Image by Roberto Lee Cortes from Pixabay “When people ask me if Michael Sullivan was a good man, or if there was just no good in him at all, I always give the same answer. I just tell them…he was my father.” – Michael Sullivan, Jr. (played by Tyler Hoechlin) “Revenge is never a straight line. It’s a forest…it’s easy to lose your way…to get lost…to forget where you came in.” – Hattori Hanzō (played by Sonny Chiba) To say that violence has been a staple in cinema since its early years is an understatement. Despite a particular sector of American society purporting to uphold Puritanical virtues about shielding peoples’ eyes from blood and gore in the movies, it’s clear based on the kinds of movies that have made money at the box office for decades that audiences enjoy seeing death and destruction on the big screen. From Commando and Cape Fear to John Wick and Mandy, filmmakers with highly varied sensibilities put their own unique stamp on the action genre and keep viewers coming back for more in the process.
But, in my humble opinion, there is a particular kind of violence that can elevate what would otherwise be a standard action, crime, or adventure flick to a critically and commercially successful piece of art: a character-focused journey for revenge. There are certainly numerous potential reasons as to why moviegoers gravitate to stories about characters betrayed, cheated, or otherwise personally wronged who risk it all to seek some distorted sense of vigilante justice and retribution from those that wronged them. My hope with today’s blog is to examine several movies with distinctive identities that fit within the revenge subgenre in order to explore what exactly is enticing about this kind of story. So, without further ado…LET’S GET STARTED!! [NOTE: This blog contains spoilers for several movies. You have been warned.] Road to Perdition (2002) Within a year of its initial publication, the graphic novel “Road to Perdition” by author Max Allan Collins was already being eyed for a film adaptation. Collins’ agent managed to get the novel in front of the eyes of legendary producer Richard D. Zanuck (Jaws, Driving Miss Daisy, Deep Impact) who brought it to the attention of director Steven Spielberg. Despite his full directing slate, Spielberg showed interest by setting the project up at DreamWorks for development. Meanwhile, up-and-coming film director Sam Mendes (Jarhead, Skyfall, 1917) was coming off of his Oscar-winning directorial debut American Beauty looking for another project. When DreamWorks sent Mendes the pitch for adapting Collins’ graphic novel, he was immediately attracted by its simple narrative yet complex themes (specifically its exploration of the impact of violence on children) despite lacking any absolute moral stance about the characters actions. With more drafts of the script were written, the film became more and more detached from sticking closely to Collins’ graphic novel. While several core elements of the narrative were retained, everything from character names to subplots were taken out or changed. Notably, the character of Harlen Maguire (Jude Law) was injected into the screenplay to help keep up the tension of the Sullivans being on the run. Furthermore, cinematographer Conrad Hall (Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) encouraged Mendes to avoid gratuitous violence in favor of poignant, meaningful moments. Mendes, meanwhile, sought to focus on the graphic novel’s essence through emphasizing the “nonverbal simplicity” evident in the films of Sergio Leone and Akira Kurosawa. (This ended up causing the final twenty minutes of the movie to have only six lines of dialogue) Throughout the writing process, Collins remained a consultant but chose to not be directly involving in screenwriting due to his respect for how different the medium is from literature. While he praised several changes from his novel to the film (i.e. Law’s character, the minimalist dialogue, the characterization of Paul Newman’s role), he criticized others (i.e. the excessive vulgarity, Michael Sullivan, Jr. not killing anyone, the narrative framing device). Tom Hanks, who ended up playing the protagonist Michael Sullivan, was busy filming Cast Away with Robert Zemeckis when Spielberg sent him a copy of Collins’ graphic novel. But it was the first draft of the screenplay that caused him to get very hooked into the story (specifically as a father of four). Tyler Hoechlin, who played Michael, Jr., was hired out of a crop of over 2,000 candidates, whereas Paul Newman (The Hustler, Cool Hand Luke, The Color of Money) was the unanimous ideal choice for Sullivan’s father figure John Rooney. Principal photography took place over the course of several winter and spring months of 2001, concluding in June. To craft an authentic atmosphere for the movie, Mendes filmed on location in Chicago and had interior sets built in order to better control the lighting environment. In collaboration with Conrad Hall, Mendes sought to create a “violent and magnificent” atmosphere to serve the story of father and son “in the last period of lawlessness in American history.” In crafting the lighting for the film, Mendes looked to the artwork of American realist and New York native Edward Hopper by following a “less is more” mantra. When exterior scenes were shot, Mendes incorporated real-world weather conditions such as rain and snow to reflect the emotional states of the characters. In another impeccable example of visual storytelling, Hall specifically positioned the camera a ways away from Hanks during the first half of the movie in order to capture Michael, Jr.’s ignorance of his father’s true nature. Furthermore, Hanks’s entrances through doorways were shot partially obscured and in shadows. Finally, Hall’s wide lens helps sufficiently distance Hanks’s character from the audience over the course of the movie. Released in July of 2002 (an uncommon release window for a drama alongside the action blockbusters typical of the time), Road to Perdition grossed over 183 million dollars on an 80-million-dollar budget and received widespread acclaim from critics. The central performances from Hanks and Newman were praised, as was Hall’s cinematography, even though some critics felt Mendes detrimentally kept audiences emotionally distanced (and thus uninvested) from many of the characters (Michael, Jr. being the exception). The film was nominated for six Oscars, winning only Best Cinematography for Conrad Hall (who had passed away barely two months before the ceremony that year). Notably, this was Newman’s final Oscar nomination (Best Supporting Actor) before his death in 2008. Of all the movies directed by Sam Mendes, Road to Perdition (in my humble opinion) is the best of his movies that has received the least positive attention in the mainstream since it came out. It remains on my working list of underappreciated and underrated flicks that I recommend to friends and family whenever I get the chance. While there’s a lot to like about the film, I want to focus on the enduring relatability of its narrative: a father seeking revenge for the deaths of his family. While not a father myself, the plight of mobster Michael Sullivan (Tom Hanks) as he hunts down his adoptive father figure John Rooney (Paul Newman) for murdering his wife Annie (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and second son Peter (Liam Aiken) is such a compelling story to watch unfold. Undoubtedly, Hanks delivers what might just be his most morally corrupt performance to date. Obviously, the ingrained criminal nature of Sullivan makes for an uncharacteristic archetype for Hanks to play. But what I think Hanks does to excel in this role beyond peoples’ expectations of him are how much he counters the popular perception of him as a charming and lovable man. Hanks, instead, plays Sullivan as an admirable and respectable father whose thirst for Rooney’s blood complicates his relationship to violence and, therefore, the viewer’s relationship to Sullivan. But the added narrative twist that makes the revenge thrills of Road to Perdition transcend their genre trappings is Sullivan’s other priority following Annie and Peter’s deaths: keeping his eldest son, Michael, Jr. (Tyler Hoechlin), from following in his father’s footsteps. In sharp contrast to the scenes involving Sullivan tracking down Rooney and killing anybody that gets in his way of doing so, watching Michael, Jr. develop a more intimate and loving bond with his father on the road than they ever had during their normal lives is heartbreakingly tragic and ironic. It is this strand of the film’s narrative that turns it from very good to great. Whereas most revenge flicks evoke catharsis in the audience simply by showing the person who’s been wronged achieve their goal of getting back at the person or people that wronged them, Road to Perdition establishes the true stakes as Sullivan doing everything in his power to shield his son from any desire to kill while simultaneously allowing himself to be consumed by it. A simple thematic premise, but a powerful one nonetheless. Aside from the main narrative, it is the other elements of moviemaking on display that incite Road to Perdition to transcend greatness into its status as a modern, underrated classic. On the one hand, Mendes skillfully structures the story to inject enough levity between Hanks and Hoechlin so as to keep this dark, violent drama from becoming overbearingly so (I always loved the scenes involving Michael, Jr. learning to be a getaway driver) Aside from the writing and direction, the lighting and cinematography are often applied to sheer perfection. Notably, the standout climactic scene occurs on the rainy streets of Chicago when Sullivan (cloaked in urban shadows) guns down several of Rooney’s men before confronting Rooney face to face and killing him. As an end to the closest thing Sullivan had to a father-son relationship, it serves as the tragic end to one of the last things tying him to life. The other thing, of course, is Michael, Jr. whom he wants to keep alive and sheltered until his dying breath. Ultimately, he is successful despite having to kill assassin Harlen Maguire (Jude Law) after being fatally shot by Maguire himself. Bleeding out on the floor of a beach house, he dies being held in his son’s arms but not before managing to proudly assure Michael, Jr. that he knew his son was incapable of killing. All in all, Road to Perdition will always be one of my favorite gangster movies and one of the prime examples of how emotionally complex and thematically rich the revenge subgenre can be. Its exploration of the consequences of violence is great and its cinematic techniques on display are captivating. But I’m grateful that the film exists, first and foremost, as a story reminding fathers to show love towards their sons while also reminding sons the lengths their fathers will go and what they will sacrifice for them. Kill Bill (2003-2004) While filming his sophomore feature Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs, Django Unchained, The Hateful Eight) collaborated with star Uma Thurman (Gattaca, Paycheck) to conceive of “The Bride” character which led to Tarantino working approximately eighteen months on the script during his time in New York City in the early 2000s. Nearing completing on the script, Tarantino realized that his protagonist’s child could be alive (it was spending time around Thurman, who had recently given birth to her first daughter Maya Hawke, that influenced Tarantino regarding this decision and his approach to “The Bride” character overall). In conceptualizing the film, Tarantino aimed to pay homage and respect to the “grindhouse cinema” of the 1970s (specifically martial arts, samurai, and blaxploitation films, and spaghetti westerns). Notably, the yellow tracksuit, helmet, and motorcycle worn by Thurman’s character were inspired by Bruce Lee’s outfit in 1972’s Game of Death. Furthermore, the animated sequence is largely drawn from violent anime movies like 1987’s Wicked City. As production was set to begin, Thurman became pregnant with her son Levon so Tarantino delayed production. Principal photography lasted just over five months, and Tarantino shot