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Batman Begins (2005)
375 Plays2 years ago
It's another Batman movie! Derick McDuff returns to discuss Batman Begins, the somewhat-forgotten film of Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy. We talk about how this movie has held up, what aspects of it haven't aged well, and a lot more.
Listen to Derick on the Underrated and Infinity Stones and Dragon Bones podcasts.
Help support the show by buying or renting this movie on Amazon.
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Transcript
Bruce's Path to Justice
00:00:14
Speaker
You are ready to lead these men. You are ready to become a member of the League of Shadows. But first, you must demonstrate your commitment to justice.
00:00:45
Speaker
I'm no executioner. Your compassion is a weakness your enemies will not share. That's why it's so important. It separates us from them. You want to fight criminals? This man is a murderer. This man should be tried. By whom? Corrupt bureaucrats? Criminals mark society's laws. You know those better the most. You cannot lay this man unless you are prepared to do what is necessary to defeat evil.
League of Shadows and Gotham's Fate
00:01:15
Speaker
And where would I be leading these men? Gotham. Has Gotham favored his son? He will be ideally placed to strike up the heart of criminality. How? Gotham's time has come. Like Constantinople or Rome were before it.
00:01:34
Speaker
The city has become a breeding ground for suffering and injustice. It is beyond saving and must be allowed to die. This is the most important function of the League of Shadows. It is when we performed for centuries. Gotham must be destroyed.
Podcast Introduction and Guest Background
00:02:01
Speaker
Welcome to the Superhero Cinephiles Podcast. I'm your host, Perry Constantine, and welcoming back a guest who'd been on before, and that's Derek McDuff. Derek, how you doing today? I'm doing well. Thank you for having me back. I'm excited to be back. Yeah, I'm happy to have you on. It's funny, we've been doing this show for, you know, this is episode one, 40 years, 139 or 140, somewhere up in there that we're recording this.
00:02:28
Speaker
And in all those episodes, it took us a long time to talk about any of the Nolan movies. And we've only talked about The Dark Knight Rises. You're on today to talk about Batman Begins. And we still haven't talked about The Dark Knight, which is the godfather of superhero movies, as the popular opinion goes. So it's kind of funny. It's taken us this long to get to the Nolan films.
00:02:52
Speaker
Yeah, that's kind of random, especially since you would not expect the Dark Knight to be the last one that you guys talked about, but I just love Batman Begins so much, I couldn't pass up the opportunity. Well, yeah, we'll get to that. But before we do, why don't you give people just a little brief reminder of who you are.
Podcasting and Film Appreciation
00:03:11
Speaker
Yeah, so I am Derek McDuff. I am one of the co-hosts of the Underrated Podcast. It's a film podcast where we look at underrated movies. I also do a couple other podcasts, including one on Marvel movies called Infinity Stones and Dragon Bones, which I think should be out before you guys hear this. I'm going to have Perry on that show talking about Black Panther Wakanda Forever. So that's just kind of on new Marvel movies. But yeah, I do a bunch of podcast stuff.
00:03:42
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, this one will probably be coming out in February, I believe. So they'll definitely be airing the Wakanda Forever episode before that. But so one of the things I've been talking to people lately is just kind of asking what kind of stuff they're into lately. So it doesn't have to be superhero related, right? But what sort of movies, TV shows, comic books, video games, whatever are kind of grabbing your interest right now.
00:04:11
Speaker
So now, you know, it's as of the time of recording this, obviously, you know, it's going to be a little bit before, you know, this comes out. But I guess it's still kind of relevant because by the time this comes out, it's going to be Oscar time. And I have been kind of now we're in that we're November as we're recording this. And it's the time when a lot of those movies
00:04:28
Speaker
those kind of like awards contenders prestigious movies are coming out. So I've been seeing a lot of those recently. Luckily, I live in a part of the country where I can get to like an AMC and they'll be playing a lot of these limited to release movies. I just got to see Banshees In A Sharon, which is a real contender for one of my favorite movies of the year, probably directed by Martin McDonough. He's a really good playwright slash
00:04:56
Speaker
director, writer, I just saw Tar. So I've been getting really into a lot of those kind of more prestigious movies at this time of the year, you know, October, I usually do kind of the spooky horror movies. And then once we get to the later months of the year, I get to all the awards bait stuff.
00:05:14
Speaker
OK, cool. Yeah, I haven't gotten into that mode yet. It's tough for a lot of those movies. We don't get them here until like sometimes like a year later in Japan. Yeah. I mean, there's still the one everyone was talking about. I think it was maybe not last year, but, you know, a few months ago or time has no meaning to me anymore.
00:05:35
Speaker
When you have kids, when you have young children, time just kind of loses all meaning because you don't really much. But everyone was talking about everything everywhere all at once, and that still hasn't come out here. I don't think it comes out here until like February or something.
Impact of Batman Begins on Cinema
00:05:51
Speaker
Yeah, that is such, that was one of my favorite movies of the year. It's definitely in contention for being one of the best movies of the year. I think it's, this year has been really good with like multi-verse movies. You know, obviously we had that, we had Dr. Strange. There's been a lot of really interesting, weird stuff. That one is just kind of this A24 darling. And yeah, it's so interesting that the way release schedules work, especially internationally where it's like, oh, you know, something like an awards darling will not come out for a year or two.
00:06:19
Speaker
But then, you know, those big budget movies, because, you know, a lot of the bigger studios like Disney and Warner Brothers want to avoid spoilers. They'll drop them day and day around the world. So no one can be like, oh, wow, this happened at the end of, you know, Black Panther or whatever. Which they did with Avengers here, actually. Avengers came out three months late here.
00:06:42
Speaker
And so everyone else in the world had already seen it. I already had the Thanos reveal spoiled for me. But after that, pretty much all the Marvel movies, for the most part, at least the big ones, the big tentpole ones, they came out same day. In some cases before, Civil War actually came out a few days before it came out in America because there was a different holiday weekend starting before. Oh, OK. That's interesting.
00:07:10
Speaker
But some like I remember when I first came here it was summer 2008 and Like a year it would have been like maybe new year 2009 when I saw posters in the theater for 1408 the John Cusack Samuel L. Jackson horror film and I already had that on DVD when I came to Japan
00:07:33
Speaker
That's or it's, you know, I know it's interesting because it works the opposite way, too, like Princess Mononoke, you know, which was a huge movie in Japan on Japan in 97. Didn't hit the states until 99, you know, and I didn't really realize that's why I was listening to one of my favorite podcast podcasts like it's 1999. And they're like, yeah, we're covering Princess Mononoke because it's a US release of in 99. And I was like, that's so bizarre to me. Well, I mean, Battle Royale, right? That came out in 2000.
00:08:03
Speaker
But the media in the movie in the States didn't come out until 2010. Wow. It was released in 2012, actually. But by that point, it had been bootlegged and everybody had already seen it anyway. Yeah, that's why I like look at these like the release dates on like letterbox or something. And I'm always just like, how is this movie like a 2007 movie? Like I didn't see it over here until 2020. Yeah, those those weird, just staggered release dates. Yeah. You see when things hit and yeah.
00:08:34
Speaker
Anyway, so like, as we said, we're talking about Batman Begins today. So this was kind of like, this was like the big turning point for the Batman movies and kind of for superhero movies in general, because this was kind of coming on the end of the early 2000s, you know, kind of mid superhero boom that was going on when like all these studios were
00:08:59
Speaker
We're trying to make superhero movies in the wake of X-Men and Spider-Man, but they didn't really quite know what they were doing.
00:09:05
Speaker
And so we got a lot of stuff that was, you know, to be honest, kind of like middling to awful, right? We had a lot of like the, we had the Mark Stephen Johnson's Daredevil movie, which was decent if you watch the director's cut. But we also had his Ghost Rider movie, which was not good at all. We had the Tim Story Fantastic Four films, which by the time you guys listen to this, we've already done a pair of episodes on those, which
00:09:31
Speaker
had their heart in the right place, but they didn't quite match with the, the story didn't quite work so well. And, you know, then, you know, complete garbage like Electra and Catwoman. And so we had this whole, we had a whole bunch of stuff that was coming out back then. And then it wasn't really until Batman begins that I think there was kind of like a renewed interest, kind of like, you know, breathing some new life into not only Batman, but into the superhero genre itself and film.
