[Guest blogger Scott on projects never completed.]
No matter whether you’re into film, music, or comics, you’re bound to have heard of some ‘Lost Project’; these are those masterpieces that coulda, woulda, shoulda been but were never realized as the result of contract disputes, the project getting away from the artist, editorial interference, various legal issues or, in the worst case scenario, the death of the artist. Here are just a few of my potential-favorite-works-that-never-actually-existed:
Alan Moore’s Twilight of The Superheroes
This Alan Moore penned tale, proposed circa 1987, would be his vision of the ‘last days’ of the DC Universe. The plot would have evolved around the heroes being arranged in various ‘houses’ in the future: The House of Steel (Superman and Wonder Woman, now married), The House of the Bat, The House of Thunder (The Marvel Family). An impending union between the House of Thunder and Steel threatens a future rife with Super-Fascism. There were many rumored similarities to the plot and Kingdom Come. The series would have been the centerpiece of a company wide crossover and would have resulted in the re-establishment of DC’s multi-verse (much like 52).
The Who’s Lifehouse
This was Pete Townshend’s intended follow-up to Tommy and is one of the most ambitious musical projects ever envisioned. The story, a sci-fi tale set in a futuristic dystopia, would have incorporated elements of technology that sound much like Virtual Reality and the Internet. The problem with this is that this was 1971 and, by Townshend’s own admission, no one really understood it but him. In addition to the complex plot, the project would have been, not only an album, but a film and, presumably, a concert tour which would have had interactive features; Townshend would have supposedly taken vital statistics from his audiences and then, using a synthesizer, create musical templates from which the band would build upon (Supposedly, the synth bit of “Baba O’ Reilly” was created by doing this with the stats of Townshend’s Guru Meher Baba). After the project was abandoned, many of the songs written for the concept became the Who’s Next album (To my knowledge, John Entwistle’s “My Wife” was the only song not connected to Lifehouse in some way). Townshend would revisit the Lifehouse concept on several other occasions in an attempt to ‘finish’ it. Elements of the plot surfaced in his 1993 concept album/radio play Psychoderelict, he released a boxed set of the out takes of the project in 2000 which also included a radio play version of the story and would revisit the story yet again on the ‘Wire and Glass’ portion of the Who’s 2006 album Endless Wire, however, rather than the story becoming more concrete over the years it has only become more convoluted which makes one wonder what that album may have been like had it been completed as envisioned in 1971.
J.D. Salinger’s The Fall of the House of Glass
Supposedly a manuscript of this exists somewhere, I have no idea what the plot would have been about other than bringing an end to the ‘Glass Family Saga’ that had been featured in works like Franny and Zooey and “Perfect Day for A Bananafish”
The Jimi Hendrix/Miles Davis collaboration
The two musicians were rumored to be working on this around the time Hendrix died and this may have been the inspiration for Davis’ own Bitches Brew album (an album that would lay the groundwork for Jazz-Fusion).
Richard Donner’s Superman I & II
Okay, so we’ve already gotten a taste of this with the Donner Cut of Superman II (which you should check out if you have not already… so much better than the original and, unlike most director’s cuts that add a scene or two, this really is 50-75% a completely different movie) but, in listening to the commentary, the first movie would have ended differently and Superman’s ‘spinning time backwards’ trick would have been reserved for the grand finale of the second film after Lois falls to her death in one of the chasms during the fight with the Kryptonian villains. I also think the Donner cut of Superman II is a great example of a ‘Lost Work’ that finally saw the light of day.... and, unlike most 'Lost Works' that eventually see the light, came out better than expected.
And while we’re on the subject of Superman….
The Kevin Smith written, Tim Burton directed, Nicholas Cage starring Superman Lives!
