Transcript
Speaker: I'm just gonna wing it.
Speaker: Hello podcast listeners and welcome to the inaugural episode of Popcorn and Perrier.
Speaker: I swear I will not do this voice the entire time.
Speaker: My name is Brady Birkenmeyer and I am joined here with Ryan Tobias.
Speaker: How are you, Ryan?
Speaker: Hi, Brady.
Speaker: Brady, I'm good.
Speaker: Good, man.
Speaker: I appreciate you doing this.
Speaker: This has been something you and I have been talking about for a long time.
Speaker: We are both avid movie fans, but you're a little different than me.
Speaker: I'm sort of your average way too into movies guy, but you have credentials.
Speaker: Could you tell me about them if you would?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Well, first of all, thank you.
Speaker: I'm excited to do this podcast with you.
Speaker: I've been wanting to do...
Speaker: a podcast for a long time to, uh, you know, heat the world with my takes.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Didn't you say you have a friend group, uh, uh, that, that had some sort of success or something like that in it in podcasting?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I have some friends who do, I'm not sure how successful they are, but, uh, yeah, I do.
Speaker: Somebody who does it though.
Speaker: The, the good, uh, the pod and the ugly.
Speaker: Okay, great.
Speaker: They started out by covering every single Clint Eastwood movie written, directed, or starring.
Speaker: And then they moved on.
Speaker: And they got to Space Cowboys.
Speaker: How bad was that day?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And they do pairings, so they picked one at the beginning and one from the end of his career and then worked to the middle.
Speaker: Oh, that's a lot of fun.
Speaker: Yeah, but then they've also done...
Speaker: All sorts of, you know, Fincher and I think they've done Shyamalan.
Speaker: They've done all sorts of directors and actors since then.
Speaker: They did a big Meryl Streep season recently.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Oh, cool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: OK, so that's exciting.
Speaker: So so you have, yeah, some some friends in it.
Speaker: This is something that you've always wanted to get into.
Speaker: How did you get started?
Speaker: You know, why do you love movies, Ryan?
Speaker: Let's see.
Speaker: I love movies because I love the transportive spectacle.
Speaker: The first couple movie memories I have were seeing Bambi at a one screen theater in Phoenix when I was four or five.
Speaker: And being terrified, screaming, running out of the theater.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: Who brought you?
Speaker: Was that a parent or a grandparent?
Speaker: I have a grandparent memory.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: My mom took me.
Speaker: My mom did not... She did not remember Bambi and Bambi's mom's death, you know?
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: And the Night of the Bucks.
Speaker: That shit's intense for a four-year-old.
Speaker: No, it is very intense.
Speaker: So what were you saying?
Speaker: It traumatized you?
Speaker: Was that like one of your first memories of movies?
Speaker: Yeah, and that's kind of important because I like...
Speaker: I like a lot of horror and thrillers and disturbing shit.
Speaker: Ooh.
Speaker: And for some reason, that's like part of my, it goes all the way back to my first couple.
Speaker: This is your origin story.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This is Bambi scaring you in movies.
Speaker: You're like, ooh, movies should be scary.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Or, you know, difficult in at least some scenes or something to that nature, right?
Speaker: Shocking.
Speaker: Shocking.
Speaker: Shocking moments in movies are my favorite movies.
Speaker: And then after that, I saw my grandparents taped Star Wars.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: I don't know if it was off cable or they rented it and then taped it.
Speaker: What year were you born, Ryan? 79.
Speaker: So this would have been like 84, 85.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: My grandparents get a VCR and they have the Star Wars tape.
Speaker: And I just watched that.
Speaker: You know, I watched the movie dozens of times and then at some point I realized you can just watch a part of the movie.
Speaker: So I would just watch the final invasion of the Death Star, you know, the the rebel assault at the end.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Over and over and over again.
Speaker: But that so Star Wars is like huge for me.
Speaker: And specifically, I've realized recently that.
Speaker: Princess Leia, and specifically in A New Hope, is like my, it's where my taste in women comes from.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I have a similar.
Speaker: Smart, sarcastic.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I have a similar story about where I got my taste in women, and it's Lois Lane.
Speaker: Her brassy, you know, bossing everybody around.
Speaker: From Superman the movie?
Speaker: From Superman the movie, yes.
Speaker: Margot Kidder.
Speaker: Yeah, she's definitely up there for me too.
Speaker: So yeah, Lois Lane was the similar thing.
Speaker: And I don't know how gross we're going to make this podcast, but one of my first masturbatory sessions as a young boy was the scene in Return of the Jedi where she's wearing the bikini and Luke, I don't know why I have to get into the specifics of the scene, but now you're in.
Speaker: Luke is swinging her on the rope, right?
Speaker: And her butt flap moves with the wind a little bit.
Speaker: And that was a thing.
Speaker: Now, famously, Carrie Fisher hates these fucking stories.
Speaker: Hates them, hates them, hates them.
Speaker: Just lived her entire life with men coming up to her and saying, you're the first thing I ever jerked off to.
Speaker: And then she famously said that to the new
Speaker: girl who's in the movies whose name escapes me at the moment and she's like, this is what you have to look forward to for the rest of your life.
Speaker: So when I met Carrie Fisher, I didn't tell her that story.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: So just so you know the type of person that I am.
Speaker: You can die with a clear conscience.
Speaker: I appreciate that.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: I didn't add to her strain.
Speaker: Okay, so as a young child, you get addicted to the stuff, the shocking scenes specifically, always a big thing.
Speaker: What made you pursue it?
Speaker: Because that is sort of what you did, right?
Speaker: Yeah, I didn't really- Collegially is what I'm leaning towards, but-
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: What made you pursue movies?
Speaker: It's just always been a subject that I've been interested.
Speaker: I've never really wanted to be a director.
Speaker: You know, a lot of people who get really into movies, they have some fantasy of being a director.
Speaker: Of making their movie.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But I just ended up in college.
Speaker: I was kind of fishing around for stuff to study.
Speaker: And I was taking a lot of history courses, a lot of gender study courses, and then a lot of film courses.
Speaker: And I found at Portland State, the film department at the time was in communications department.
Speaker: So I had one particular professor who taught like 75% of the film theory courses.
Speaker: And I just took classes with her every quarter.
Speaker: And then after three years of that, I had almost enough to graduate.
Speaker: So I kind of accidentally became a film professor.
Speaker: But I learned, you know, just a tremendous amount.
Speaker: And then I took some some graduate level courses.
Speaker: I flirted with being a film theory professor.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I have a little bit of graduate level knowledge of that as well.
Speaker: Well, this is a way for you to be a film theory professor for somehow less money.
Speaker: then that would yield you.
Speaker: So our podcast then is the idea of me wanting to steal your knowledge because my credentials, I went to college, but I got a degree in website design and animation and Photoshop and artsy stuff.
Speaker: But I've always been a, well, a fan of,
Speaker: just a fan of just kind of all kinds of different stuff.
Speaker: And like comic books were very, very young, but obviously movies were incredibly instrumental.
Speaker: I watched Superman with my father, very, very young.
Speaker: One of my first memories, it was the old George Reeves.
Speaker: I realized it was a TV show, but at the time I thought we were watching a movie.
Speaker: And so that's really implemented when, um, uh,
Speaker: When Batman came out, my father took the four year old me to go see it.
Speaker: I believe he said a midnight showing, but I'm not 100 percent on that one.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: And he said, quote, because they made a fucking Batman movie.
Speaker: So he was going to bring his four-year-old to a PG-13 movie.
Speaker: My father's not a socially responsible man in any stretch of the imagination.
Speaker: But... Well, if he was like my dad, my dad took us to see Batman, and he was so disappointed that it wasn't like Batman 66.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: That's what he grew up on.
Speaker: And when we came out of that movie, out of that gothic...
Speaker: Tim Burton shit.
Speaker: He was so mad and he apologized.