00:10:00
Speaker
Yeah, no, I completely agree with that. And I kind of briefly mentioned Batman Begins last time I was on when I was talking about Spider-Man 2, which came out a year before this, because I feel like those two films really are, they kind of changed everything in terms of like superhero films and
00:10:16
Speaker
then they didn't start the like the big superhero boom that we are experiencing now with like the marvel like the mcu and just you know even like everything else just you know people talk about superheroes dominating the box office but they kind of were like the precursor to that they were kind of like the last stepping stone before you got to that and i think in two very different ways like we already really talked about a lot how spider-man 2 set up a lot of the things that you would see in marvel movies and kind of how
00:10:44
Speaker
it solidified what a certain type of superhero movie was. And I think this did that for another kind of superhero movie. You see the two routes that the superhero movies would kind of go, the kind of more fun, Marvel, you know, quote unquote bouncier route. And then you have the more self-serious, darker, quote unquote,
00:11:02
Speaker
like movie that's supposed to be like, this is a superhero movie, but what if it was set in, you know, the real world? And like, what if you got an auteur film director to come and step in? Because that was something they had always wanted to do, like ever since, you know, 97 and Batman Robin, which was, you know,
00:11:20
Speaker
know there's some defenders of that movie but it was a huge huge like people hated that movie critically did bad I think it did not do very well financially killed the franchise for a long time and then they were gonna reboot they're like let's go a more serious route first they wanted to bring in um so I think they always had an idea of doing a Batman year one type movie originally they wanted to do a Darren Aronofsky led film eventually he kind of stepped away and they ended up doing
00:11:46
Speaker
You know, the Nolan movie and, you know, Nolan wasn't Nolan at the time he was kind of a more, he had done some films that are some really good film stuff like Memento, some of these kind of indie, not almost awards baby I don't know if any of them following or any of those movies got nominated for awards but he was kind of one of those guys was like wow this guy
00:12:05
Speaker
knows how to make a prestige film so let's get him to do a superhero movie and that that realistic take of like get this guy who knows how to make a really good character drama with some interesting characters and just like give him the reins to make the superhero movie in the real world kind of ended up being like what DC was trying to do exclusively for a while and a lot of
00:12:28
Speaker
those type of you know the even something like that is still super very like not in the real world but like even watchmen is trying to be very gritty and realistic and i think that this movie really that this in spider-man just set out the two routes that superhero movies are still kind of taking to this day oh yeah i think especially when you look at the batman movies in general i mean um i mean the the stuff that came after this right you had snyder who was doing this i think
00:12:55
Speaker
It's kind of a, I guess you'd say it's almost kind of like a weird mix between Nolan and Burton because he's got all the fantasy aspects in there too. But it's also got the really gritty style thing. So it's this kind of weird mix of the two. Whereas you look at like Matt Reeves and the Batman, I mean, that is, you know, straight up like Nolan, which is as much as I love the Batman. And I've said this
00:13:17
Speaker
so many times, I'm probably going to keep saying it, but that's one of my biggest criticisms of that movie is that it's going back to that idea of what if Batman was in the real world? I'm like, well, we saw that we got three movies with that we don't, we can do the, you know, we can do the more fantastic Batman now for for a change. And so yeah, so that's that was very much what Nolan did here. And you're right, he wasn't, I think people, in retrospect, people probably forget
00:14:02
Speaker
how little he was
00:14:05
Speaker
I'm spacing that too. No, it was following you. It was like Insomnia. Insomnia. Insomnia, that was it. Yes, thank you. Yeah. So it was this, and it was a decent movie. It had some issues, but mostly it was pretty good. Had a really great Robin Williams performance. And, you know, Al Pacino was kind of all over the place, but you watch that movie and you could see definitely the kind of DNA that you would see in like his Batman films. Like it's that very same type of idea.
00:14:31
Speaker
remember when he was announced, because I'd seen Memento, I'd seen Insomnia, I'm like, Oh, that guy, he'd probably make a really good Batman movie. And he did. And, but I think what really kind of sold me when they announced this was when they said that they got Christian Bale, like, and Christian Bale at the time, he wasn't a very big name actor, but I knew him from American Psycho and loved him in American Psycho. And I remember
00:14:58
Speaker
me and a buddy of mine back then, we would always do like our, we were both movie buffs, we were both comic book fans, we'd always do our fan castings of who we'd want to see play these characters. And two of the ones we talked about, and like two of our favorite picks, Christian Bale as Batman and Tom Jane as the Punisher, and both of those ended up happening.
00:15:22
Speaker
that's perfect yeah that's great no yeah and i think i think you know it even goes kind of further than that of like this movie being you know like uh something that would set the tone for superhero movies because it it made it okay to reboot things it made it okay for it to be like okay we had this series of batman movies and in the past you would be like all right we got rid of burton we're down with the burton series we're gonna technically continue this series
00:15:49
Speaker
but not really mention anything that happened before. We're just going to recast it, get a new director, do all this stuff. And that kind of became almost the norm for wallets. Like, all right, well, now we need to bring in somebody new, start something new, and we can actually have a fresh slate.
00:16:04
Speaker
But I think that it not just affected superhero movies, but that was a huge impact on just movies in general. Because while the Batman movies were doing that recasting, but never really commenting on it, everything else was kind of doing this. Like, look at the James Bond movies. They spent 40 years recasting and just being like, oh, he's the younger guy. How is Pierce Bronzeman, you know,
00:16:26
Speaker
Like the same guy as Sean Connery is the same guy as Roger Moore. We're never gonna really mention it. And then the year after this comes out, I mean, they were probably in production at the same time, but I still feel like it affected it somewhat is Casino Royale comes out and it's like, here's a hard reboot of the James Bond franchise. And we've gotten so many just like hard reboots. We're starting this franchise over again. And you can trace it all back to this. And I think this movie does not get talked about
00:16:54
Speaker
enough of how important it was in changing not just superhero movies, but just the entire way that we look at these big franchises, you know, even something like Planet of the Apes, the new Planet of the Ape, or new-ish now, I guess, the Planet of the Apes trilogy with Andy Serkis. It's so good. It's so incredible. And it only exists because, you know, it's instead of doing that, like, oh, we're just going to kind of like reboot the movie like they did with the Tim Burton Planet of the Apes. It's like, all right,
00:17:19
Speaker
we're going back to basics, here's the origin story of Caesar, here's the origin story of Batman, here's the origin story of James Bond, and all that stuff, you know, you can kind of really look at Batman Begins as giving us that. Oh yeah, absolutely. And yeah, I think people might forget that back then if you had, if you had a movie and it was, you don't do
00:17:43
Speaker
You don't do a clean slate unless like a lot of time has passed. And then, and even then you're not like using the same premise but making a different movie. You are remaking that movie, right? So when they did.
00:17:54
Speaker
So when Tim Burton did Planet of the Apes, right, he remade Planet of the Apes. He didn't make a, he didn't take that concept and make a new movie. It was a remake of Planet of the Apes. And I mean, like you look at, yeah, James Bond films are a good example, right? They all continue. And it was very much like the logic that comic books use, right? It's, you know, it's on a sliding timeline, basically. They never explicitly explain it in the media itself, and it's just up to the fans to kind of go along with it.
00:18:24
Speaker
How did Spider-Man get his powers in 1963, but he's still like only in his mid 20s, maybe late 20s in 2020. Well, it's because it's sliding time scale and there's only been about a period of like five to 10 years that have passed in the Marvel universe in that time.
00:18:40
Speaker
That's kind of how the Bond movies operated too, right? And you'd have little tongue-in-cheek references like when George Lazenby came in, the very first thing he says in that movie is, you know, this never happened to the other guy or something like that. But there are clear references to stuff that has come before. You know, Timothy Dalton's Bond, when he's at Felix Leiter's wedding and he's looking kind of despondent and two people are talking and they're like, well, Bond was married before.
00:19:09
Speaker
which refers back to the Lazenby movie. And there
Reboots and Franchise Influence
00:19:11
Speaker
are references, lots of connections between Tracy Bond from Honor, Majesty, Secret Service and Electra in The World is Not Enough. Lots of thematic connections like that, little Easter eggs that are thrown in for the fans to pick up on. You can find those all throughout the movies. But then after Die Another Day, it was, and they were originally gonna be doing another movie with Brosnan.
00:19:39
Speaker
And like you said, I'm not sure how the productions overlap, but I do remember at some point, the Batman Begins buzz was definitely there even before the movie came out. And at some point, they're kind of like, well, maybe we should just try to restart it all. And so then they did that with Casino Royale. And other stuff followed too, like horror movies, like, you know, you had the Friday the 13th franchise,
00:20:07
Speaker
You had Halloween, you had Nightmare on Elm Street, all of those, after this movie came out, boom, you got pretty much hard reboots after that. And then Spider-Man, right? After Spider-Man 3, like just a few years later, record time, like it had never been that fast before, we get the amazing Spider-Man. And again, hard reboot. And then even, you know, Superman Returns also started another trend of
00:20:33
Speaker
you know going back to these old franchises and picking them up again and continuing them so he did and just kind of like altering what sums the stuffs like okay well we're gonna pick up after superman 2 and then put this movie in there and ignore superman 3 and 4 and now you've got a lot of movies doing that approach too
00:20:51
Speaker
Yeah, and it's interesting, you know, because even Spider-Man, you know, they rebooted with Amazing Spider-Man. And then just a couple years after that, again, they rebooted it, you know, and obviously, they, they kind of just recently brought all those movies back into the fold. But that really just speaks to, you know, how the culture had changed. And it's like, okay, we can just kind of keep Spider-Man rebooting this thing until we, quote unquote, get it right. Or, you know, you know, I mean, obviously, that's a big part of it was the rights and everything with Marvel and Sony and everything.
00:21:16
Speaker
But I do think that does really speak to that and how... I don't think reboot was really a thing anyone said. It was not in our vernacular before this movie. And now it's so ubiquitous that there's a TV show called reboot and everyone knows exactly what they're talking about. Which is a great show by the way. Anybody should check it out. It's a Hulu show.
00:21:37
Speaker
But now, you don't see really quote unquote remakes anymore. I can't think of the last movie that was just a straight up remake. They're all reboots now.
00:21:49
Speaker
or at least soft reboots. The thing is, now I think everything is at least a soft reboot, like you were saying, with how it's like, okay, well, Superman Returns kind of picks up after one and two, it ignores three and four, the new Halloween series, which is the first one, which H2O also did. So yeah. Though H2O picked up after the second one, I think. Yeah, yeah. And then this one, yeah, and the new franchise went back and picked up after the first one.
00:22:17
Speaker
And then even like, you know, the Terminator franchise, the later movies, I mean, people have valid criticisms of those, but they did some interesting things, I thought, with Genesis, where they were using the original timelines, those movies still exist, but then changing the timeline, and you've got a time travel movie. So that's a creative way to do a reboot, I thought, too. How well it worked is a different story, but it was a cool idea.
00:22:44
Speaker
Yeah, the three movies are so interesting because they just keep like, rebooting and you're like, you're not sure what continuity anything is because there's like, there's salvation and there's Genesis and then there's whatever the new one that came out like, two years ago now or was yeah, dark fate. And it's just like, it's yeah, it's kind of one of those things was like, there's so many continuities, it's almost tough to keep straight. And then you got the TV show too. Right, right. So yeah, yeah. And but I think it
00:23:12
Speaker
It shows something that I think comic book publishers have understood for a while, and now movie studios are starting to catch up on, which is that these audiences are smarter than you give them credit, right? They can follow these different timelines. They can follow these different interpretations. It's, because I remember that being a, and you know, to give the studio some small bit of credit, they weren't completely wrong. I remember when this movie came out,
00:23:41
Speaker
Batman Begins, there were people talking on message boards like, wait, how is this come before Batman? How is this how is this set before the 89 Batman and all this? Because they're noting like inconsistencies between this and I'm like, no, it's not a prequel. Because prequel was kind of the big thing at that time, you'd have the Star Wars prequels and all that. And so everyone, a lot of people did think this was a prequel to the 89 Batman movie.
