Batman

So, currently the whole Batman movie franchise is kinda deadish. So I figure it's time for a reboot.

And I figure that if you just release another dark gravelly voiced Batman it won't stand out against it's previous incarnations.

So what I think is it should be more along the lines of if a comic book from the 80s, met with the 90s animated show......except it's live action. But the camera framing, and Batman's personality are more comic book than theatrical. Even in the 1989 Batman, he was posing, and doing movie stuff.

This would be a movie where the city itself is dark and brooding, Batman is dark and brooding, but the rest of the elements of the movie are not.

The story would actually center around Commisioner Gordon. He's trying to work together with attorney Harvey Dent in prosecuting Selina Kyle....a high level cat burglar who was caught stealing a priceless diamomd necklace.

But during their meeting bullets reign on the windows of the office. Gordon and Dent duck behind the desk, and avoid any fatal injuries. And that's when a bomb is thrown into the room. They try to run out of the room, and Gordon escapes, but Dent is badly burned on half his body.

Every cop in the building pours out of the building, guns drawn to find no one. The only thing they find is a burning red flag thats held on the door by a knife.

And that's the basis of the film. Gordon trying to do his job, and occasionally meeting up with Batman, but is being targeted by an unknown assasin who keeps intentionally not killing Gordon, but leaving behind two things. The first is the transformation of a new super villain (so we see the rise of the penguin, two-face, catwoman, bane) but also a burning red flag stabbed onto a nearby surface with a knife. Never any finger prints.

Gordon is INSISTANT that this is the work of the Joker, and has his cell at Arkham Asylum placed under extra security. And everytime he's shown video evidence of Joker not only not leaving his cell, but also having a minimum of 20 eye witnesses at all times. Despite Gordons insistance, it WASN'T Joker.

Batman knows it's not Joker. Joker would target innocent civilians. Use them as hostages. Whoever is targeting Gordon is being very deliberate.

At the same time, all of these new super villains are causing chaos for Batman. He's having to go stop Two-Face, and Riddler, and Mr Freeze, and Bane, and Penguin.....and all these other super villains that are coming from the aftermath of various attempts to kill Gordon in a way that feel deliberately failed.

So while Batman is off fighting those villains, we pop in from time to time to see his fights, but our perspective is with Gordon. He is trying to get a handle on things, and that's who we follow.

The whole thing feels like a game of chess. Just to get Gordon into positions that are more and more vunerable. Easier to attack him from every angle. Making it more obvious by the minute that he doesn't even know who his attacker is, but he's so exposed that the lethal blow could come from any angle, at any moment, without warning. Still Gordon presses on.

Thats when Batman swoops in, grabs him, and swoops him to a far away safety. Up high in the shadows. In the rafters of an industrial plant.

Gordon is scared out of his mind, but says they must press on. They must find the man trying to kill him, and cause chaos in the city. That's when Batmsn says "But Commisioner...you've already found him." And pushes Gordon off the ledge, into a vat of acid below. Then swings off crashing through the window, as the building explodes.

Fade to black. To be continued.

And the second movie, would retell all of those events from Batmans perspective. We'd see him fight all those fights we missed out on. And in the end, we'd see Batman stalk the assasin, and realize that the reason he was targeting Gordon so much was to distract the city resources from prosecuting criminals. This guy was hired by a mob boss, who was sick of his low level crime thwarted. So the mob boss was able to take blood of batman from previous encounters with the joker, and clone his DNA. Essentially creating a clone Batman. But instead of dressing like Batman, he just posseses Batmans traits. Such as athletism, and dectective work. He is every bit as skilled and intelligent as Batman. Wearing all black, with a red cape. And to leave a calling card,he rips off his cape, stabs it to a nearby wall, and sets it on fire.

Batman figures out the only way to get this guy to come out of hiding is to fake Gordons death. So he swoops Gordon into an industrial plant, pushes Gordon off the ledge into a vat of acid, and leaps out before this red cape blows the building up. What red cape never sees is Gordon submerged in the vat of acid. He only sees Batman and Gordon go in, but only Batman come out. The acid isn't harmful at all, and saves Gordon. But from his perdpective, Batman is his attempted killer.

This leads to a fight scene with red cape and Batman. Maybe on some rooftops. You see the fight end when red cape falls to his death.

