[cerveza_fiesta]

Just saw DK yesterday. Holy fucking fuck was it ever INTENSE. Good god. I don't know how Bale did it but he turned Batman from a pansy nipple-suited wanker fighting colorful enemies, into a badass flying ninja deserving of the batman name.

the goddamn batman was the goddamn awesome. Nuff said.

[Darkwatch]

Saw it.
Loved it.
That is all.

[drinksinbars]

saw it yesterday - it was good. but too long. and too convuluted.

best part - pencil.

worst part - bad seat in cinema and my arse goign to sleep on two hours before i realised there was another forty five minutes to go.

[Cause]

does anyone know what happened with that story that bail might have beat his mother?

[Scifreak]

Quote

Well, as John Pistelli argues, Hollywood's production mill is at a miserable nadir. One comic book fantasy after another, and all of them somehow parables about the 'war on terror' and the need for a hypertrophic superman to slaughter the evildoers without and the traitors within. The Dark Knight, the latest installment of the Batman flicks, follows on from The Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk. The Iron Man was, of course, about a billionaire arms producer named Stark who drives fast cars and treats women like whores - one of his victims being a female reporter from the ubiquitous Liberal Media (who, we are invited to judge, had it coming). He gets into a dreadful scrape in Afghanistan, while flogging his weapons, which results in his capture by the banally evil Talibs (who look about as Afghani as I do). To escape, he builds an 'Iron Man' shell that turns one ordinary billionaire adventurist into a weapon of God, a furious monster that lays into enemies with mammoth hammer blows and every variety of weaponry known to a screenwriter. Having noticed that his weapons are getting into the hands of the evil ones (he finds killing sweet American boys rather than Afghan farmers objectionable), Stark announces that he no longer wants to make arms and retreats into privacy - but predictably is drawn back into action as the Iron Man to thwart the corrupt double-dealers in his own company who have been selling to both sides. And so on. The Incredible Hulk is, on the face of it, a glorified Beauty and the Beast fable for teenagers. Ed Norton is the unassuming prince who, due to radiation poisoning during a military experiment, becomes a ferocious, bawling, infantile green giant if his heart rate gets too fast. He is in hiding, because the corrupt colonel whose daughter he loves (the weepy, pouting Liv Tyler), wants to abduct him and return him to status of a lab rat so that he can develop this Hulk into a battlefield weapon. And what a weapon - he takes down helicopters, absorbes rocket blasts, repels bullets with contemptible ease, crushes tanks, and lays buildings to waste with his mighty muscles. Hulk smash! But the man himself is anxious to rid himself of the Hulk persona and is desperate to return to his sweetheart, which he duly does. He finds himself mutating into the green thing again, the better to protect Liv from collateral damage when the colonel goes after him with said tanks and helicopters at the college where Liv works, and the pair elope to a cave where the sobbing giant roars his heart out. Hulk wuvooo. And so on and on. You might think the Hulk is a bit more ambivalent about the need for a superman, but there is no implied critique of the military-industrial complex, and Norton eventually reconciles himself to being a viridescent chump. And, at the end of this race in which Norton finally outwits and escapes his would-be captors, he is propositioned by none other than Stark, the Iron Man. The way is clear for a fun-packed cross-over - oh frabjous day!

