Much frantic rushing about here, but briefly:
Hellboy II was two hours long and felt like five. Look: I get that you can’t translate Mike Mignola’s idiosyncratic designs and narrative style directly to the big screen; they work best as comics, which is why they’re such good comics to begin with. But Del Toro’s film is almost bizarrely haphazard and shambling, daring you at every moment to care about anything happening onscreen. Seriously: The general effect is like watching a Hellboy-themed dream sequence in an episode of According to Jim. All broad gags and chicks-man jokes with maybe a Serious Lesson at the end. Following Chris Ware (and surely many others), I blame Roy Lichtenstein. His work trained a generation of intellectuals and culture-workers to value comics as pure surface, for their “briskness and fluorescence,” as Anthony Lane put it in his review of Superman Returns. Yes, Del Toro’s monsters and mer-men and bottle-dammerungers look amazing, but an impressive video portfolio does not a movie make.
In short, Hellboy II was exactly the sort of movie that adventure comics fans have resigned themselves to getting and, confident that they’ll never be much better, have even settled into enjoying.
The Dark Knight, however, was two-and-a-half hours I would gladly experience again. I direct you to Kevin Church’s spoiler-free review for more details. Like Kevin, I was impressed by the way in which the film dealt gracefully and provocatively with many of the familiar tensions and ambivalences of the superhero genre (especially as compared with the hand-wave they got in the Iron Man film, which, much though I still love it, now looks a little shabbier in the light of the Bat-signal). And you know, I actually jumped a few times, and believed characters were in peril; these are not normally things I associate with superhero movies.
OK, but Christian Bale’s scary Bat-voice has got to go. Does he need a Sucrets? My mom has some in her purse from 1982. They’re probably still good. Otherwise, I guess it was only the best action/suspense movie I’ve seen in years.
Q: Did I allow myself an insidery “I get that clever bit of joke casting” chuckle when Nestor Carbonell appeared on the screen? A: Yes I did. I’m not made of stone, people. And without conspicuous geekery, how will the thugs know who to beat up in the parking garage afterward?
Also, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Aaron Eckhart as Captain America.
And what can I say about the Watchmen trailer that hasn’t already been said? Except maybe that I bet Art Spiegelman rolls his eyes when the phrase “most acclaimed graphic novel of all time” pops up on the screen? I am still deeply suspicious of the whole enterprise, but now I’m at least curious.
I think Jaxxie nailed it when she said that she was watching the trailer, going “what IS all this crap?” and then saw it was based on a comic book, and said “oh, never mind.” AH, COMICS!
I did watch the Dark Knight last night, and all I could think was OMG YEAR ONE and then HEAVY DUTY 9/11 SYMBOLISM and that mashed together made me very, very happy. And I even liked Oldman this time around, he wasn’t as whispery.
My dad and I were talking about it (he saw it on Friday, which means I am lame), and it could have been called “Gotham City,” with its focus on Gordon and Dent; Batman is, at best, a a major supporting player, and I wonder if the Joker doesn’t actually have more total screentime.
Yeah, there was a definite dearth of big iconic Batman-silhouetted-against-something moments (and the one that pops to mind—him standing on rubble with firefighters in the background—doesn’t really work). There’s no grand, swelling “debut the new costume” bit, either. The single best moment in the whole movie is the Joker hanging his head out the window of a car, just sucking in the night.
Also: I just listened to “Magazines” from the new Hold Steady record again, and that Lucero guy’s rasp is actually more embarrassing than Christian Bale’s. Although maybe they included his performance as a meta-commentary on poseury.
Now I don’t know who to believe. My spawn (I’d say daughter but I think spawn works better in the genre) saw it last night and gave it 2 thumbs down, saying that it was filled with the Joker making the same threats over and over, with the other characters receiving the redundant overtures with redundant credulity each time. She, unlike you, found Christian Bale to be, and I quote, “Hot.”
“OK, but Christian Bale’s scary Bat-voice has got to go.”
Do I hear an in for Adam West in Batman 3?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFb6Uwkdgzw
YES.
Actually, I think hearing Adam West’s avuncular tones as you get the crap pummeled out of you by Urban Warrior Batman would be intensely unsettling.
Dude, the best Batman voice was the guy on the Super Friends…before Adam West.
Via Eschaton, I like this Eric Alterman characterization of the politics of Dark Knight: “Both libertarian and fascistic, which is to say that it’s damn confused” . Also probably a pretty good description of Batman in general.
Yeah, that quote is pretty spot on.