00:24:06
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's interesting. Yeah, the way that that kind of for a while, people would get confused by that kind of things are like, you know, when the Planet of the Apes movies, to bring it back to those again, people were like, okay, well, how does Caesar do this? Because he eventually does this and those later Charlton Heston films and blah, blah, blah. And it's just like, it doesn't, it doesn't have to connect to this, this can be its own unique thing. And I think by now, you know, most people know that. But yeah, there was, I think, a little bit of confusion for a while on that.
00:24:39
Speaker
Alright, so let's dive into this discussion. I think this is an interesting movie because I think it kind of gets forgotten about a lot because, you know, Dark Knight was, you know, just such a massive improvement over every aspect of this movie and it became, you know,
00:24:56
Speaker
you know, again, like I said, be at the beginning of this episode, a lot of people call it the godfather of superhero movies. And then you have the Dark Knight Rises, which not only ended the trilogy, but also is just such a polarizing movie. And where it's, it's got it's, it's got in there people who absolutely love it, and they'll defend it to the death, then you got other people who will, you know, decry it, you know, completely, but it's, and it's,
00:25:23
Speaker
And both sides, it's hard for them to acknowledge the other side's arguments, like the people who hate it. They almost find, they don't remember that there are actually some interesting things in that movie. Whereas the people who love it, they're not willing to talk about the problems, the obvious problems it has. But Batman, see, Batman Begins gets kind of lost in the shuffle a little bit.
00:25:46
Speaker
Yeah, no, I completely agree. And that's why it was one that I wanted to talk about because I think that it doesn't get recognized for how important it is. And it is, I think in my opinion, it is a really, really good movie. Like I obviously, I love The Dark Knight. And I actually I like Dark Knight Rises. I do think it is has a lot of flaws, but I generally enjoy it. But I think that this one is
00:26:09
Speaker
probably I would say for me the best Batman film personally and I just love it as a movie but I think that it also it's a better whether or not you think that The Dark Knight is a better movie or not I think that this is a better superhero movie because The Dark Knight is a really like it's interesting you use the word the godfather of superhero movies because it does feel like a crime
00:26:33
Speaker
Movie it feels like a mic especially like a michael man like 1980s like heat or something you know right I think Nolan even had the cast and crew watch heat before making the dark knight where this feels like yeah, this is a superhero thing even though it is Grounded in the real world it does feel very superhero II where there's you know like there's this big plot to like in
00:26:55
Speaker
You know, poison the city and you've got and you've got razzle ghoul run around the scarecrow and it's got all these themes that I feel like are very inherent with superheroes just about like about doing the right thing and about fear and overcoming your fears and
00:27:10
Speaker
And Batman is so built on trauma and this movie is really about the trauma and him getting over all those things that happened to him as a kid. You know, obviously Batman is so defined by the death of his parents. And I think that Nolan handles this really well. And Gotham just feels like a real lived in unique city and like he didn't just go and shoot in Pittsburgh or Chicago like he did with the sequels. Like this feels like its own thing with like the narrows and the monorail.
00:27:37
Speaker
that all feels like translating something comic booky into the real world. And I almost forget how just talking again about the death of his parents and how impactful it is, I forgot until rewatching it for this, how quick that scene happens in this. Because in my mind, Joe Chill shoots him and then the pearls fall.
Character Development in Batman Begins
00:28:01
Speaker
Because that's how, you've seen those pearls fall in,
00:28:04
Speaker
thousand times they even make jokes about it you know in some adaptations where you know the Snyder one obviously you just have that slow-mo thing even in the Burton one it's just like very drawn out and this is just kind of boom happens it's just a dramatic dramatic event that just happens and then he's just kind of sitting there and Joe chill just kind of like runs away and I love how in that moment it just feels so real and visceral and it's it's not overdone it's not overly cinematic
00:28:33
Speaker
you just are like, wow, this is the origin of Batman. This feels like, wow, this is how it really happened to him. Because I kind of lost my train of thought there. But no, yeah, well, that's very well said, though. I don't really have anything to add to that. But I did want to talk about the casting in here. So I'd mentioned Christian Bale and now I think
00:28:58
Speaker
When we're talking about Batman actors, obviously leaving out Kevin Conroy, who just recently passed away at the time of recording this. And he was obviously the gold standard. But leaving out Kevin Conroy, what would you, and let's just talk live action Batman here. I mean, he did play a live action Batman in Crisis, but that's a different story. But leaving out Conroy, how would you rank Christian Bale in Batman actors?
00:29:27
Speaker
he's always been like he's always fluctuated but between my number one and my number two he's always been like one or one a for me because i just i feel like he does strike a really good uh balance of being somebody who feels like a real person but is is kind of he's also is like this guy's kind of weird and broken and you could see him dressing up as a fat like he feels like a good
00:29:49
Speaker
He's a perfect Batman for this universe for this kind of more realistic gritty lived in universe. I love Keaton. Keaton is maybe my favorite on any given day because Keaton is just kind of like, he's nuts. He likes to get nuts, you know, as he says.
00:30:04
Speaker
I've also recently, like Patterson, I think is really great. Like it's those three, they're always, the three of them are always on the podium. No disrespect to any of the other live action Batman, but like they all feel just broken and just like broken weirdos. Like people you think would just be like, I'm going to save the city by dressing up like a big bat and fighting crime. And Bale is a weird dude. Like he's always kind of like finding these different sides and aspects to the character.
00:30:33
Speaker
I think he was the best part of Thor Love and Thunder like he's in a different movie than everyone else but he just finds this nugget of this character and really goes into it and you can see how devoted he is just with like you know something like American Psycho where he just it's so insane and how he would just transform his body to play all these different characters
00:30:53
Speaker
And he really just zeroes in and becomes these characters and not in like a shitty Jared Leto just kind of like, oh, I'm gonna like be a method actor and send you condoms to people. He's like, it's like, oh, no, he's actually just like, just, you know, like doing the performance just to do a good performance and not to just make it about how great of an actor he is.
00:31:13
Speaker
Right. Well, I think it was Pattinson who said that people seem to use method acting as an excuse to be an asshole. You never hear about a method actor who, you know, is playing a really nice guy and is just like a really nice person to everybody. I think he's definitely right, especially in the case of Jared Leto, right? It's obviously just an excuse to be an asshole. But yeah, he really kind of dives into these characters he plays and he really, like you said, he finds these different aspects.
00:31:41
Speaker
I'm kind of with you. I think Pattinson, I would rank lower just because I haven't gotten to see him play the Playboy Bruce Wayne persona yet. So you don't have that to compare it to. Whereas I think Bale, like Keaton does it in a much more subtle way, but he does have variations in the Bruce Wayne and in the Batman persona. And also the Bruce Wayne million or Playboy persona and the Bruce Wayne, you know, damaged orphan persona, we can call it. Because you see it in,
00:32:12
Speaker
Batman Returns, I thought it was, or even the first Batman when he was at the party. And he's just playing this role of kind of like this absent-minded billionaire when he's following Vicky and Knox around the Wayne Manor. And then he just comes up to them randomly. He's like, oh, that's Japanese. And they're like, well, how do you know that? And he's like, well, because I bought it in Japan. And they're like, who are you? He's like, oh, that's right. Sorry, I'm Bruce Wayne, right? And he's just kind of got this.
00:32:39
Speaker
Another time in Batman Returns when he meets Selena Kyle for the first time and because he had seen her as Batman just like a few nights before and he says he's like oh we've met she's like we have and he's like no you know what I mistook me for somebody else right.
00:32:54
Speaker
But when he's in the meeting with Shrek in Batman Returns, you could see that Shrek invited him in because he's like, oh, this is Bruce Wayne. He's a fop. I'm going to easily steamroll him, get him to give me all his money, blah, blah, blah. And then Bruce comes in here and he's like, I commissioned this report. And he's just like, you know,
00:33:11
Speaker
in a second he slips into like you know hardcore intelligent businessman persona and when he's in the bat cave right he's like very much in detective mode and all that he does it's it's very subtle but it is there the more times you see it i think he also had a really good handle on the batman voice using a different voice for it bale handles the the differentiations between his bruce wayne you know public image his bruce wayne you know real bruce wayne and his batman
00:33:42
Speaker
They're much more clear delineations. It's much more over the top when he plays like the playboy Bruce Wayne versus when he's playing like the serious, intelligent Bruce Wayne. And you can see those differences. And I think the movie, I think Michael Keaton got a little bit short changed because Tim Burton was more interested in the villains too. So he didn't get as much time to really play up those aspects.
00:34:03
Speaker
But Nolan, and one of the credits to Nolan is he gives a lot of time in these movies to Bruce Wayne and Batman. Whereas the movies before it, they kind of, the villains overshadowed Batman in every single one of them.
00:34:19
Speaker
Yeah, I completely agree. And I think that's one of the reasons I do love this movie so much as a Batman movie is because it really, other than maybe, you know, the Matt Reeves one that just came out, this is, I think the only Batman movie I'd say where Batman is the most interesting character. Like obviously you said in all of the Burton and then the Schumacher movies, you have these, you cast these really big personalities to be the villains. Like everybody from Nicholson to Schwarzenegger, you have just these huge people.