It's only after the media report on what happened that Gordon speaks to Batman again.

And when asked why Batman tricked him, Batman tells Gordon "I needed you dead. But more importantly, I needed you safe. If anyone, even you, knew that you were working with me, the attacks would have continued. With you dead, and also afraid of me, I knew you'd go into hiding, and thus not seen."

That's when they leave the alley, only to see in the distance a red burning cape, stabbed onto a wall.

Fade to black.

Woah! Holy 🦇 💩! Huge!

Did anyone else pick up and read issue #1? I did, but was somewhat underwhelmed. Not sure if I will stick with the series. The art and some of the action sequences were well done though.

Did anyone pick up and read the first issue? I thought it was quite well done and a nice return to the 'Long Halloween' series.

I have noticed that almost nobody on Lemmy is very good at video games, so I am throwing this glove toss to the ground as a challenge. Crush these Batman Returns on the Super Nintendo achievements (you will fail, being poor at videogames) and support the community around this game. If you are less bad at videogames and want to see "how it is done" I suggest this speedrun, but it won't help 99.76% of the gamers on Lemmy who don't even know what tech is, in beat-em-up/ fighting games they aren't aware of it. We'll watch as the so called proud "BATMAN" fans of "lemmy, a can't play videogame so good community" downvote and hate upon this Batman Returns themed achievement set, just because they don't respect Michael Keaton's acting on Super Nintendo.

It's honestly just Jokerfying (who isn't even in this game) that I am apparently in the only 100ish gamers who have any of the good Batman Achievements for this entire game.

Alfred isn't even in this game because he was deemed TOO LIKELY to be KILLED by an infinite punch cancel chain, which would have raised the game's rating to "T for Teenengarten" in Germany.

Saw this at a local store, and couldn't stop laughing. Although, his love relationship with Catwoman, a woman in leather with a whip, makes a lot more sense now.

Classic 1966 Batman & Robin: Adam West and Burt Ward, among my favorite iterations of the dynamic duo.

Burt Ward: "There are several fine actors who have portrayed Batman in films. In my eyes, there was only one real Batman. That is and always will be Adam West. He was truly the Bright Knight."

I'm currently rewatching Batman: The Animated Series and noticed in the episode Feats of Clay that the assistant (I couldn't remember his name) of Matt Hagen seems to be a little bit more affectionate than you'd usually see in a friend. I could be seeing things but I never noticed that as a kid.

If true that would make the story even more sad. But I guess good for him for getting out of that abusive relationship. Matt sees him mourning in the end and just laughs madly.

Now I wonder what else I've missed. I was wondering about Maven and Selina Kyle but they seem to be more distant. Not to mention Selina's open flirtations with Bruce and Batman.

I've watched a few episodes already and hope to watch the rest in the next few days, so without spoilers how are people enjoying the show?

I like when characters are clearly defined. You need a clear baseline of a starting point of who these characters are, and where they come from. Their personality can change over time, but not WHO they are. So things like age (unless you plan to age the entire universe equally), facial features, race, gender, eye color, hair color, body size, body shape. These are all things that need to be consistant no matter how many times you reboot the series. Peter Parker has been a high school/early college aged skinny white boy who just happens to be Spiderman. Batman is always an early 40s, maybe mid 30s rich businessman, who happens to be Batman.

When they wanted to make a black kid as Spiderman, they created a new character. I'm not sure if it's just for the video games (I don't regularly read comics, and I haven't seen him in any movies), they created Miles Morales. A NEW CHARACTER, and the city doesn't know Spidermans identity. They've seen him change his costume before. So he can "be" Spiderman, but he's a different physical person. And that's fine. That's how you SHOULD go about making a change to who the super hero is, without doing a hard reset on the universe.

But Catwoman? She's all over the place. Sometimes she's white, sometimes she's black, sometimes she's young, sometimes she's old, sometimes she's a villain, sometimes she's a hero, and then one time for no reason at all they had her play basketball.....the nails I get, because she's CATwoman, but why the whip? Sometimes she has the whip, sometimes not. Pick a lane!!! God damn! Are there multiple catwomen? Am I supposed to believe there's an entire commitee of women who's sole goal in life is to point out how stupid Batman is, that he's not noticing that every time he runs into Catwoman, she's clearly a different person? Sometimes she loves Batman, sometimes she's lesbian. Sometimes she's anti-social. Sometimes she teams up with other villians. Sometimes she teams up with Batman.