This was rumored somewhere around 1997-98. Smith got the job based on the quality of his Chasing Amy script and, from what I have read, the story would have been an adaptation of sorts of the whole ‘Death and Return of Superman’ story. Producer John Peters (who had produced Burton’s Batman) wanted to do a ‘darker’ Superman movie (Kevin Smith tells the hilarious story of Peter’s ‘vision’ on the Evening With Kevin Smith DVD). Later, Tim Burton was brought aboard to direct (eventually rejecting Smith’s script in favor of one done by his own people) and Nicholas Cage was cast as the man of steel…. At which point it fell into development hell. If nothing else, this one gave us a great Mad TV bit which imagined Cage (fresh off of his performance in Leaving Las Vegas) as an alcoholic Superman in a sketch entitled Leaving Metropolis. (Sorry, I couldn’t find the clip anywhere online).
So, folks … what are some of your favorite non-existent works? (this reminds me of how in The Sandman Morpheus had that library of books that were never written… wouldn’t it be awesome to have one of those?)
[GRANT MORRISON on WILDCATS and the AUTHORITY. Scheesh. I know projects have been aborted before, but I can't think of one that I actually cared about being aborted after such a promising and limited start (one issue of Wildcats and two of the Authority). Well, Wildcats was not so promising, but Brad and I have a weird affection for that title, and the Authority start was genuinely awesome. Too often Morrison is paired with weak artists, and the fact that he had solid collaborators would have meant great things I think.]
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Jason Powell on Uncanny X-Men #152
[Guest blogger Jason Powell continues his issue by issue look at Chris Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men Run. For more in this series, see the toolbar on the right.]
“The Hellfire Gambit”
A recurring mantra of Claremont’s during his entire tenure on X-Men is that the protagonists should not kill. They are heroes, goes the refrain, and if they kill they are no better than the villains. The philosophy is repeated twice in this issue, first by Kitty then on the final page by – of all people – Wolverine. This liberal sense of morality, which in the context of the X-Men often seems naive, is part of what comics like The Authority and The Ultimate were rebelling against (as Geoff points out in his book). In “The Hellfire Gambit” at least, Claremont offers up a practical demonstration of why, in the sci-fi universe that the X-Men inhabit, killing your enemies isn’t a great idea – your enemy might have body-switched with one of your best friends. It’s superhero cliché used as metaphor again: In the story, Kitty is right to save Emma’s life, because although she doesn’t know it, Storm is trapped in Emma’s body. In real life, the death penalty is wrong because a good person might be somewhere inside the body of that seemingly heartless murderer. (Ironically, the White Queen will actually go on to be reformed over the decades, eventually going so far as to replace Jean Grey as Scott Summers’ main love interest during Morrison’s New X-Men series.)
Or an alternative interpretation is that this is a slight variation on a Morrison philosophy that Geoff so enjoys: Simplistic right-wing solutions like the death penalty just don’t work in the X-Men’s complex world of mutants and body-switching telepaths.
Whatever the case, morality lessons aside, issue 152 offers up a tidy and well orchestrated conclusion to a fun two-parter. While this second appearance of the Hellfire Club can’t possibly match up to the first (during the Dark Phoenix Saga) in terms of the overall scope and sense of dread, it does mark several notches of improvement in terms of the Club members’ individual characterizations. While previously they seemed like fairly generic evil-doers with an affected style of dress, this new story plays up the fetishism as integral aspects of their characters. It’s still tame by modern standards, but Kitty’s comment in the previous issue that Shaw, Frost, et al are criminals “for kicks” and that “they’re sick” gives the first hints of what sets the Hellfire Club apart from other villains. As with Magneto’s increased dimensionality and the curing of Sauron, the undercurrent of kink in the Hellfire Club is another example of Claremont attempting to avoid stagnation within the superhero paradigm of the recurring villain by adding a new twist each time.
The process continues here. Shaw’s casual romantic aggression towards Emma implies a sexually permissive relationship between the two, and the fact that Shaw is undeterred despite Emma inhabiting an entirely different body is telling as well. Indeed, Emma’s desire in the first place to take over Storm’s body can be read as motivated by twisted or fetishistic desire – it certainly doesn’t play out as an integral part of the Hellfire Club’s plan to invade the mansion. Its primary purpose seems to be to spice up the sexual interplay between her and the Black King. With the Club viewed in this light, it’s hard not to wonder as well about the White Queen’s single-minded desire to acquire Kitty Pryde. Is there a kinked motivation for that as well? (A story in New Mutants will eventually reveal that, no, the White Queen is not a pedophile – she merely seeks protégés.)
