of films will be limited in the future, and more focus made on the smaller and lower-budgeted animation productions, which are allowed to include more subtleties in their works, or keep focusing on the print works, themselves, to see if I can find what I want.
To me, the best Batman film in the last twenty years has been "Mask Of The Phantasm". They had everything in that film: Action and adventure, subtle character developments, humor, good acting, good plot and story, the essence of the characters intact (which was a general adaptation of the "Batman: Year 2" storyline from DC back in the mid-1980s). The movie was animated-- and it did all this in under 80 minutes.
Why can't Hollywood super-hero movies do that?