Speaker: He was like, I wouldn't have taken you guys to see this movie.
Speaker: And I of course loved it.
Speaker: You know, I thought it was amazing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The 66 stuff.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: My dad, that's definitely the only thing.
Speaker: shit my dad would have ever had, you know, aside from reading maybe the occasional comic book when he was a child.
Speaker: But I remember him liking it.
Speaker: And one of our very first VHS tapes that was the super old style that cost $120 or whatever, they were heavier than the later tapes.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Like the plastic was thicker.
Speaker: We had that for Batman and obviously wore that tape out.
Speaker: But yeah, the goal, the aim sort of of the reason I wanted to start this podcast, I've done a few podcasts.
Speaker: I'm currently doing another podcast.
Speaker: Super Geeky Playdate was a podcast that I did for about five years.
Speaker: We got... Yeah, it was pretty good.
Speaker: It was a lot of fun.
Speaker: And we got quite a few listeners.
Speaker: And we got in free every year to the Rose City Comic Con with press passes.
Speaker: We cover the event and then do an episode about it.
Speaker: We did live shows.
Speaker: We did all kinds of stuff.
Speaker: And it was an absolutely amazing experience.
Speaker: Now I currently do another show and I would like to try this thing out as well.
Speaker: But ultimately, yeah, I want to talk about movies and I want to use all that incredible information that you learned without having to pay for it.
Speaker: See, I'm tricking you into this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Brian, I'm happy to offer my services for free.
Speaker: It's more fun for me to think I'm duping you.
Speaker: Is that okay, though?
Speaker: Yeah, we can make it a bit if you want to make it a bit.
Speaker: I can keep that.
Speaker: Okay, good, good, good.
Speaker: I also, on a personal level, as someone who loves movies and grew up reading criticism, I
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: The film department or something like film theory moved into the English departments at schools.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So most of the people in the film criticism space and making podcasts are writing for most of the outlets that cover movies.
Speaker: They all have like they all have degrees in literature or journalism, which are great.
Speaker: But it's a it's a very different way of looking at films than how I was taught.
Speaker: And so I hope talking about films the way the way I see them will help you, but also just be different from what people hear on other shows about.
Speaker: Even podcasts that talk about the same movies.
Speaker: I'm completely fascinated.
Speaker: Could you distill for me within a few words your sort of general unique outlook on films or what I am in store for before we start the subject matter of this episode?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, we can end the intro on that note.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Okay, great.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So the teacher, the professor that I studied under at PSU, Dr. Brooke Jacobson.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: The first thing that you had to do every year and which shocked a lot of people who were showing up to class thinking they would just get to watch movies and then talk about movies and that it would be like fairly light work.
Speaker: Sure, easy degree or whatever.
Speaker: You just watch movies all day.
Speaker: Yeah, so in her class, the first paper you had to write every quarter was dissect a movie without referring to the script.
Speaker: You cannot use the dialogue to advance your argument.
Speaker: You can only use the machinations of the plot and then how it's shot, how it's lit, what people are wearing, how they're acting, but not what they're saying.
Speaker: the subtleties of the way in which, because movies are inevitably their own incredible medium involving
Speaker: all the different elements that they do, they can tell stories without any words whatsoever.
Speaker: And so your professor is trying to open your mind to that, like kind of right off the bat.
Speaker: Like this is the way you're going to need to start thinking of things.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, if you take getting that right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And on an average movie, you know, even a small movie, the smallest indie movie,
Speaker: The acting is like maybe five to 10% of what's going on to get it made, you know?
Speaker: But of course, when people think about movies and they watch them, that's like where 90% of their attention is.
Speaker: Yes, of course.
Speaker: So drawing attention to the fact that 90% of what is getting, of the work that's going into making the movie and creating the impression in your mind and giving you those visceral reactions, that's all being done by people who you don't think about off screen, you know, and their work is kind of unseen.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: The subtleties of the medium could allow.
Speaker: Incredible.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: And then just as far as how I look at movies, because this is different and sometimes causes arguments with respectable gentlemen who love film.
Speaker: I'm excited for those arguments, by the way.
Speaker: So I studied film theory from a feminist and a Marxist point of view.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: What that kind of means is that I'm always looking at how
Speaker: all genders and all races are kind of portrayed in a movie or their lack of portrayal to, you know, sure.
Speaker: Having a woman.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The Bechdel test.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: For anyone not maybe following along, like just a quick example of what he's describing here is something called the Bechdel test, which is a basic baseline thing about movies in which, you know, do the female characters have their own agency?
Speaker: They express this by having a conversation that is not about a man.
Speaker: Is that correct?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I get that right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And there's...
Speaker: There's a similar test that obviously adapted from the Bechdel test, but Ava DuVarnay also has the DuVarnay test, which is do you have people of color in your movie?
Speaker: And if so, do they have their own, similar to the thing, do they have their own agency?
Speaker: Are they talking about something besides white?
Speaker: Are they just there to help the white guy?
Speaker: There's so much.
Speaker: So like, yes, because of the podcast that I listen to, I've only just touched on these areas that you're,
Speaker: going to teach me much, much more about, but opening my eyes to the Asian mystic stereotype or whatever, and how prominent it is everywhere.
Speaker: Like the movie, I don't know why this leaped into my head, but the movie, What Women Want with Mel Gibson.
Speaker: Like it ends with him like encountering a woman wearing a babushka who like says a thing to him that breaks the curse finally at the end or something.
Speaker: You might also get struck by lightning.
Speaker: That movie has issues.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Anyway, I guess all that to express that I'm fascinated and I'm interested to learn this stuff.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, I appreciate that.
Speaker: And then the other thing is the Marxist point of view, which is that Hollywood is an industry, you know, movies, as much as we love them, are products.
Speaker: And they're made by a hundred, sometimes a thousand people.
Speaker: So the director is important and some directors are very important in crafting a film.
Speaker: But the odd theory.
Speaker: Yes, I take issue with that, with the auteur theory.
Speaker: Once again, for anyone not following along at home, the auteur theory sort of came to... Ryan's going to know way more about this than me.
Speaker: I think it became prominent in maybe the 1920s due to French... What was happening with French film at the time?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Maybe that's half remembered.
Speaker: Anyway, the auteur, which just means author in French, is this theory that gave rise to the megalomaniac directors that we know about today.
Speaker: Kubrick and Wells and these guys who are famous for torturing women or torturing their actors because it's for the greater good of the art.
Speaker: And they're just assholes that are completely unchecked is I think what Ryan's sort of argument is.
Speaker: And they're not the end all be all creator of this work.
Speaker: These things are worked on by literally hundreds of people, if not thousands.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: There.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The auteur theory is generally speak.
Speaker: Generally speaking, says the director is responsible for everything that happens on screen.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Better or worse.
Speaker: And yeah, that in the past it's been used by great artists in quotes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: To abuse other people, to do a lot of environmental destruction, like to rain terror.
Speaker: He was trying to ruin Tom Cruise's marriage.
Speaker: He did.
Speaker: He did.
Speaker: He was like, I'm going to take your wife away.
Speaker: I don't know how he talked.
Speaker: He took his wife away from her, filmed all these sex scenes with her with this male model.
Speaker: She was like,
Speaker: Don't tell your husband what we did here today.
Speaker: Like make him jealous, make him jealous in real life so that he looks more jealous on the screen.
Speaker: I'm not sure that logic tracks, but whatever.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: So, yeah, I generally think that directors, while important, and you can talk about their work as a body of work, even if you object to the auteur theory, because at this point, the auteur theory is so well accepted that these directors.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Everybody thinks that, you know, Fincher thinks he's an auteur.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Whatever I want to say about it.
Speaker: I could argue with him.
Speaker: But, you know, he's the one who's getting millions of dollars to make a movie.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And we're just assholes on a podcast.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: Just assholes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This asshole on a podcast takes exception to auteur theory.
