[Just your average movie goer]

Yeah, the paramedics on the scene at the beginning of the movie could work... not dead unless stated otherwise and all that. Actually, working in Nolan's favour, nobody explicitly said that Harvey Dent was dead.

Now that you mention it, I wonder if directors like Nolan ever do browse internet forums to see what people are saying about their movies. Personally, I think it's probably unlikely in this case as a lot of the comic book fans out there are scary. However, if a director were to use some of the ideas we mentioned in our discussions, it would be nice, wouldn't it?

Lastly, Civilian - you've really got me reassessing my view of Batman Begins. I now realise that a lot of the scenes at the beginning were time-wasting. For instance, we could have skipped the whole notion that Bruce Wayne dabbled in the criminal lifestyle and got himself arrested. If he were more self-directed, rather than a wandering suicide-risk who needed others to nudge him towards becoming Batman, we could have ommitted that as well as half a dozen other scenes.

Then after the opening flashback from his childhood, we could have him already on that mountain - having him seek out Rhas Al Ghul rather than the other way round.

If we ommitted the excessive foreshadowing with the 'fear' theme, we could have also axed the last training exercise with the League of Shadows.

Imagine how the movie could have looked then. Bruce Wayne seeks out some mysterious cult to learn how to fight injustice, has a brief training montage with them - then after the next flashback to his young adult life, we cut to the scene where he finds out this cult is up to no good. He abandons them to do things his way, returns to Gotham and we can have our first Batman scene forty minutes into the film instead of sixty.

Another thing would be to ax some of the scenes where Fox gives him ready-made Bat gear. I'd take out the utility belt for starters...

"So Mr Wayne, you want a whole lot of specialised gear to fight crime and you'd like to use the symbol of a bat to strike fear in the hearts of criminals and as a persona to protect the people you care about from reprisals... well, a while ago we developed this 'Batman' suit. Would that do?"

"Nice. Also, I wonder if you could make an urban combat vehicle for me as well."

"Well, it's funny you should ask that..."

Yeah, Batman Begins could definitely benefit from a bit of trimming down.

This post has been edited by Just your average movie goer: 03 February 2010 - 11:25 AM

[Supes]

One of the "Origin of Batman" comics I read years ago ran a bit of a montage type set of panels also as it looked to span about 10 years of what Bruce Wayne was doing in order to develop the skills he needed to become Batman. The notion of Batman had not been entered into at this stage, but it showed Bruce at different places such as:

1. Ninja training school on top of a mountain
2. Taking boxing lessons from Ted Grant (DC's boxing Heavyweight Champ who went on to become Wildcat)
3. Studying with the FBI (nice little moment was commentary on all his results being outstanding except firearms which he failed)
4. spending time on the streets in amoung the poor and criminal element

There are a couple of others that I cant recall now. But what I found most interesting was to underlying theme that he never actually completed any of these training sessions. The implication was that he took that which he needed to learn and then moved on.

As an aside, there is another nice little throw away line in a later comic where Wildcat and Batman face off. Wildcat has a moment of, "Hmmm something about this is familiar." referring to Batman's fighting style. I like these sort of things.

[civilian_number_two]

I remember a storyline where Bruce was on trial, or was at a discovery hearing at least, where evidence was being presented of his association at certain times with certain groups around the world. The purpose of the hearing or trial or whatever was to determine whether Wayne had been involved in un-American activities. It was a nice frame narrative for a series of flashbacks of Wayne training with various specialized militia, crime organizations, and yeah, ninjas worldwide.

One thing that's definitely always bugged me is the comic book idea that if you want to learn martial arts, you go to a secret hideout at the top of a mountain and you study with ninjas. I figure Wayne could have studied with a number of commercial schools worldwide and achieved the same results, but the comic book fiction is that the best training comes from ninjas who live in secret hideouts at the tops of mountains. And his lockpicking skills he learned from a world-class safcracker. So, world-classs locksmith was out of the question, yeah? ... etc.