The Dark Knight is the most obviously fascist of the films. The billionaire playboy with a penchant for sadistic violence is back in action against the Joker, a criminally insane "terrorist madman" who issues demands in shaky-looking videos, which the weak-minded populace is often inclined to give in to. The Joker, of course, has no motives. He is just an Iago-like malevolence, pure vindictive chaos, who can no more be reasoned with than he can be bribed or bullied. As Alfred remarks, regaling Master Wayne with a tale of his colonial exploits in Burma, "Some men don't want anything logical like money. Some men just want to watch the world burn." And so it transpires: the Joker is a purveyor of purposeless, chaotic violence, who ends by placing a massive bet on the sociological assumption that most people are at root as viciously indifferent to other human beings as he is. The Batman's counter-bet is that people are as devoted to order, authority and hierarchy as he is. The bad guys are an assortment of freaks, black gangsters, Russian gangsters, mobsters and crooked Chinese businessmen. The good guys are, with the exception of a single side-kick played by Morgan Freeman, uptight bourgeois white Americans, and the most virtuous of them all is the blonde hero with a chin like a body-builder's arse, the District Attorney Harvey Dent. Elected on the slogan 'I Believe in Harvey Dent', he is the hallowed Great White Hope of the film, a potential legit successor to the Batman's subterranean campaign of terror. Dent's crusade against crime is on the legal side, but just because he is a pious public servant doesn't mean he doesn't sympathise with the aristocratic vigilante. After all, as he remarks, when the barbarians were at the gates of Rome, they suspended democracy and appointed a Caesar to protect the population. (These pompous jerks do love their classical metaphors). In fact, that part of Gotham's police department which isn't bought off by the Joker relies on the violent, lone storm-trooper to break legs, smash faces and torture on their behalf. And the Batman, with the enormous resources at his disposal, doesn't shrink from breaking international law to abduct a robotic Chinese criminal (because "the Chinese will never extradite one of their own"), or from erecting a colossal apparatus of surveillance which makes Bush's extensive illegal wiretapping look decidedly unimpressive, the better to catch the evil one. In protecting the population, he and the police confect serial lies and myths for public consumption - the 'noble lie', that is, which the masses need to sustain their morale. This struggle is not a collective one, after all, and the few members of the public who do try to 'copycat' Batman's antics end up being butchered.

The Batman is a man of steel, unlike Bruce Wayne, who is merely super-hunky and dashing. He has no limits, and can survive flesh wounds, stabbing, crashes, and falls from a great height, without putting a dent in his schedule. He moves with a fluidity and speed that must make him the envy of the Parkour kids, appearing out of nowhere, and disappearing noiselessly. His ferocious masculine growl is an exaggerated imitation of Dirty Harry. He is the ruthless, overbearing superego of Gotham city, animated not by compassion or solidarity but by an obsessive conscience. "The most urgent task of the man of steel," Klaus Theweleit argued, "is to pursue, to dam in, and to subdue any force that threatens to transform him back into the horribly disorganized jumble of flesh, hair, skin, bones, intestines and feelings that calls itself human." People turn to men of steel in order to restore the imperilled fantasy of immortality, by ensuring that it is others who die. But the men of steel, whatever their protests to the contrary, do not desire an end to the chaos and destruction. They adore it, and are lost without it. If Bruce Wayne no longer had his epic fight against mega-crime, he might have to deal with picket lines at his company gates, people trying to 'redistribute' his wealth, immigrant workers becoming politically assertive, public prosecutors bashing on his doors to investigate his environmental or labour code violations, all of that petty stuff that real-life CEOs have to deal with. His romantic interests might realise that he was unworthy of love too, and anyone unfortunate enough to marry him would discover a controlling personality given to violent rages, a megalomaniac who spies on her every move through his system of cameras and hidden mics. And what's with all the secret chambers and torture equipment? He might even prove to be rather dim, bigoted and narcissistic, a more handsome version of Donald Trump. As for Harvey Dent, his 'idealism' would prove to be as tyrannical as it is selective. He would be rounding up petty drug offenders and shoplifters, 'cleaning the streets' of prostitutes and undesirables, jailing the homeless, going after the damned radicals and peaceniks.

No, I don't believe in Harvey Dent, or Batman, or the Incredible Iron Crock. Gotham needs a revolution.

Made me lol

[McLovin]

wow. some critics take this stuff far more seriously than they should...

[Scifreak]

McLovin;369501 said:

wow. some critics take this stuff far more seriously than they should...

If you think he takes it seriously you should see the Dissident Voice review from Pister. It is merciless:D

[Skywalker]

Who is this by?

[Scifreak]

Skywalker;369545 said:

Who is this by?