00:34:48
Speaker
And then even in the later Nolan movies, obviously you have Heath Ledger as the Joker in The Dark Knight, and then The Dark Knight Rises, you have Bane, everyone doing the Bane kind of just like, oh, you know, like, that was such a big thing. And then even in like Batman 66, that's movies that's kind of really about Batman's rogues gallery, because you have so many villains in that you have to give a lot of time to each of them. So this one really just feels like the one that is diving most
00:35:15
Speaker
into the psychology of Bruce Wayne slash Batman and some of the guys I thought I was thinking of when you were kind of talking about Keaton and kind of how he would have to switch back and forth between the kind of like affable kind of goofy Bruce and then just kind of the serious Batman. There's a really great moment in this that I think shows off how well Christian Bale is doing then it's right after he gets out of that restaurant or that hotel that he just bought with the
00:35:37
Speaker
the two like supermodels whatever and they're all wet and he just kind of sees Rachel and he just like you see the facade just kind of crack because she knows him better than anyone probably except for maybe Alfred and she's just like so embarrassed that he's just been like putting on the show that he needs to do and he's just like this isn't me and then she gives him that iconic line that he you know then says back to her later to reveal that he's Batman is like she's like it's not about who you are beneath but it's what you do that defines you and I think that is
00:36:06
Speaker
you know, such a theme in this movie and to be like, yeah, you can do be a good person and do all these and, you know, on on do all these good things beneath. But like your actions are what really speak like you have to like make the good person that you are a reality. And I think that the way that you see him just kind of like process all that and be like, you know, trying to be like, who am I really? Am I the Batman? And identity is always such a big thing in all of the Batman movies, but especially this one where
00:36:36
Speaker
You know, it is just like about seeing other people and the fear that they have. And people have these different perceptions. Like, Scarecrow is just some guy with a weird potato mask. But then when people see him, he's breathing fire and stuff. Or even when he sees Batman, he's got the spooky face. Perception is so important to the themes of this movie. Yeah, absolutely. And also, I think Bale
00:36:59
Speaker
And this is, you know, it's not something that Keaton can control. But Bill looks like Bruce Wayne, like he looks like I'd imagined Bruce Wayne to look like. And I mean, Bob Kane, who gets all the credit for creating Batman, although I think Bill Finger definitely deserves more of that credit. But he said that Val Kilmer was like his
00:37:19
Speaker
looked like his perfect idea of Batman and Bruce Wayne. And I could see that, but when I look at Bale, I mean, I think he definitely does. Like, he looks like a millionaire playboy. I mean, Michael Keaton, as good as he was, doesn't look like a millionaire playboy. Yeah, and it's interesting, because I saw, like, there was, I don't know if it was, like, the Batman 89 comic, or if it was, like, I think it might have even been, like, some behind-the-scenes promos for, like, Keaton coming back in the Flash movie, and they kind of, like, definitely touched on this, because, like, you know,
00:37:48
Speaker
He's got, Keaton kind of now has the receding hairline and everything and he's got that very, the widow's peak got even more extreme and they kind of like gave him like the hair that you would expect like Batman to have, you know, like because yeah, he doesn't have that like comic book chiseled Batman look, he just kind of looks like this kind of hoofy weirdo almost that's kind of having a good time and Bale has that classically just Batman looks like he's pulled from the comics look.
00:38:17
Speaker
And they really made sure to highlight the Batman's physicality in this too, because again, something that the Burton and Schumacher movies did was Batman's not really very acrobatic or much of a fighter, at least we don't really see it that much. And a big part of that is because, you know,
00:38:38
Speaker
Tim Burton can't shoot an action scene to save his life, but also it has to do with the fact that they're walking around in these big rubber suits. They can't even turn their heads in. And Nolan, and they're still stuck with the rubber suits in this, which, you know, I wish they wouldn't have kept with the rubber suits. I can understand why they're trying to keep that idea of like its armor and they want to make, but I would have preferred they had gotten away from the rubber and gone with something a little bit more flexible. But,
00:39:07
Speaker
Nolan finds a really good way to do that, where he showcases Batman's physicality through, like, these really close-ups, these quick cuts, so you see him beating the cra- You see more of the aftermath of him beating the crap out of these guys, so you don't really have run to the problem of not being able to see him in action.
00:39:23
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that was something that I was thinking about a lot during this rewatch is because I thought like, okay, this is a great movie, but maybe the action is not great. And about rewatching it, I'm like, oh, it does really work with what they're doing. Like when you first see him, like Batman first kind of shows up as Batman and he's like taking out all those
00:39:41
Speaker
thugs of Falcone at the docks and it's just kind of these quick cuts and it's kind of that builds up this kind of this mystique of like him being this larger than life figure like you don't get to see him really like punching people it's just like what is going on over here you can't even get a good glimpse of it it's just because it's so quick and it and then by the time you get there just all these guys are knocked out and then he just ties Falcone to the thing
00:40:05
Speaker
And that's why like later on, you know, you have Crane's henchmen and they're just like, I hear he can fly. I hear that he's supernatural. I hear all these rumors and it's almost like that episode of the Batman animated series where there's all the kids and they're telling all the stories about Batman. And yeah, just the way that these action scenes are shot and you just see glimpses. You're like, he could be anything. He could be a man or he could be a creature. Like you don't know.
00:40:31
Speaker
Yeah, they really do a good job with that. I mean, that opening scene at the docks, that is such a... And that was something that the other earlier films, or basically any adaptation of Batman, except for the animated series, really didn't put a lot of focus on, was the fact that he does... One of the reasons why he can... You know how to fight off six men, but we can teach you how to engage 600 that...
00:40:55
Speaker
Ducard tells him is because he does strike from the shadows, like that whole secret, it felt like an Arkham game when you're in the Predator mode, right? You're going through and which is one of the best things about those games when you're going through as Batman and grabbing, you know, armed enemies from behind or from above or you're taking them out with with traps and all this. And that's something we had never seen in a Batman movie before this. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely.
00:41:22
Speaker
And so I was wondering, so we were talking a lot about how great Christian Bale is, but I think that the entire cast in this movie, a lot of the supporting characters are really phenomenal because obviously you have, you know, the legendary Michael Caine playing Alfred. You've got Gary Oldman as
00:41:39
Speaker
as Commissioner Gordon, you've got Morgan Freeman, you've got even like Ruggter Howard, just kind of like a side villain role. And then you've got Liam Neeson as Ducard slash Rajal Ghul. And I think all of these performances are so great. None of them are like scene stealing or show stealing in a way that like
00:41:58
Speaker
like a Jack Nicholson or like a Jim Carrey would have been as a villain in the older movies, but they all are really giving these great performances. Kenny Holmes is okay. I think I do prefer Maggie Gyllenhaal a bit. But other than that, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. The cast really worked for me in this. Yeah. You know what? When I think of my ideal actor for Alfred, like who I think best captures Alfred from the comics, it's
00:42:28
Speaker
it's probably
00:42:46
Speaker
Michael Caine though is one of the things that really sells Michael Caine is the relationship he has with Bruce like you believe these two have this long and deep relationship for years like that exchange I mean he's Michael Caine's got some of the funniest lines in this movie I hope you want a member of the fire brigade yeah but that didn't like you know when he says
00:43:11
Speaker
when he talks about how they're trying to get him declared legally dead. And he's like, well, it's a good thing I left everything to you. And he's like, yeah, he's like, you can borrow the rolls if you like, just bring it back to the full tank of gas. But like, just little moments like that. But it also does a good, it also does a good, you know, bit of backstory, because it explains how Bruce can be gone all this time and how he can still have all his stuff when he comes back. I mean, that, and that's something I had never considered before, but it makes total sense now when you look at it.
00:43:39
Speaker
Yeah, I love all that. And I think that lends itself really well to the world building in this film, because this movie, definitely a lot more than a lot of the other Batman films that came before, I think, does a great job with the world building and making you feel like I kind of alluded to before, like Gotham feels very real, it doesn't feel like they're just shooting on location of some other city, like this feels like a real world, they allude to like the past.
00:44:03
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And how they allude to the past, like, oh, yeah, there was these economic things, and you find out that was later caused by the villains of the story. There has been this long thing, and the League of Shadows do feel like somebody that has been creeping around in the world, and they give over, like, we sacked Rome, and we burned London to the ground, and all this stuff. That all feels really cool and interesting. I wish we would get to, like, the narrows and the monorails doesn't ever come back in the other Nolan films, which just feels like a kind of a loss to me, because I think those aspects
00:44:33
Speaker
are really cool. But yeah, the garden just feels so real and lived in. Yeah, I think one of the big reasons for that is just because of because they
00:44:42
Speaker
Nolan had like a patchwork of different cities that he used to film to make Gotham here. So they shot some of it in Chicago. They shot some of it in Hong Kong. They shot some of it in London, I think, as well. And they kind of went all over the place to kind of patchwork Gotham together. And like you said, that makes it look, their Gotham looks a bit more unique because of that. Whereas when The Dark Knight came around,
00:45:04
Speaker
the mayor of Chicago basically told Christopher Nolan, we'll give you anything you want. And then no one's like, okay, we're filming all in Chicago now, which me as someone who comes from Chicago, it is really cool to see my city in the background. But at the same time, also, you watch that movie and you're like, that's not Gotham, that's Chicago. And
00:45:25
Speaker
So that's one of the things I realize about it now. And you're right, this Gotham does feel a lot more lived in because they are shooting in real places because you look back at the Burton movies, which as great as Gotham looks from a distance, right? You got the Gothic architecture and all that, and that looks amazing. When you get down to the streets, it's a pretty empty city. You've only got like maybe 15 extras at a time in there. So it definitely does not feel lived in. In the Schumacher films, you have these weird,
00:45:56
Speaker
Massive statues and bridges that don't seem to connect anywhere. It's like an MC Escher painting instead. It's just a bizarre architecture. So that doesn't feel lived in at all, whereas this feels lived in. This Gotham, you see the narrows, you see the people on the streets, all of that feels very real. Not only because it's grounded, but just because no one gives the city itself a personality that I think the other movies kind of didn't really focus on that much at all.