[J m HofMarN]

Hey, cmon, sure the ninjas at the monastery atop a snowy mountain concept is cliche, but at least he never had to avenge his murdered Sensei/Master. Now THAT would be unforgivable. By the by, I'm reading up on Batman extensively, and comic books in general, will start a thread in the book forum!

[Just your average movie goer]

You're brave. On my own foray into the comics, I noticed (and I'm not sure if DC comics are alone in this) that DC comics do a tremendous job of making their comics inaccessible to newcomers.

I can't understand why they had to keep a continuous continuity from all the decades of past publications - especially through the dubious means of alternative universes. All that infinite crises crap, whatever the hell that is, is off-putting to newcomers. I actually had to do a bit of web research to find the best entry points.

The Dark Knight Returns seems to stand as a nice solo "What if..." story so that works and I really like the graphic novels in the Year One continuity, including Year One (rather obviously), The Long Halloween and Dark Victory.

Hush was recommended to me as well as a good one and I found I could follow it fairly easily - although, mind you, there were a lot of characters I'd never heard of - and despite being released not that many years ago, it had references to events that I believe occurred back in the eighties comics. Fortunately they were ones that most people with a passing interest in Batman have probably heard of (like the Joker shooting Barbara Gordon and murdering Jason Todd) but I think it's a bit strange. If they reset the continuity every now and then, that would mean that newcomers could catch up. No-one's going to read several decades worth of backlog comics just so they can get into a series. However, if there were several distinct series, then new readers could get into one more easily. For example, a friend might say "Oh, you should check out the so-and-so Batman series that ran from 1975 - 1976. There was a lot of good stories in that one."

Oh, and for the record, the moment in Hush that took my most by surprise was the appearance of Superman's dog. I never knew he had a dog, let alone a super dog. However, I kind of liked it for its comic (read 'comedic') value.

Well, those graphic novels along with the Steve Englehart collections basically pull me up in terms of my knowledge of Batman comics. However, I'd be interested in checking out your thread when you make it. I'm always interested in the reinterpretation of old stories. They show you other ways of looking at things for starters. They also tell you a little bit about the time when they were made as they often reflect the tastes of the day.

And to get back on topic, I'm with you, Civilian. Why couldn't Bruce Wayne have done some training at legitimate institutions? He could have enrolled in a judjitsu school or something. Actually, now that it's come up, it would have been nice to see a montage such as the one Supes mentioned in Batman Begins - ie. one that shows Bruce Wayne learning a variety of skills from different people because I don't think a ninja school would be the best place to learn about forensics and other crime solving skills.

[Gobbler]

Just your average movie goer, on 04 February 2010 - 08:31 AM, said:

Why couldn't Bruce Wayne have done some training at legitimate institutions? He could have enrolled in a judjitsu school or something.

Are we seriously bashing a comic for entertaining the concept of skills so unique that they require a not so common and also not so boring unique source here? C'mon people, he's a multimillionaire - why should he settle for the less if he can get the best?

[Just your average movie goer]

That is of course making an assumption that mountain top cults provide better training than modern institutions, my friend. However, I think the idea we're entertaining here is that the 'secret ninja school' backstory (with its obligatory montage sequences) is a bit of a cliche these days.

Also, don't forget all the advances of modern institutions - scientific understanding of the body's capabilities, research in the best nutrition... and where a ninja sect may teach you that there are numerous special yin-sha points (I just made that word up for the hell of it), a modern institution might instead teach you that the body has x number of pressure points, what every single one of them is and the effect on each and every one if you apply pressure there.

Yeah, you could probably argue things in favour of the 'ninja school' stuff as well, I suppose. We're just saying that it's not as interesting as people think. Besides, the interesting thing about Batman is that this guy dresses up in a bat costume and uses advanced gadgetry to stop crime and beat the pulp out of criminals. We don't need copious amounts of detail about his training.