NO! FIGURE IT OUT DC!!! She's Selina Kyle. That's your starting point. If I'm to believe in this character, you need to define who she is. If there are multiple catwomen, that needs to be explained.

You don't see Harley Quinn changing drastic things about her to the point of being unrecognizable. I remember being in the theater watching The Dark Knight Rises, and thinking "Huh. A woman wearing all black, who's a cat burglar. Why don't they just replace this character with Catwoman???"

It wasn't until later in the movie when I pieced together that she WAS supposed to be Catwoman.

THIS was the biggest "WTF ARE YOU DOING???" moment I had about the catwoman character. Scarecrow was clearly defined. Joker was clearly defined. Two face was clearly defined. All these characters there was no mistake who it was. Even Robin at the end of the movie didn't get a clear "IS that Robin, or not???"

But Catwoman only became apperent about halfway through the movie. She had no connection or imagery OF cats. It's actually WORSE than the 1993 Super Mario Bros movie, when you saw the Goombas. At least there they explained "Hey, these are the goombas." They never explained why some of them had long lizard faces, and some had round heads......but they used the word "Goomba" right in the introduction. With Catwoman, they NEVER said "Catwoman" the entire movie.

And it doesn't help things that the 2004 Catwoman movie with Halle Berry was just......just so bad. I love Halle Berry, but come on. I think even she'd admit that was a low point in her career creatively.

The 1992 Batman Returns is THE definitive Catwoman. THAT'S how you do it.

There's also the campy 1960s tv show version of Catwoman. Considering the rest of the show, Catwoman was fine here. Nothing too remarkable, but then again nothing from that version was. Other than maybe Ceasar Romero not shaving before putting on Joker face paint. I mean really. Did he never see the character? Joker does NOT have facial hair!

My only theory is that it's multiple women, and they're all Catwoman. Batman, and the audience are treated like they don't see the constant shifting in who that is.

And yes, I'm also upset by Batman and Robin. All of it. Just.....the whole movie. Mr Freeze is not some hulking power lifter. Poison Ivy was played alright I guess. Robin is not some dude in his 40s. He's supposed to be like 13. And yes, I realize that kind of makes Bruce Wayne/Batman a little suspicious that he's a grown ass man hanging out with this random 8th grader. Even moreso when you realize he's hanging out with him to get help from this boy fighting the most psychotic maniacs in Gotham.

"Ok, Robin. We've got to stop the Joker. He's going to blow up the bank. He's going to have armed henchmen all over the ground. He's going to have bombs inside the bank. Here's a big stick."

Ok, I'm losing focus here, and the more I type the more I realize how weird the Batman universe is.

So I have a sizeable dvd collection. I'll often go to resale shops, and be like "Oh, a George Carlin DVD? $3? Yes please!" and then not watch it for years.

So I've had Batman, Batman Returns, and Batman Forever in my collection FOREVER. I refuse to buy Batman & Robin on the grounds that it's Batman & Robin.

Well anyways, last night I was bored, and needed to watch something new while I cleaned my room. I decided to watch Batman Forever. I remember loving it as a kid, and HATING Batman & Robin. So I figured "Well, let's see if this holds up to my childhood memories...."

Spoiler alert, they did not....but it wasn't terrible either.

So, this is the first Batman movie without Micheal Keaton, without Tim Burton, and maybe without Danny Elfman? The music certainly didn't feel like Elfman.

So the immediate thing I dislike about this movie is, despite previously appearing in the series as Harvey Dent (previously played by a black actor, and now played by Tommy Lee Jones, which is confusing right from the start), you NEVER see why Harvey Dent went crazy. You see this really bizarre scene of acid being thrown on Harvey Dent, and him "covering up half his face" with a manilla envelope.......but the liquid clearly splashes his whole face.

All of this is shown to the viewer through GNN (a CNN parody where GNN stands for Gothham News Network). The weird thing is, this is happening in a court of law. GNN is just broadcasting Harvey Dent, Attorney at Law doing his job in court. They had NO REASON to know something crazy would happen. And as it happens, Batman is just sitting among the spectators. He's not on trial. He's not beyond the line that only court participants go. He's behind that line, as a spectator. And again, nobody knew crazy things were going to happen to Harvey Dent, the attorney. Batman just came into the courtroom, took a seat, and was watching a random court case play out. WHY???