00:46:25
Speaker
Yeah, I totally agree. And I think that one thing that that does a really big favor to the movie is that the whole subplot with Joe Chill and everything, you know, in obviously the Burton one, they had they made Joker, the one or Jack Napier, as he was at the time, the one who killed Batman's parents. And this is just some guy and, you know, he just he feels like someone who was a product of this environment. Like Rachel says, there's new Joe Chills being created every day. And he came about because of the
00:46:55
Speaker
creation of the League of Shadows and you know in the old bat you know when he kills the Joker they was like okay there's he's gone and this one is all about like oh he wants to get revenge and it's on this person but he's maybe focusing too much and he's about to become a murderer and kill this person and that's probably a big part of the reason the psychology of this ban and all he doesn't want to become a killer because he sees Joe killed but all this the situation that created him is still intact you know by getting vengeance on this one person
00:47:24
Speaker
it's not going to change anything because as they say vengeance is not the same as justice and by taking out one bad person like the guy who uh killed like by making if they would have made him a supervillain and he'd be like all right well justice is served now and that's something that a lot of superhero movies do um where they're like okay we just took out the bad guy and now everything's solved but this is like there is this
00:47:46
Speaker
this kind of like economic problem, this overlying thing that maybe Bruce Wayne can address and Bruce Wayne's, that's what Bruce Wayne's father spent his entire life doing was trying to fix these larger problems and it feels a lot more real and interesting in that way and because they were able to make such a unique and real feeling Gotham, that all really works.
00:48:11
Speaker
Well, it's also a more complex portrayal of crime than you get in not only most superhero movies up until that time, but also just most movies in general, like the whole idea of, you know, economics leading people to commit crimes. I mean, you don't see that level of understanding. And here, like, you know, if you're talking about, say, for example, you think about like the Dirty Harry movies or something like that, you know,
00:48:36
Speaker
I think Harry would probably have been more on the side with Rachelle Gould. He would be with Batman in that final decision. And you realize, you know, he's like he says, you know, Bruce is really out to save Gotham, right? That is something he really seems to care about a lot. And one of the the whole conversation he has with Rachel after he reveals that he came back to kill Joe Chill,
00:49:02
Speaker
And then she slaps him twice and she tells him, you know, your father would be ashamed of you. That is such a great moment. And it's something that we, the Batman in the movies before that, you know,
00:49:16
Speaker
He's a fucking sadistic killer. As much as I love Keaton, in Batman Returns, he fixes a bomb to a guy's chest and then smiles and then kicks him away. He turns the Batmobile around at another guy and sets him on fire. He goes into the Joker's chemical factory and just boom, machine guns and bombs everywhere.
00:49:38
Speaker
He racks up a bigger body count than, you know, some horror icons. Like, you know, compared to Jason or Freddie or Michael Myers, I mean, Batman's kind of a bit higher than some of those guys. But here. Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah, but his Batman, but Christian Bill, like, and then that scene when he's with the League of Shadows and Ducard gives him the sword and they've got that guy
00:50:01
Speaker
You know bound and at his feet and you know, he just and bruce just looks at looks at the guy and he looks at ducard He looks at the sword. He just shakes his
Complex Villains and Mythology
00:50:08
Speaker
head. No and And ducard makes some good points. He's like, you know bruce like look this man has to be tried and ducard ducard makes some good points like well by who but corrupt bureaucrats You've seen firsthand that this way doesn't work And he's making good points, but bruce is still like but we have to be better like we can't and that
00:50:30
Speaker
Granted, it's kind of undermined by the scene at the end when he tells Ducard, now revealed to be Rache, that, you know, I don't have to kill you, but I don't have to save you. It's like, you're kind of skirting the line a little bit there. I mean, I always thought that was like, it was like, okay, well, I don't know why, but that line always worked for me. I was just like, he's like, yeah, I went out of my way to like save you before, after blowing your house or whatever. But you know what, I'm just gonna like stop being the hero now for a second.
00:51:00
Speaker
like it's you know some philosophers would probably disagree and feel like you know what Batman that's the same thing but you know whatever but yeah I do think that all of that really works and I think that the great villains in my opinion are the ones that are kind of right that are just maybe taking things a little too far and that's something that
00:51:19
Speaker
especially with a lot of recent superhero movies, a lot of Marvel movies, you know, obviously you have Thanos, but all these characters that you're like, yeah, you do have a point. You are doing things that are right. But, you know, it's the ends for them. It's the ends justify the means. And it's these people like Batman, like all these other superhero superheroes who are like, no, the ends don't justify the means killing, you know,
00:51:44
Speaker
Thousands so that people in the future will have a better future is not justified and but yeah Like that's why I think Liam Neeson is so good in this because he's not just some cackling maniacal Monster who just wants to kill everybody because he's evil He wants to do it because he's like yeah, I am saving the world. I'm doing the right thing I am justified in my actions here. Yeah, I think also
00:52:07
Speaker
I like what the movie did with the League of Shadows for the most part. In this movie, I think I really love what they did with the League of Shadows. When we get to Dark Knight Rises, they kind of undercut a bit of that, but in this movie, they find a really good way. First off, I love that they called it the League of Shadows instead of the League of Assassins from the comics. I thought that was a great change. But also, when Ducard comes to Bruce's party at the end,
00:52:33
Speaker
right? And this one, you know, socialite tells Bruce like, Oh, I've been talking to the most fascinating guy, you should be a Mr. And I hate that they mispronounce his name. It's Rachelle. But, but he says, and she says, and he looks at it, you think it's going to be Ken Watanabe, but it's someone else. And he's like, Wait, you're not Rachelle. Cool. I killed him. Or I watched him die. And then
00:52:55
Speaker
then Ducard comes out and he says, but is Rachelle Goul immortal? Are his methods supernatural? And then Bruce says, or just parlor tricks to conceal your true identity. So my thought at this was they found a really interesting way to have Rachelle Goul be immortal without actually going into that fantasy Lazarus pit realm, where it's the whole idea is that Rachelle Goul is a mantle that can just pass down from leader to leader.
00:53:19
Speaker
Exactly. That's what I thought. But then when we get to Dark Knight Rises, they undercut that whole thing. And they're like, no, no, no, look at me some was always Rachelle Gould. And it's like, well, then who started the League of Shadows? Like a lot of this whole idea of legend and mythology that's built up over a girl who's, you know, at most like, you know, 30 years old doesn't seem to really fit together very well then.
00:53:41
Speaker
But it makes so much more sense if it's a mantle that's passed down from leader to leader. And I thought that worked really well. And I thought I really liked how they had done that in this movie.
00:53:53
Speaker
And it honestly, it reminded me a lot of a movie that I love that nobody else seems to really love from the 90s where they do that same thing. And it's instead of being with the villains, it's the hero and that's the Phantom. I love how, yeah, like, because they have that they almost do like the same thing, where that kind of main villain for the Phantom is like, I killed him years ago, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you're like,
00:54:15
Speaker
And he's like, obviously, it's, you know, the Phantom, the previous Phantom, so Billy Zane's dad, and then they get to like the the pirate ship at the end. And he's just like, over the years, plenty of us have killed Phantoms. He's a mortal. And I love that same kind of trope that they use here of like, oh, yeah, Rej Al Ghul or Raj Al Ghul.
00:54:31
Speaker
however they want to pronounce it is just kind of mantle that gets kind of passed down from generation to generation of this you know and that was a really good way to like you say this is something that it is trying to be real if something happens in real world how do you make immortality something in the real world and it fits totally into that like oh the league of shadows is all about doing these tricks and theatricality and performances so it really worked with the kind of
00:54:58
Speaker
Their tactics that they had already established in the movie. Yeah now when we get into some of the more superhero stuff I think actually that's where I kind of have more of a problem with this movie because I you can tell that Nolan is not really a fan of superheroes And I think that kind of comes through when he gets the more superhero stuff Which is why I think for him as a director it made more sense for him to pull back and do something That's much more crime-focused with
00:55:21
Speaker
the Dark Knight.
Nolan's Storytelling Choices
00:55:23
Speaker
Because when we get into the whole supervillain plot of destroying the city, and you have Rache and the League of Shadows using a microwave emitter that somehow evaporates water from pipes, but it doesn't do anything to the human body, like it's the physics of that someone's got to explain it to me, because it doesn't seem to make any sense. But also, I think, you know, Scarecrow is just such an interesting villain in his own right that I think he kind of gets
00:55:48
Speaker
And I love what Killian Murphy does in this movie. And same thing with Carmine Falcone. It's a great character. It's great to put him in here. But I think that it kind of gets shortchanged because of all the other stuff that's going on. And there's just a little bit too much stuff crammed into one movie, I think, at times.
00:56:08
Speaker
Yeah, I kind of though I wish that they had done more stuff with the scarecrow in like later films. Like I know that he comes back in both the sequels, but they're just kind of glorified cameos. Right. And I was like, OK, cool. Like the way this movie ends, it's like they beat scarecrow, but he's still out there in the world. And when are we going to see him? Oh, he takes him out in five minutes to the next movie. So I would have liked to have seen more of that. I do.
00:56:32
Speaker
I do kind of appreciate that no one isn't a huge superhero fan because I feel like that can be dangerous sometimes if you have somebody that is just like so beholden to superhero imagery that you will get something like the Pearl scene in Batman v Superman because obviously
00:56:49
Speaker
Snyder is a big comic book superhero guy and he's done some adaptations and I think he does a really good job with it. He seems to be, I think Snyder tends to be more of just a fan of the imagery of superhero comics than the, because when you, especially like you look at Watchmen, it's like you didn't actually read this book at all, did you?
00:57:08
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that, you know, you can, when you are just like so beholden to like, wow, we have to like, you know, exactly, you know, piece for piece, do this, it gets a little tricky, sometimes it can be a little messy, especially when you have a character like Batman, who is so different, depending on what interpretation you're looking at. I kind of did like that we got a fresh perspective on it.
00:57:32
Speaker
Yeah, there is a fine line. I mean, I'll compare it to, like I mentioned before, Mark Stephen Johnson and Tim Story. When you watch Daredevil, you watch those Fantastic Four movies, you could tell these directors really love this source material, but there's...