Apart from the implications of deviant sexuality, “The Hellfire Gambit” is not a standout story, though it is a supremely competent one. Claremont’s use of Amanda Sefton is a clever wrinkle; having established her as a witch in the otherwise useless X-Men Annual #4, Claremont now lets her be an important part of the action, her spells saving Wolverine from murder at the hands of cyborg Hellfire mercenaries. (The cyborgs are survivors of Byrne’s intensely violent opening sequence of Uncanny #133. Byrne obviously intended Wolverine to have killed them, but Claremont – steering the ship solo now – circumvents that intent and makes them recurring villains.)
Shaw is a great villain, always forcing creative solutions to defeating him. Here, master strategist Cyclops has Colossus “fastball special” Shaw into a lake, forcing him to burn off his absorbed kinetic energy in the act of swimming to shore.
Also notable is the implied parity between the X-Men and the Hellfire Club in Storm’s dialogue of the final panel. Like Charles’ musing in issue 149 that he and Magneto are “uncomfortably alike” – which hints at Magneto’s eventual replacement of Professor X in issue 200 – the pointing out of common ground between the X-Men and the Club opens up intriguing notions about the X-Men themselves, and plants the first oblique seed for the implicit “friends with benefits” relationship that will eventually evolve between Wolverine and Storm.
[It is interesting how the comic book idea that the villains are reflections of the heroes makes it easy to may characters like the White Queen and Magneto X-Men leaders.]
[There is also a bit where Cyclops sweeps a Sentinel off the lawn that reminded me of a moment in Whedon's Astonising. This whole period is really burned in Whedon's mind, both on X-Men and in Buffy.]
“The Hellfire Gambit”
A recurring mantra of Claremont’s during his entire tenure on X-Men is that the protagonists should not kill. They are heroes, goes the refrain, and if they kill they are no better than the villains. The philosophy is repeated twice in this issue, first by Kitty then on the final page by – of all people – Wolverine. This liberal sense of morality, which in the context of the X-Men often seems naive, is part of what comics like The Authority and The Ultimate were rebelling against (as Geoff points out in his book). In “The Hellfire Gambit” at least, Claremont offers up a practical demonstration of why, in the sci-fi universe that the X-Men inhabit, killing your enemies isn’t a great idea – your enemy might have body-switched with one of your best friends. It’s superhero cliché used as metaphor again: In the story, Kitty is right to save Emma’s life, because although she doesn’t know it, Storm is trapped in Emma’s body. In real life, the death penalty is wrong because a good person might be somewhere inside the body of that seemingly heartless murderer. (Ironically, the White Queen will actually go on to be reformed over the decades, eventually going so far as to replace Jean Grey as Scott Summers’ main love interest during Morrison’s New X-Men series.)
Or an alternative interpretation is that this is a slight variation on a Morrison philosophy that Geoff so enjoys: Simplistic right-wing solutions like the death penalty just don’t work in the X-Men’s complex world of mutants and body-switching telepaths.
Whatever the case, morality lessons aside, issue 152 offers up a tidy and well orchestrated conclusion to a fun two-parter. While this second appearance of the Hellfire Club can’t possibly match up to the first (during the Dark Phoenix Saga) in terms of the overall scope and sense of dread, it does mark several notches of improvement in terms of the Club members’ individual characterizations. While previously they seemed like fairly generic evil-doers with an affected style of dress, this new story plays up the fetishism as integral aspects of their characters. It’s still tame by modern standards, but Kitty’s comment in the previous issue that Shaw, Frost, et al are criminals “for kicks” and that “they’re sick” gives the first hints of what sets the Hellfire Club apart from other villains. As with Magneto’s increased dimensionality and the curing of Sauron, the undercurrent of kink in the Hellfire Club is another example of Claremont attempting to avoid stagnation within the superhero paradigm of the recurring villain by adding a new twist each time.