Also, one other thing with the secret ninja cult. Suppose that Bruce Wayne travels to Hokkaido and finds a remote mountain village where a whole lot of mysterious guys are learning all sorts of advanced fighting moves. What happens when he goes to join up and discovers that none of them speak English? Now, I suppose he could take the time to learn a variety of languages in order to learn from all these weird mountain sects... but if my limited understanding of the character pre-Batman stage is right, then he wants to take up crime-fighting and making Gotham a better place as soon as possible, right?

Now, from this point of view on the character, those comics that Supes discussed seem to have the right idea. I especially liked the part where he didn't complete any of the training courses he signed up for. He just learned what he wanted to know from each particular group and then moved on.

Lastly, ninjas are the most overrated martial art fighters in the known universe. If you really want to have your protagonist learn his craft at on a remote mountain top in Asia, I'd recommend sending him to learn from the Shaolin monks. They're far more skilled and also they're not so heavy in the weapons department like ninjas are. So their training would be more beneficial for the young Bruce Wayne.


He would have to learn Mandarin though...

This post has been edited by Just your average movie goer: 04 February 2010 - 11:36 AM

[civilian_number_two]

I get that the mountaintop secret lairs arre more poetic than the modern schools, etc. I just don't like the cliche. Also these organizations might have weird rituals, like the finmal exam being you have to kill this guy in a pit or something. BATMAN BEGINS went into that, but IMO rather than it appearing like a dramatic point for the character to resolve, it appeared like a moment of "oh, yeah .... I'm training with NINJAS!" Another reminder that the Batman in that movie wasnt as bright as he was in the 1966 flick with Adam West. So yeah. One more thing I didn't like about BATMAN BEGINS.

And did I mention that Ra's Al-Ghul is a 600-year-old immortal or Arabic descent? I didn't like the very prosaic changes they made to his character, and I didn't like Liam Neeson in the role.

[J m HofMarN]

JYAMG- It would be a disservice to you if you didnt read The Killing Joke. Its what Heath Ledger studied to do his part in Dark Knight, and its really great stuff. Moore had a fine time with that comic. Arkham Asylum looks good too. Anything with a modern (read: not stupid) take on the joker is pretty good too, there have been a lot more comic books that treat their rivalry seriously since the mid eighties.

On an aside, has anyone else seen the completely insane special stuff on the 2 disc Dark Knight set? Did you know that the Batman costume is actually a functional suit of armor? Or that they made that goddamn bat pod and drove it around in the movie? I hadnt ever considered stuff like this but the attention to detail in that film was stunning. It would have been so simple to just CGI some of these things in, but they built a Batpod and had a guy drive it through scenes wearing a the full bat suit. The bit where he talks about wanting to be able to move his head in his armor? That was actually part of production that went into the film, because in most bat suits the actor couldnt do that due to the cowl being connected to the body of the suit.

[Supes]

Gobbler, on 04 February 2010 - 05:29 AM, said:

Are we seriously bashing a comic for entertaining the concept of skills so unique that they require a not so common and also not so boring unique source here? C'mon people, he's a multimillionaire - why should he settle for the less if he can get the best?

Actually, part of Bruce Wayne's training was to educate himself in a range of martial styles. That's why there was the ninja training plus Ted Grant training. The assumption is that he went through a number of styles to create his own blend. This is sometimes referred to in the comics as Batman is considered the No. 1 marital artist in the world within the DC Universe. It is suggested that due to his copious amounts of cash that he is able to access all these top people and training techniques. So in many respect Gobbler he doesn't settle for anything other than the best.

JM, I think JYAMG mentioned that he read THE KILLING JOKE, but didn't take to it the same way as the other collections he mentioned. In actual fact it appears to me to be the crux of THE DARK KNIGHTS morale underpinning. The Joker sets out to show how with enough stress in the right place even the best of men can go mad and bad. In the case of THE KILLING JOKE it's Gordon. In THE DARK KNIGHT the target is Harvey Dent.