00:57:48
Speaker
And I mean, Mark Steven Johnson, he kind of went a little bit over the top with some of it, because it's like every time there's a mention of a side character, it's someone who had worked on the comic books, like we don't have to have that many easter egg references. And the Tim Story movies, like you can tell he really loved the source material, but he didn't quite know how to craft a good story around it. And
00:58:10
Speaker
And yeah, and it is a definite fine line. I mean, I think you look at some of the directors that Marvel has gotten, or even like Matt Reeves, who you can tell is definitely a Batman fan, but he still manages to, he knows when to lean into the fan stuff and when to pull back from it. And yeah, after we've had some of those people who were hardcore fans, they couldn't separate their fandom from the work they were doing, no one's more of in the vein of like maybe
00:58:40
Speaker
Brian Singer, someone like that, who someone who is not really a fan, but is able to still tell still tell this story in a decent enough way. I mean, that being said, I still think I still feel like he doesn't quite get a lot of the superhero stuff, which is why that stuff feels weakest for me in this movie. And that's why I think yeah, and if we do get to the Dark Knight, it works so much better for Nolan sensibilities.
00:59:05
Speaker
Yeah, no, like I think like, like I was saying before, like Dark Knight is definitely obviously it's a it's so much more critically acclaimed because it is less of a superhero movie, I feel like it is more of a Nolan crime movie. But for me, this one kind of just strikes the right balance of Nolan sensibilities with being a
00:59:25
Speaker
Batman movie and maybe it was because it was his first time out and because he was like, okay, we got to bring back Batman to its roots and stuff like that, that he was still feeling a little beholden to the Batman thing, but he was still able to do his his own Nolan stuff that
00:59:39
Speaker
it did really just hit that exact perfect pH balance of like, you know, chemicals in my brain of like, this has enough of each of these things. And I because I am obviously a really big Batman fan. I'm a big Nolan fan. I like especially a lot of his more kind of science fiction film, you know, stuff like light, you know, I guess you would call it just kind of like, like lighter sci fi, you know, stuff like Inception or Interstellar.
01:00:07
Speaker
or hard sci-fi I guess is what you would maybe call it. But I do like a lot of that stuff more than his kind of like grittier quote unquote realistic things. So yeah, this worked. Yeah. I think the scarecrow thing is just, I feel like this was just, it was just so much of a holdover from previous iterations of this script because you had, you know, originally when there was going to be a fifth,
01:00:34
Speaker
movie in the Burton Schumacher franchise. It was going to be Batman Triumphant. Scarecrow was going to be the villain in that. When that didn't happen, you know, they started doing like the Aronofsky Year One project, or was it Dark Knight or whatever it was. One of those, Aronofsky was involved with one of those. And they'd gotten someone else involved at some point. And I think the Scarecrow had been persistent through most of those development projects, if I'm not mistaken.
01:01:00
Speaker
And so then they kind of got wrapped into, then I think he just kind of got inherited into this one. And, and again, I think Killian Murphy does, you know, such a great job, but I feel like the character just feels like he so deserves so much, deserves like his own movie, as opposed to just being a pawn of the League of Shadows. Because, I mean, I could easily see a situation where you've got Crane
01:01:24
Speaker
who is agreeing with the mob to convince the court that these people are insane to get them off out of jail time. But he's doing it because this gets him a chance to play around with his experiments. I think something like that would have, if it was highlighted, would have made it a lot more interesting. And you could have done a whole thing just on that aspect of it.
01:01:45
Speaker
And honestly, I think that if this movie would have come out today, that we would be getting an HBO Max spin off of Scarecrow, like, you know, we're getting with the Penguin and how they're doing this kind of whole wider Batman cinematic universe with all the WB properties. Because yeah, I feel like it's the kind of almost the same thing that you're talking about with the Penguin in the most recent one. And now he's getting
01:02:06
Speaker
bigger thing just for his own and you know I'm just curious to see what would have happened if that had been the kind of landscape when this movie came out if we would have gotten some more Jonathan Crain scarecrow focused things That would be cool. Oh, yeah. I mean, I think if I was Rewriting this movie I think I would have take the League of Shadows out of the whole you know after that first act I would have had them gone and not bring them back until like the second movie or maybe even the third movie
01:02:32
Speaker
and just focus and just have the rest of the movie focused on the scarecrow. I think that would have been a lot more interesting for that character.
01:02:42
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's what I was kind of really hoping, like I said, that he would be a much more prominent character in the sequels, especially. So that was the one thing that kind of I was let down a little bit by. Yeah, because Murphy gets so many scenes where you see that potential for how how well he could play this character. Like when he's just kind of like fascinated at, you know, the way like some of the patients are reacting to it, like you could
01:03:07
Speaker
the way the looks he gives in this, it really makes you think like, wow, this guy is really like, you know, thinking about how can I fuck with these paint people even more to see what happens? Like he's got that look about him. And I think it would have been so interesting to see that explored more.
01:03:23
Speaker
Real fast, I just wanna say with that, I'm so glad that, I know it's obviously a different character, but that he is finally getting a chance to be the lead in a Nolan movie after being a supporting cast in almost every one of Nolan's movies going back to Batman Begins. He's been in the castle and then finally he's gonna be the, he's gonna play Oppenheimer in Nolan's Oppenheimer biopic. So I'm really excited to see him finally get a chance to take that center stage. Yeah, yeah.
01:03:52
Speaker
Also, I think probably one of the best things this movie did too was its portrayal of Gordon, because the Burton Schumacher films, Gordon was just there. He did nothing. You had no reason to believe that he had any real relationship with Batman. But here, Gordon is basically treated as his partner. And Gary Oldman does such a brilliant job of capturing Gordon's character.
01:04:23
Speaker
the struggles he's dealing with being like the only good cop in a city full of corrupt cops and that whole idea of Bruce tracking him down and following him and figuring out which cops he can trust, which ones he can't, and then deciding to trust Gordon this much. I loved all of that in this movie.
01:04:42
Speaker
Yeah, and that was something that I feel like was, there's so many interesting thematic things that are set up in this movie that are just kind of abandoned in later films. But the one that does come back at the end of the trilogy that I think is so powerful is when, you know, Batman's going off to seemingly sacrifice himself and he looks at Gordon, he's just like, yeah, something good, you can just like make such an impact by doing something
01:05:06
Speaker
just as simple as giving a coat to a like a young boy who's just lost his parents and that moment like that's like the start of like you know when Batman thinks he's lost everything but just this small act of kindness that Gordon gives to him just like helps him realize that there is good in the world and he can trust people and he can trust specifically this guy um so I think that is a really powerful moment that luckily gets brought back later on yeah
01:05:32
Speaker
Although I think that line in the Dark Knight Rises was way too overwritten. I think that moment would have worked so much better if it was just maybe a silent look or something like that, and then a flashback image or something. Especially because I don't like that... One of the things I don't like about that moment, and I talked about this when we talked about Dark Knight Rises, was that my interpretation of Gordon
01:05:55
Speaker
in the comics and also throughout these movies is that he knows who Batman is, but he's not saying it. Like that moment when he tells Blake in Dark Knight Rise, oh, I know exactly who he was. He was the Batman. I'm just like, okay, you know, you're just not saying it, right? You really know though. But then at the end when he looks kind of surprised like Bruce Wayne, I'm like, no, no, no, no, you're killing it now, no. But that's just my, that's my personal headcanon though. So that's just my own thing. Yeah, yeah. But I, and what was I gonna touch on next here?
01:06:25
Speaker
Um, oh, Rachel, Rachel is, I think from, okay. So if we're talking about all the love interests we've had in Batman movies, Rachel's not a bad one. I'm not going to say she's a, she's a bad love interest. I'm not going to say she adds nothing to the story. But when I think about what they did with Harvey Dent and I think about, you know, we had just covered, uh, just like two days ago, I had recorded an episode about the long Halloween movie and I think about the,
01:06:55
Speaker
the Batman relationship in the long Halloween comic book and all that. And one of the things I wish had done was instead of making this childhood friend be like his long lost love interest and this theme that carries out through all the movies so much so that after she dies he retires as being Batman. I think that it takes away so much of that character where he's hanging so much of
01:07:25
Speaker
his future as Batman on this prospect of a happy ending with Rachel. I don't like that about that interpretation of Batman in these movies. I think it would have been so much more interesting if instead of it being Rachel that is his childhood friend that then becomes a district attorney, it was Harvey Dent.
01:07:43
Speaker
And that would have been such a great through line to connect this movie to The Dark Knight, because then we have these two guys who they came up together, they both had these same ideals about saving Gotham, but then they diverge wildly. And then for Harvey, it just becomes a complete tragedy in the end. I think that would have been such a better thematic through line.
01:08:08
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. And I think that especially in this movie, Rachel, she I think when you know, Maggie Gyllenhaal is playing her and she becomes a more central, I guess central character in the sequel. I think she's a little better. But in this one, she basically just exists to be the voice of morality and to just say the things like I said, Oh, like Rachel says this, Rachel says this, she just kind of says all the things that the screenwriters are like trying to impose just here's them. Here's another moral for you, Ben. And here's another moral.
01:08:37
Speaker
And so she's not really her own interesting character. I mean, yeah, like she's just kind of a, I think she's a very 2005 woman in a superhero movie where it's just like, they don't really know what to do. They just have to have a love interest who's gonna say these things that are correct of the hero and motivate him and whatever. And at least she doesn't like it. I guess she kind of, he does save her for a second, but she is still doing her own thing. She does have a lot of agency. I will give him credit, especially when you compare it to,
01:09:05
Speaker
like we talked about Spider-Man 2 and those movies, like Mary Jane is just always put into the role of like the screaming damsel in the end. But at least I feel like, and part of it's probably because of Kirsten Dunst, but like she doesn't feel like she has much of a personality. She just feels very just kind of like blank slate, like, hey, I'm here to just say what you need me to say, you shouldn't kill people, your dad would be ashamed, blah, blah, blah. And, you know,
01:09:32
Speaker
Nolan gets accused a lot of not really being able to write women, which I feel like maybe he's just not great at writing people in general. But this, it really kind of comes through here that this is Rachel's just not a very well written character in this particular film, I think. No one's big thing, I think when it comes to like story and narrative and characterization is
01:09:53
Speaker
And I've noticed this in some of his other movies, because I think in some of his later movies, like after Inception, I think he kind of, he started buying into his own hype a little bit too much. And I think he kind of, because there are so many Nolan fanboys now who think he can do no wrong. And I think it feels like Nolan's bought into that a little bit himself. And I think that kind of like ego definitely comes out when you look at some of this, like the, like you mentioned the character stuff with Rachel in here, but also the,
01:10:20
Speaker
the story structure, like the Dark Knight Rises I look at, there are plot holes so big you can drive a truck through that movie. And it's just like he's so concerned with these thematic elements and these themes and these other larger messages that he's trying to convey that I think he kind of loses sight of those story and character details in the process.