The process continues here. Shaw’s casual romantic aggression towards Emma implies a sexually permissive relationship between the two, and the fact that Shaw is undeterred despite Emma inhabiting an entirely different body is telling as well. Indeed, Emma’s desire in the first place to take over Storm’s body can be read as motivated by twisted or fetishistic desire – it certainly doesn’t play out as an integral part of the Hellfire Club’s plan to invade the mansion. Its primary purpose seems to be to spice up the sexual interplay between her and the Black King. With the Club viewed in this light, it’s hard not to wonder as well about the White Queen’s single-minded desire to acquire Kitty Pryde. Is there a kinked motivation for that as well? (A story in New Mutants will eventually reveal that, no, the White Queen is not a pedophile – she merely seeks protégés.)
Apart from the implications of deviant sexuality, “The Hellfire Gambit” is not a standout story, though it is a supremely competent one. Claremont’s use of Amanda Sefton is a clever wrinkle; having established her as a witch in the otherwise useless X-Men Annual #4, Claremont now lets her be an important part of the action, her spells saving Wolverine from murder at the hands of cyborg Hellfire mercenaries. (The cyborgs are survivors of Byrne’s intensely violent opening sequence of Uncanny #133. Byrne obviously intended Wolverine to have killed them, but Claremont – steering the ship solo now – circumvents that intent and makes them recurring villains.)
Shaw is a great villain, always forcing creative solutions to defeating him. Here, master strategist Cyclops has Colossus “fastball special” Shaw into a lake, forcing him to burn off his absorbed kinetic energy in the act of swimming to shore.
Also notable is the implied parity between the X-Men and the Hellfire Club in Storm’s dialogue of the final panel. Like Charles’ musing in issue 149 that he and Magneto are “uncomfortably alike” – which hints at Magneto’s eventual replacement of Professor X in issue 200 – the pointing out of common ground between the X-Men and the Club opens up intriguing notions about the X-Men themselves, and plants the first oblique seed for the implicit “friends with benefits” relationship that will eventually evolve between Wolverine and Storm.
[It is interesting how the comic book idea that the villains are reflections of the heroes makes it easy to may characters like the White Queen and Magneto X-Men leaders.]
[There is also a bit where Cyclops sweeps a Sentinel off the lawn that reminded me of a moment in Whedon's Astonising. This whole period is really burned in Whedon's mind, both on X-Men and in Buffy.]
Monday, August 04, 2008
The Maxx: Darker Image #1
This is the first post in what I hope will be a successful issue by issue look at Sam Kieth's The Maxx. I reserve the right to abandon it at any time. I considered doing an introduction answering the key questions of Why? and Why Now? but I thought it might be better to just dive right in and see what comes up when.
The first appearance of Sam Kieth's The Maxx was in an 8 page short in 1993's Darker Image #1, alongside Rob Liefeld's Bloodwulf and Brandon Choi and Jim Lee's Deathblow. Bill Messner-Loebs did Kieths dialogue, which strikes me as odd considering that the art and the story are Kieth's but I don't know much about the Maxx beyond the comics I have. The Maxx stands out in this trio: the purple and yellow, along with the very odd shape of his jaw, make him much more like a traditional cartoon than Deathblow or Bloodwulf. "The Maxx" sounds like something that would match those ridiculous names, and the whole early 90s X-Treme comics trend, but it would be revealed to be something ironic down the line; Bloodwulf and Deathblow, as far as I know, do not have much of a sense of irony, which was their downfall, and the downfall of many a self-serious post Miller-Moore comic book.
The story: In the outback, on the run from a big cartoon creature with a hammer, The Maxx heads for a hut for safety, but it holds a sexy jungle babe in a leopard bikini who straddles him and stabs at him. A violent scene shift reveals a sexy woman is using a needle on him, but she is trying to help him after he broke into her apartment disoriented; she sees the crazy costume, but treats him like a homeless person she feels sorry for.
