Social War Room Lounge v260: Pls no bully Geg

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I will say comic book movies are well outside of my wheelhouse so I could be an extreme outlier. For the record, it's wrong to say no respected critics called the film bad. David Denby who is a very respected critic for the New Yorker wrote about it quite negatively. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/07/21/past-shock
 
essie said:
I can't really think of much to say about Joker because I found it so uninteresting. Persepolis is a pretty leftist comic book film but I'd have to think about others too.
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Joaquin Phoenix is really amazing in the movie but other than that I wasn't a huge fan. It feels like the film for the era in that it embodies a lot of populist anxieties but like real world populist anxieties it feels a bit confused and muddied. The backlash against the film seemed to me because it was perceived as giving voice to right wing populism when in practice it was really leftist populism but I don't think that as a film it had a very coherent message.
essie said:
Maybe a problem for me is I feel so much love for the Joker and don't find him irredeemable. I think he is the one who exposes the dangerous hyper masculinity of Batman and truly does seem himself in that character. I think that character has such a remarkable way of exuding the pain that comes from rejection or oppression, when he is caught off guard by Gamble calling him a freak and he seems genuinely hurt by it that is beautiful. But the way he is treated by the film, as you said, irredeemable, rubs me the wrong way.
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In defense of that portrayal of the Joker he is presented as pointing out hypocrisies in the system. The example is his "part of the plan" speech. Another interesting detail is that at multiple points of the film he's seen as employing mentally ill henchman who, by their association with the Joker, lead them to being brutally and unjustly treated by the authorities; Dent uses his two headed coin to trick the guy involved in the mayoral assassination attempt into thinking Dent's gambling with his life and after the capture of the Joker the pleas of the henchman with the bomb implanted in him go unheeded until its too late.
 
essie said:
Your point is well taken. I think to me the fundamental issue with The Dark Knight is that by virtue of it being a superhero property it can't explore the gray area here and thus lends itself to projection. If the point of Alfred's story and Batman's use of surveillance is to show that heroes are corrupted i don't think it goes far enough to outline this and would think Batman should be the one who turns into a villain like Two Face. Of course a studio can't do this because of a need for a sequel and marketing, maybe.

Outside of whatever issues I have with the politics of the film I still find it to be loud, poorly paced and frustratingly wastes the pathos that Joker taps into by resolving his relationship with Batman through fighting.
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Essie a studio wouldn’t turn Batman into a villain like Two Face because it literally destroys the entire character. It has literally nothing to do with “the studio making more movies.” Youd destroy the character and decades worth of mythos that’s built in. It just doesn’t make sense at all.

batman using surveillance is nothing like two face or the joker. Those two are straight up murderers and will kill just about anyone who gets In their way.
 
StoneColdSteveAustin said:
Essie a studio wouldn’t turn Batman into a villain like Two Face because it literally destroys the entire character. It has literally nothing to do with “the studio making more movies.” Youd destroy the character and decades worth of mythos that’s built in. It just doesn’t make sense at all.

batman using surveillance is nothing like two face or the joker. Those two are straight up murderers and will kill just about anyone who gets In their way.
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Yes, that is exactly my point. I know a studio would never turn Batman into a villain for reasons of canon, considerations like this have no place in serious art, to me.
 
essie said:
Maybe a problem for me is I feel so much love for the Joker and don't find him irredeemable. I think he is the one who exposes the dangerous hyper masculinity of Batman and truly does seem himself in that character. I think that character has such a remarkable way of exuding the pain that comes from rejection or oppression, when he is caught off guard by Gamble calling him a freak and he seems genuinely hurt by it that is beautiful. But the way he is treated by the film, as you said, irredeemable, rubs me the wrong way.
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I find it very disturbing how people sympathize with the Joker, and this is coming from someone who used him as an av for 10 years and he is my favorite villain of all time. You even seem to find love for him.

The Joker is a complete psychopath. He has no emotions for people, and everything is a game to him. He sees people as prey, as pawns, as pieces on a movie set to be used, abused and moved around for his own amusement. He is in a way, worse than evil, as an evil person can at least be sniffed out through simple eye contact. The worst part about pure psychopaths is you can't even tell that they are psychopaths. They hide the normal emotional and facial expressions we all know and are able to read. Sure, the Joker makes a mockery of this, with his clown make up which actually accentuates his face at times, especially the laugh and smile (The Climax of his pure Joy from pulling one over on people) it still slides by a lot of people.

Like most legitimate psychopaths, the Joker is extremely charismatic, through this he is able to play people, against themselves, against others, and even for just his own tricks. He is the most dangerous type of criminal type, and it's right in everyone's faces. No real motive, no objective, pure chaos encapsulated.
 
Jack V Savage said:
It was boring is a correct subjective judgment, but it was absurdly implausible is not. Of course, plausibility isn't necessary for a movie to be good, but it did make it impossible to take it seriously, which it seems to ask.
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I don't blame you but as someone who grew up with the animated series it really knocked it out of the park for me. The balance it struck made it feel really rooted in the Batman mythos and willing to engage in comic book logic while also feeling a lot more grounded than most Batman fiction.

As a movie it really felt like a proper crack at "what if Batman and the Joker were real?" which requires certain liberties to be taken but Nolan took a lot less than most comic book movies do. But to your point most comic book movies have a lighter, more comedic tone which ends to give them more slack with suspension of disbelief.
 