Speaker: That's all.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Which is totally cool.
Speaker: And, but I, I would love to hear, uh, uh, you know, all of your reasonings and more about that because it sounds like a perfectly reasonable stance to take, I think, which is interesting to me because as a film character,
Speaker: Fan, which again, I wanted to call this podcast like the geek and the scholar or the fan and the scholar or something like that, because that is sort of the thing that we're trying to reach here.
Speaker: And as a fan, I thought our tour theory was just what it is.
Speaker: I didn't know we could have issues with our tour theory.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: All of this is just going to be very interesting from my perspective.
Speaker: Anything else you want to say?
Speaker: Just, you know, a lot of people have heard of auteur theory, but didn't even know there were other kinds of film theory.
Speaker: You know, like... Right.
Speaker: That one is so... Because most film critics use it.
Speaker: The media uses it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's just commonly accepted.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: I thought that was the thing.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So this is going to be so much fun.
Speaker: I'm excited to learn.
Speaker: The audience will learn along with me.
Speaker: as Ryan uses that education he spent so much money on and gives it away for free to us, his listeners.
Speaker: So without further ado, we would like to get to the main podcast.
Speaker: topic of today, which will be... Ryan, tell us a little bit about just the format of this show and the way you wanted to do that.
Speaker: What would we say?
Speaker: Blockbuster versus arthouse movie or whatever.
Speaker: So I think we're going to take a popular movie, a blockbuster movie, a fan movie.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: The types of movies that...
Speaker: Yeah, and we both grew up watching them, you know, and there's a lot to love about them.
Speaker: And we're going to pair that with a more arty movie, a weirder movie.
Speaker: Art house movie.
Speaker: Yes, loosely the art house movie, which doesn't just mean, you know, Miramax or A24, one of those distributors, right?
Speaker: Yeah, A24, horror movies, trash movies, exploitation movies, foreign movies.
Speaker: Ah, yes.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: All that stuff is going to make me watch.
Speaker: Anything off the beaten path.
Speaker: And we're going to compare the two movies and see how they're different and how they're the same.
Speaker: Maybe they have a same subject.
Speaker: Maybe it's a similar genre.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Or same director.
Speaker: Or in this case, today's theme is Bateman Batman.
Speaker: Can you do the voice?
Speaker: Do you have a Batman voice?
Speaker: Of course I have a Batman voice, Ryan.
Speaker: You don't have a Christian Bale, you know.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Swear to me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Swear to me.
Speaker: And he does the, oh, what is this stupid line?
Speaker: So that's what that feels like.
Speaker: He does it.
Speaker: These ridiculous... And I've heard him talk about the voice, how he had to make the voice so, so ridiculous because he's a real actor in a big rubber suit with funny ears.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And guys that, yeah, work this craft sometimes have issues.
Speaker: I have a whole theory about the voice, actually.
Speaker: Later, we're going to get into the voice.
Speaker: I find that interesting.
Speaker: So, those listeners.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: So, we didn't do.
Speaker: So, Batman, Bateman.
Speaker: We're going to talk about The Dark Knight.
Speaker: And then we're going to talk about American Psycho.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Which both involve Christian Bale, of course.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And are they the same character?
Speaker: Is Bruce Wayne slash Batman essentially the same person as Patrick Bateman slash American Psycho?
Speaker: That's what we're going to get into today.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And it will be a very exciting discussion.
Speaker: So, without further ado, we are going to get into our main topic for the episode.
Speaker: And it is Bateman v. Batman.
Speaker: And we're back.
Speaker: First, we are talking about The Dark Knight, a movie that maybe is the definition of a blockbuster.
Speaker: It came out in July of 2008.
Speaker: It stars, of course, Christian Bollinger,
Speaker: Bale, Michael Caine, Heath Ledger, Gary Oldman, Aaron Eckhart, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Morgan Freeman.
Speaker: It is directed by a little-known director named Chris Nolan.
Speaker: Hans Zimmer, of course, did the music.
Speaker: In 2020, it was selected...
Speaker: By the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry.
Speaker: This movie, with a budget of $185 million, hit a billion with a B at the box office.
Speaker: Clearly a blockbuster.
Speaker: Ryan, well, let's see.
Speaker: This format, let me tell you the fans' perspective of this movie.
Speaker: And then you tell me your smart guy shit.
Speaker: Is that good?
Speaker: That sounds great, yeah.
Speaker: Okay, I can be kind of brief because everybody knows this movie and I'm Brady and I've done a lot of podcasts where I've talked about this movie.
Speaker: This movie is probably, arguably, the best comic book
Speaker: movie ever made and movie with a capital M. It is all, it is a film.
Speaker: It is a real ass cool movie with action and gangsters and violence.
Speaker: And, and it also happens to star as the protagonist, a guy in a rubber suit with pointy ears and they treated our shit like,
Speaker: Seriously, in a way that is not done nowadays.
Speaker: Nowadays, when Dr. Octopus tells Spider-Man that his name is Otto Octavian, Spider-Man has to stop and look at the audience and make a face like he just smelled a fart and go, aren't comic books stupid, guys?
Speaker: Aren't comic books fucking stupid?
Speaker: And then the audience laughs and it's all this Joss Whedon fucking humor that we can't get rid of.
Speaker: This was the before times.
Speaker: This was when you went to a comic book movie.
Speaker: It was a movie first that involved comic books.
Speaker: I remember going and seeing the Spider-Man movie.
Speaker: We are going to see the Spider-Man movie, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker: Get your seats.
Speaker: Get your popcorn.
Speaker: This is an event.
Speaker: Now there's 10 that come out every year, of course.
Speaker: But yeah.
Speaker: This movie also touched on the Joker and Batman's dynamic in a way that had only really been portrayed in the comic books up until this time, with a little bit of flirtation maybe in other media.
Speaker: The idea being that they are two sides of the same coin, that Batman represents order while the Joker represents chaos.
Speaker: And they...
Speaker: There but for the grace of God go I. There's an amazing, actually it's a line in The Killing Joke by, why can't I ever remember that old wizard's name?
Speaker: Alan Moore.
Speaker: Alan Moore.
Speaker: Alan Moore looks like an old wizard.
Speaker: If nobody's ever Googled Alan Moore, Google him right now.
Speaker: He is an old wizard.
Speaker: And he wrote some of the greatest comic books ever made.
Speaker: He's also a dickhead.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He wrote a line in the killing joke where he has the Joker say that it was just one bad day that caused me.
Speaker: And it was one bad day that caused you.
Speaker: So one bad day can make anyone one of us.
Speaker: And this is expressed in the film.
Speaker: This is what the Joker's goal is, is to take down the shining star that is Harvey Dent and turn him into one of us.
Speaker: Give him one bad day that will turn him in to this...
Speaker: you know, super villain, obviously.
Speaker: We can put it in more simple terms because it is a comic book movie.
Speaker: Fascinating.
Speaker: But that's the Joker's goal.
Speaker: The Joker wants to show the world, show Batman that I'm not
Speaker: unique that, that I, as the Joker, I want to cause this pain on normal people because this pain was caused on me by people who didn't care.
Speaker: And I'll get into maybe as we go through the movie about a Joker's presumed military background, uh, you do to a lot of the things that he does and the things that he says.
Speaker: Uh, so, uh,
Speaker: So, and also, the Joker is trying to tell himself this line.
Speaker: He's trying to convince himself that he is chaos and this shit makes sense.
Speaker: At the same time, he's trying to convince it to Batman.
Speaker: Like, he... He...
Speaker: He's not chaos.
Speaker: He tells Harvey Dent, I'm just a dog chasing a car.
Speaker: I wouldn't know what to do with it once I got there.
Speaker: He's not, that's not true.
Speaker: The opening scene is the most carefully planned, meticulous fucking heist I've ever seen.
Speaker: He exits the building at the same time.
Speaker: There's a gigantic field trip of school buses.
