Holy BatMovie!
Oct. 5th, 2008 12:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI watched the 1966 Batman yesterday.
IT IS THE BEST MOVIE EVER. EVER. EVER. By which I mean it is completely terrible, so completely and utterly terrible that it’s hard to believe its creators didn’t intend it as a parody, so terrible that I may have to watch it five or six more times just to appreciate the full extent of its awfulness.
Just to show you how awful yet fantastic this movie is, I offer this quote, in which the Batman, the Boy Wonder (they actually call Robin the Boy Wonder in this movie! Really!) and Commissioner Gordon discuss BatVillains. (Did I mention that the word bat is attached to everything in this movie? EVERYTHING. There’s a special BatLadder!)
Commissioner Gordon: It could be any one of them... But which one? Which ones?
Batman: Pretty *fishy* what happened to me on that ladder...
Commissioner Gordon: You mean where there's a fish there could be a penguin?
Robin: But wait! It happened at sea... Sea. C for Catwoman!
Batman: Yet, an exploding shark *was* pulling my leg...
Commissioner Gordon: The Joker!
Chief O’Hara: All adds up to a sinister riddle... Riddle-R. Riddler!
Commissioner Gordon: A thought strikes me... So dreadful I scarcely dare give it utterance...
Batman: The four of them... Their forces combined...
Robin: Holy nightmare!
Robin also gets wonderful lines like “Holy Long John Silver!”, “Holy Captain Nemo!”, and (as an answer to a riddle) “A sparrow with a machine gun!”
Inevitably I have to compare Batman (1966 version) to The Dark Knight.
Cinematographically speaking The Dark Knight beats Batman absolutely hollow, (Batman features sound effects that are written on the screen, comic book style: Pow! Kerplunk! Splat!), and similarly in any contest in acting, soundtrack, or pretty much anything else it pulverizes Batman—
But it pulverizes its viewers, too. The Dark Knight is top-heavy with its own darkness, self-importance, moral seriousness—and if it delivered on that last I might forgive the fact that I left the theater like I’d just suffered through a calculus exam, but insofar as The Dark Knight is morally serious it’s pernicious.
The Dark Knight’s moral crescendo is Commissioner Gordon and Batman’s pact to lie to the people of Gotham, because if the people realize that Harvey Dent wasn’t made of awesome they’ll whither away and die. Really? The people of Gotham have dealt with social disintegration, endemic crime and corruption, the rise of the Joker—and Batman has the audacity to believe that they’re incapable of dealing with Harvey Dent’s fall? That he ought, for their own good, lie to them as if they were children?
The man is morally unfit to wear his cape. He isn’t trying to save the people of Gotham City because he believes they’re good people crushed by venal, greedy, lying elites, he’s trying to save the people of Gotham City because he wants to run around fighting evil and looking cool, never mind he thinks of the people in precisely the same terms as his enemies. They’re pathetic, they’re sheep, they can’t handle the truth.
In which case the end of The Dark Knight isn’t Batman heroically sacrificing himself for the greater good. It’s Batman running away from the fact that he’s about to be cornered into revealing his secret identity, and then all the fun and games will be over, while providing himself with a quasi-noble rationalization for his actions.
…I am not going to write “Five Reasons Bruce Wayne is a Failure as a Human Being.” It will not help.
Superhero secret identities are inherently problematic—you just can’t solve corruption by lying to the people, just like everyone else—but it’s one thing to build silly flicks on moral absurdities, and another to build films that are hailed as masterpieces.
IT IS THE BEST MOVIE EVER. EVER. EVER. By which I mean it is completely terrible, so completely and utterly terrible that it’s hard to believe its creators didn’t intend it as a parody, so terrible that I may have to watch it five or six more times just to appreciate the full extent of its awfulness.
Just to show you how awful yet fantastic this movie is, I offer this quote, in which the Batman, the Boy Wonder (they actually call Robin the Boy Wonder in this movie! Really!) and Commissioner Gordon discuss BatVillains. (Did I mention that the word bat is attached to everything in this movie? EVERYTHING. There’s a special BatLadder!)
Commissioner Gordon: It could be any one of them... But which one? Which ones?
Batman: Pretty *fishy* what happened to me on that ladder...
Commissioner Gordon: You mean where there's a fish there could be a penguin?
Robin: But wait! It happened at sea... Sea. C for Catwoman!
Batman: Yet, an exploding shark *was* pulling my leg...
Commissioner Gordon: The Joker!
Chief O’Hara: All adds up to a sinister riddle... Riddle-R. Riddler!
Commissioner Gordon: A thought strikes me... So dreadful I scarcely dare give it utterance...
Batman: The four of them... Their forces combined...
Robin: Holy nightmare!
Robin also gets wonderful lines like “Holy Long John Silver!”, “Holy Captain Nemo!”, and (as an answer to a riddle) “A sparrow with a machine gun!”
Inevitably I have to compare Batman (1966 version) to The Dark Knight.
Cinematographically speaking The Dark Knight beats Batman absolutely hollow, (Batman features sound effects that are written on the screen, comic book style: Pow! Kerplunk! Splat!), and similarly in any contest in acting, soundtrack, or pretty much anything else it pulverizes Batman—
But it pulverizes its viewers, too. The Dark Knight is top-heavy with its own darkness, self-importance, moral seriousness—and if it delivered on that last I might forgive the fact that I left the theater like I’d just suffered through a calculus exam, but insofar as The Dark Knight is morally serious it’s pernicious.
The Dark Knight’s moral crescendo is Commissioner Gordon and Batman’s pact to lie to the people of Gotham, because if the people realize that Harvey Dent wasn’t made of awesome they’ll whither away and die. Really? The people of Gotham have dealt with social disintegration, endemic crime and corruption, the rise of the Joker—and Batman has the audacity to believe that they’re incapable of dealing with Harvey Dent’s fall? That he ought, for their own good, lie to them as if they were children?
The man is morally unfit to wear his cape. He isn’t trying to save the people of Gotham City because he believes they’re good people crushed by venal, greedy, lying elites, he’s trying to save the people of Gotham City because he wants to run around fighting evil and looking cool, never mind he thinks of the people in precisely the same terms as his enemies. They’re pathetic, they’re sheep, they can’t handle the truth.
In which case the end of The Dark Knight isn’t Batman heroically sacrificing himself for the greater good. It’s Batman running away from the fact that he’s about to be cornered into revealing his secret identity, and then all the fun and games will be over, while providing himself with a quasi-noble rationalization for his actions.
…I am not going to write “Five Reasons Bruce Wayne is a Failure as a Human Being.” It will not help.
Superhero secret identities are inherently problematic—you just can’t solve corruption by lying to the people, just like everyone else—but it’s one thing to build silly flicks on moral absurdities, and another to build films that are hailed as masterpieces.
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Date: 2008-10-06 02:42 am (UTC)Re: Jim Gordon - he's my favorite characters in Batman. My only disappointment with the 1966 Batman was that Gordon was such a nebbish.