So Dent gets splashed with the acid, and for some reason blames Batman???

And now he's evil. Nothing to explain why he has any sense of duality. Nothing to explain his coin. Nothing to explain why only half his face was burned. I get that he got burned, but nothing is explained why he's EVIL now. On top of that, he plays the role like a combination of Ceasar Romeros Joker, and Jack Nicholsons Joker........except he's NOT the Joker. He's Harvey Dent/Two Face. He misses the point of the role entirely. The closest he comes is in the early parts of the movie, when he says to a bank security guard "Heads, you live...tails, you die". Flips it, comes up heads. Throws the guard into a vault, to which the guard says "I thought heads means I live?" and Two Face says "Ah, too true. You WILL live....to be bat-bait!"

THAT'S NOT TWO FACE!!! Either way, he expects the guard to die. The whole point of the coin is to ease Harvey Dents empathy, while also satiating Two Face's bloodlust. In this movie, both outcomes leads to bloodlust in some form. There's even a scene later in the film where he keeps flipping the coin until he gets tails. WHATS THE FUCKING POINT THEN??? Joel Shoemacker and Tommy Lee Jones both missed the point entirely of the character. If I were writting this script, I'd have chosen another secondary villain. More on that later.

The Riddler is played by Jim Carry. Now The Riddler is a very unique character which can be played a bunch of ways. You can play him dark, you can play him cartoony, you can play him mysterious, you can play him as an figure you never even see. Jim Carry takes it more in a cartoonish over the top mid-90s Jim Carry style performance. I've heard rumors that originally the role was meant for Robin Williams, and I certainly could see him playing the role almost the exact same way. I even saw a short video on youtube clipped from an interview recorded in the 90s where he talks about how sometimes Hollywood uses you and your talents as bait. At one time Jack Nicholson was supposed to play the Joker in Batman 89, and then backed out. So they said "We'll just give it to Robin Williams if you back out", and suddenly Jack Nicholson was back in. You could really hear the hurt in his voice when he said "Sometimes they use you. They promise you things they never meant to give you, all so someone else can make a little extra on their paycheck. But maybe one day I'll be cast. Maybe as The Riddler."

Jim Carry played the role expertly however. For what this film was trying to be, he played the role exactly how he should. It would be interesting to see how he'd play it AFTER hollywood discovered he can do drama and not just "unsanctioned baffoonary", as Tommy Lee Jones put it.

The citys atmosphere was WAAAAAAY off. The first two films depicted Gotham as being a dark brooding city, where crime and depression loomed in every corner. Batman Forever deals almost exclusively in neon bright colors. At one point an alley became a blacklight rave. It made NO SENSE!!!

What's worse, is they could have played into the colors with the story they have, if they simply depicted the city with the same dark depressing tones, until the city gets ahold of Edward Nigmas brain drain machine. You could see the depressing greys and blacks of the city contrast slowly at first, and then more and more with the bright neon green. As each household plugs in, the city gets a little more neon bright. Signifying the population treating their depression with this new brain drain machine. All the while the viewer knows how it's cheery bright happy visuals represent something far darker. And that brings me back to two-face. Remember when I said he shouldn't even be in this movie? Well, he really didn't have any character development, or plan, or motivation besides "kill batman". So what if we swapped him out for a different villain.

I'm thinking The Riddler works with Mr Freeze. As the city turns more and more green with brain drain machines in every house, it means more and more population is distracted and thus unable to pay attention to the real dangers around them. More and more the Riddlers machine becomes increasingly a metaphore for the distraction that TV had become by the 90s. Taken to the extreme, the city becomes a society of couch bound zombies, leaving the streets abandoned. I'm thinking Robin Williams could have played Mr Freeze. A character only interested in saving his wife, and when Batman destroys the only method to allow her to be healed, he instead diverts his attention to working with The Riddler. The Riddler clears the streets of opposition, and in return he gains mental information of the citizens watching. And Mr Freeze gets to set the abandoned city into a sub zero wasteland to allow his wife to comfortably walk the streets. His freezing could have turned the city neon blue. So the skies are neon green, the streets are neon blue, and Batman has to save the city. I think that works better on every level.

