[Movie] The Dark Knight (Batman Begins Sequel)

Originally Posted by LeHah

...crap like V For Vendetta (which is basically backhanded support of fascism)...

...Now, I'm all for intellectual comic book movies that fail in-so-far as they're earnest in the attempt (see - Hulk)...

Oh wow, just wow. I think you've just pushed your character over the line from comedy into farce with those two statements mate.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Denicalis

Rated higher than the Godfather. And a solid 1.0 above Dr. Strangelove.

Welcome to the bizarro world that is imdb ratings.

Popular opinion; the eternal enemy of pompous Film Studies students.

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Originally Posted by LeHah

The Hulk, while it didn't get where it was going, was basically nothing more than a child neglect story.

V For Vendetta is literally "If you don't agree with us, you're not only wrong, you're also Hitler".

Ha ha ha, I see what you mean. I was a big fan of the V graphic novel before I saw the film so I guess knowing all the rest of the story that gets left out makes it slighty less in-your-face preachy. Also, living under our current government makes it seem a bit more relevant possibly. Also it's got Stephen Fry playing himself (For a change) which is always a good thing.

The Hulk, I always felt was punching rather above it's weight in terms of message delivery. The ending particulatly destroyed any credibility it might have had up to that point, they should have killed him and had a poignant, introspective end instead of that jungle bullshit.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by LeHah

It's certainly a movie that is darned sure it has a message but can't even begin to figure out what it's supposed to be. It's one of those movies that idiots think is clever, like The Matrix. (As opposed to, say, Fight Club. Fight Club is a fairly smart movie ruined entirely by people, V is a fairly stupid movie treated the same way. I'd say there's still something to Fight Club; It's not the amazing meaning of life that every disaffected myspace user has been insisting for the past several years, but it does say something.)

V, though, is pretty far from subversive. Just the opposite, even -- it removes things from the comic to make it more appealing to general people... and all the stuff it adds are really really generic obvious modern jabs. The overwhelming sense you get from the comic is that it's just a 1984 pasthche - the overwhelming sense you get from the movie is that it's artistic cannibalism to remove points from the original plot to substitute whats popular to fight against in 2006.

"V.." was written as commentary against anti-gay politics in 1980s England. The movie still has all the stuff about the British government putting gays in concentration camps and the obvious message there -- but at the same time, V himself isn't gay in the movie, when he is a homosexual in the book.

If you want to be more exacting - why are you taking material that is rallying against the British Government by using a character in a Guy Fawkes mask, and then making it a movie about rallying against the Bush administration ... using a character in a Guy Fawkes mask? Shouldn't he be wearing a George Washington mask or something?



I think the movie is dated a lot more than the comic is, though, because lots of it comes off as clear attempts to glob modern commentary to a story where it doesn't belong and makes no sense. The comic has a taken-from-Orwell radio voice of authority who reports all the news - but the movie turns that into a Bill O'Reilly angry news commentator character. And they're part of the evil British fascist government and responsible for the concentration camps and such.

Way to be slick, Hollywood.

When I first saw it, for whatever reason it didn't register with me that it was made by Americans so the Bush analogy completely passed me by. The R.S.C. oldboys cast didn't help either. As such, I saw it as an obvious dumbing down of the message of the comic but leaving in enough of the anti-oppression stuff to not be forcing the message down people's throats and I felt that they were to an extent taking the "Don't hate gays and blacks" message as read and focussing more on how easy it is for a complacent populace to be led into a tyrannical, authoritarian state. Given that our current government have been chipping away at our civil liberties for years and Britain is now the surveilance capital of the world, I figured this was a deliberate focus choice, forgetting that the film was made by Septics. The heavy Guy Fawkes imagery also helps as I live in about the only town in the world to still properly celebrate Bonfire Night so I think I'm overly forgiving of the film's faultsbecause of external influences.

To be fair though, my taste in films, as you well know, tends towards explosions and car chases so I'm not really the right person to be having esoteric discussions about the various messages present or lacking in more cerebral pieces of cinema.

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So I actually saw this last night and I thought it was pretty good. I certainly think some people are looking for things to complain about for the sake of complaining (They over used the Joker's name at the beginning? What? They said it twice) but I equally don't think it's the greatest film ever made as some are claiming and I think Batman Begins was better. The whole copycat vigilante thing was an interesting angle they completely ignored after the initial scene, all the bits with Bruce Wayne doing heroic things were completely at odds with his image as a slightly useless socialite and although Ledger was ok as the Joker, he was nothing spectacular and whilst it was a decent enough performace as a criminal, it wasn't anything special as a portrayal of a proper psychopath.

I mean yeah, it was a good film but fuck off should anyone get an oscar for it or anything like that.

How ya doing, buddy?