Speaker: And so he blends right in.
Speaker: He has plans.
Speaker: He
Speaker: He's trying to be an agent of chaos.
Speaker: He doesn't believe it himself.
Speaker: He's trying to prove that he can do it to Harvey Dent to prove that it really happened to him.
Speaker: And he's not just an asshole causing pain on others because pain was inflicted upon him.
Speaker: This is very fascinating.
Speaker: I've never delved into the psyche of the Joker when thinking about this movie.
Speaker: Welcome to reading comic books.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: So that's interesting because I think you come away with a lot of conclusions that I have never considered.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: Because I think you have this background with the comics.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Specifically, when we're going to talk about a Batman movie, which again, Ryan gave me this lowball...
Speaker: uh, just thing.
Speaker: So that for the first episode, cause yeah, Brady can talk about Batman for ever.
Speaker: So, yeah, but that's what we're dealing with, with the dark night.
Speaker: It was a huge deal in the comic book community.
Speaker: It dealt with the themes that we had been seeing in comic books since 1986.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: when The Dark Knight came out famously by Frank Miller and the same exact year, The Watchmen came out by Alan Moore.
Speaker: Things were changed in comic books after that forever.
Speaker: They were edgy.
Speaker: They were real.
Speaker: Who watches The Watchmen?
Speaker: They're not shining beacons on
Speaker: heroes anymore they are in there are human beings with injured psyches who do these things for reasons this moves away generally from looking at the the hero from the joseph campbell hero of a thousand faces archetype that superman fulfills and i've always loved him for those reasons superman is the modern day hercules or
Speaker: or any number of those stories.
Speaker: He's our shining hero, and he's a hero because he's a hero.
Speaker: He's a man who has superpowers, therefore he does good.
Speaker: Period.
Speaker: Alan Moore in 1986 suggested for the first time, what if he chose not to do good?
Speaker: And that wasn't specifically talking about Superman.
Speaker: But Frank Miller at the same time was discussing in The Dark Knight, what if Superman with all his shining glory, blah, blah, blah, was manipulated by a guy like Ronald Reagan.
Speaker: Then what the fuck would the world look like?
Speaker: So yeah, seeing those themes come up in the dark night, this cemented itself quickly in comic book fandom.
Speaker: Plus it was 2008.
Speaker: All we wanted was really dark superhero movies.
Speaker: Here's the dark origin of this comic book.
Speaker: Remember Frogman?
Speaker: His wife was killed.
Speaker: Like it's, it was a time.
Speaker: That is for sure.
Speaker: It was a time.
Speaker: Now they are a little more silly, which is, is better.
Speaker: But again, I hate the Joss Whedonification of all of it.
Speaker: Anyway, that is how the, the fan community, as far as I'm concerned, viewed the dark night.
Speaker: What about you smart kids?
Speaker: Yeah, this is this is very amazing background.
Speaker: So I can bring to it like the a little bit of the historical context and then how the film was received as a film, you know, without it.
Speaker: I don't think anything I'll say is going to contradict your what you're saying.
Speaker: But also feel free to do that.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Oh, no, I'll argue.
Speaker: Please fight with me.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: And also, I just want to say one thing just to touch on my point about we're just two assholes on the Internet.
Speaker: If anybody, if me and Ryan don't like your movie, don't.
Speaker: It's OK.
Speaker: We're just two assholes on the Internet.
Speaker: Don't get mad.
Speaker: We're just two assholes on the Internet.
Speaker: You don't got to listen to what we think or or believe what we say.
Speaker: So just that's it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: So 2008, as you said, movie comic book movies have yet to be taken seriously in Hollywood.
Speaker: Comic book movies and video game movies, despite they've been trying to make them at this point for 15 years.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, if not longer.
Speaker: Oh, much more comic book.
Speaker: I mean, back to you go.
Speaker: Superman was 79.
Speaker: But yeah.
Speaker: Well, I feel like Superman did the super Superman and Superman 2 did really take it seriously.
Speaker: You know, that was the last time it was like, but then they poisoned the waters that Batman 89 was supposed to come right the fuck after Superman because you want to capitalize on that.
Speaker: But yeah, you couldn't get it together.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Hollywood's never the serialized method of storytelling that comic books are so good at.
Speaker: Hollywood has never figured out, you know, how to replicate that, even though it seems like it should be so natural.
Speaker: Talk on that a bit more.
Speaker: What do you mean?
Speaker: Why don't they know that?
Speaker: Episodes or movies or sequels.
Speaker: It seems like it would be so easy to make movies and sequels that would be like comic books.
Speaker: Ryan, why can't they figure that out?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: It seemed like Marvel did have it figured out, you know, for a while.
Speaker: For phase, is it phase?
Speaker: I don't remember the phases in it.
Speaker: Phase two and phase three?
Speaker: No one cares about the phases.
Speaker: I'm the dorkiest that they come.
Speaker: Nobody gives a fuck about what Kevin Feige calls this year's batch of whatever's.
Speaker: I think between The Winter Soldier and Endgame, they had the right approach for jumping from movie to movie, tying it all together.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But I didn't think they had it before.
Speaker: Like, those first...
Speaker: Besides Iron Man and a few others, the first set is pretty mediocre.
Speaker: Iron Man 2, though, was a huge switch.
Speaker: Like, that movie sucks.
Speaker: Totally sucks.
Speaker: And it's supposed to be the one where Iron Man deals with his alcoholism, which is supposed to be that character's central thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Total garbage movie.
Speaker: I think the way you do comic book movies properly is...
Speaker: You know, not every issue of a comic book, not every four issue set of a comic is like the big climax, you know?
Speaker: No, of course.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You put out I think you put out a lot of under 100 million dollar movies.
Speaker: And then every three years, every five years, you do the big $300 million, bring it all together, get everyone going, you know.
Speaker: But other than that, you got to keep it small and not every issue of Spider-Man is trying to defeat the villains and marry Mary Jane or whoever the fuck every time, you know?
Speaker: Yes, absolutely.
Speaker: There's stuff that that's, that's what's always obnoxious about.
Speaker: We as comic book fans always hate is that every time you always have to reboot this hero and we have to listen, we have to see their fucking origin story again, which is important in a movie.
Speaker: But in the comic books, I've never read Spider-Man's fucking origin.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Yeah, right.
Speaker: I didn't read the comic that was in.
Speaker: I've seen it flashbacked or whatever.
Speaker: But every time I pick up a Spider-Man comic, it's Spider-Man dealing with an issue.
Speaker: And the movies can't seem to do that.
Speaker: They won't just let the next one, you know, and here we go again, you know, or whatever.
Speaker: Because, yeah, the movies.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they've always done this with comic and video games.
Speaker: They assume, I think what's going on is the producers think it's stupid.
Speaker: And so they assume the people who like it are stupid.
Speaker: And so they have to make, if they're making Super Mario Brothers, it has to be for morons because only a moron would go to a Super Mario Brothers movie.
Speaker: Super Mario Brothers movie.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that makes sense.
Speaker: It's very condescending.
Speaker: And is that going to change?
Speaker: I wonder about this with Congress, too.
Speaker: Is that going to change once the boomers are finally dead?
Speaker: Like millennial filmmakers.
Speaker: Also, I saw a post about how millennial filmmakers are basically making a series of movies where parents finally apologize.
Speaker: Everything everywhere all at once is a perfect example of this.
Speaker: Don't know how I got on that train of thought.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: So The Dark Knight and in 2008.
Speaker: Yes, it wasn't.
Speaker: These weren't treated seriously back then.
Speaker: So they weren't treated seriously.
Speaker: And Nolan had seemingly unlocked the magic recipe with Batman Begins because he was a serious art director given a fairly small budget.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Considering how big these movies would become.
Speaker: And it really paid off and he took it seriously.
Speaker: And that's really the thing about people talk about and we can get into an argument about this if you want, but I don't really think it's...