The fantasy action sequence may be a hallucination: the first line of the comic is the Maxx's "Huh. The sounds inside my head have started again." The sound-effects make is importantly unclear if the repeated "CHUNG!" sound is a pounding in his head, or the pounding of the feet of his giant antagonist: the creature may just be in his head. So the first part of the story may be metaphor for things going on in the real world. This is of course one of the big claims of comics: that they are not just escapist fiction, but capable of questioning the things we take for granted in the real world. What makes the Maxx stand out is that rather than make the implicit claim that this comic has real world relevance, the comic makes connecting those two worlds part of the narrative. This would be a bit like Enchanted, if it, you know, didn't suck.
Kieth plays with the grim and gritty narration, but disrupts its self-seriousness with a lot of weird irony. The Maxx says "The sounds in my head have started again. Good, It helps me think ... Focus" and then he goes on to talk about his claws. It could be Wolverine, except the first word of the comic is the dumb "huh," and he says of his claws not that they are made of razor sharp unbreakable adamantium, but that they "still feel wet. Interesting." The deadpan reaction throws the whole scene askew. And the comic runs from there: the creature smells like "sweating leather and peppermint." The creature has a weird Tolkin-esque faux-arab name with two apostrophes and a q with no u (Ret'qark'n), but the Maxx describes him as "God Clan. Really mean." The Maxx is right of the bat, not that bright or reliable: he is like Wolverine if Wolverine had been invented by Whedon -- his tough guy posturing keeps getting undercut. "Being near death makes my senses sharper" he says, just before the creature happens to pick up his hiding place out of dumb luck, leaving him to just run away rather than fight.
Kieth's layouts are energetic and strange -- panels have weird shapes and are often dominated by playfully stylized sound-effects. The woman is beautiful and sexy and hits all the standard comic book buttons -- big breasts, revealing clothing, straddling the male protagonist with a needle just like in Casanova. But she is also more hips than boobs and turns out to neither victim nor aggressor. When the Maxx looks out over the city at night from a broken window along side stone carvings of creepy bird heads he should look like Batman -- except we are too far away to find it stirring, and it is placed on the far right of the page in a way that makes the interior of the woman's apartment where he was unconscious far more important. (Notice also the little hands pointing to where we should look -- if you know the technical name for that hand, and it has one, let me know in the comments). The final page is the glamour pose we expect, similar to the one on the first page, but the story emphasizes its own disorientations now: We end with the woman's narration: "I cant help wondering what he used to be. What kind of uniform those rags were?" She thinks it would be cool if he turned out to be one of those "Youngbloods" but concludes with a worry that if she cant get his head straight he is going to get her evicted.
All the 90s superhero stuff is here, sort of, but everything is really off kilter: the perspective is wrong, the gender politics are wrong, the fight-scene was a washout, and the whole adventure part of the story -- which is sort of why people you know buy these things, may just have been a dream. Many issues later it will turn out that Kieth is working on a plan to sneak a whole different kind of story to us under the trappings of a superhero comic, pretty much the only kind of comic book that was going to get any attention in 1993.
Next Time: Maxx #1
Retro ad watch: Valiant's DeathMate (Their Love Will End all Time) is apparently "The Biggest Crossover Event in the History of Comics."
The first appearance of Sam Kieth's The Maxx was in an 8 page short in 1993's Darker Image #1, alongside Rob Liefeld's Bloodwulf and Brandon Choi and Jim Lee's Deathblow. Bill Messner-Loebs did Kieths dialogue, which strikes me as odd considering that the art and the story are Kieth's but I don't know much about the Maxx beyond the comics I have. The Maxx stands out in this trio: the purple and yellow, along with the very odd shape of his jaw, make him much more like a traditional cartoon than Deathblow or Bloodwulf. "The Maxx" sounds like something that would match those ridiculous names, and the whole early 90s X-Treme comics trend, but it would be revealed to be something ironic down the line; Bloodwulf and Deathblow, as far as I know, do not have much of a sense of irony, which was their downfall, and the downfall of many a self-serious post Miller-Moore comic book.