Batman is played by Val Kilmer. He plays an alright Batman, but a great Bruce Wayne. Certainly a downgrade from previous films, but not the worst (for that, see George Clooney. The smug asshole).

Nichole Kidman is here in a truely forgetable role. She's just another chick that wants to fuck Batman. They play her character as obsessed with duality, but she has no real interest in Bruce Wayne. Only Batman......and god damn does she throw herself at him. Truely awful writing. Her performance is fine for what they wanted her to do. It's just what they wanted her to do serves no purpose, and again misses the point of the role they've laid out for her.

Chris something plays Robin. Which ultimately is weird for two reasons. First, he's way too old to be Robin. Robin is supposed to be like 14. Here he's like 23. Why is he getting forced to live with Bruce if he's an adult? At this point in the 90s, I'd have cast Joseph Gordon Levit. Oddly enough he'd be cast as "Robin" in the nolan films.......again, when he was far too old. Although I do like that they stayed true to the comics visual style of Robin in the circus portion of the film, and stayed true to the source material for his backstory. I kinda wish that was just his outfit in the movie, instead of that metalic look.

BAT NIPPLES!!! BAT NIPPLES!!!

Alfred crushed it as always.

I forgot all about sugar and spice. I was like "sugar looks firmiliar. I wonder if she's done anything else.......holy shit that's drew barrymore. What the fuck is she doing playing such a bit part???" I bet you she just loved Batman, and wanted anything to do with this film, and the directors were like "Yeah, all we got is this bit part, but it's way below your talents, and..." "I'LL TAKE IT!!!" I bet that's how that went.

The batmobile just offends me. The previous one was just perfect. Just don't change anything......oh, I see, it needed neon colors too. Probably so you could sell new toys. Which is another thing this movie suffers from. Everything is blatently made just for the sake of merchandising it. Batman 89 was a merchandise juggernaut, and all you needed was a black shirt, and a yellow bat symbol on the chest. Sold like a billion of those!

Did we even see commishioner gordon?

Maybe it's more of a modern film style, but I feel like these films were only thought of one at a time, rather than connecting 4 films as one continuous story. I feel like Joker should have made a small cameo at the end of this movie, to set up for his big return in the 4th movie. Replace Nichole Kidman's character in this movie with Dr Herleen Quinzel. Returning Jack Nicholson as the Joker. And the two of them would be the main villains of the 5th movie "Revenge on Batman"

God damnit hollywood! Get your shit together!!!

I’m surprised how good this looks. It appears to be combining the BtAS aesthetic with some modern darkness. I’m cautiously optimistic. How about others?

cross-posted from: https://reddthat.com/post/19582774

Batman: The Last Halloween To Conclude the Long Halloween Trilogy - IGN

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/11755652

If The Dark Knight felt like a relentless crime thriller inspired by the cinema of Michael Mann, The Dark Knight Rises explored the spiritual and emotional journey of Christian Bale’s version of Bruce Wayne. By connecting to the storyline involving the League of Shadows first introduced in Batman Begins, Nolan and his brother Jonathan Nolan were able to bring their interpretation of the caped crusader to a satisfying conclusion. Although the film satisfied story beats that they had established at the beginning of the trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises drew inspiration from Charles Dickens’ classic novel A Tale of Two Cities.

...

Dickens’ novel examined how it could be possible for one city to have two classes of citizens with completely different experiences. A Tale of Two Cities focuses on the experiences of both a wealthy family and an English barrister in the years leading up to the Reign of Terror, in which revolutionaries stormed Paris and executed members of the upper class. Jonathan Nolan cited the sociopolitical themes of A Tale of Two Cities as a primary influence on The Dark Knight Rises. He stated that when looking for “good literature for inspiration,” he found that A Tale of Two Cities was a "harrowing portrait of a relatable, recognizable civilization that completely folded to pieces with the terrors." Similar to the French revolutionaries who were infuriated by the wealth gap, the prisoners Bane frees in The Dark Knight Rises have a justified reason for their anger; it is revealed to them that Dent’s crimes were covered up, and that his entire legacy is itself a lie.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/15445069

"Batman: Caped Crusader" Premieres Aug. 1, 2024 On Prime Video, First Images Revealed

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/12393006

Sequel is a novel.