Speaker: People always talk about the comics and the comic movies in specific and specifically DC movies as being somehow more realistic.
Speaker: Or they like to say that like real.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: But it's really just that they're taking the material seriously.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: They're making a movie.
Speaker: Nolan and Snyder make movies where Batman is a serious person who wants to do things in the world.
Speaker: And we don't, like you said, we don't joke about him like we do in Marvel movies.
Speaker: It is not unheard of for that dynamic to exist in the comic books as well.
Speaker: Stan Lee famously said that he wrote Spider-Man as what if Jimmy Olsen was the one with superpowers.
Speaker: So the idea is that DC is the keepers of mythology.
Speaker: Yeah, they're all gods, right?
Speaker: They're all, I mean, they're demigod representatives, essentially.
Speaker: It's a pantheon in DC, whereas it is people with superpowers in Marvel.
Speaker: And I think that that translates into the movies as well.
Speaker: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker: So, you know, when Dark Knight came out, it was... There were... So you asked, you know, what did the smarties think about it at the time?
Speaker: To be honest, I've always, you know, as we talked about in the intro, I grew up loving Star Wars and Raiders and Ghostbusters and all the 80s stuff.
Speaker: And then I got real into...
Speaker: indie, hipster, snobby shit in the 90s.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: Quentin Tarantino.
Speaker: Everybody did in the 90s.
Speaker: The 90s was the time to do it.
Speaker: I was into the snobby comic books.
Speaker: Image Comics was also created right around the time Miramax was shoving out shit like the pianist and the crying game.
Speaker: There was good shit.
Speaker: 90s was it for fucking indie shit, man.
Speaker: That was some good times.
Speaker: And even Tarantino at the time, he was saying...
Speaker: all of those young independent directors were we are not this big corporate bullshit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, and nerd culture was also looked down upon.
Speaker: And so by the time dark night rolls around, I am happy to have an excuse to like lean back into loving that stuff, you know, right.
Speaker: Nolan, my indie snob, you know, director.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Made memento.
Speaker: One of the greatest independent film successes in history.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: Now he's on the Dark Knight and I can like enjoy Batman as like an artistic thing, you know, something to take seriously as as as intellectual material, not just pop art, you know, not not just schmaltz.
Speaker: So you didn't have a similar experience were you to bring your young daughter to the Dark Knight, you would, you know, potentially, let's say, for the first time, you would not then exit like your father had with the 89 one and say, like, I don't know what the fuck they did to Batman.
Speaker: I apologize that you had to sit through that.
Speaker: Yeah, no, no, no.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: It was something that you, the normies could be proud of.
Speaker: And I understand you are not a normie and I apologize if I'm like, I'm a geek and you didn't grow.
Speaker: That's not what I'm trying to say at all.
Speaker: It's very, it's very, yeah.
Speaker: It's very representative as we'll get into when we start talking about, you know, the plot and stuff and how I view the Joker differently than you.
Speaker: And it's fascinating that it is the difference of you knowing the comics, um,
Speaker: and my not having that knowledge.
Speaker: So seeing the Dark Knight was, you know, a thrill.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It was visceral.
Speaker: And, you know, it's not... You love those.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the critical community was very much in line with the idea that the Academy should change to...
Speaker: the dark night should have been nominated and, you know, right.
Speaker: All the changes that have happened since then.
Speaker: And now the critical community looks back on dark night.
Speaker: And I do some of this as well, uh, cynically because comics took over so much of Hollywood and like, how did this movie ruin, you know, quote unquote, uh, Hollywood for a couple, 15 years.
Speaker: You know, Hollywood's ability to learn the wrong lessons from every success is,
Speaker: is unfathomable wait until you see these barbie knockoffs that we're gonna get 150 of that are all terrible they're all gonna be fucking terrible it's gonna be it's it's just real weird how they do that um okay so do you want to get into the plot or do you have let's do it let's do it i don't want to hurry hurry or anything but yeah no um okay
Speaker: Ryan, the Dark Knight begins in Chi-Town, where it is portraying Gotham City, of course.
Speaker: And we see what is a very elaborate bank heist with multiple individuals all wearing their Joker masks.
Speaker: They all have specific duties that they are...
Speaker: assigned to most of the time, they're fairly simple, short, quick duties.
Speaker: And once they are done, the, the person they are working with is, uh, uh, uh, set to assassinate them to do.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Pop them.
Speaker: You know, one less, uh, guy who gets a share or like whatever, not realizing of course.
Speaker: And then of course that culminates with the final guy.
Speaker: Uh, well, not, not quite the final guy, the penultimate guy.
Speaker: Who's like,
Speaker: Hey, wait a minute.
Speaker: He like realizes it right before his death.
Speaker: Oh, I hope that doesn't happen to me, Ryan.
Speaker: I don't want to die going, wait, what?
Speaker: Or something like, you know what I mean?
Speaker: I don't want to like that feeling of wait and then boom, you're out.
Speaker: And I don't, oh, I hate it.
Speaker: But so then finally the final man, and I haven't even touched on William Fichtner.
Speaker: I want to call this episode, you and your friends are dead.
Speaker: But, um,
Speaker: Uh, uh, the final guy, of course, realizes his, the, you know, what's been going on with everyone else and how he, and what we now know is, is Heath Ledger as the Joker.
Speaker: Uh, you know, I'm guessing you were, you were gonna, you know, he told you to kill me next.
Speaker: No, I'm supposed to kill the bus driver.
Speaker: I don't know if that's my Heath Ledger joker.
Speaker: I'm going to keep workshopping it.
Speaker: It's pretty good.
Speaker: But boom, he gets hit by a truck, which I'm like, well, that is a comic book movie that the truck hit right there.
Speaker: This big, ridiculous thing just happened to work out.
Speaker: Breaks the realism a little bit.
Speaker: But you're having fun.
Speaker: You're laughing a lot in that opening scene.
Speaker: There's a lot of funny scenes.
Speaker: There's a lot of like, well, was that, you know, three shots or four?
Speaker: Oh, it was four, you know.
Speaker: Okay, boom!
Speaker: You know, where'd you learn to count?
Speaker: But then I kept noticing that the gun kept going off and nobody seemed to die.
Speaker: Like, they seemed to shoot William Fickner, too, and he's alive at the very end of the scene to get the, to get the, he's getting a smoke bomb in his mouth or whatever.
Speaker: And I was like, why are we killing people in this?
Speaker: Yeah, he gets kneecapped, I think.
Speaker: Oh, he gets kneecapped.
Speaker: That second shot.
Speaker: The second shot.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So yeah, of course this scene ends with the bus flailing into traffic seemingly completely random and chaotically, right?
Speaker: But it lines up perfectly, which what appears to be a gigantic fucking field trip.
Speaker: into the heart of Chicago and it blends it again comic booky you know reality but it blends in perfectly and no one notices and the Joker makes his escape with a shit load of mob money we are now in a mobster movie tell me your take on this opening scene Ryan
Speaker: So this is so great because I think it sets up.
Speaker: So Nolan's goal, right, is to make an elevated comic movie, something that, as you said in your part of the intro, gets across these generational themes about the struggle between Joker and Batman and their relationship and that relationship to Harvey Dent and all that.
Speaker: He, unlike the Marvel movies, which do the wink and the nod whenever they got to talk superhero business, I think Nolan comes up with an amazing structure for this movie that really is demonstrated by the intro here.
Speaker: So in the intro, we have, just as you called out in your breakdown, this is really like a Michael Mann, a heat heist.
Speaker: You know, this is like...
Speaker: Yeah, this is very much like... Oh, I have a note about that here.
Speaker: It says, Ryan says this is a classic gangster movie as a superhero film.
Speaker: This is the Michael Mann scene, but there's no good process stuff like he does.
Speaker: There's not... It cuts out all of... If it was really Michael Mann, we'd
Speaker: be there as the guy has to figure out the dial.