The story: In the outback, on the run from a big cartoon creature with a hammer, The Maxx heads for a hut for safety, but it holds a sexy jungle babe in a leopard bikini who straddles him and stabs at him. A violent scene shift reveals a sexy woman is using a needle on him, but she is trying to help him after he broke into her apartment disoriented; she sees the crazy costume, but treats him like a homeless person she feels sorry for.
The fantasy action sequence may be a hallucination: the first line of the comic is the Maxx's "Huh. The sounds inside my head have started again." The sound-effects make is importantly unclear if the repeated "CHUNG!" sound is a pounding in his head, or the pounding of the feet of his giant antagonist: the creature may just be in his head. So the first part of the story may be metaphor for things going on in the real world. This is of course one of the big claims of comics: that they are not just escapist fiction, but capable of questioning the things we take for granted in the real world. What makes the Maxx stand out is that rather than make the implicit claim that this comic has real world relevance, the comic makes connecting those two worlds part of the narrative. This would be a bit like Enchanted, if it, you know, didn't suck.
Kieth plays with the grim and gritty narration, but disrupts its self-seriousness with a lot of weird irony. The Maxx says "The sounds in my head have started again. Good, It helps me think ... Focus" and then he goes on to talk about his claws. It could be Wolverine, except the first word of the comic is the dumb "huh," and he says of his claws not that they are made of razor sharp unbreakable adamantium, but that they "still feel wet. Interesting." The deadpan reaction throws the whole scene askew. And the comic runs from there: the creature smells like "sweating leather and peppermint." The creature has a weird Tolkin-esque faux-arab name with two apostrophes and a q with no u (Ret'qark'n), but the Maxx describes him as "God Clan. Really mean." The Maxx is right of the bat, not that bright or reliable: he is like Wolverine if Wolverine had been invented by Whedon -- his tough guy posturing keeps getting undercut. "Being near death makes my senses sharper" he says, just before the creature happens to pick up his hiding place out of dumb luck, leaving him to just run away rather than fight.
Kieth's layouts are energetic and strange -- panels have weird shapes and are often dominated by playfully stylized sound-effects. The woman is beautiful and sexy and hits all the standard comic book buttons -- big breasts, revealing clothing, straddling the male protagonist with a needle just like in Casanova. But she is also more hips than boobs and turns out to neither victim nor aggressor. When the Maxx looks out over the city at night from a broken window along side stone carvings of creepy bird heads he should look like Batman -- except we are too far away to find it stirring, and it is placed on the far right of the page in a way that makes the interior of the woman's apartment where he was unconscious far more important. (Notice also the little hands pointing to where we should look -- if you know the technical name for that hand, and it has one, let me know in the comments). The final page is the glamour pose we expect, similar to the one on the first page, but the story emphasizes its own disorientations now: We end with the woman's narration: "I cant help wondering what he used to be. What kind of uniform those rags were?" She thinks it would be cool if he turned out to be one of those "Youngbloods" but concludes with a worry that if she cant get his head straight he is going to get her evicted.
All the 90s superhero stuff is here, sort of, but everything is really off kilter: the perspective is wrong, the gender politics are wrong, the fight-scene was a washout, and the whole adventure part of the story -- which is sort of why people you know buy these things, may just have been a dream. Many issues later it will turn out that Kieth is working on a plan to sneak a whole different kind of story to us under the trappings of a superhero comic, pretty much the only kind of comic book that was going to get any attention in 1993.
Next Time: Maxx #1
Retro ad watch: Valiant's DeathMate (Their Love Will End all Time) is apparently "The Biggest Crossover Event in the History of Comics."