the movie sequentially despite the final edit showing scenes out of chronological order. Additionally, martial arts choreographer and Honk Kong native Yuen Woo-ping (The Matrix, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) was hired to advise the action scenes. Despite making Kill Bill as a single movie, Tarantino succumbed to pressure by producer Harvey Weinstein to release it as two films as a compromise to cut less scenes. Tarantino himself has said that his biggest challenge in making the movie was creating his own unique spin on action as opposed to relying more heavily on dialogue as he had done in previous projects. Given the time period when he was filming, Tarantino forewent CGI to instead rely on practical effects (particularly those used in Chinese cinema from the 1970s). As filming was wrapping up, Thurman was injured in an auto accident after requesting that a stunt driver do the scene in her stead. She sustained a concussion and damage to her knees as a result of the crash, incentivizing her to request Miramax to release the crash footage which they agreed to on the condition Thurman legally absolve them of any permanent damage to her person. The crash tainted Thurman and Tarantino’s relationship for years, and Thurman has expressed that her acting and career have been affected ever since. Made on a combined budget of approximately 60 million dollars, the two parts of Kill Bill (subtitled Volume 1 and Volume 2, respectively) were released less than a year apart in October of 2003 and April of 2004. Their box offices combined, Kill Bill grossed roughly 333 million dollars and received largely critical acclaim for its style and respectful parody of grindhouse cinema. Thurman’s performance was well received, although neither of the Kill Bill flicks received any Oscar nominations. However, Tarantino’s female-led revenge duology is highly regarded as two of the best action movies of the 21st century. Also, the first film’s use of Tomoyasu Hotei’s song “Battle Without Honor or Humanity” has become a staple of pop culture and was also used in films like Shrek the Third, Team America: World Police, and The Mitchells vs. the Machines. Generally speaking, I consider myself a fan of Tarantino. Aside from Pulp Fiction, which unquestionably remains my favorite directed feature of his, I also quite enjoy Jackie Brown, The Hateful Eight, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. And while I don’t love Inglorious Basterds or Django Unchained as much as many Tarantino fans do, I can appreciate their sheer entertainment value. But when it comes to the Kill Bill movies, I don’t quite understand what the big deal is. Upon reflection of my experience watching the Kill Bill duology, I think it ends up being more disappointing than unenjoyable. Going into these movies after seeing how Tarantino had evolved as a filmmaker in his early years, I was hopeful that his signature dialogue combined with over-the-top, heightened action scenes and a layered emotional journey for “The Bride” (Uma Thurman) could make for his best example of cinematic storytelling yet. What ended up happening, however, was Taratino’s biggest strengths and flaws as a filmmaker clashing to subpar effect. For starters, I’ve always found my favorite part of Tarantino’s distinctive and eccentric style to be the dialogue-driven mingling among his protagonists. Essentially, the action and plot of his stories are (almost) always propelled forward by his exceptionally strong, well-written characters whose banter back and forth is just as (if not more) entertaining to watch as his gratuitous hyper-stylized violence. And out of all of his movies, I think Tarantino relies least on this defining strength in the Kill Bill films. Sure, there are some superb scenes that rely more on character interactions (notably Bill’s monologue about Superman in Vol. 2) but they are few and far between when compared to much of Tarantino’s other work. Which gets to my least favorite part of these movies: the action. Maybe I should’ve checked my expectations before watching Kill Bill, but I’m just not as entertained by swashbuckling sword fights and martial-arts beatdowns in the style of the iconic wuxia and chanbara action genres of China and Japan, respectively, as I am by tense, dramatic dinner scenes in Django Unchained or a bunch of angry assholes holding each other at gunpoint in The Hateful Eight. Beyond that, however, this style of violence in movies (particularly in live action) is simply too cartoonish for me. While I can appreciate and enjoy it in small bits (like the animated sequence in Vol. 1 that works surprisingly well), the major fight scenes in both parts of Kill Bill (like “The Bride” facing off against O-Ren’s Crazy 88 in Vol. 1) just don’t do it for me. I do get what Tarantino is doing in paying homage to East Asian cinema that he grew up watching and loving, and I’m sure if I was in his position, I’d have some intense nostalgia for these kinds of movies. But I don’t, and thus much of what Kill Bill relies on to hook the audience into its four-hour-plus epic revenge tale. And this gets to my biggest complaint about these movies: why couldn’t Tarantino just grit his teeth and edit it down to one super-sized film? I greatly admire him as an artist and filmmaker, and have always found his overtly egotistical personality somewhat endearing. But I just wish he would’ve convinced Harvey Weinstein to submit a three-hour-ish cut to the studio and said, “That’s the movie. Take it or leave it.” Instead, what we got was a movie more than four hours long edited into two halves that, when combined with the regular cutting back and forth through time, makes for what ultimately comes off to me as a jumbled mess of a story. Uma Thurman’s “The Bride” probably deserves better than what Tarantino ultimately released in the Kill Bill duology. Her desire for revenge is incredibly sympathetic (the “church slaughter” scene makes for one of the genuinely dramatic and emotional sequences between both movies), but the movie that surrounds her just doesn’t add up to the sum of its parts. I know my opinion is unpopular, and hopefully when I rewatch the two Kill Bill flicks at some point in the future when Tarantino announces his last film, I’ll enjoy them more. For now, though, I watch them and end up feeling very “whelmed.” The Revenant (2015) As early as 2001, Hollywood was trying to adapt Michael Punke’s novel “The Revenant” (in turn based on the 1915 poem “The Song of Hugh Glass”) into a feature film. Several producers, such as screenwriter Akiva Goldsman (The Client, A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man) and writer/director Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, Snowpiercer), picked up and dropped the project over the course of nearly a decade. By August of 2011, Mexican director Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu (Babel, Birdman) signed on to direct the movie with several production companies such as New Regency joining the effort as well. By this point, Iñárritu was seeking out Leonardo DiCaprio (Titanic, The Aviator, The Wolf of Wall Street) for the lead role of Glass. Once hired, Iñárritu worked on rewrites with screenwriter Mark L. Smith (Overlord, The Midnight Sky), who had penned an initial drift ten years prior. Smith himself admits that he was apprehensive if Iñárritu would be able to film some of the sequences they were writing but went along with it for the time being. After the production was put on hold from 2012 to 2014 while Iñárritu filmed (and won a Best Picture and Best Director Oscar for) Birdman, the budget and casting were finalized with DiCaprio signed on but Tom Hardy (Black Hawk Down, Warrior, Mad Max: Fury Road) taking the other lead role that Iñárritu originally wanted to be played by Sean Penn (Casualties of War, Mystic River, Milk). Principal photography kicked off in October of 2014. Several conditions of filming stretched out the shooting schedule for almost a full year. First off, Iñárritu utilized natural lighting and real-world locations which required using “40% of the day” to simply travel to, light, and stage every scene which could often be hampered by weather conditions. Furthermore, several crew members either quit or were laid off by Iñárritu himself. DiCaprio has said that at least 30 sequences in the movie were “some of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do.” Despite all of these obstacles, Iñárritu managed to shoot the movie chronologically per his desires (despite doing so increased the film’s budget by at least seven million dollars). By the time production wrapped in August of 2015, the cost of the movie had more than doubled to 135 million dollars. Released on Christmas Day in 2015, The Revenant earned over 530 million dollars at the box office and was mostly warmly received by critics. While DiCaprio’s performance and Iñárritu’s direction received universal and near-universal praise, respectively, some critics took issue with the screenplay and runtime. Ultimately, The Revenant earned a leading twelve nominations at that year’s Academy Awards (including Best Picture). In addition to Emmanuel Lubezki winning Best Cinematography, Iñárritu became the third director in history to win Best Director two years consecutively (following John Ford for The Grapes of Wrath and How Green Was My Valley, and Joseph L. Mankiewicz for A Letter to Three Wives and All Above Eve). Notably, DiCaprio won his first acting Oscar after being nominated four times prior (five counting his producer credit on The Wolf of Wall Street). The Revenant was actually the first of Iñárritu’s films that I saw. I distinctly remember going to the theater with my dad around New Year’s Eve the year it came out, and we both left the theater stunned by what we’d just watched. It was an incredibly harsh yet cathartic viewing experience, and remains one of my most memorably moviegoing experiences of the last decade even though The Revenant is not a big blockbuster episode of a mega-franchise like Marvel or Star Wars. And despite some initial apprehension on my part when I rewatched it over a year ago, I underwent a similar thrilling and emotionally draining experience seeing The Revenant again that (almost) matched my first unforgettable time seeing it. While I really like Birdman, I do think that The Revenant is Iñárritu’s best film. Among other reasons, I think this is partially due to the fact that it’s surprisingly his most accessible film. For one thing, the story is simple: fur trapper and frontiersman Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is nearly mauled to death by a bear in the American wilderness of the early 19th century and, due to his injuries, ends up being left for head by his less courageous contemporary John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) after watching his son Hawk (Forrest Goodluck) get stabbed to death by Fitzgerald. Over the course of the next nearly two hours, the audience watches Glass endure hell on Earth to return to the trappers’ home at Fort Kiowa and, with the help of Captain Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson), track down Fitzgerald and kill him as retribution for Hawk’s murder. Simply put, in virtually every scene it is evident that Iñárritu and the creative team both in front of and behind the camera wholly committed to immersing the audience in the unforgiving world of The Revenant. Aside from the plot itself, Iñárritu’s reliance on natural lighting combined with his staging of the action (notably the opening skirmish between the trappers and local indigenous tribe) and the breathtaking cinematography of Emmanuel Lubezki (Children of Men, Gravity, Birdman) perfectly captures the ruthless ambiance and life-threatening environment of the setting. When it comes to seeing Glass or any of the other characters interacting with their surroundings, never once does the audience fail to suspend their disbelief which allows them to be fully immersed in the world that Iñárritu creates for us. For a movie like this, the believability of the environment is perhaps the most important thing to get right. Of course, nobody that sees The Revenant comes away from it