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essie said:
Batman Returns is my favorite superhero movie lol.
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Ugh. I really can't say much good about it, from tone (Burton's usual strength) to plot (Burton's constant weakness).

But it's better than the average superhero film just based on production value. There are only a few films I would say are "good" in the genre: the Nolan trilogy, the first Iron Man, the GotG movies, Joker, Man of Steel, and...well, I guess that's it. Watchmen had some positive things but was superheroically boring. The Avenger movies are trash.
 
StoneColdSteveAustin said:
I’m sorry but I have no idea what this means.
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It means that, as I was saying, to me by virtue of Batman existing as a superhero film designed for big commerce it can't achieve the interesting heights of serious art.
 
Trotsky said:
I just don't get how the Burton Batmans have retained positive appraisals through time.

They're just bad, particular Batman Returns.

Personally, I hate everything Tim Burton has done (meh, Ed Scissorhands was okay). I absolutely loathe that intersection between whimsy and gothic horror. And a grown man doing that stuff into his sixties just strikes me as sad.
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I found some his stuff meh to stuff, not my style, and not sure if I would still like them. But I did like Beatle juice at the time. His Batman stuff was just bad.
 
Sketch said:
I find it very disturbing how people sympathize with the Joker, and this is coming from someone who used him as an av for 10 years and he is my favorite villain of all time. You even seem to find love for him.

The Joker is a complete psychopath. He has no emotions for people, and everything is a game to him. He sees people as prey, as pawns, as pieces on a movie set to be used, abused and moved around for his own amusement. He is in a way, worse than evil, as an evil person can at least be sniffed out through simple eye contact. The worst part about pure psychopaths is you can't even tell that they are psychopaths. They hide the normal emotional and facial expressions we all know and are able to read. Sure, the Joker makes a mockery of this, with his clown make up which actually accentuates his face at times, especially the laugh and smile (The Climax of his pure Joy from pulling one over on people) it still slides by a lot of people.

Like most legitimate psychopaths, the Joker is extremely charismatic, through this he is able to play people, against themselves, against others, and even for just his own tricks. He is the most dangerous type of criminal type, and it's right in everyone's faces. No real motive, no objective, pure chaos encapsulated.
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Sorry, like four people are disagreeing with me so the speed at which I can reply to all of these is limited lol. He has emotions for Batman, tells him he loves him and gives him earnest advice about how society treats outcasts. I would think his motive is to destroy a system that he finds to be oppressive. The fact that he murders people doesn't really move me considering he is a movie character lol.
 
Khabib Khanate said:
I don't blame you but as someone who grew up with the animated series it really knocked it out of the park for me. The balance it struck made it feel really rooted in the Batman mythos and willing to engage in comic book logic while also feeling a lot more grounded than most Batman fiction.

As a movie it really felt like a proper crack at "what if Batman and the Joker were real?" which requires certain liberties to be taken but Nolan took a lot less than most comic book movies do. But to your point most comic book movies has a lighter, more comedic tone which ends to give them more slack with suspension of disbelief.
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Bingo in re BTAS. If you grew up with BTAS, or to a lesser extent the Superman counterpart, you became used to a human element to the subject that was sorely missing from the big screen until Nolan. I thought they did a respectable job trying to do the same for Superman in Man of Steel, but it's much harder to strike that balance of realism when you're dealing with flying aliens and shit.
 
Trotsky said:
Ugh. I really can't say much good about it, from tone (Burton's usual strength) to plot (Burton's constant weakness).

But it's better than the average superhero film just based on production value. There are only a few films I would say are "good" in the genre: the Nolan trilogy, the first Iron Man, the GotG movies, Joker, Man of Steel, and...well, I guess that's it. Watchmen had some positive things but was superheroically boring. The Avenger movies are trash.
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Every single MCU film is better than anything Burton has done in the genre. X-men were better (and there was some big misses there), the crow is better, Shazam is prob better (have not seen it).
 
essie said:
It means that, as I was saying, to me by virtue of Batman existing as a superhero film designed for big commerce it can't achieve the interesting heights of serious art.
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ah okay now it makes more sense.

you originally said because a studio won’t turn batman “bad” (canon considerations) you think it loses some of its artistic abilities.


Why would batman turn bad though? The idea doesn’t even make sense to begin with.
 
Khabib Khanate said:
Guy was a creep, he'd never stop talking about "Asian snatch"
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He was one of the more perpetually hostile and intense posters on here. His posts always struck me as a white collar dude going through a midlife crisis, amped up on coke and angry over culture war stuff. Plus the Asian prostitutes thing.
 
essie said:
I will say comic book movies are well outside of my wheelhouse so I could be an extreme outlier. For the record, it's wrong to say no respected critics called the film bad. David Denby who is a very respected critic for the New Yorker wrote about it quite negatively. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/07/21/past-shock
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Joe Morgenstern was also pretty down on it. I think the hype campaign threw fairy dust in a lot of people's eyes at the time, and I'd guess that most re-evaluations would be much more negative. Certainly not comparable to the Burton takes on Batman.
 
StoneColdSteveAustin said:
ah okay now it makes more sense.

you originally said because a studio won’t turn batman “bad” (canon considerations) you think it loses some of its artistic abilities.


Why would batman turn bad though? The idea doesn’t even make sense to begin with.
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I guess they would turn him bad if the point of the film was that the things he believes in are bad, such as the scene I pointed to. I agree that it doesn't make sense for the film to turn him bad if they don't see those things as being bad.
 
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