In less than 48 hours, I'm going to be seeing
The Dark Knight Rises. I'm not a fan of Nolan's Batman by any means, so I'm basically seeing it for completist purposes. I've seen the first two in theaters, and I just want to satisfy my curiosity. Plus, after the way I loved
Avengers and
Amazing Spider-Man, I feel like this has been the best year for superhero movies thus far and I'm hoping to get lucky with this one. Maybe I'll like it.
But what I'd like to talk about right now are my reasons for not being a fan of the Nolan Batmans, and how that ties into a larger issue I have with comic books and comic-book movies. I've frequently seen my argument against these movies be dismissed with "You don't like it because it's too dark," especially in light of my championing a movie like
Avengers. That's reductive at best, and is ridiculous. It's not about "dark," and it never was. You know what my favorite comic book movie pre-
Thor was?
That's right. It was
The Crow. You know, that movie where Eric Draven comes back from the dead to avenge his murder and the murder/rape of his girlfriend by killing everyone involved? Really, roses and puppies, that movie is.
Hey, know what one of my favorite comics in recent years is?
CRIMINAL by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. A noir comic. And if you know about noir, you know going in that things do not end on a bright note, pretty much at any time.
All this goes to say, I'm sick of my argument against the Nolanverse being reduced to "It's dark." That's not my argument. It never was. So what
is my problem with them?
I can't buy into them. And before I get into that, I just want to get this out of the way. Look, I'm not the type of comic book fan that judges the movies based on their adherence to the details of the comics. If I were, I'd hate... well, everything. No, I don't even judge
comics based on their strict adherence to continuity, so why would I judge comic book movies that way? These heroes are serialized characters, and they're open to a variety of interpretations.
So I really only judge superhero movies by two things: (1) how much they capture the spirit and the magic of the character, and (2) how little it takes me out of the story, which is to say how much it gets me immersed in what I'm watching and how long it keeps me there.
The first criterion is important when watching these movies for the first time, but is less important in subsequent viewings (basically, the novelty gets lost. If you find a superhero movie where the "magic" stays on after 10 viewings, please tell me. Also, I've only seen
Avengers four times.). The second is just important to watching
any movie, period. Now, you can make up for the lack of the second criterion with an influx of the first (prime example that was pointed out to me earlier today: there's no way that T-Rex in
Jurassic Park should have gotten into that building, but it's too awesome not to do), but overall, especially on rewatching, if you don't fulfill the second criterion, you're just taking us out of the story.
And that's where I stand with Nolan's Batmans. I can't get into the story, pretty much at all.
In
Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne spends over an hour of our movie time training to be a ninja. He practices all these ninja moves, but when he becomes Batman, what does he do? Put on the most constricting mobility-hindering suit possible.
I know it's an aesthetic gripe. I'm aware of that. But it's a big glaring plot hole, and it's constantly there on the screen. The annoying thing is that Nolan's first film is filled to the brim with great actors who deliver equally great performances (except for Katie Holmes), but the suit is right there, calling attention to itself. You're supposed to find this man frightening, but nothing about him is frightening. He's in a Halloween suit. He can't turn his neck. The entire movie spends so much time establishing how "grounded" and "realistic" it is, but the very way Batman is presented is "realistic" in a Hollywood point of view, which is not at all "believable," but more "not fantastic." It wouldn't even be so glaring if Jim Gordon didn't get so much screen time. How is who's supposed to be the world's most perfect human wearing body armor from head to toe while the
old policeman next to him is only wearing a bulletproof vest?
Seriously, I rewatched
Batman Begins recently and actually thought it was pretty good, up till the point that he put the suit on, and then it was done. I was taken out of the story, and I couldn't get back in to the story.
"But Duy," you ask, "as you say, you can make up for lack of tightness in the story if it captures the magic. Didn't it do that for you? After all, Batman had a bunch of gadgets and a cool tank."
Well, no, frankly, it didn't do that for me, and that's the part where my comic prejudices come into play. Batman is many things, and surely, being "Mr. Gadgets" is a fair interpretation, but it's not mine. To me, Batman was made cool by the fact that he had a keen detective mind (barely present in
Begins) and was the world's best physical specimen, the DC Universe's answer to Captain America.
To me, the gadgets don't make Batman cool; it's the other way around. They're cool because Batman uses them. But that's not the case with Bat-Bale, who is so reliant upon all his gadgets. And again, that's fair if you like that interpretation of Batman, but considering that he spent over an hour of movie time learning how to be a fighting machine, I don't think you can blame me for being disappointed that he eschewed it for the chance to be James Bond with gadgets.
The Dark Knight was even worse, because in addition to all of that, he would continually lose in it. The first scene he's in, he gets bitten by a dog. Hardly a challenge for the Caped Crusader. The final scene he's in, he falls two stories and gets knocked out, despite his heavy body armor (funnily enough, if he didn't have that heavy body armor, he'd have been able to right himself). There's just nothing spectacular about this Batman beyond his gadgets, and I just find the overreliance on gadgets and weapons kinda lame. So to me, he doesn't fit criterion 1 at all — much less so when you consider that
Captain America would come out next year.