without being fully aware of the impression that DiCaprio’s powerful, transcendent performance has left on them. Similar to Iñárritu’s fully immersive atmosphere of the American frontier, DiCaprio’s inspiring and admirable commitment to every part of Glass’s story of survival only enhances the viewing experience. And when you remember that his fight to live is motivated purely by a desire to avenge his son’s death, the movie takes on a more empathetic and heartbreaking tone than what it would’ve had if this strand of the narrative was absent in lieu of Iñárritu making a straightforward survival flick. I tend to enjoy movies that seamlessly integrate the three major sources of narrative conflict, which The Revenant does to a tee. First, Glass’s struggle to survive the wilderness in an effort to return to Fort Kiowa still breathing perfectly encapsulates “man vs. nature.” Second, the hostiles that Glass encounters along the way (and, of course, the final confrontation between Glass and Fitzgerald) makes for some solid “man vs. man” entertainment. Finally, Glass’s internal struggle over his relationship with violence and his lust for revenge, in contrast to acting out of honor for his son’s memory, serves as the “man vs. self” cherry on top, so to speak, of the film’s layered yet easy-to-follow story. In my humble opinion, this is what sets The Revenant apart (or at least helps it stand out) from most other films in the revenge subgenre. To be fair, the film is by no means perfect. At over two-and-a-half hours, it does feel slightly drawn out without needing to be. Certainly, a handful of scenes could’ve been slimmed down (and maybe one of two even cut) to make for fifteen minutes less and thus allow the movie to work even better and the littlest bit less of a hardship that some viewers find it to be. That being said, The Revenant is one of those rare movies that I think works in spite of its runtime. Simply put, the potential exhaustion you’ll feel by the time the credits roll is more than worth it. And hey, at least it wasn’t split into two movies like Kill Bill. 😊 Each of the movies I’ve discussed here today utilize revenge, either adequately or spectacularly, as a motif of storytelling to ingratiate the audience to a diverse array of protagonists with distinct personalities yet a shared bloodlust to make right the wrongs done to them and their loved ones. In a way, like many film genres and creative outlets in general, revenge stories are a prime method of vicarious fantasy and escapism for consumers of such art to emotionally live out how they would act if who they cared about most in this world were taken from them. Whether you fear what you would become in such a predicament—like Hugh Glass in The Revenant—or your primary concern is the legacy you leave behind for your offspring—like Michael Sullivan in Road to Perdition—revenge will likely always be a one-way ticket to death and destruction. But, thanks to movies, we can just fantasize about taking such a path rather than suffer the trials and tribulations of it ourselves. If you’re interested, I’ve written about several other notable revenge movies: Brian de Palma’s Carrie, the Coen Brothers’ True Grit, Mel Gibson’s Braveheart, Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners, and Christopher Nolan’s Memento. Just to name a few. 😊 What is your favorite revenge movie that I discussed today? What are some other revenge movies that you recommend? What opinions of mine do you find absolutely ridiculous? Let me know in the comments below. Until next time, this has been… Yours Truly, Amateur Analyst
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Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay Unlike so many kids today, I didn’t grow up watching anime. Sure, I’d check out the Saturday morning episodes of Pokémon or Yu-Gi-Oh! every now and again. But I never even heard of Studio Ghibli or of films Akira and Ghost in the Shell until my young adulthood. So, in catching up with cinema classics over the last few years I’ve also better familiarized myself with some older and newer classic anime flicks such as Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro, Isao Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies, Naoko Yamada’s A Silent Voice, and Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name.
After seeing all those movies and more, what’s the one that I would recommend to anyone? It is none other than Mamoru Hosoda’s 2012 masterpiece Wolf Children. Why is this movie worth your time? Keep reading to find out. 😊 What’s It About [NOTE: This section contains minor spoilers for “Wolf Children.” If you’d rather see the film for yourself, skip to the next section. Also, I’ll be crediting the cast of the English dub since that’s the version of “Wolf Children” that I watched.] The story of Wolf Children centers on a young woman named Hana (Colleen Clinkenbeard) who befriends, and ultimately falls in love with, a strange loner (David Matranga) while at college in Tokyo. Not long into their relationship, the man reveals his ability to transform into a wolf which does not deter Hana’s affections. The two end up moving in together and having two half-human, half-wolf children: their firstborn girl Yuki (Lara Woodhull and Jad Saxton), and their only son Ame (Alison Viktorin and Micah Solusod). However, once tragedy strikes, Hana is forced to cease her education and raise her two children by herself. Recognizing the inherent dangers of bringing up half-wolf kids in a populated urban environment with neighbors and the government prying into their lives, Hana decides to relocate her family of three to the Japanese countryside. While working to upstart a successful farm, Hana also fully commits herself to giving Yuki and Ame ample space and opportunities to grow up as human or as wolf as they wish. Throughout the course of the film as both children age, Hana’s motherly devotion shines brightly while Yuki and Ame experience a variety of situations that help them decide who they want to be and how they want to live in this world. Ultimately, Hana must come to terms with the choices that her children make and accept her potential shortcomings in order to realize whether or not she gave each of them what they truly needed for the future. Why It’s Worth Watching Going into Wolf Children, I was unsure if I would like it or not. I had seen three of Hosoda’s movies before: Saban Entertainment’s 2000 film adaptation Digimon: The Movie (which he co-directed with Shigeyasu Yamauchi), the 2006 sci-fi romance The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and the 2009 sci-fi adventure flick Summer Wars. As a kid, I owned the VHS tape of the first and watched it on repeat but I acknowledge now that it’s not a well-structured movie. I did not really enjoy the second one, but I did enjoy the third one despite and because of its quirkiness. Luckily, Wolf Children did not disappoint. In virtually every way, it felt like a step up from all of Hosoda’s previous films which makes it not only my favorite movie in his repertoire but also one of my favorite anime movies. Period. Much of my love for Wolf Children is based on the characters that Hosoda co-wrote with frequent collaborator Satoko Okudera (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars). Our protagonist is Hana, a smart and capable young woman trying to get an education when her path crosses with the mysterious, enigmatic loner who turns out to be a werewolf. Honestly, it’s these first twenty-ish minutes that are the weakest of the movie but they’re still very good. Hosoda and Okudera’s screenplay expertly settle you in for what you think is going to be a wholesome family story about two young people overcoming life’s struggles to race their mixed-species children. But life (or the writers) has other plans, putting Hana’s story on a different path of being a single mother of her kids Ame and Yuki. From this point on, Wolf Children becomes a compelling drama about the trials and tribulations of motherhood with the added twist of a human trying to raise her half-wolf children without a half-wolf partner around to help out. Moving forward, every decision Hana makes is about raising her children in a safe environment where humans will not discover the secret behind her children’s dual identity. From not knowing to take her sick child to a doctor or a veterinarian to leaving the city to avoid social services who have received noise complaints from neighbors, Hana’s predicament and the grace with which she handles allows Hosoda to evoke incredible amounts of empathy from his audience for his protagonist. For a little over half the film, Wolf Children is Hana’s story. It is a gripping and lovely tale of the unconditional love parents have for their children, which alone makes it a great film. But sometime during the second act, you start to realize that the movie’s about more than that. As Ame and Yuki get older, they experience journeys of their own in confronting the truth behind how humans view predators like themselves as well as going back and forth between which part of themselves to uphold more wholeheartedly. Thus, Hosoda effectively shifts the film’s narrative to a thematically rich coming-of-age story where Ame and Yuki either suppressing or embracing their wolf selves symbolizing the universal identity crisis that all kids experience as they get older. And, to top it all off, the conclusions of the kids’ journeys perfectly tie into Hana’s arc. She has spent so many years of her life being a hyper-protective mother keeping her children safe from the darkness of the world, but towards the end of the movie her overprotective nature puts her own life at risk. Ultimately, she must accept that she has done all she can to raise her children well and allow them both to move forward with the paths they have chosen. As the audience, you feel the bittersweet mixture of pride and heartbreak that Hana feels in these moments even if you don’t have or have never had children of your own (as a single, unmarried man in his mid-20s myself, I qualify as the non-parenting viewer 😊). If this powerful story isn’t enough, Wolf Children boasts some breathtaking animation for being ten years old. From the very first shot, it is clear that the movie will be a vast visual improvement from Hosoda’s earlier films. The animation team excels at grounding this fairy-tale-like story with how they conceive nature as a hopeful and vivacious place in sharp contrast to the somber aesthetic that defines the city (and thus the film’s tragic beginning). On top of all of that, I was initially worried that the look of two children that regularly transform into wolves would be too cartoonish and, therefore, distract from the grounded narrative. Fortunately, the animators seem very aware of such wariness and never let the audience come away from any scenes involving Ame and Yuki’s wolf selves feeling that they have stripped away the realistic elements dominating the rest of the movie. Simply put, Wolf Children is more than worth your time on a rainy Sunday afternoon or a Friday family movie night. It has plenty of humor and kinetic action for young children, compelling characters and plot for adolescents, and mature, relatable themes for adults. And if you’re not a parent, you’ll feel like you’ve gone through the ringer of being one by the time the credits begin to roll. 😉 If you’re unsure of where to start delving into the anime film genre, you certainly won’t go wrong starting that journey with this masterpiece. Have I convinced you to check out Mamoru Hosoda’s Wolf Children? What’s a movie that you feel is underappreciated? What opinions of mine do you find absolutely ridiculous? Let me know in the comments below. Until next time, this has been… Yours Truly, Amateur Analyst Image by Enrique Meseguer from Pixabay Science fiction has always been a rich source of cinematic storytelling since the earliest days of film. Ever since Georges Méliès released his adventure movie A Trip to the Moon in 1902, filmmakers all across the globe for decades have been inspired to tell stories about everything from robots and aliens to wars and conflicts between humanity and technology.