Speaker: Every motion, every putting on the glove, every opening the case, we'd see all that stuff.
Speaker: But this is a quicker, you know, blockbuster-y version, I guess, of that.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Well, so he takes this, the Michael Mann stuff of, there's the pulsing music that's driving you forward, the propulsive music.
Speaker: You have precise cuts, like everything's happening on the beat.
Speaker: And all of the information that's being conveyed, there's not a lot of exposition.
Speaker: You're just hearing these dudes talk.
Speaker: about the job they're doing that day.
Speaker: Nobody says like, well, we're robbing a bank and there's going to be nine guys in clown outfits.
Speaker: There is a line about how the silent alarm was not going to the police, that it was going to a private number, which is the very beginning of world building in that we understand that this is a mob bank.
Speaker: Correct.
Speaker: But it's not they're not providing exposition about what they're doing.
Speaker: I see.
Speaker: I see.
Speaker: OK, OK.
Speaker: About how they all got together.
Speaker: You are there.
Speaker: They're trying to figure out.
Speaker: Hey, I'm Joe.
Speaker: This is my first time here.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's none of that.
Speaker: They're just doing no Mr. Pink, Mr. Brown.
Speaker: They're just on the job already.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's very brightly lit.
Speaker: You see everything that's happening meticulously for not the planning, as you're talking about, but the execution.
Speaker: You see every domino piece fall to create the ultimate height.
Speaker: Yes, absolutely.
Speaker: Like I was saying, everyone has one little job and you see all those play out in a row.
Speaker: But then the Joker reveals that this is all a joke.
Speaker: This is all kind of a magic trick that he's put together.
Speaker: And so it's giving a twist on, in a Michael Mann movie, in a Martin Scorsese picture, this would be so serious and there would be no jokes and there would be no reveal of the gas canister, right?
Speaker: So that's kind of...
Speaker: That, as you pointed out, is saying in that intro scene, this is going to be a serious movie.
Speaker: But this one guy, the Joker, isn't beholden to any of the rules of a normal serious movie.
Speaker: He's Bugs Bunny.
Speaker: He's Bugs Bunny.
Speaker: He's the Bugs Bunny of the movie.
Speaker: He gets to bounce around and dress like a woman and kiss the guys.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which is what I always want to do.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So here's the big magic trick.
Speaker: So Christopher Nolan's other movies, right?
Speaker: He's always obsessed with time.
Speaker: He's playing with time.
Speaker: I want to talk about no loss.
Speaker: And I don't know if this is the episode, but I want to talk about him with you so, so much.
Speaker: But yes, we should.
Speaker: We should cover a lot of his movies going forward.
Speaker: We will.
Speaker: But so he's and this movie has no time stuff.
Speaker: on the surface of it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Nobody's talking about time.
Speaker: It's not, but Nolan smuggles this obsession, uh, of his into the movie.
Speaker: And in my opinion, uh, through the Joker.
Speaker: So everybody else in the movie, uh, is in a, like you said, a gangster picture.
Speaker: It's a Michael man.
Speaker: It's a Martin Scorsese, deathly serious thing.
Speaker: Um, um,
Speaker: And the Batman is rule.
Speaker: Everybody else is ruled by time, right?
Speaker: Like they have to, it's all precise mechanics.
Speaker: You see the Batman doing everything, investigating everything.
Speaker: When the Batman has to get across town, you see him fighting traffic to get across town.
Speaker: Like every step that the Batman takes is charted out.
Speaker: The Joker is,
Speaker: is not bound by time.
Speaker: The Joker is not bound by the structure of a genre picture.
Speaker: When the Joker needs to show up someplace, he just appears.
Speaker: We never see the Joker coming or going from anywhere.
Speaker: And he shows up across town in like 10 or 15 minutes.
Speaker: He gets all the way across town in 10 minutes.
Speaker: It's true.
Speaker: And he if he needs a bomb.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If he needs a bazooka, which, again, is military training.
Speaker: Like, well, so he got military training.
Speaker: He's clearly he says the story about like, oh, but when a caravan gets blowed up in the desert, that's all part of the plan.
Speaker: That's something that happened to him.
Speaker: He's right.
Speaker: This is why he's angry as he's angry at the U S military and he's taking it out on personal, on private citizens.
Speaker: So, so I think that was, that was such a mind blowing bit when you were talking about the comic perspective.
Speaker: And I think from the, you know, Goyer, David S. Goyer helped break the story.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And he's very much of a comic backgrounds guy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That name sounds super familiar.
Speaker: I, when I was scrolling, I,
Speaker: David S. Goyer.
Speaker: He wrote a bunch of Blade.
Speaker: Oh, hey, there it is.
Speaker: I just watched Blade recently.
Speaker: He helped break the story for all three of the Nolan Batman movies.
Speaker: It's like screenplay by the Nolan brothers and then story by David S. Goyer and Christopher Nolan.
Speaker: Okay, cool.
Speaker: So I think he's bringing that context for you.
Speaker: For me, and for, I think, the way Nolan intended the Joker to be received, we don't know the background of the Joker.
Speaker: And the movie doesn't ask you... Every time the Joker tells you about his background, he lies.
Speaker: That's a comic book thing.
Speaker: The Joker never has one origin.
Speaker: He has all the origins.
Speaker: This time, he was a failed stand-up comedian that...
Speaker: whatever.
Speaker: And then this time, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: The only thing that generally keeps is falls into the vat of chemicals at ACE chemicals.
Speaker: Like, right.
Speaker: That's pretty much it.
Speaker: But everything that happened before that is always up, you know, whatever.
Speaker: So I think if without that context of having read the comics a lot and just knowing that they are nemeses, you know, the Batman and the Joker in, in this movie, the Joker is a terrorist.
Speaker: The Joker is Al Qaeda, you know,
Speaker: He has, nobody understands why he's doing what he's doing.
Speaker: Nobody cares where he comes from.
Speaker: He's just interrupting like the normal course of daily life in Gotham.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Where, and in the normal, like, yeah.
Speaker: Cause it's part of the plan that it's fine.
Speaker: And if it's not, if I show up at you fancy, fancy, uh, uh, party and I, you know, this isn't part of the plan.
Speaker: It's weird.
Speaker: It's wrong.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Well, all of my fucking friends died in that caravan.
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And to that, so to that end, if you don't go that extra layer of reading with the comic background, he is, you know, his collaborators that we meet in the movie are all mentally ill.
Speaker: Like there's no way that he, it's impossible what he accomplishes.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: That is breaking the formula of this procedural gangster picture that,
Speaker: just constantly until by the third act of the movie, he takes over and it's now the Joker's movie and everybody else is guest starring in the Joker's movie.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: And then it becomes like a horror movie, right?
Speaker: And then your argument then also entails that in some way the visual...
Speaker: the movie's giving us visual cues and things like that of this change in the third act.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And whatever you're saying.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Fascinating.
Speaker: Everything gets much, much more chaotic and frenzied at the end of the movie.
Speaker: Plot points are not meticulously unpacked.
Speaker: you know, Batman's, everybody's reacting.
Speaker: The gangsters in Batman are just reacting to Joker in the third act of the film.
Speaker: And of course the two, the two folks, the two parties in the boat where you got tiny Lister, they're making the hard decision that everybody should have made right away, which is we are not going to kill others.
Speaker: If we have to be destroyed, then that's better than killing others, which is, yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So it doesn't go according to plan.
Speaker: The Joker is proven wrong.
Speaker: He is proved to himself, branching off what I was talking earlier, that he is just an asshole.
Speaker: That it didn't just take one bad day.
Speaker: But at the same time, his point is proven in that Harvey Dent, who was already a shit face, he wasn't, or a shithead, he wasn't
Speaker: a really shining star.
Speaker: He did have corruption.
Speaker: He was known as Two-Face in law school.
Speaker: He...