JYAMG, I haven't regularly read comics for a while, but DC does engage in a "reset" every few years or so. I do agree that it would be good if there were more stand alone stories and not so much of the ongoing story. Having said that, I do like continuity pieces. For a time the Superman comics were doing it well where they would have essentially stand alone stories with pieces of ongoing stories running through. It mean you could pick up a comic and get a good read on it's own but also if you continued to read you would also take up a back story as well. As noted with the Batman/Wildcat meeting, being a little aware of the Batman character history allowed me to appreciate something that others might not unless they also had the same knowledge.

Civ#2, I also agree with the poor representation of Ra's in THE DARK KNIGHT. I was not so concerned about Neeson as I think given the appropriate character concept he could have carried off the role, but really more the radical shift that they took with the Ra's character himself.

[Just your average movie goer]

Yeah, I've read The Killing Joke. I just forgot to mention it in that last post. It was a bit too sick for my tastes and there's something about a naked Gordon being prodded by weird midgets that just doesn't work for me. I suspect that it might be something that people like more if they got into it closer to the time it came out. Also, I didn't like the Joker's origin story. Furthermore, I've read the Alan Moore was unhappy with DC for including its events in the main continuity - as he had intended it to be a standalone 'what if' story as The Dark Knight Returns was.

I will say this about it though - the writing and the panel layout had a very smooth flow to it that was certainly above and beyond the usual fare. I don't know why but a lot of other comic teams seem to enjoy making the layout confusing. Occasionally, I've read ones where you've got to review the boxes and decide which one's supposed to come after the previous one and so on. Sometimes, rather than going left to right on a single page, they keep going over a double spread, resulting in dialogue and pictures disappearing in the glue that binds the pages to the spine. I mean, why do they do that? Everyone knows that you lose a bit of every page to that. That's why it's standard practice to leave margins on the left and the right. However, The Killing Joke was very well laid out and easy to follow.

I will also add that while I don't like The Killing Joke, I can appreciate its influence on future Batman projects. If this was the first time it was suggested that the Joker's appearance comes from chemical bleaching, then it brought about the awesome Axis Chemical sequence in Batman '89 - and although I didn't pick it myself, Supes' point about The Dark Knight drawing on the story rings true as well.

Okay, The Dark Knight extras... not the most interesting bonus disc I've ever come across. It didn't have any discussion about how they shaped the story or about comic influences. Also, for those of us who don't have twenty metre IMAX screens in our living rooms, the IMAX sequences were rather pointless. However, I agree that it's cool how they made all that gear. The batpod stunts were a bit dubious though, weren't they? They weren't sure whether the stunt man dressed as Batman would get his cape entangled in the rear wheel once he got the thing going so to find out, they just got him to try anyway and kept their fingers crossed. Fortunately, it didn't get entangled but what did they have planned in the event that it did?

Personally, I quite liked the bit where they blew up that building for the hospital sequence. They found a building that was scheduled to be demolished, went up to the guys in charge of the job and said something along the lines of "If you're going to demolish this building anyway, do you think you could demolish it spectacularly?"


Now, regarding Liam Neeson in the role of Rhas Al Ghul, it occurs to me that the whole setup with Ken Watanabe as a decoy Rhas Al Ghul was wrong too - as was the fact that it was set in Bhutan or Nepal. I think in the DVD extras, they mentioned that it was Bhutan, not that it really matters. Anyway, given the middle eastern origins of the character, then those scenes shouldn't have been in that region of Asia at all. Perhaps a mountaintop in Tunisia might have been more appropriate.


Oh, if DC does a reset every few years, I think they'd better do one now. The last time I went into a comics store, I picked up one of the new Batman comics and discovered that at this point, the title character is actually dead and Dick Grayson's under the cowl. I don't know - maybe a whole lot of readers are hooked on this storyline but if anyone's just seen The Dark Knight and they're planning to delve into the comics, DC will lose them.

One time, I picked up one of their Crises on Infinite Earths things in a library and had a flip through it - one of the most confusing messes I've ever seen committed to paper. You'd probably need a PhD in DC comic history to make sense of it.

Now having said all that, I think a bit of ongoing continuity is a good thing too but within reason. I don't think a comic made after the year 2000 should be referencing events from a comic back in the 80s.