I have written about several distinctive, genre-defining science-fiction films over these last couple of years: the 1950s black-and-white horror movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the 1970s space opera Star Wars and its sequels, the 1980s sci-fi comedies Back to the Future and Ghostbusters, the 1990s action spectacles Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Independence Day, and James Cameron’s 2009 epic Avatar. Just to name a few. 😊 But today, I am here to discuss the 1968 sci-fi classic Planet of the Apes which spawned a film franchise with four direct sequels, a 2001 remake, and a reboot trilogy starring Andy Serkis. It is often cited among one of the best sci-fi flicks of the last sixty years, standing tall alongside other classics of the era like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Clearly, its legacy has remained relevant well into the 2010s as it inspired a modern retelling of this story from directors Rupert Wyatt and Matt Reeves. But I have to ask…why isn’t Planet of the Apes great? [NOTE: This blog will contain spoilers for “Planet of the Apes.” You have been warned.] What’s It About Three astronauts—including George Taylor (Charlton Heston)—awaken from hibernation during a deep-space flight only to crash land on an unknown planet. After discovering that their travels have shot them over two thousand years into the future, the astronauts begin traversing the wasteland of this unknown planet before they are found by armed gorillas. While the other two astronauts are either killed or knocked unconscious, Taylor receives a wound to his throat nearly killing him. He wakes to discover that two chimpanzees—Zira (Kim Hunter) and Galen (Wright King)—have managed to save his life despite the wound temporarily muting him. While in captivity with a human woman (Linda Harrison), Taylor observes a theocratic ape society with a strict caste system that only views humans as a source of slave labor or as subjects of scientific experiments. After managing to convince Zira and her husband Cornelius (Roddy McDowall) of his compatible intelligence, he attempts escape but is recaptured when the apes learn that he can speak. To determine Taylor’s origins, the apes conduct a hearing which puts Taylor’s life (and manhood) at risk. Fortunately for Taylor, Zira and Cornelius manage to free him once again and together they leave Ape City to find Taylor’s crashed spaceship in the “Forbidden Zone” where the apes have ruled out of bounds. In an effort to be vindicated, Zira and Cornelius plan to uncover evidence of a non-simian civilization predating the apes while Taylor aims to prove his true origins from beyond this planet. When Zira’s superior Dr. Zaius (Maurice Evans) and some soldiers discover them in the Forbidden Zone, Taylor coerces Zaius to go into a cave with them. It is there that Cornelius shows Zaius remnants of a technologically-advanced human society that existed on the planet before the apes. To the others’ surprise, Zaius admits that he’s known about these remnants and warns Taylor not to keep looking for answers in the Forbidden Zone which was once a lush paradise. Despite indicating otherwise, Zaius seals off the cave to prevent the human evidence and charges Zira and Cornelius with heresy. But while they are being escorted back to Ape City along the shoreline, they come across remnants of the Statue of Liberty. The twist? The planet Taylor crash-landed on is not an alien planet with talking apes, but instead Earth centuries after an apocalyptic war. Realizing this, Taylor collapses to his knees in disdain for humanity destroying itself. What’s Good About It Given the time when Planet of the Apes came out, I understand why it’s a foundation film for modern sci-fi movies. Simply put, sci-fi had largely treated backwards into “camp” territory with movies lacking sufficient investments in special effects or gripping screenplays resulting in the genre being lampooned among film critics for over a decade. However, this was released the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey did. And while they’re VERY different takes on science fiction, they both offered relatively grounded, idea-focused cinematic experiences that inspired some modern sci-fi flicks like Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival or Ridley Scott’s The Martian. Ultimately, these elements are (in my humble opinion) the most enduring strengths of the original Planet of the Apes. For one, the story’s inversion of the “man conquers nature” trope by showing what it might be like for humanity to be studied like wild animals by sentient simians undoubtedly makes for mild entertainment. Specifically, how ape characters Zaius and Zira act as opposing ideological outlooks on man’s potential for intelligence—and thus usefulness to progress—makes for some sufficiently compelling melodrama cloaked in thematic explorations of what makes life sentient and valuable. Aside from that, I think the film does a serviceable job pioneering other sci-fi tropes such as theocratic class distinctions stalling genuine achievement and the tendency of totalitarian regimes to conceal parts of history for the sake of the will of the state. Certainly, other stories do these things better but Planet of the Apes never truly stumbles in executing these ideas in its story. But my favorite aspect of the film’s narrative was the primary struggle of Charlton Heston’s human character trying again and again to win Zira’s trust and do his damnedest to protect his life by proving to all the apes the potential of humankind. Not only does this effectively serve the tragic irony of the film’s climax (that, in actuality, humanity’s worst tendencies won over in the end), but I just enjoyed seeing Heston interact with the ape characters. When Planet of the Apes is focused on this element of the story, it’s the most engaging. Unfortunately, the film’s strengths end there. So, why isn’t it great? What’s Holding It Back Similar to my earlier comments, I totally understand how the film’s seemingly shocking ending twist about the planet that Heston’s character has landed on would’ve reeled audiences back in 1968. Its piercing, melodramatic vibe very much fits in with other mid-20th-century sci-fi flicks like The Day the Earth Stood Still or Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But, the ending just didn’t hit in the 2020s in the way that the filmmakers intended it to. Despite its best efforts to “mindf**k” me, its age is perhaps most apparent in failing to do just that. Overall, though, I think what most holds 1968’s Planet of the Apes back for me is the fact that movies have come around that have made it effectively obsolete. Notably, the modern Planet of the Apes trilogy started by Rupert Wyatt in 2011 and taken over by Matt Reeves for its second and third entries do such a more interesting and relevant take on this kind of story. And those movies are far more engaging cinematic entertainment. Need I say more? But maybe I’m wrong, and Planet of the Apes is truly a cinematic masterpiece. I suppose you’ll have to convince me otherwise. 😊 What am I missing about the sci-fi classic Planet of the Apes? Do you think it’s a great movie or do you agree that something’s holding it back from greatness? What opinions of mine do you find absolutely ridiculous? Let me know in the comments below. Until next time, this has been… Yours Truly, Amateur Analyst Image by Abhishek Kashyap from Pixabay Over a year into blogging on a (mostly) weekly, I’ve given my thoughts on so many different superhero franchises. From 20th Century Fox’s X-Men series and the DC Extended Universe to Marvel Studios’ “Infinity Saga” and Sony Pictures’ Spider-Man flicks, there have been so many great, okay, mediocre, and utterly awful depictions of superheroes on the big screen over the course of several decades. But none may be more iconic than the “Caped Crusader” himself…
BATMAN. As I’ve mentioned in several blogs prior, I only grew up with a cinematic version of Spider-Man to admire. Whether it be Tim Burton’s foundational take on the character or Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight Trilogy,” I had never seen any of Batman’s big-screen interpretations until pretty recently. Beyond that, Batman’s persona as a hero just never appealed to me. He seemed either too edgy or too cartoonish to hold his own in either a zany comic book movie like Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy or in a more grounded approach to superheroes like Logan. But, like so many other notable franchises, I have spent the last several years soaking in much of Batman’s history on the big screen and want to delve into the both the exceptional and the incredibly overrated versions of the character leading up to the newest take that premieres this weekend: Matt Reeves’ The Batman. So, without further ado…LET’S GET STARTED! [NOTE: I did not watch the 1966 Batman movie or the Schumacher films Batman Forever and Batman & Robin. I just couldn’t subject myself to them. ☹] Batman (1989) Although I wasn’t alive back in 1989, my understanding is that Tim Burton’s Batman starring Michael Keaton in the title role was a cultural phenomenon when it came out. Considering it made over 400 million dollars during its original run (making it the fifth-highest-grossing film at the time), it doesn’t surprise me. Even Burton himself once referred to the movie as “boring” even though he “liked parts of it.” And yet, its aesthetic and style have stood the test of time as a foundational film of the comic book genre. Is that enough to make it a good movie? … No. No it isn’t. To be clear, I don’t hate Tim Burton’s Batman. I just find it boring and don’t get why it was such a hit when it first came out. Sure, it’s stylish and undeniably inspired the gritty ambience of future superhero flicks (including Nolan’s own trilogy). But virtually everything else in the movie is either uninspired, tonally confused, or outright bizarre and not in a good way. To start, the plot of the movie has always baffled me with how scattershot it is. The struggle that plays out between Keaton’s Batman and Nicholson’s Joker involving Batman interfering with police business and the mob’s attempts to kill Jack Napier (the Joker before he comes the Joker) for having an affair with his boss Carl Grissom’s (Jack Palance) mistress which causes Jack to fall into a vat of acid which changes his skin and want to kill everyone with a laugh-inducing chemical and… SEE WHAT I MEAN?!? I know it’s a matter of hindsight being 20/20, but somehow Christopher Nolan was able to tell a more coherent, complex and compelling story in The Dark Knight without the audience ever feeling out of the loop in what is happening, who is doing what, and why. Clearly, Burton did not focus nearly as much of his energies on overseeing the screenplay for Batman. Which gets to my problem with our two main characters. Apparently, Burton was fascinated by the image of Batman and the Joker as a child and wanted to explore a world where each of their origins are deeply intertwined. In the film, the former’s journey to become the Caped Crusader begins with Jack Napier murdering his parents (which is also done far more tastefully and intelligently in Todd Phillips’s Joker) and the latter’s journey to becoming Joker begins with Batman trying to kill him. Do I like the idea of these two ideological opposites having shared origin stories? Yes, but unfortunately Burton falters in pulling this off. And much of that has to do with both actors (in my humble opinion) not excelling in their respective roles. I get that Nicholson was, and continues to be, praised for his take on Joker. And, admittedly, he has some fun moments. But that’s just it: I don’t think it should be fun to watch the Joker scheme and terrorize. In fact, it should be terrifying knowing just how much fun he’s having despite nobody else sharing his glee. So, while Nicholson expertly shows us that he had fun playing the Joker, the horrifying aspects of the character simply don’t shine through. He just comes off more like a showman and less like a menacing supervillain. Regarding Keaton, I really don’t get why people admire his take on Batman or Bruce Wayne. Just like