01:10:43
Speaker
Yeah, no, he's not a character guy. He is a very, like you said, bigger picture, kind of like what are the larger themes and especially you watch something like Tenet. There is like
01:10:54
Speaker
Those, the people in that movie, there's like one emotional moment in that entire movie and the rest is just kind of like, oh, I'm the protagonist. I'm going to do this. Like the character is literally just literally he's very cold and just kind of, yeah. If you had a gun to my head, I could not tell you, I could not give you a summary of tenant. I just could not do it. I could just watch that movie and I'm just like, I, I don't really know what happened here and I don't really care too much to think about it.
01:11:24
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, pretty much. I think definitely, like you said, after Inception, he got... I think that's something that happened. It's interesting. There's this really great book by William Goldman, where he kind of talks about how people get kind of anointed as these auteurs, and they seem they can do no wrong. And then he talks about specifically with Hitchcock, about like how Hitchcock made all these incredible movies, and then Psycho comes out, and people are like, wow, Hitchcock can do no wrong. And then
01:11:52
Speaker
After, you know, then he slowly kind of went downhill because he was just like, yeah, I'm Alfred Hitchcock. I'm amazing. I can just do whatever I want to.
01:11:59
Speaker
And he was never really the same after that. And I think you could argue the same case for Nolan after all his phenomenal success after The Dark Knight and Inception. I do really, really like Interstellar as well. I think that's another great movie, but I think you do kind of get, and I do like all of his films, but I think that him being like, I'm Nolan, I've got to do with the Nolan thing, have these big, incredible set pieces that are moving around and doing all these things that some of the stuff like character,
01:12:28
Speaker
motivation and dialogue that makes a lot of sense gets lost in the shovel. Well, I think it also works with with actors to like Johnny Depp is I think the best example of that where you know, he's such he was such a versatile actor back in the day and he was able to do all these different parts. But then after he he gets so much acclaim for Jack Sparrow, he just kind of just does the quirky thing every single time he's in a movie after that.
01:12:54
Speaker
Yeah, or like to keep with superheroes, Ryan Reynolds, incredible actor, like very versatile doing all these weird, interesting things in the first half of his career. He becomes Deadpool, and now he's just Deadpool. Like somebody said, I can't remember who it was, but they were like, becoming Deadpool was both the worst and the best thing to happen to Ryan Reynolds because he is
01:13:16
Speaker
able to get work so consistently and make so much money now, but that's all he does. You're not going to see him do another like smoke and aces or anything like that. He's just kind of the quirky like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna make a quick little quip here. Like, so yeah, you're absolutely right about that. Yeah, but I think in the case of I don't mind so much when it with Ryan Reynolds, same reason I don't mind so much when George Clooney does that thing where he just basically plays himself or when Dwayne Johnson does it too, because in those three cases, like they're so entertaining that I don't care.
01:13:46
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, he's good at what he does. I just, I just, I mean, I feel like Dwayne Johnson and George Clooney, they're both good actors, especially Clooney, but I feel like Clooney has never been that versatile. So I'm not like missing like, oh man, I remember when George Clooney would try and do this and this and this, but now Reynolds early caught of his career was just, I feel like so interesting. And it's something that we don't get anymore. I think I put Clooney up there above Reynolds. Cause I think if you look at some of the stuff he's done, like Siriana or Three Kings, I think,
01:14:15
Speaker
he had showed a lot more, or even like, you know, to a lesser extent, even from Dust till Dawn, I think he showed a little bit more range in those types of movies. But then after a certain point, he just kind of like, I'm just gonna be George Clooney. Yeah, he's kind of just, I mean, I disagree a little bit. I feel like he's always kind of been Danny Ocean, but I do see what you're saying where he was maybe trying to do a couple, some different roles early on. Okay.
01:14:42
Speaker
So what do you think about the Tumblr, the redesigned Batmobile
Batmobile and Technology Realism
01:14:46
Speaker
in this? Let's talk about the aesthetics of Batman that they go with in this movie. The Batmobile is probably the most obvious one.
01:14:56
Speaker
Yeah, I thought I remember at the time really liking the tumblr and I think it's definitely still holds up because, you know, obviously, like we talked about, they are trying to go that more realistic route. And it's like, how do we do that? Oh, well, Wayne Enterprises is now a weapons manufacturer and they have all these R&D department that is just kind of collecting mothballs. And so we have this this tumblr thing and I think it looks just so unlike
01:15:20
Speaker
anything we've really seen in a Batmobile before or even since where it is just kind of this jagged dark thing and it is just kind of you know it is just be able to just plow through the city and just fly over rooftops that I thought it was a cool interesting design that felt it did feel like it can be in the real world but it is still something not like anything we would see on the street.
01:15:45
Speaker
Yeah, it kind of reminds me of the mammoth Batmobile he had in The Dark Knight Returns, the comic book. And it's got that feel where it's like this big tank thing. I mean, I think it's fine for these movies. I would not want this to be like the default Batmobile going forward. I like something that's a little longer and sleeker, more like the Burton Batmobile or like what they did in the animated series. But I think for these movies and what they're doing, it works really well.
01:16:14
Speaker
Yeah, and I think all of the bat tech stuff works specifically for these movies. I wouldn't want to see, like you were saying, this stuff in a different adaptation of Batman, like the current
01:16:26
Speaker
Like the ones they were doing with like the Snyder, like Batman, it would obviously not work, but here they're like, okay, this is Kevlar, this is, and there's like, it's stuff where it's like, oh, this isn't real, but like, you could kind of like, it's close enough to the reality, you could be like, yeah, he'll stick a shockwave through a thing and he'll be able to glide on it. That's a good way to like, bring Batman gliding into the real world.
01:16:46
Speaker
You know, one of the ones that I thought I don't know if it really worked was the bat sonar But it was it was one of those things that was like he uses it once and it just never gets used again Um that one I thought was a little bit goofy. Uh, but for the most part I I liked a lot of it I can forgive the sonar thing because of the fact that it was taken directly from the year one comic book So I give them but otherwise you you make a good point about it like it they use it once they never see it again um, I think they
01:17:14
Speaker
I like the gliding at first, but I think they kind of overuse it a little bit. And I think it's telling why in later movies, then they stop using it at all, basically. Yeah. Yeah, I think yeah, yeah. Oh, go ahead. No, sorry, go ahead. I was just gonna say, yeah, I think I'm trying to think I remember him using it like a couple times and it does. Yeah, it feels novel. But you know, by the time you're rolling around a movie to
01:17:38
Speaker
that does wear a little bit thin, so they're like, okay. And it's the same thing with, like, I like it the way his costume looks a lot in this movie, but like you were saying, he can't really turn his head. And it's something they directly addressed in the sequel, like Morgan Freeman was like, you want to be able to turn your head. And I thought that was interesting, you know, especially since you have like, it felt like then this bat suits felt like the next progression into the real world from like that fruit roll up that like he was wearing and Batman returns or he just like tears it away. I do like this bat suit a lot.
01:18:07
Speaker
Yeah, my one criticism of this Batsuit is I wish it wasn't all black. I wish they had had like, you know, put in some gray and like the bodysuit thing to just kind of make that that bat symbol pop a little bit more. I think that would have been nice. I am glad they went back with the gold belt because they had gotten away from that in the in the later Schumacher films and you just had like the belt and like everything was just like this
01:18:29
Speaker
black blue shade type of thing. So I like that they tried to at least bring back the gold belt.
Supporting Characters and Tech Influence
01:18:35
Speaker
I think it would have been nice if they had had, you know, some gray in there to kind of separate the bodysuit from the gloves and from the boots. But also the way that they make the gloves functional with the scallops on the end. They gave them a reason for that and it comes from his experience with the League of Shadows. I really like that idea too.
01:18:54
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. I thought that was a really cool thing without it feeling like too much like, here's how Han Solo got his gun. It felt like a very natural thing. It's like, oh, yeah, like, he's always had these things. We've never really thought about why they're there. And then you show him fighting with it. And I really thought all the way they introduced his backstory, because I mean, obviously, we've gotten into comic books and stuff before. But we and we've had a lot of superhero origins over the years. But we up until now, we hadn't really
01:19:20
Speaker
delved into how Batman becomes Batman and seeing him get all this tech and seeing him kind of learn to become Batman and learn the tricks of like, oh, why is he theatrical? Like, why is he using all these shadows and these little gadgets and these little ninja techniques? And to see that it's like, oh, he learned from like this actual ninjas who are his enemies now and the League of Shadows that it all plays into it really well, I think. Yeah, that was a really, really well done.
01:19:48
Speaker
And we haven't really talked about him a lot, but Morgan Freeman, I think bringing in Lucius Fox was, it was a surprise when they had announced that casting for me, because I wasn't expecting A, for them to have Lucius Fox in this, and B, for him to be such a crucial part of these movies. But I thought it, and in retrospect, though, it was such a great move, because it makes total sense for how Batman's able to do all this stuff.
01:20:13
Speaker
he would need to have some help, someone on the inside of Wayne Enterprises, to help him do all this stuff. So I thought that was such a great addition to the mythos. That's really been picked up a lot since then because they've, you know, they brought it up in the comic books, they brought it up in other adaptations. And as I'm not 100% certain, so nobody quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure this movie was the first one to give Fox that much of an elevated role.
01:20:40
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think he, I can't think, I don't think he was in any of the movies beforehand. No, he wasn't in the movies before at all. Like, I know that. Okay.