Speaker: So yes, One Bad Day worked on Harvey Dent, but it didn't work on Tiny Lister, who is presumably a prisoner on that prison ship or whatever.
Speaker: Weird time to be moving prisoners at the same time as a yacht travels in the exact same direction.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that comes to something else I was thinking of while watching this movie.
Speaker: Now...
Speaker: For years, I just unabashedly love this movie, right?
Speaker: Like, I've seen it, you know, dozens of times.
Speaker: I always loved it.
Speaker: The older it gets, the less...
Speaker: I think it works.
Speaker: And, and, and this time I really thought, and the movie, uh, right after, uh, the Joker has been caught, uh, after the truck flip, which is, I think the greatest scene in the film.
Speaker: It really did.
Speaker: No CGI flipped a fucking 18 wheeler in the streets of Chicago.
Speaker: And then the following scene with the Joker muttering, I want you to do it.
Speaker: I want you to do it.
Speaker: You know, like that is.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: Also, that scene is a little bit reminiscent of when Batman is shooting towards Jack Nicholson in the Batwing.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Pulls out the big gun.
Speaker: That is that exact scene.
Speaker: And speaking on that a little bit, I also think the Dark Knight does not age well.
Speaker: as well as I would have suspected because when I went and saw The Batman, which I, my review was very firmly like, okay, I am seeing Gen Z's Batman movie and it's full of hope and like positivity and good shit.
Speaker: And this is a great way to take the character and I think this is great.
Speaker: And then when I was sitting in the theaters,
Speaker: I was thinking like, oh, I've never seen a scene where the Batman walks in to an open police investigation with Gordon and all the other cops look around like, hey, Gordon, you can't have fucking Batman in here doing detective work.
Speaker: I've never seen that in a movie.
Speaker: And then I went home and watched the fucking Dark Knight right after leaving the theater from the Batman.
Speaker: And I realized it's in the it's the same fucking scene.
Speaker: The Batman movie is really, which again is a little indicative of Gen Z, a patchwork.
Speaker: of other stuff.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: It's so watchable.
Speaker: I don't know if I like that movie, but if it's on, I can sit down and watch it at the breeze.
Speaker: It starts as a David Fincher movie.
Speaker: It's fucking seven at the beginning of that movie.
Speaker: 100%.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I think watching it this time, and I even remember the first time in the theater, while I love the movie, after the truck flips and you figure out it's just going to go on and on, I was just exhausted.
Speaker: I see.
Speaker: And so I believe in hindsight, you end the movie there, the Joker's imprisoned, Rachel and Harvey are abducted.
Speaker: And then you get a whole movie to unpack.
Speaker: Because Two-Face was my favorite character in the animated series.
Speaker: I loved.
Speaker: Cool, cool, cool.
Speaker: And I was disappointed that Two-Face gets 45 minutes.
Speaker: And he's not even the main focus.
Speaker: They did the Venom in Spider-Man 3 with him a bit.
Speaker: But my argument against that though, Ryan, is that the Joker has to bring down the shining star.
Speaker: That's the Joker's mission in the movie and he has to succeed.
Speaker: So like, you've got to have that turn maybe as the end of the movie, you know, Christopher Nolan movies are often too long.
Speaker: Uh, you know, I'm not arguing that a movie couldn't, couldn't be cut down or turned into two movies or something.
Speaker: Maybe, uh, you know, fuck, we lost a ledger and that fucked the third all the hell, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But, uh, but my argument there is, we have to see the shining star fall, my friend.
Speaker: And that's gotta happen.
Speaker: And that's so interesting.
Speaker: That was the part that kind of blew my mind when you were talking in the intro, because I don't think if you don't have the comic background that, uh,
Speaker: the Batman Joker two face relationship, the way you unpacked it is so clear.
Speaker: Oh, without the context.
Speaker: That could be correct because Batman has this incredible respect for Harvey Dent.
Speaker: That's you would have seen that in Batman, the animated series.
Speaker: Harvey Dent is a friend.
Speaker: of Batman's.
Speaker: He loves that man.
Speaker: And so to have him, and that's why you do see Bruce Wayne.
Speaker: He has that moment where he listens to what he's talking.
Speaker: He, he turns off the Patrick Bateman, uh, face for a second.
Speaker: And he actually listens to Harvey Denton, that scene.
Speaker: And he says, okay, I'm going to fund you for the rest of your life.
Speaker: And he's, yes, he,
Speaker: He's thinking this can be it.
Speaker: I can stop the Batman.
Speaker: The Batman is obviously something that can't go on forever, but Harvey Dent could go on forever.
Speaker: And he could actually make the big sweeping changes that I really should have been spending this money on the whole fucking time instead of dressing up like a bat and beating up guys who are trying to break into an ATM.
Speaker: Jesus Christ!
Speaker: Put your money into society, you fucking lunatic, fascist lunatic.
Speaker: Yeah, somebody had to say it.
Speaker: You're so brave.
Speaker: Eventually you just have to say it.
Speaker: I don't even remember where we were talking because I got so mad.
Speaker: You give me a lot to chew on because the last time, the last couple of times I watched this movie.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think it's just too long.
Speaker: They're tacking on the Harvey stuff to just get that plot line out of the way so that no one can jump to the next thing.
Speaker: But for you, it's actually very satisfying.
Speaker: I'm identifying with that.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm identifying.
Speaker: It has to be there to your point.
Speaker: It absolutely has to be there for it to be.
Speaker: So that's that that gives me a whole new next time I see it.
Speaker: I'll have a different something to chew on there.
Speaker: So the last thing I want to pick your brain about Brady and unpack a little bit is the Batman voice, the infamous.
Speaker: I feel like the only thing that is universally criticized in these movies, in the Nolan Batmans, the only thing that everybody dislikes is the voice.
Speaker: He does a big ridiculous one.
Speaker: He does a big unridiculous like this.
Speaker: Michael Keaton was kind of just doing this.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I'm Batman.
Speaker: Hey.
Speaker: But everybody does a deep voice.
Speaker: And I believe it's Frank Miller who sort of invented that.
Speaker: He thinks Batman should sound like Clint Eastwood.
Speaker: And he wrote everything and made everything so that Batman sounds like Clint Eastwood.
Speaker: So that's where that begins.
Speaker: And yes, Bale had to do, and I'll do more research before we talk about American Psycho and about his process, because I am utterly fascinated, but...
Speaker: Yeah, that basically he had to just ridiculous push this voice to ridiculous levels.
Speaker: And now here we are with that as sort of the, you know, that's the Batman impression kind of people do now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so this is so I agree that it's goofy as shit and I make fun of it as much as everyone else.
Speaker: But I think when people make fun of it, they're missing that it's like one of the overarching themes of the trilogy.
Speaker: Oh, shit.
Speaker: So it starts and begins, and Batman gets the voice when he takes the hallucinogenic drugs, you know, with the... Oh, shit.
Speaker: Oh, shit.
Speaker: The Army of Shadows.
Speaker: Is that what they're called?
Speaker: Yeah, no, with the League of Shadows, yep.
Speaker: The League of Shadows.
Speaker: He takes the little blue flower, and then... This is the first time when they first get him there, when he shows up and he's like, I'm fucking tired, and they're like, fight each other!
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Then they give him the hallucinogen?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's the first time he does the voice?
Speaker: That's the first time he hears the voice is in one of those is when he's working with the League of Shadows.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So then he brings it back to Gotham and Scarecrow, when Scarecrow doses people, he also starts talking like this, you know, like only when people are hallucinating and he's got the bag on his head.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So he's doing the same voice.
Speaker: He's doing the same register of voice, which is weird because that's not the Scarecrow really at all, but they screw up characters all the time.
Speaker: But it goes along with the hallucinogen, right?
Speaker: Like they're using this voice to fuck up your head after they've dosed you.
Speaker: Yeah, of course.
Speaker: And to make you think...
Speaker: Fear.
Speaker: Fear.