Not sure of the authors name, it's from regularly updated lefty blog Lenins Tomb

http://leninology.blogspot.com/2008/08/i-d...arvey-dent.html

[amphibian]

I like to let things settle a bit and avoid the crowds at the theaters, so I finally went to see The Dark Knight today.

There were about 10 people in a giant theater, so I snagged an entire row in the sweet spot for myself. And proceeded to be blown away by the movie. Very, very solid and even thoughtful.

I thought Ledger's performance built upon Nicholson's by leaning on the Killing Joke's ideas to a greater degree. I like that opposite-twins relationship between the Joker and Batman and I loved that the Joker actually delivered a monologue about it, which probably forced a larger chunk of the audience to actually use their brains while watching an action movie.

Random thoughts: Is the scarred prisoner (Deebo, the President from the 5th Element) the future Killer Croc? I'd like to see a more sentient Croc instead of a rehash of the Riddler or Penguin.

Why leave Maroni and the Falcone gang at large if they're going to be left out of the next movie? Have Two-Face and Maroni start an all-out war and Croc wreak sporadic havoc. That plus the Batman as a criminal storyline would be faaaantastic.

[Mezla PigDog]

Scifreak;369496 said:

That big quote by Scifreak

What's the guys point? Isn't that what we all want from superhero/comic/action movies? I thought Iron Man was trying to be a bit ironic about typical American policies. Or was I seeing a subtext that wasn't there?

[stone monkey]

I get the feeling that he thought he was being original... Superhero as fascist - like no one's ever thought of that before

You should see the rightwingnuts who are currently bending over backwards to read the entire film as a metaphor about GW Bush and Iraq.

Which just goes to show that once a film is out, any interpretation of it is possible. And if, as another George has said, "Films are not released, they escape." Then this one's been getting up to an amazing amount of weird shit out there in the wild.

[Illuyankas]

@Amph:

Spoiler

Er, Two-Face killed Maroni by shooting his driver before bailing out. I do think they should have left Two-Face alive, though.

[amphibian]

Illuyankas;370068 said:

@Amph:

Spoiler

Er, Two-Face killed Maroni by shooting his driver before bailing out. I do think they should have left Two-Face alive, though.

The movie never said anything about Maroni or Two-Face being dead. We saw a car crash (which Two-Face put on a seatbelt for) and a fall off a building.

[J_Slr]

Amph you almost have an interesting point, but they had the ceremony for Dent (unless my memory has been corrupted), surely someone made sure his body was in the casket???

Also just thinking back to the movies, can anyone remember who the villians were in the Batman movie with Two-Face(Tommy Lee Jones, I think) and Jim Carey and others....

[Illuyankas]

Spoiler

Two-Face is dead. The script (and novelisation, but that's not as conclusive as the actual film script) has him as dead, he's very famous as Harvey Dent with scars so they can't really imprison him anywhere as he'd be recognised, messing up Batman and Gordon's plan and rendering Batman's sacrifice pointless.

[Yellow]

Yeah, there's no way Maroni or Dent survived. Sometimes the most obvious conclusion is the correct one.

[Gothos]

seen it today. total awesomeness, I approve!
shame Ledger is dead, he did an awesome job on the Joker. I dare to say he was even better than Jack Nicholson.

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

Yes, yes he was. Sorry Jack, you were good too, but damn.

[Chance]

stone monkey;370003 said:

I get the feeling that he thought he was being original... Superhero as fascist - like no one's ever thought of that before

You should see the rightwingnuts who are currently bending over backwards to read the entire film as a metaphor about GW Bush and Iraq.

Which just goes to show that once a film is out, any interpretation of it is possible. And if, as another George has said, "Films are not released, they escape." Then this one's been getting up to an amazing amount of weird shit out there in the wild.

That review was a brilliant example of why "too" political people should be shot on general principles be they leftists or rightists...its a movie a darn good one at that and while I found few political undertones in it, there was alot of other things that could interesting...also kinda fun when a reviewer gets his quotes wrong and what was that about despising classical quotes I wonder how old this steriotype rebel was (or if he just never left his teenage revolution against order)...