Nicholson, he has some good moments that are usually his awkward-but-endearing interactions with Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger). Yet those are few and far between, and when he dons the cowl and cape as Batman he doesn’t really say or do anything cool. To be fair, this isn’t completely on Keaton’s shoulders as Burton’s direction and the cinematography of the action doesn’t help the situation. But, at the end of the day, Keaton is not my Batman and I’m not very excited to see how they to modernize him in the upcoming DCEU films Batgirl and The Flash. But what about as a superhero tentpole? Does it have some great comic book movie “firsts”? Once again, Batman disappoints in this regard too. First off, I found Burton’s introduction of Batman in the opening minutes and the reveal of the Batmobile during the second act to be anti-climactic at best and lazy at worst. That being said, Nicholson revealing himself as the Joker from the shadows is a decent start to his turn as the iconic villain (just not followed up very well by his absurdly cartoonish antics). All that being said, though, one element of the film that remains awesome is the soaring and inspiring score from none other than Danny Elfman. The opening credits do their damnedest at hyping the audience up for a movie that never really comes, and how his music punctuates the action sequences and dramatic moments helps make the movie bearable rather than outright unwatchable. And I love how this is the beginning of his career as a composer for superhero movies, which continued with Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy before heading onto the Marvel Cinematic with Avengers: Age of Ultron and the upcoming Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (a much-anticipated reunion with Raimi). So, after two viewings, my feelings on the 1989 Batman flick haven’t really changed. While it has some cool sets and some great music, the rest of the film leaves much to be desired. Sure, it set some trends for both the genre and the depiction of Batman on the big screen (famously, the deeper voice that Keaton adopted to better conceal Batman’s true identity). Ultimately, though, it remains for me more of a culturally and historically significant movie than a timeless on. Batman Returns (1992) I don’t have as much to say about Batman Returns, Burton’s follow-up to 1989’s Batman, because it’s basically the same movie. I do like it more than its predecessor, but just barely. To begin with some positives, I do think that this film strikes a slightly better tonal balance than the first film. It does this not by injecting some realism into the script but by getting rid of it entirely in favor of doubling-down on the camp from before. Much of this is embodied by the movie’s dual villain roles, but I’ll get to that later. Additionally, I did appreciate Burton’s art-deco aesthetic for Gotham a little more this time around largely due to its Christmas-infused elements. But, once again, Batman Returns is an example of Burton prioritizing style and flair to the detriment of story, characters, and themes. Which gets to the bad stuff of the movie. When it comes to the villains, I wouldn’t say that Danny DeVito as Penguin alongside Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman are better than Nicholson’s Joker from Batman. But I do think that they’re more fun to watch. Especially in the second act, when they first meet and begin working together, is when Burton’s need to “cartoonize” the Batman universe that he’s crafted forms center-stage and dominates the remainder of the narrative. And this allowed me to begin laughing at the movie for the second half. And, in my humble opinion, I’d rather laugh at a movie than not laugh at all. Furthermore, Burton’s second take on dual identities by making Selina Kyle/Catwoman a thematic foil to Bruce Wayne/Batman works ever-so-slightly better than it did the first time (emphasize “slightly”). Rather than intertwine (and therefore unnecessarily complicate) the hero’s and villain’s origins, Bruce and Selina falling for each other more once they realize which vigilante mask that they each wear is somewhat enticing and had some good potential for richer storytelling. It never quite got there, but I give Burton some credit for the potential on display between Keaton and Pfeiffer. That’s really it. Like I said, Batman Returns is basically the same movie so much of my criticisms of 1989’s Batman still stand. The characterization of the protagonist falls flat in favor of cool set pieces and zany villains and their ridiculous, animal-centric schemes. By the end, I feel like I don’t know Batman any better than at the end of Burton’s first movie, but at least I enjoyed myself a little more the second time around. Maybe an actual cartoon movie will work better than these live-action cartoons did. Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993) Similar to my lack of childhood nostalgia for Burton or Joel Schumacher’s Batman films of the late 80s and 90s, I did not grow up watching Batman: The Animated Series and thus had no personal connection to Kevin Conroy’s take on the character nor on other seminal interpretations of the Batman universe (notably Mark Hamill’s version of the Joker). So, when I first watched Batman: Mask of the Phantasm in 2020, I found it unengaging thematically, uninteresting visually, and generally just a slog to get through. However, I’m happy that I rewatched it last month because I ended up appreciating it a lot more in the wake of trudging my way through repeat viewings of the Burton flicks. In comparison to those cartoonish atrocities that try to put themselves off as dark, gritty superhero movies, Mask of the Phantasm is a real cartoon movie. And yet it somehow feels more grounded, emotionally mature, and thematically rich than 1989’s Batman or its sequel. Being that it’s a movie based on a children’s cartoon show, I found the film’s narrative structure to be quite bold and unassuming. Not to diminish kids’ intelligence, but that kind of storytelling device for anyone, no matter how old they are, can only go so far before it potentially becomes antithetical to the goal that the filmmakers are trying to achieve. Fortunately, the creative team behind Mask of the Phantasm balances the flashbacks well enough to provide much-needed context for Bruce Wayne’s relationship with Andrea Beaumont (Dana Delany). In turn, this allows the tragedy of the third-act climax between Batman and the Phantasm to actually feel earned and heartfelt without coming off as rushed or poorly written. On that note, I found Bruce and Andrea’s chemistry more palpable and believable than Michael Keaton’s dynamic with either Kim Basinger in Batman or Michelle Pfeiffer from Batman Returns. Much of this, I think, has to do with how the story sets them up as foils to one another who both lost parents in childhood and bond over this shared trauma. From there, Bruce’s turn as the Caped Crusader in this animated universe comes not from training with Ra’s al Ghul and the League of Shadows in Asia but instead being (metaphorically) left at the altar by Andrea. I find this to be, in some sense, a more compelling origin for Batman. He did not create his crime-fighting alter ego solely out of a desire for vengeance against, or to serve justice to, the scummy underworld of Gotham City. Rather, it was being abandoned by his love and left alone that pushed him over the edge and into wearing the cape and cowl. Just another example of how a kids’ cartoon flick somehow crafted a better character for Bruce Wayne/Batman than any of the live-action versions that came before it. 😊 But what perhaps makes Mask of the Phantasm an overall better movie than Burton’s duology or any of the pre-2005 cinematic takes on the character is ultimately about fulfilling the key elements of Batman’s archetype and mythos. Not only do the filmmakers offer a nuanced (albeit truncated) backstory that resonates with the audience, but they included some characterization of Batman by showing him conduct actual detective work to solve the mystery of the Phantasm. In addition, the rapport between Kevin Conroy’s Batman and this version of Alfred Pennyworth (Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.) finally feels legitimately endearing rather than just like an awkward pseudo-adoptive father-son relationship. Seeing how much this Alfred cares for Bruce as well as his cheeky attitude, I have to imagine that Christopher Nolan or Michael Caine drew some inspiration from the film for his own trilogy. In fairness, Mask of the Phantasm is by no means a great film. Without question, my biggest disappointment was with Mark Hamill’s rendition of the Joker. While we do only get about twenty-ish minutes with him, I wish he had been more involved in the story from the get-go so that I was more invested in his role in the climax involving Batman and Andrea. But, setting that aside, I think this movie does a better job than Burton’s two ventures into Gotham City in making a story worthy of Batman’s comic book origins. Is it my favorite take on the character? Certainly not, but for a less-than-80-minute runtime, it’s more than worth your time if you want to see Batman done justice in animated fashion. Reflecting on these three early, formative Batman movies, I am grateful that both Burton’s films and Mask of the Phantasm exist in the same way I’m happy that Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy exist. Without those, we never would’ve gotten Marvel Studios’s fresh and well-done take on the web-crawling teenage superhero. And without the Burton flicks and Mask of the Phantasm, we never would’ve gotten Batman Begins. Batman Begins (2005) Everyone talks about the first Blade and X-Men movies, as well as Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man movie, as the films that ushered in the modern comic book genre dominated these days by the likes of Marvel Studios. Yet many people seem to forget, ignore, or understate the significance of Christopher’s Nolan first cinematic venture to Gotham City that came out THREE YEARS before Jon Favreau’s Iron Man. Having seen Batman Begins twice, I just cannot understand why it is not given the credit it so rightly deserves as an example of how to do a superhero origin story right. In the spirit of full transparency, I’m not a fan of all of Christopher Nolan’s movies. That being said, I think his tackling of Batman in the “Dark Knight Trilogy” will go down as one of the best film trilogies in history (possibly even surpassing that of Francis Ford Coppola’s first two Godfather flicks and Steven Spielberg’s original Indiana Jones trilogy). Even if it doesn’t, Batman Begins should certainly be remembered as one of the best comic book movies of all time. Full stop. What makes Batman Begins so damn good? One of its most powerful qualities is Nolan’s full-throttled deconstruction of Bruce Wayne as a character as a means of exploring how a mythos like Batman can be born as the dual personality of a self-isolating billionaire. Rather than simply have Batman already exist like in the 1989 film or rush through his backstory like in Mask of the Phantasm, Nolan crafts the narrative of his first Batman flick around exploring the conditions, experiences, and psychological trauma needed for the Caped Crusader to form in his grounded version of Gotham City. In my humble opinion, this is undoubtedly the best decision Nolan could have made for a reboot of Batman. By focusing (almost) the entire first half of the movie on seeing Bruce Wayne philosophically and ideologically struggle with how to serve justice for his parents’ murders without disrespecting their memory and legacy, he made a film that can be watched and appreciated by people who have no nostalgic or sentimental attachments to the character (including myself). In short, Batman Begins manages to be a comic book movie about Batman that also doesn’t absolutely need Batman in it to be good. Having watched the film again recently, I am even more convinced just how imperative it is in the greater history of modern comic book cinema. Without going off too much on a tangent, all I’ll say is Jon Favreau may not have devoted the first half of Iron Man