But what about criterion 2? Look, I've never seen
The Dark Knight again, but I remember two things about it right off the bat whenever anyone asks me what I think of it, and one of them is the big plot hole in the middle, where Gordon fakes his death, then Batman chases the Joker around Gothamm, intentionally crashes his bike, intentionally knocks himself unconscious (which he wouldn't have to, if he were wearing Captain America style clothing and were able to you know, right himself), so that Joker comes
this close to killing him, so Gordon could reveal that he
didn't die, and pull a gun on Joker int he nick of time, thus saving Batman. But no, this was all a plan! Honest!
It's just things like this that continually take me out of the story, and if I'm not able to immerse myself in the story, I can't say I'm a fan of it, can I? Nolan just asks us to take the movie too seriously, but I think superheroes are inherently absurd. For further explanation, let's go to David Mazzucchelli, from his BATMAN: YEAR ONE afterword.
(By the way, I actually did like
Dark Knight the first time. The second thing I remember about it is Heath Ledger's performance, which was transcendent and amazing. Then again, it's probably a bad sign that the first two things I think of are plot holes and the villain.)
When I've said this to people, I've often received the defense of "Well, what do you expect? It's a superhero movie." But I think that's unfair to superhero movies. Why should we hold them to a lower standard because they're superhero movies? They should still be logical as they're presented to us, with the world and the characters and their actions being congruous with each other. You can present to me the most unrealistic scenario, and as long as it's in line with the world that's been presented to us and I can empathize with the characters' actions and reactions, as long as the events have sound progressive logic to them, I would buy into the movie. Nolan's Batman doesn't do that. (For the record, I think the best explanation I've ever seen regarding this was specifically that it
was absurd and the disconnect between the Bat-elements and the grounded setting really highlighted the former. Great if you can see the blatant absurdity as a positive, but I just find it difficult to do because I think Nolan's trying too hard to ask us to see it as anything but. It's all about perceptions.)
Not for me, anyway. I'm mainly writing this because I hate telling people that I don't like Nolan's Batman and being greeted with reactions like "GASP! Heathen! How dare you!" All I'm saying is that it hits my suspension of disbelief threshold too much. That's a threshold that's different for everyone, and I'm not saying anyone's wrong for liking them. I'm saying
I don't.
(Also, I'm saying the first two were lame. They just didn't get any of the magic of the superheroes. Well, I guess they do if you like Bat-Gadget-Man.)
Now, having gotten that out of the way,
I just want to get something else out of the way. So be warned; I'm putting my rant hat on.
I'm sick of praises for this
movie being phrased to bash Avengers,
or any of the Marvel movies in particular. I was pointed to a
review saying how it was a contrast to "Marvel's witty, slickly-produced
spectacles," with "witty, slickly-produced spectacles" being used as a
negative. Last
week, someone said "Dark Knight Rises makes Avengers look like a
kiddie film!" AVENGERS IS A KID-FRIENDLY FILM! Why is that a bad thing? But what really gets me
is the ones that attack Avengers and the Marvel movies for not being
substantial, whereas the Nolan Batfilms are thought-provoking. Avengers
was a movie about hope and heart and heroism. It's SUPPOSED to be
primal and idealistic. It's not supposed to make you think; it's supposed
to speak to your gut and make you feel the goodness from a most basic
level. Why does something have to try to say
something deep or meaningful about "society" in order to be good? I like
deep, dark, things as long as they're well-crafted, but it seems to me that people tend to automatically give points for something just by being dark and subtract points for something when they're not. Seriously well-done, well-crafted things that appeal to
both children and adults is so underrated from an artistic level, as
if they're somehow "less" because they don't deal with a deeper theme,
that they choose to focus on uplifting themes. Is this the world we live in?
 |
Oh no! Tom "Loki" Hiddleston likes the fact
that kids watched Avengers! Doesn't he know
superheroes are serious business?? |
Now, having said all that, I like variety in my entertainment, and the older I get, the more eclectic my tastes get. I'm still going to see The Dark Knight Rises on Sunday. The completist in me wants to see it, and I don't give in to him very often, so I'm going to see it. I'm a comic book fan, and I love LIFE WITH ARCHIE: THE MARRIED LIFE and I love CRIMINAL: LAST OF THE INNOCENT, two stories with the same premise and two completely different tones and directions. So I feel like there's room in this world for both a dark Batman movie and an uplifting movie like Avengers (though, if you were to ask me, given Hollywood's copycat nature, I know which one I want them to ape going forward).
And make no mistake about it, I want to like this movie; I don't buy things or tickets to things that I don't want to like. But I wanted to get that clear to you guys before I saw it: I didn't like the first two, I know what I'm getting into, and thus I'm waiving my right to complain about this one on the Cube if I end up not liking it. If I do like it, well, expect me to write something about it.
But if I don't like it, well, you should know: it has nothing to do with it being "dark," and it never did.
