Monday, July 23, 2012

My case of the Mondays... (spoilers)

First of all, let me begin by saying that this weekend went by way too fast. You hear me? Way too fast. I spent Friday night watching The Dark Knight Rises with friends at a huge Smithsonian IMAX theatre, and drove to the beach the next morning.

So lets start out with the first thing, The Dark Knight Rises. I'm gonna have to have some spoilers here, just because there's some things I'd like to discuss. First off, everyone already knows I'm not a big fan of Nolan's Batman movies. I'm just not big into how he re-does characters. They're not BAD, don't get me wrong, he tells a good story. But it doesn't grab me, that's all. So I went into this film kind scared because Bane is one of my favorite Batman characters, and I heard a rumor that Talia, another favorite, would be there too. Well, I was right on both counts. First off, the opening scene. Bane speaks for the first time, and I was literally dumb-struck by how terrible it was. It was like Sean Connery on Celebrity Jeopardy.
I was actually shocked because while I knew Ban wasn't going to have his classic Spanish accent, I didn't know how down-right awful he was going to sound. I figured they would have at least given him something normal sounding, bit it was bad. I kind of cringed whenever he spoke, which is I guess better than when Willy and I downright laughed whenever Christian Bale growled in his Richard Nixon as Batman voice. Those complaints aside, the rest of the movie wasn't completely awful. I totally called the fact that the kid climbing the all was Talia, if only because during the Bruce-doing-a-chick scene, I said, "She's Talia". Then I noticed a kid with blue eyes climbing out of prison and realized what was happening. Honestly? I was disappointed, if only because once again, they made Bane someone else's lackey. They made it look like he was the mastermind, but that's never in the cards for a movie Bane. Poor Bane never gets any love. Well, he does sometimes. To tell you the truth, I prefer the animated films to the live action ones. I think that having the films animated and straight to video makes it easier for you to cater to the comic fans. It's a much smaller budget, and you know who your audience is. I understand that these huge blockbuster movies can't give a lot of fan service, but I would have liked a little something... like... couldn't the opposing football team have been Coast City? Hehe! Oh well.. it was an entertaining movie. The part with the bomb was a little confusing. I was surprised it didn't go off every time they bumped it, but maybe I'm just not that familiar with how those things work.

Anyway, the movie lasted a long-ass time and we wound up not getting home until 3am. So Willy and I slept until 9, dragged ourselves out of bed (finally), and drove to our friends' house for a weekend with them. We'd been planning this for months, and even though it was a 3 hour drive, we didn't let that stop us! So after a 4.5 hour drive (traffic..........) we made it to his place and managed to have a fantastic time with new friends and old friends. I woke up exhausted with a really stiff neck, this morning... totally worth it!!

I'll talk about my weekend with the guys a bit later... for now, enjoy some Bane!



2 comments:

Unknown said...

I'm a-gonna post a comment!

I've seen it 4 times now and each time I keep liking it better- as a comics fan it wasn't what I was hoping for originally but all the complaints I had when I first saw it are pretty much gone.

Chiggity check:
-Bane's voice actually sounded pretty f*king cool to me, despite its moments of weird Sean Connery...

-BATMAN's voice is actually straight outta the comics! :) Batman #498 (part 15 of Knightfall), Robin to J.P.Valley when he's doubting himself about playing the Bat: "Remember Paul - just stick to the shadows and put on that hoarse, grating voice Bruce uses."

Nolan took that line and wanted to show what it would be like if someone did that voice a lot over time. Notice from movie 1-3 it gets progressively worse (b/c Bruce's vocal chords are going bad). Bruce's regular voice even has a weakness/hoarseness to it by movie 3.

I started liking the movies most when I found out that Nolan was trying to make the films as if they were "The true story" on which the comic legends & tales would become based.

The approach was that these Films=Ancient Greece, Comics=Greek Myths.


All of the deviations work great from that perspective b/c that's what happens when people tell stories/legends. Makes the movies work great as "true history" & comics work great as "legend."

So I'm on board w. what Nolan was trying to do, b/c I really like the idea of his trying to answer the question "How could this go down in real life?"

His whole goal was to show the tremendous toll that being Batman would take from a person, making Wayne an even more heroic & tragic person for making all that sacrifice.

Makes Bruce a much more sympathetic character to me, & everyone else more human too, which was done to provide a contrasting backdrop to the epic nature of the stunts being pulled off, making them even more amazing b/c they're plausibly done by very real human beings...

So it's definitely not meant to recreate the comics for comic fans, it's meant to prove to the world that there can be some intellectually valid & pretty high-quality literary themes found in comic source material, good for some truly intense drama.

He wanted to get comic fans and characters the respect they've deserved from the rest of the world, by showing non-geeks how badass & emotionally moving a "real" Batman could be.

IMHO, well-done! :)

Unknown said...

I have no idea why it calls me "Unknown" since I signed in w/ my Google acct... it's Jason... duh...