to seeing Tony Stark not in the fully-fleshed out Mk. III suit if not for Batman Begins preceding it. This compelling character arc for Bruce Wayne would not work without Christian Bale’s incredibly dedicated performance. Not for a second does the audience doubt his commitment to showing all of Wayne’s flaws and insecurities while also proving by the end how these traits contribute to the intimidating gusto of Batman as a symbol of mysterious, enigmatic vigilantism. Bale creates two characters in one movie that depend on one another to exist, but also allows Wayne and Batman to enhance each other while also revealing the inherent weaknesses of each one. Bruce Wayne is a lonely, tormented young man who has never fully dealt with the trauma from witnessing his parents murdered in front of him as a child. In attempting to waste his life away on some cockamamie scheme for revenge, he submits himself to the hard ways of the League of Shadows in order to discipline himself and find purpose. Upon returning home to Gotham City, Wayne recognizes that he cannot run around beating up criminals as himself and thus must create a dual identity that strikes fear and terror into the hearts of the city’s scum and villainy. Thus, Batman is born. By embracing theatricality and intimidation in crafting his superhero persona, Wayne is able to “mask” (😊) the enduring shame, guilt, and fear of his true self. Because while Batman may be able to punch bad guys and stop Gotham City from killing itself by the film’s conclusion, only Bruce Wayne can forgive himself for what happened to his parents and try to move on with his own life. Combined with Nolan’s screenplay (co-written with David S. Goyer), Bale’s origins as Batman also make the more ridiculous aspects of the Caped Crusader’s modus operandi palpable, logical, and believable. I ABSOLUTELY LOVE how Wayne justifies the imagery of the bat for his vigilante costume to Alfred (Michael Caine): “Bats frighten me. It’s time my enemies shared my dread.” This serves as a more-than-adequate explanation for why Wayne starts running around in a black suit of armor, cape and cowl beating up criminals. It also plays sufficiently well into the film’s central theme of fear and the lengths one will go to overcome their own fears. But the other element of Batman’s mythos that I think Nolan handled so well was his strict moral stance against killing criminals. While I always figured his parents being killed had something to do with it, Nolan just adds such fantastic layers of nuance to it. Essentially, Wayne nearly goes through with assassinating his parents’ murderer, Joe Chill, as he’s leaving court one day before seeing someone else gun him down in cold blood. As Wayne leaves and is confronted by his childhood friend and romantic interest Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes), he faces the truth of why he wanted to kill Chill: it wasn’t about some higher principle of justice, but self-serving revenge. Furthermore, if Wayne had succumbed to those inner demons and gone through with it, he would lose any moral high ground and thus ensure that his parents’ deaths were in vain and nothing more. Did Tim Burton handle these core character motivations for Batman as Christopher Nolan did? I think you already know the answer. 😊 While the film is squarely on Bale’s shoulders, he is surrounded by a fantastic supporting cast. Michael Caine is a great Alfred in the entire “Dark Knight Trilogy,” but I particularly love how in this film he remains the angel on Bruce Wayne’s shoulder who never veers from being his moral guide but also never fails to give him grief for his quirks and eccentricities. I also found myself enjoying Katie Holmes more on this rewatch as Rachel Dawes, both in terms of her chemistry with Bale but also how her character stands out amongst the other Batman love interests that came before as a smart, stern woman that holds Wayne’s feet to the fire. I also greatly appreciate how much more prominent Jim Gordon has in Nolan’s trilogy compared to prior and later Batman movies, and Gary Oldman remains (in my humble opinion) the definitive take on the character’s noble Gotham City police officer who steadfastly aids and supports Batman for his good intentions (although I am excited to see what Jeffrey Wright does with the character in The Batman). Finally, I was pleasantly surprised by Morgan Freeman standing out as one of my favorite supporting characters for Batman. Specifically, I appreciated how his version of Lucius Fox could give Wayne even more shit than Alfred but also make his scenes introducing Wayne to cool gadgets and weapons more than just exposition but entertaining character building for both Fox and Wayne. I cannot wrap up discussing Batman Begins without showering praise on its villains. Nowadays, Liam Neeson gets no shortage of shit for the god-awful action flicks he keeps making but people forget that he can act superbly well when given the right role. And his approach to making Wayne’s mentor in the League of Shadows, Ra’s al Ghul, an ideological zealot who views himself as Batman’s equal except for their methods for ending crime and corruption is such a good foil to Batman for his introduction film. But whereas Neeson is the straight-man villain, Cillian Murphy soars as the slightly zanier Dr. Jonathan Crane/Scarecrow due to his unsettling personality and outlandish plan that’s just grounded enough in reality to be terrifying. Unfortunately, they are another example of how Batman Begins receives the raw deal due to its sequel because everyone talks about Heath Ledger’s take on the Joker but never Neeson or Murphy in this movie. And they should be talked about more, because they’re both awesome! Which essentially sums up my view on this movie. Despite being surpassed by its predecessor, Batman Begins remains one of my favorite comic book movies. But, more importantly, it is the first truly great Batman movie that tells a great origin story for the Caped Crusader that stands toe-to-toe with the best comic book origin flicks of the last two decades. The Dark Knight (2008) For a summary of the production and release of The Dark Knight, click here. If Batman Begins is the Star Wars of the “Dark Knight Trilogy,” than its 2008 sequel, The Dark Knight, is The Empire Strikes Back. For me, at least, this is true in more ways than one. While I personally enjoy and appreciate George Lucas’s iconic 1977 film more, I can admit that its 1980 sequel is a better-made film. This is very much true for Nolan’s first two entries in his Batman trilogy. Simply put, while I think Batman Begins is a more compelling Batman story, I think how he built on its themes in The Dark Knight to craft as close to a perfect movie as you can get is incredibly admirable and earned the film’s legacy as one of the best movies of the 21st century. Other than that, however, there is not much I can say about The Dark Knight that hasn’t already been said about it more eloquently and profoundly than many others in video essays across the Internet.[1] So, instead, I will strive to be succinct in what I love most about the movie. Here goes nothing… On a rewatch, I found myself more greatly appreciating Nolan’s masterful handling of the pace of The Dark Knight. There are virtually no scenes, whether they be action-oriented or dialogue-heavy, where the tension is not exponentially more heightened than the one that came before it. For a two-and-a-half-hour runtime, this could quickly exasperate and exhaust the audience to the point of causing them to lose interest. Yet, Nolan never lets this happen. When combined with the film’s other qualities, such as the practical effects and use of IMAX cameras in crafting a uniquely grounded aesthetic for Gotham City, he allows the film to transcend its time and cement itself as a movie that works no matter how old it gets. I am wholly confident that fifty years from now people will still be talking about The Dark Knight in the same vein that people nowadays shower praise on the likes of The Godfather and Aliens as prime representatives of the time they were made while simultaneously being timeless classics. When it comes to Nolan actually making a sequel of Batman Begins, he uses what was started with Bruce Wayne’s character and relationships, in addition to Batman’s crime-fighting philosophy, to serve up a powerful and compelling enemy. From the outset of the film in which he must discover the truth behind misguided impersonators to losing the love of his life resulting from hubris, Wayne endures physical and psychological toil in fighting against that which terrifies him most: chaos embroiling his city, and his failure to do anything about it. By the end, when Batman relinquishes any potential goodwill that he has with the people of Gotham in order to preserve the heroic reputation of district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), Nolan cements his take on the Caped Crusader as one of the most noble, selfless, and courageous heroes in modern comic book cinema. As Jim Gordon puts it while Batman flees the police: “He’s the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now…He’s not our hero. He's a silent guardian. A watchful protector. A dark knight.” If giving up everything you hold dear to serve the people you care about and work towards accomplishing the greater good doesn’t make you a fantastic superhero, I don’t know what the hell does. Of course, Batman is not what most people come away thinking about after watching The Dark Knight. Unsurprisingly, they come away in love with Heath Ledger as Batman’s iconic archenemy the Joker. From his eerie, ingenious opening scene during the bank robbery to the chilling “pencil scene” to his interactions with all the main characters, from start to finish Ledger steals this movie right out from under Bale. He perfectly encapsulates Batman’s ideological opposite, and pulls off a brilliant performance as a man who, as Alfred puts it, “just wants to watch the world burn.” While I personally get a tiny bit more out of seeing Joaquin Phoenix transform Arthur Fleck into a famous psychopath in 2019’s Joker, I cannot deny that Ledger more than earned his posthumous Oscar and his status as possibly the greatest comic book movie villain ever. Period. All that being said, however, I stand by the fact that Aaron Eckhart doesn’t get nearly enough credit for his tragic turn as Harvey Dent. While I get that Ledger is an entertaining psychopath with incredibly daring and malevolent schemes that Batman must somehow prevent, Dent is ultimately the heart of The Dark Knight. During the first half, I root for his relationship with Rachel Dawes (now played by Maggie Gyllenhaal) despite hoping that her and Wayne can come to some sort of understanding about their relationship. But once Joker’s “you can only choose one” plot successfully ends up killing Dawes and physically scarring Dent, his unstable emotional state makes him vulnerable to the Joker’s manipulation and puts him on the path to forgoing all of his credibility with the people of Gotham by seeking vengeance for Rachel’s death. Once he kidnaps Jim Gordon’s family out of blaming Gordon’s negligence for Dawes’s demise, Dent cements himself as Nolan’s tragic villain of the entire “Dark Knight Trilogy.” Whereas Ra’s al Ghul and Scarecrow are shadowy figures trying to rid the world of Gotham’s crime-ridden façade and Joker is simply an agent of chaos, Dent is a genuinely good person whose own guilt and distorted sense of justice puts him down a destructive path of revenge that can only lead to his own grave. Nolan attempts to craft a similar arc for Bane (Tom Hardy) in the second sequel, but it doesn’t quite land as well. But, I’ll get to that later. In the midst of all this star power, it’s hard to forget the standout moments from our supporting cast. Once again, Jim Gordon’s presence both in the plot and his evolving relationship with Batman continues to be one of my favorite dynamics in Nolan’s trilogy. I particularly how, despite his wholehearted dedication to beating the Joker despite problems with the police bureaucracy surrounding him, he still admits fault to Dent in the face of watching his family be killed. His hyper-principled persona, fully embraced by Gary Oldman, works so well as something of a foil to Batman’s particular brand of vigilantism. When it comes to Wayne’s inner circle, Alfred has some of his best moments in both counseling and consoling his pseudo-adopted son during his best and worst moments. Particularly, the burden of keeping Wayne’s secret identity a secret seems to weigh very heavily on Alfred in the film more than before which plays into his changing view of Batman as a symbol that perhaps can’t be around forever due to the destructive role it plays in the life of the man that he cares so much for. Finally, Morgan Freeman once again shines as Batman’s armorer. I really appreciate his unflinching criticism of Batman’s not-so-subtle leaning towards authoritarian spying on the people of Gotham in the name of crime fighting. It makes Fox more than just a tertiary character, but an essential part of Nolan’s thematic exploration of the morality of surveillance in a post-9/11 world that serves as the film’s more subtle layer of social commentary. Need I say more? The Dark Knight is a fucking masterpiece, and if you haven’t seen it you’re missing out on some of the finest cinematic artistry ever captured on film. Go watch it; you’ll know that me and everyone else who’s seen it is right. 