Speaker: It's the sound that evokes fear.
Speaker: Ryan, thank you so much for explaining movies to me.
Speaker: Holy shit.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And then the Joker gets the voice too, right?
Speaker: When he's doing his cam torture of people.
Speaker: Oh, that's right.
Speaker: He is also using the voice on them.
Speaker: Yeah, with the upside down news reporter or whatever.
Speaker: I don't remember what he says, but yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, and then... Yeah, and so then all of these... All of the dual people, you know, all of the villains, all of the...
Speaker: Super people.
Speaker: I don't know what you want to call them.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: The meta humans is what they're called in DC Comics.
Speaker: They all use the voice.
Speaker: And this crystallizes in Bane, whose voice is so strong, it takes over the sound of the movie.
Speaker: The space.
Speaker: The space of the movie.
Speaker: You're suddenly just in... You're in a noisy airplane in...
Speaker: And you just hear this Pierce thing, this voice come out of absolutely nowhere.
Speaker: This sounds like a cartoon.
Speaker: And he says like, Rob, she's wondering.
Speaker: Why are you in the suit of mine?
Speaker: What's out of the plan?
Speaker: Like, you can't understand what the fuck he's saying.
Speaker: But it is this booming voice out of every... And it's here.
Speaker: And it's when it's recorded, right, and mixed into the rest of the movie.
Speaker: To your point, there's no attempt to make it seem like the voice is coming from the scene.
Speaker: The voice is outside of the movie.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that's Bane's.
Speaker: That's how you know that Bane is the mega villain of the whole trilogy.
Speaker: Because he has the voice better than the Batman.
Speaker: He's the only person whose Batman voice is more powerful than Batman's.
Speaker: Holy shit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Isn't that wild?
Speaker: It's so cool.
Speaker: I need to meditate.
Speaker: Yeah, Jenny and I talk about the voice whenever we watch the show.
Speaker: I make fun of that stupid goddamn voice so much.
Speaker: It's not the Batman voice, but the dumb voices.
Speaker: The whole three movies are full of dumb voices.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But they still, Nolan, they still mean something, even though they're dumb.
Speaker: Like he put them there for a reason.
Speaker: That's so cool that you taught me that.
Speaker: Fuck.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This is going to be a fun show.
Speaker: I think so.
Speaker: Is there anything else on the Dark Knight that we should cover before we move on to our next segment, Ryan?
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: You know, I don't.
Speaker: Just a quick note that unexciting parking garage.
Speaker: You know, I know we had to get rid of the Batcave, but we're doing everything in just this, just a big room with a bunch of lights.
Speaker: It's not exciting.
Speaker: It's not Batman.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: James Bond.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: It goes along with the Michael Mann, the James, like the heavy procedural.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Fuck.
Speaker: It's that very clean.
Speaker: Michael Mann loves the expensive, clean aesthetic, like the house, the million dollar house that has no furniture in it.
Speaker: That's like his dream.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And his wife, of course, being dead.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Also, I wrote Nolan makes men talking exciting.
Speaker: And I wrote Oppenheimer, the speed at which he's cutting between these shots of men talking.
Speaker: And of course, Hans Zimmer is doing his work
Speaker: But it's exciting.
Speaker: And it feels like this journey.
Speaker: It's that pull that you feel from movies sometimes where you're like, here we go.
Speaker: But it's just a bunch of shots of men talking.
Speaker: And he did that to me again in Oppenheimer, which I thought was interesting.
Speaker: Yeah, it's one of his... We should talk a lot more about his movies.
Speaker: It's one of his...
Speaker: There are many things that Christopher Nolan has discovered about how you can structure a film.
Speaker: And that propulsive dialogue driven method is one because there's no.
Speaker: So in when the movies Oppenheimer is almost all this way.
Speaker: But when when the Dark Knight gets going, there's no establishing shots.
Speaker: There's no people walking into a room and saying, like, let's now have.
Speaker: Hi, nice to see you.
Speaker: Let's have a conversation about that.
Speaker: They just did, you know.
Speaker: I'm so sorry to interrupt.
Speaker: Please do not lose your train of thought.
Speaker: Did you know the establishing shot was invented for the movie?
Speaker: Oh, damn it.
Speaker: What's the old one with the KKKs or the heroes?
Speaker: Birth of a Nation.
Speaker: Birth of a Nation?
Speaker: Birth of a Nation was the first movie to ever do establishing shot outside the house before we go inside the house.
Speaker: Just wanted to say that out loud because I knew that little tidbit.
Speaker: Okay, please keep going.
Speaker: That's the problem with Birth of a Nation is it's very important to like how film developed as a medium, even though it's a fucking awful, horrendous piece of hate, you know?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's the rabbit's paw, you know, of film history.
Speaker: Or the monkey's paw.
Speaker: The monkey's paw, yes.
Speaker: Where you get all the good, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, that's a good way to look at it.
Speaker: Okay, I hope you didn't lose your train of thought.
Speaker: Yeah, so Nolan does away with as many of the establishing shots as he can.
Speaker: He picked up a trick from Soderbergh.
Speaker: We'll watch some Soderberghs and talk about the origin of this technique.
Speaker: That's a similar thing.
Speaker: I've been talking and it somehow looks exciting.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Have you seen the Limey?
Speaker: Oh, shit.
Speaker: You know, I watched that movie on VHS when I was 10 years old.
Speaker: Is that the one you're talking about?
Speaker: Or 12 years old or something.
Speaker: But no, I haven't seen it as an adult.
Speaker: We will watch that one because that is the first movie that has this fluid Nolan style of telling a story without ever stopping to like...
Speaker: set the audience up.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So the line he takes place in the main character's memory as he's remembering a trip to Los Angeles and to try and mimic the feeling of remembering something.
Speaker: Conversations happen like he will start talking to Luis Guzman in a car and
Speaker: about his daughter and then they'll be at dinner and then they'll be having drinks and then they'll be back in the car.
Speaker: And it's all the same conversation, but it's not linear with where they are.
Speaker: Because when you remember talking to me about the bat at the dark night, you're going to bounce around back and forth about things we talked about without ever going through and saying, well, first we did this and then we did that.
Speaker: And then of course, and so that's how, yeah.
Speaker: To illustrate literal thought,
Speaker: or dream, or whatever it is they're trying to convey using the mechanisms of film.
Speaker: So Nolan figured out that he could take this technique.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm glad.
Speaker: That's wonderful.
Speaker: It's very exciting talking to someone about this stuff.
Speaker: So Nolan figured out he could take this Soderbergh's approach
Speaker: uh, and just use it to cut out all of the fat from his movies, all the shit he doesn't want to focus on.
Speaker: He doesn't want to waste time.
Speaker: It's so important to Nolan.
Speaker: I don't want to waste time on, on watching Batman rock into a building.
Speaker: Watching Kenneth is so much of him just being like, and now we are just talking about Nolan, but it's just so much of him just being like, shut up.
Speaker: I'm sick of explaining stuff.
Speaker: Like, who cares?
Speaker: I don't want to explain what's going on.
Speaker: I don't want the guy to have to tell you with his mouth what's going on.
Speaker: Pick the fuck up what's going on.
Speaker: Even when the guy does stop to tell him what's going on, you can't hear it.
Speaker: Who cares?
Speaker: Shut up.
Speaker: Look at the things.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like that's, that's what his movie, that's what, especially Dan and oh my God.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That movie is just so like catch up.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This is a James Bond character.
Speaker: Suck it.
Speaker: Like you get no information about him.
Speaker: You know, James Bond, right?
Speaker: Catch the fuck up.
Speaker: The movie's happening.
Speaker: Like, okay, shit.
Speaker: I'm following you.
Speaker: That's how that movie feels.
Speaker: Nolan is such an interesting director.
Speaker: And I want to talk to him about, I want to talk more about him with you.
Speaker: We'll do a book.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, we're getting into our next segment, American Psycho.