01:20:47
Speaker
Yeah, but it really works because what like we're saying when you are doing this more realistic movie, you do have to be like, okay, how does it make sense that this guy exists in the real world? Whereas you can in like a Burton movie, you can be like, okay, well, he's got all this stuff. And because those movies are a little bit less grounded in reality, you don't have to think about really how he got all of his tech and how he got everything. But in this one, you do need a character like a Lucius Fox, you do need to be like I was saying, oh, there is this our underground R&D department that nobody really talks about or whatever that exists in
01:21:17
Speaker
So that character was really essential for giving us the take that Nolan wanted to have on Batman. Yeah, absolutely.
Film's Ending and Future Tease
01:21:25
Speaker
All right, and then I want to just briefly touch on the ending here because, I mean, this was such a great way to end this movie was with that theme of escalation and then leading that into the next movie where they bring in the Joker. And like, I still get chills when I think about that ending when he comes in and he says, you know, there's this other guy, you know, robbery double homicide.
01:21:47
Speaker
you know, has a taste for theatrical in the hands of the Joker card. I thought that was such a brilliant ending for this movie. Yeah. And I really like it too, because this movie, you obviously you get villains that we'd never seen before in, you know, on the big screen, you get Joker and Ra's al Ghul. And then like, okay, we know what you guys wanted. We know you wanted to see these kind of other legacy characters. We gave you something new here. This is Batman's origin story. And now
01:22:14
Speaker
He's going to meet the Joker. There's going to be something else. So so hold off for that, guys. We haven't forgotten about the supervillain that you all love so much. We were doing something different here. But don't worry, there's going to be more coming. Yeah. And he also and I also love that they established very clearly that, you know, in this movie, they established that, you know, Bruce Wayne is the mask.
Identity and Performance Critique
01:22:35
Speaker
Batman is the real person like they and that again, this is kind of an example of
01:22:41
Speaker
Katie Holmes only being there to say things to the main character, or to say things to the audience. So at the end, when he says, you know, Batman's just a mask, and she says no, and she touches his face, she's like, this is the mask. Your true face is now the one that criminals see. I'm like, in retrospect, at the time, I was so excited when they had said that, because I'm like, yes, finally, they get it, they get it. Now in retrospect, I'm watching this, and I'm like, you're kind of doing that telling instead of showing there, but I'm glad the effort was made and that the idea was acknowledged.
01:23:11
Speaker
Yeah, definitely, because that is something that, you know, people love to debate about, like, who is the real Batman? Who's his real mask? Which is his real mask? And the fact that they kind of directly address it, like you say, it is a little on the nose a little, is it a little, you know, it should be a little tell don't show. But I think that it is a good point that they at least brought it up. Yeah, yeah.
01:23:34
Speaker
Oh, and the voice. If I'm gonna not Christian Bale for any aspect of his performance, anything that knocks him down to be either on par or maybe below Keaton, it's the voice. And I don't think they were really thinking in advance, because I don't think they realized how much they were gonna need Bale to speak as Batman in the sequels. I don't even think they even really knew if there were gonna be any sequels.
01:24:00
Speaker
Um, I think if they had had, if they had had a little bit more force forethought, they would have, you know, maybe done some audio manipulation on the voice or something, but like they did with, um, with a, they did with Ben Affleck. But yeah, that voice, it's just, it's okay for a little bit. He speaks in here, but when we get into the dark night, it starts to board around the ridiculous.
01:24:23
Speaker
Yeah, that's what I was gonna say is that it works in this movie, I feel like, because he only uses it very sparingly just to intimidate criminals. Yeah. Whereas, and I think, like, retroactively, people don't like in this movie because of what comes later. But this movie, it works perfectly fine, but when, because he's only using it just to scare, but then he uses it, like, whenever he's Batman, like, in the later, even when he's, like, Selena Kyle leaves and he's like, that's what that feels like. I'm like, why are you still doing that? It's just you. Why, like, you're not performing for anyone.
01:24:53
Speaker
I made that comment too and we talked about that. You're completely alone. Why are you still using the voice?
01:25:00
Speaker
Exactly. And that's something that those sequels do quite a bit is just kind of he just they overdo it with the voice. Here, though, I think it's just the right amount. It is just he's just he's doing it like, swear to me. And you know, he drops that guy. And that is such a like, it's often paired in and memed now. But like, at the time, you're like, wow, that was the that's the first time you actually see Batman. He's not just like,
01:25:23
Speaker
you know, wearing that kind of like ski mask is not just off in the shadows. Like he's like really getting a close up of this guy talking to this person. It is so intimidating. They do a good job of showcasing that intimidation factor too, but still like skirting the line of how
Nolan's Career and Film Legacy
01:25:38
Speaker
far he'll go. Like I think that's one of the things this movie does very well when it and like you said, this is as a Batman movie.
01:25:46
Speaker
you know, I think an argument could be made for the Batman now, but up until the Batman, this was probably the best pure distillation of the character we had in live action. Yeah, no, I obviously completely agree. I think this does a really good job of just diving into the broken psyche of Bruce Wayne. Absolutely. Okay, well, Derek, I think that about brings us to the end here. Any final thoughts on Batman Begins?
01:26:14
Speaker
I guess, yeah, just I've kind of said pretty much at all, but I think that this is a movie that it wouldn't necessarily be underrated, but it is something that maybe people need to go back and kind of reevaluate it as its own movie that kind of had such an impact. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I think it's again, like I said at the beginning of this episode, it's
01:26:37
Speaker
kind of like the forgotten Nolan movie because it gets overshadowed by how amazing the Dark Knight was and how polarizing Dark Knight Rises was. And then, and also we've just had so much, it's ridiculous when we think about it because this movie came out less than 20 years ago, right? 2005, right? Yeah. And in that time, we've now had four Batmen.
01:27:05
Speaker
Well, five of you count Kevin Conroy in Crisis, right? Because we had Bail, we had Affleck, then we had... Affleck, oh, no, sorry. We had Bail, you know, Affleck, and then Pattinson, and then, you know, Conroy on Crisis. And then also we had, I keep forgetting his name, Scott, Scott Glenn, the guy who plays it on Titans. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:27:34
Speaker
Ian Glenn. He's from Game of Thrones, right? Yeah, yeah. Ian Glenn. So Ian Glenn plays him on Titan. So we've had five different Batman, and soon six when we get Keaton back in the Flash. So it's ridiculous. Within the span of 20 years, we're going to have six different live action Batman.
01:27:59
Speaker
You compare that to the previous 20 years from 1989 to 1996, there were just the three and that was it. Yeah, yeah. Or even if you go from like the 1960s up until 89, before Keaton, there was one dude, you know? Yeah, yeah. So yeah, and just like, it is amazing when you think about how much Batman content, Batman content there really has been in the past 20 years. It's just, so it's very easy to see how this movie can get lost in the shuffle.
01:28:29
Speaker
Yeah, totally. And even with within the Nolan filmography of the wider Nolan filmography, because I feel like, you know, after this, you know, Dark Knight becomes such a huge hit. And that's when he kind of becomes this prestige director. And then people like to look at his early films, like Memento and that's something like, oh, this is his early stuff. This is like sliver mid period here. This and I think the prestige to kind of
01:28:51
Speaker
get lost to time a little bit because they were right when he was starting to get a little bit of money but he hadn't become like the Christopher Nolan monolith yet he was still making these big budget studio movies but not like unlimited money you know yeah i think i think that's really good comparison i think you know this movie and this is really kind of a good model for a lot of directors to follow is you know you do like the the big crowd-pleasing blockbuster movie and then you get the money to do your more personal projects like the prestige like inception
01:29:22
Speaker
And that's a good model that I'm not sure, I don't know if Nolan necessarily set this model, but I think it's a good model for a lot of actors and directors to follow because then you can explore, it gives you the freedom to make these more personal projects as opposed to just doing all blockbusters or all personal projects. Exactly, it's the old one for them, one for me. Right, exactly, yeah. Like I remember Jay and Silent Bob strike back. There was that conversation between Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.
01:29:50
Speaker
where he says, you know, first you do the first you do the big movie, then you do the arthouse film, and then you do the film just because your friend says he owes you one. Yeah. All right. Why don't you tell people where they can find you.
01:30:05
Speaker
Yeah, so you can find me on any of the social media apps, just Derek McDuff or Derek's Photos on Instagram. You can check out my podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts, however you hear this, check out Underrated and then Infinity Stones and Dragon Bones just by Googling or searching those in your podcast app. I'm on Medium as well, just Derek McDuff and then
01:30:32
Speaker
I do a lot of freelance stuff, places like WatchMojo, things like that, if you wanna check me out on any of those sites. Okay, great. All right, Derek, thanks so much for coming on again. And if anyone hasn't listened yet, I was... We're recording it now, but the release date will have come out before this episode. So go back and listen to the episode we did on Black Panther, Wakanda Forever, and Infinity Stones and Dragon Bones.
01:30:59
Speaker
All right, Derek, thanks again. I'm sure it's good. Yeah, I hope it will turn out to be. We'll find out soon.
01:31:08
Speaker
All right, thanks again for coming on. Again, you're always welcome back anytime. That does it for this episode of Superhero Cinephile. Superherocinephiles.com is the website, SuperCinemapod on Twitter and Instagram. And remember, you sign up for the Patreon page, patreon.com slash SuperCinemapod. You get these episodes a week in advance, and you can also listen to The Companion Show, Superhero Cinephile's book club, where we talk about comic books and graphic novels. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.
01:31:36
Speaker
If you enjoy the Superhero Cinephiles, then you'll also love my companion podcast, the Superhero Cinephiles Book Club. All my Patreon subscribers get access to this exclusive podcast where I review superhero comics and graphic novels. Not sure what comics you want to read next or what you should dive into? I've got you covered on that. I'll be doing reviews, recommendations, and also talking to you about useful entry points.
01:31:57
Speaker
If you're interested in reading some comics but don't know where you should start, plus you'll get access to all episodes of the main show a week before everyone else. On all of this for as little as just a dollar a month, all you have to do is go to patreon.com slash supercinemahot and you can sign up at any subscription amount to get started. Thanks so much for your support and please don't forget to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:32:40
Speaker
Thank you for listening and as always good night. Good evening. God bless.