😊 The Dark Knight Rises (2012) Apparently, my Star Wars analogy from before really does hold muster because (in my humble opinion) The Dark Knight Rises is very much the Return of the Jedi of Nolan’s trilogy. Is it the best conclusion to a trilogy ever made? No, but it’s still a pretty good ending to the story that he started with Batman Begins. To begin with the positives, I think how Nolan wraps up Batman’s professional friendship with Jim Gordon brings the necessary emotions out of the audience. Seeing how Gordon has never lost faith in Batman by the time he has to fly the nuclear bomb out of Gotham (presumably at the cost of his own life) makes Oldman’s portrayal of our favorite Gotham police commissioner of the most memorable from Nolan’s entire trilogy. But it’s not just the returning cast that has shining moments. I did also appreciate Nolan’s effort to tie up some loose threads that stared with Batman Begins. Specifically, incorporating a revenge plot with Talia al Ghul (Marion Cotillard), the daughter of Wayne’s mentor Ra’s al Ghul, who is the true brains behind Bane’s terrorism operations. Was the romance between her and Wayne poorly set up and rushed? Sure, but I wanted to start by focusing on the positives. 😊 Simply put, Cotillard sells the betrayal in the third act which just lends credibility to her abilities as an actor in films like The Immigrant and Allied. And, of course, the production design and action sequences remain on point in this movie and hold their own against the best of the rest of the trilogy. I particularly loved the highway chase revealing Batman to the world for the first time in eight years, culminating in the reveal of the “Bat” aerial vehicle. And the use of Batman’s equipment and weapons unquestionably remain one of the best elements of all three films. Of course, the use of the “Bat” culminates in an awesome moment with the kids on the bridge recognizing Batman flying the bomb out of and away from Gotham City. While not quite as hype as Gordon’s “Dark Knight” speech at the end of the last movie, it still serves as a poignant finale to Batman’s swan song in this movie. Unfortunately, there is still much to be desired by the end of The Dark Knight Rises. While the film stands well enough on its own, I think much of the story and characterization just pales in comparison to the near-masterpiece that is Batman Begins and the undeniable masterpiece that is The Dark Knight. For starters, Nolan’s thematic exploration of what it means to endure and overcome pain via Batman’s flat-out loss fighting Bane (Tom Hardy) in the second act, resulting in his imprisonment which forces him to self-reflect and rehabilitate both his body and mind. While I appreciate Nolan’s dedication to giving Bruce Wayne true characters arc in all three films, the scenes with Wayne in prison while Gotham City is going to hell just aren’t interesting by comparison. Furthermore, one of the other best relationship dynamics of Nolan’s trilogy—the familial, father-son rapport between Wayne and Alfred—was (in my humble opinion) not well resolved either. Obviously, Michael Caine’s performance in all of his scenes was impeccable. His vulnerability he shows both when he’s angry at Wayne’s hotheaded drive to face Bane face-to-face and when he’s guiltily apologizing to Thomas and Martha Wayne’s headstones for letting them down (because he assumes that Wayne died) is so damn good. But, Nolan’s need to overstuff this movie with Bane’s terrorist schemes and other unnecessary side characters causes the resolution to Wayne and Alfred’s conflict feel rushed and thus leaves me feeling more unsatisfied than I should when they see each other in the end. When it comes to what is arguably the most lampooned part of The Dark Knight Rises—Hardy’s voice performance as Bane—I don’t hate it. Ultimately, Bane’s character felt repetitive in light of both the shadowy hardline nature of Ra’s al Ghul and the chaos-loving criminal antics of Joker. I’d rather have Bane be more a supporting villain and the screenplay play more into the third-act reveal of Talia that could’ve worked way better than it did (even though I did enjoy it, it's still too flawed to feel amazing). Also, maybe Nolan could’ve just gotten rid of Bane’s face mask earlier in the film like how Norman Osborn’s helmet was destroyed very early on in Spider-Man: No Way Home. This could’ve allowed Hardy’s acting chops to shine through much better, causing him to be more intimidating than amusing for some viewers. Ultimately, though, I think the major problem with this movie is Nolan’s screenplay (which he developed and co-wrote with David S. Goyer and his brother Jonathan, respectively). It just feels like Nolan consciously recognizing some senseless need to one-up himself in terms of the scale of wrecking Gotham City. In Batman Begins, the conflict was relatively contained but had the potential (and therefore the stakes) feel big. In The Dark Knight, the intimidation and plotting by the Joker feel grounded while also terrifying and (due to the philosophical nature of what the Joker represents in relation to Batman) higher stakes than what came before. But in this movie, Nolan’s storytelling ambitions (somewhat) got away from him. His injecting several new supporting characters, like eccentric vigilante Selina Kyle/Catwoman (Anne Hathaway) and rookie police officer John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), comes off as unnecessary which only hurts those characters’ ability to fit naturally and effectively into the overall story. Furthermore, the scale of the third-act conflict involving Bane’s nuclear bomb (while cool to watch) feels the most “comic book like” of the entire trilogy. And not in a good way, but rather to the extent that it hurts the grounded and realistic atmosphere that Nolan painstakingly established in the first two films. At the end of the day, I think The Dark Knight Rises is given more grief than it deserves. In terms of the production work that went it, it remains one of the best put-together comic book movies of the last decade and deserves praise in that respect. Unfortunately, Nolan’s handling of the epic scale was done better in films like Inception and Interstellar and instead foreshadowed some of Nolan’s worst work in films like Tenet. But, more disappointingly, The Dark Knight Rises ends up being only a good conclusion to a trilogy that included a fantastic first act and an utterly revolutionary second act. Thus, its ambitions hurt it and will forever leave Nolan’s “Dark Knight Trilogy” feeling only great instead of absolutely legendary. The LEGO Batman Movie (2017) Several years after The Dark Knight Rises came out, I think fans of the Caped Crusader and the general public were ready for a different take on Batman. We had the quasi-campiness of the Burton flicks, the in-your-face, no-holds-barred campiness of 1966’s Batman and the Schumacher movies, and the grounded, gritty realism of Nolan’s “Dark Knight Trilogy.” But after what was pulled off in those films, what could be done next at that point? For the answer, I refer back to one of last year’s blogs about the Neo-Western. There, when discussing 2017’s comic book movie Logan, I identified the four stages of evolution that a genre of fiction can go through: experimental, classical, parody, and deconstruction. While often these phases occur sequentially in relation to one another, I contend that if you apply this framework to understanding Batman’s evolution on the big screen we realize that Nolan’s trilogy skipped over parody in favor of breaking the conventions of the Batman flicks that came before. But that doesn’t mean filmmakers must now avoid parody altogether. In fact, the creative team behind The LEGO Batman Movie embraced it which is where much of the fun of this movie comes from. By integrating the outlandish and energetic physics of the LEGO property with the zany antics of Batman and his rogues’ gallery, director Chris McKay and the animation team show that their vision for this movie was spot-on: show the audience how fun it is to watch Batman defeat his villains while also reminding us how ridiculous his mythos and character (usually) are in anything other than an animated movie. On this point, I appreciate how in the wake of an increasing tendency towards meta references in the comic book genre (lookin’ at you, Deadpool!) that this movie doesn’t drown the audience with endless references to past cinematic Batmen without a point to it. Whenever the film makes overt jokes at the expense of the Burton or Schumacher flicks, or Nolan’s trilogy for that matter, it is doing it to add to the characterization of this version of Batman (played expertly, in my humble opinion, by Will Arnett). The fact that this LEGO Batman is aware of his mixed bag of a cinematic legacy makes his rugged personality and reclusive demeanor stand out in the midst of all these other takes on the character. Which brings me to what perhaps surprised me the most about The LEGO Batman Movie both times I saw it. For a children’s animated movie, the storytellers here managed to craft a pretty strong thematic arc for Bruce Wayne/Batman with an important message for people of all ages: if you allow the traumas of your past to affect your outlook on the future, you will lose out on fostering some meaningful relationships and allowing yourself to heal and move forward with your life. Do some of the other Batman movies touch on this idea? Sure, but I really like that Arnett’s version has to lose the prestige and self-esteem that comes with donning the cape and cowl and start relying on people to help him defeat the bad guys, like Dick Grayson/Robin (Michael Cera) and Barbara Gordon/Batgirl (Rosario Dawson). In turn, this acceptance of new people into his lonely, isolated world of Wayne Island teaches him the importance of being happy and having a new support system in his life by overcoming his fear of losing them again. This kind of deeply resonant storytelling comes quite close to some of the better Pixar movies in terms of giving young viewers hope and a love of life in a way that so many other animated films clearly have no interest in doing. To be clear, this movie could have just been a fun action movie with Batman (and some other Warner Brothers properties). But I’m appreciative of the creative team deciding to elevate Batman’s arc here and not simply go for a cash-grab LEGO movie off the backs of the 2014 hit that preceded it. Aside from Batman’s standout journey, I have to give overdue praise for the supporting cast of The LEGO Batman Movie. On a rewatch, Michael Cera’s Robin is dripping with such infectious, boyish charm to the point that his hyper pure innocence makes Batman’s initial rejection of and annoyance with him all the more heartbreaking. And their dynamic is fulfilling by the end as Batman bringing him into the fold feels earned and hopeful in a way that this movie’s conclusion should. I also adored Rosario Dawson’s role of