Heh heh. In the fine tradition of the Nightlife forums, having first exhausted the topic, we have now totally derailed this thread. Good times.

This post has been edited by Just your average movie goer: 04 February 2010 - 08:43 PM

[Supes]

Responded to part of your post over in Comic Books Thread in the Book Club.

[Just your average movie goer]

Good idea. Although, while we're slightly off the topic, it seems like the perfect time to throw these in:

The Dark Knight meets Superman

The Dark Knight meets Superman Part 2

These are awesome. They're a couple of parodies, exploring the idea of what would happen if you had that classic cross-over from the comics in the universe of the new Batman movies. If you haven't see them before, click on them now. They're great.


And now getting back on topic...

Quote

I get that the mountaintop secret lairs arre more poetic than the modern schools, etc. I just don't like the cliche. Also these organizations might have weird rituals, like the finmal exam being you have to kill this guy in a pit or something. BATMAN BEGINS went into that, but IMO rather than it appearing like a dramatic point for the character to resolve, it appeared like a moment of "oh, yeah .... I'm training with NINJAS!" Another reminder that the Batman in that movie wasnt as bright as he was in the 1966 flick with Adam West. So yeah. One more thing I didn't like about BATMAN BEGINS.

I love it. It's very stereotypical, isn't it? "Oh, this is an evil cult? Oh, man... I wish you had mentioned that earlier."

Actually, Bruce Wayne was particularly stupid because the warning signs were there in virtually every scene with that cult. An old man warns him not to go up the mountain, he's greeted by a group of dodgy looking characters carrying high powered rifles (um... this is a ninja school, isn't it?)... and then there's that stupid scene where Rhas attacks him. You know, that "Death does not wait for you to be ready!" crap. Well, the thing is... if Bruce Wayne has come to learn from this cult, then they oughta assume that he's not up for that stuff yet. If he was ready for it, then why would he need to enrol? Seriously, that's like throwing a final fourth year exam at a brand new freshman class. A good teacher just doesn't do that - and the whole vibe of the scene is that these guys seem evil. Also, I hated the dialogue during that pointless demonstration "Tiger! Judjitsu! Panther! Puffin! Lemur! Monkey on acid! You are skilled but this is not a dance!"

This post has been edited by Just your average movie goer: 06 February 2010 - 05:14 AM

[Supes]

Just your average movie goer, on 06 February 2010 - 05:10 AM, said:

Actually, Bruce Wayne was particularly stupid because the warning signs were there in virtually every scene with that cult. An old man warns him not to go up the mountain, he's greeted by a group of dodgy looking characters carrying high powered rifles (um... this is a ninja school, isn't it?)... and then there's that stupid scene where Rhas attacks him. You know, that "Death does not wait for you to be ready!" crap. Well, the thing is... if Bruce Wayne has come to learn from this cult, then they oughta assume that he's not up for that stuff yet. If he was ready for it, then why would he need to enrol? Seriously, that's like throwing a final fourth year exam at a brand new freshman class. A good teacher just doesn't do that - and the whole vibe of the scene is that these guys seem evil. Also, I hated the dialogue during that pointless demonstration "Tiger! Judjitsu! Panther! Puffin! Lemur! Monkey on acid! You are skilled but this is not a dance!"

In a lot of ways this scene is actually more in keeping with the character of Bruce Wayne as he is seeking out the required knowledge and also sets up the aspect of Batman that often puts him at odds with someone like Superman. Batman, will break rules and laws in order to uphold the greater good. It is highly conceivable that Bruce Wayne would walk into an "evil" camp in order to obtain knowledge that he will later be able to use against said evil. He just recognizes that he is not always positioned to win some battles or make a change in some circumstances. If memory serves thought there was a very Hollywood like destruction of the camp at Bruce's hands so they kind of ticked that box, although I really don't think it was necessary to do so due to Bruce's actual nature.

[civilian_number_two]

MG, those videos you linked are funny and all, but they're clerly plagiarizing this. Enjoy.