Barbara Gordon, the new police commissioner who does not respect Batman’s lone-wolf vigilantism but recognizes the value of his symbolic presence to the people of Gotham City and thus wants him to work alongside the police to fight crime. This makes for an entertaining and rewarding, character-driven conflict between her and Batman from start to finish, and the creative team never make her come off as demanding or cynical in a way that feels antiquated for portraying a female character in a male-dominated movie and genre such as this one. I do have some complaints with the film. First and foremost, I was once again underwhelmed by the animated Joker (Zach Galifianakis) on display here. Like Phantasm, I wish he played a more pivotal role in the story as opposed to relying on bringing in all these Warner Brothers properties (Voldemort, Sauron, and King Kong, just to name a few) to help him take over Gotham. Sure, it makes for some fun set pieces, but ultimately didn’t really add much meaningful to the story. Instead, I would have preferred a third act simply focusing on Batman learning to accept both his friends like Robin and Batgirl as well as his extensive rogues’ gallery in order to defeat Joker. This could have show Batman grow as a character while also keeping it a story centered within Batman’s chaotic world of wacky characters. It simply didn’t need Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings to make it good because it already was. But, at the end of the day The LEGO Batman Movie is still a super fun ride with some meaningful character moments and a satisfying Batman-centered story that feels different enough from what came before while also not ignoring the other movies. Quite the opposite; it celebrates Batman’s rich cinematic heritage with heartfelt parody and loving homage to the good, bad, great, and awful movies that make up this treasure trove of nerd cinema. Simply put, if you want to have fun watching a Batman movie, you can’t go wrong with The LEGO Batman Movie. The Batman (2022) [NOTE: This blog contains spoilers for “The Batman.” You have been warned.] More than fifteen years after Christopher Nolan brought modern sensibilities to adapting Batman for the big screen in Batman Begins, many comic book movie fans and cinephiles at large were unsure how any filmmaker could possibly revitalize Batman in live-action form after Nolan. Especially after the critical and commercial success of The Dark Knight, the idea of seeing a new take on the character than had even a slim chance of rivaling Nolan’s iteration of the Caped Crusader seemed preposterous. As such, after The Dark Knight Rises the one and only live-action version of Batman came in the form of Ben Affleck playing a grizzled and weary Bruce Wayne in several DC Extended Universe flicks from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice to last year’s HBO Max original Zack Snyder’s Justice League. Granted, Affleck never got his own solo Batman movie (even though he planned on directing himself until 2017 before completely leaving the project in 2019). So, where did Warner Brothers take Batman from there? Enter Long Island native and regular J.J. Abrams collaborator Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, War for the Planet of the Apes), who decided to detach his film from the established continuity of the DCEU in preference of making a standalone Batman flick that would serve as a reboot a decade after Nolan’s “Dark Knight Trilogy” concluded. And ever since the teaser trailer premiered in late summer of 2020, fans across the globe hotly anticipated what Reeves would offer in terms of a new take on Batman. The question is: did he deliver an iconic version of the character that stands on its own but also rivals the best that came before? In my humble opinion…YES. HE. DID. To be clear, The Batman could not exist without the art-deco ambience of Burton’s two flicks, the grounded crime thrills characteristic of Nolan’s trilogy, or even Snyder’s version that shows how Batman struggles to work as part of a team. And in ways both subtle and obvious, this film pays homage and respect to what preceded it in an effort to craft a fresh cinematic take on Batman, his eclectic rogues’ gallery, and the grimy city of Gotham that they inhabit. So, what makes The Batman a great movie? I think the most brilliant aspect of its story is how it acts as an origin story different from any other superhero movie of the past few decades. And it does so by not showing us Bruce Wayne becoming Batman like in Batman Begins or as an expert and experienced crime fighter like in Mask of the Phantasm or The LEGO Batman Movie. Instead, Reeves and star Robert Pattinson hook the audience by telling a story based in the realities of what it would mean for Bruce Wayne to be learn how to fight crime on the job during only his second year donning the cape and cowl. This narrative device allows for The Batman to stand out as a superhero early in his career that can make mistakes without it feeling unbelievable or disappointing. Everything from his suit being durable but not impenetrable to him putting together his Batmobile before revealing it roughly halfway through the runtime and nearly killing himself testing out a flight suit reinforces the notion that Pattinson’s take on the character has not fully come into his own. This lays the foundation for Batman’s character arc in the movie which seems inspired by a scene in Batman Begins. It’s almost like Reeves saw Christian Bale nearly gun down Carmine Falcone in Nolan’s first Batman movie and thought: “What if my movie was centered on that entire emotional struggle?” In other words, The Batman shows us the inherent moral ambiguity of a rich orphan from a powerful family dressing up in a bat costume and beating up criminals. Namely, that such acts could inspire other mentally-unstable Gotham citizens (lower on the socioeconomic ladder than Bruce Wayne, mind you) to take action in their own twisted, deranged fashion. Enter the Riddler. Paul Dano shines as a poor orphan (and thus an effective foil to Pattinson) who was left behind in the wake of the deaths of Bruce’s parents due to Gotham politics and law enforcement drenched in corruption. Whereas his parents being killed put Bruce on the path to become a crime-fighting vigilante, the Riddler is inspired by seeing Batman on the streets of Gotham to unmask the corrupt in the city his own way. Despite being less physically capable than Batman, his intellect is able to orchestrate a multi-layered plan which not only forces Bruce Wayne to learn the truth behind his father’s ties to organized crime boss Carmine Falcone (John Turturro) but also causes Batman to question the effect that his presence is actually having on the city he claims to want to defend despite frightening both the criminals and the innocent. I loved what Reeves did with this Batman story. He unabashedly did not make an action-heavy thriller like Nolan’s trilogy or most comic book movies made today, but rather clearly wanted The Batman to play off more like a slow-paced crime drama starring Batman as an up-and-coming detective alongside Lieutenant Jim Gordon (Jeffrey Wright). Despite me having no sentimental or nostalgic attachment to Batman’s characterization as the “world’s greatest detective,” I enjoyed Reeves and Pattinson bringing this aspect of the character to the big screen since most other Batman movies (the exception being Mask of the Phantasm) barely address this in any satisfying way. Not the case here, as Pattinson and Wright have such strong chemistry as two principled men struggling to avoid becoming unraveled by the revelations of just how deep the corruption goes. While The Batman fulfills on its name as being a story very much focused on Batman’s journey embracing the need for him to be more than just a violent vigilante, there are some great supporting performances that vary on screen time but all make an impact in their own unique way. Easily the standout from the supporting cast (in my humble opinion) is Zoë Kravitz as Selina Kyle as a stripped-down and grounded Catwoman who retains much of the sly wittiness and zany sexiness in homage to Michelle Pfeiffer’s take on the character in Batman Returns. That being said, I think Kravitz’s chemistry with Pattinson far and away exceeds anything that Pfeiffer had with Michael Keaton or Christian Bale had with Anne Hathaway in The Dark Knight Rises. Furthermore, Catwoman’s physicality and fight choreography was fulfilling due to its distinctiveness from Batman. Unlike Pattinson’s brutish fierceness punching and tasing people up close, Kravitz pulls off a more light-footed and kinetic style distancing herself from enemies while taking them out of the fight as quickly as possible. In some ways, I’m more excited to see where this version of Catwoman goes in a sequel than Batman. Aside from the Riddler, the two secondary antagonists have great moments all their own despite being very different in personality. Simply put, Colin Farrell transforms behind the prosthetics and make-up for his highly effective take on the Penguin. Rather than laughing at the character’s over-the-top nature like I did with Danny DeVito in Batman Returns, I enjoyed Farrell lightening up the grim and dour mood during his scenes in treating Batman as we probably should see him: a freak in a costume. Whereas Farrell makes for a fun antagonist, John Turturro’s version of crime lord Carmine Falcone whose ability to deceive Bruce Wayne regarding his past relationship with his father makes for an essential and compelling piece of the heart of this movie. Despite being overshadowed by the harrowing theatricality of the Riddler or the mesmerizing charm of Catwoman, Falcone in The Batman made for an actual character that I cared to watch on screen compared to prior versions. I hope I’ve made it clear that I really liked Matt Reeves’ The Batman. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a flawed film, as the runtime detracts from my enjoyment of it a little bit. While I was never bored watching it in the theater, there were small moments here and there or parts of scenes that I thought could’ve been trimmed down or cut entirely to transform the film from a three-hour crime drama to a two-and-a-half-hour instant classic. But, in my estimation, that doesn’t hurt the movie enough to drag it down to “good.” Undoubtedly, The Batman is a great comic book movie that, despite not being as emotionally compelling as Batman Begins or as kinetically thrilling as The Dark Knight, offers a refreshingly unique cinematic take on Batman that does enough richly thematic storytelling to warrant setting up at least one sequel for the future. Despite not growing up with the Caped Crusader, I think that Batman’s various appearances in film altogether demonstrate the evolution of the comic book over the past thirty-plus years. From where we started with Burton’s zany, cartoonish world of Batman and Batman Returns (which was followed up by a somehow even more over-the-top world from Joel Schumacher), we’ve seen Batman in animated form with Mask of the Phantasm. For many fans, the defining take comes from Christopher Nolan in the “Dark Knight Trilogy.” And yet all of these became parody in The LEGO Batman Movie before Matt Reeves came along to inject new life into the character’s rich cinematic legacy with The Batman. Where does the character go from here? Personally, I’m excited for what potentially will come. With all that being said, here is my ranking of the eight Batman movies that I wrote about above:
What is your favorite film starring the Caped Crusader? How do you want to see Batman’s character evolve in future movies? What opinions of mine do you find absolutely ridiculous? Let me know in the comments below. Until next time, this has been… Yours Truly, Amateur Analyst [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMQuShmUZhs; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfQdjSpJgUQ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhpjKX1j-KQ |
Austin McManusI have no academic or professional background in film production or criticism; I simply love watching and talking about movies. Archives
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