Sunday, August 03, 2008
Dark Knight Coverage
A summary of our Dark Knight coverage
My initial thoughts on the trailer in which I am sad to say I did not like the look of Ledger's Joker. Wow, did I turn around on that completely. I like Miller's Joker as Dandy thing (because it draws attention to Batman-as-Dandy), but actually the fact that the Joker looks like he has been clothed by Vivian Westwood turns out to kind of awesome.
Some reviews of the Dark Knight here, before I got a chance to see it.
My initial cursory review, with much expanded in the comments, which is where the real discussion takes place.
Troy Wilson on Sandwiches and Bombs, which started it all up again
HC Duvall on some of his problems with the film.
Mikey with an interesting idea on the secondary casting.
And James Wheeler's praise of the film, which nicely considers some of our objections.
My initial thoughts on the trailer in which I am sad to say I did not like the look of Ledger's Joker. Wow, did I turn around on that completely. I like Miller's Joker as Dandy thing (because it draws attention to Batman-as-Dandy), but actually the fact that the Joker looks like he has been clothed by Vivian Westwood turns out to kind of awesome.
Some reviews of the Dark Knight here, before I got a chance to see it.
My initial cursory review, with much expanded in the comments, which is where the real discussion takes place.
Troy Wilson on Sandwiches and Bombs, which started it all up again
HC Duvall on some of his problems with the film.
Mikey with an interesting idea on the secondary casting.
And James Wheeler's praise of the film, which nicely considers some of our objections.
James Wheeler Defends The Dark Knight
[We have had a great series of discussions on the Dark Knight, which I think is a movie with a lot to recommend it. But it was so universally praised by so many in and out of the comics community (it had a 94% metacritic rating) it fell to us to swing the pendulum the other way -- and perhaps we went to far. But I think it was a lot more than "hating" on a movie that everyone loved. Overpraise can be as much of a problem as under-praise, because in both we are in danger of loosing sight of the thing, and dulling our senses for the next thing.
Nevertheless, I think we could use something fully positive on the Dark Knight here, and James has written a very smart piece to that effect, one that nicely takes into account some of the things we said around here. The Hulk comparison seems particularly apt, as I have to admit to hating that movie, then turning around and seeing its brilliance years later.]
So it turns out it's impossible to overstate how good Heath Ledger is as The Joker. I know because I only just saw The Dark Knight, and if nearly a month's hyperbole isn't enough to oversell the performance, then nothing is.
But what of the movie itself? Geoff has said, and others have agreed, that by keeping the tension dialled up to fever pitch for the solid 2.5 hours, the movie ends up being exhausting. I think this is 100% accurate. I also loved the movie for it.
The Dark Knight in no way resembles the Summer Blockbuster it is supposed to be. It's too long, too intense, too upsetting. It reminds me of Ang Lee's Hulk in its ambition, refusing to conform to the expectations of a superhero comic adaptation. Where it beats Hulk however, is that I wasn't entertained only when the title character was onscreen.
It's a million miles away from the uncertain, try-to-please-everyone concessions of Batman Begins, which attempted an uncomfortable marriage of Year One's stripped-down realism and explosive action movie excess. This time out, I'm thoroughly convinced by Nolan's hyper-tech Batman, because now it's clear that Nolan is. Where Batman Begins seemed at pains to use technology to explain or justify the less plausible aspects of the comic book character, The Dark Knight is fully committed to the idea of a gadget-powered Batman. In hindsight, it's the ninja stuff that feels like the concession.
A lot of people have complained about the unexpected fourth (fifth, sixth, twenty-eighth?) act, but I found myself grateful they didn't cut the story in half: any other superhero franchise would've just ended the movie with the birth of Two-Face as its coda, teasing the next installment. Oh wait, I guess Spider-Man 3 doesn't, so we can be grateful that Harvey's treatment was infinitely superior to Venom's.
And then there's Gordon's speech, the hero Gotham deserves and the hero Gotham needs. My first thought was that this is the second time Nolan has ended a Batman film with a meaningless distinction (remember "I won't kill you but I don't have to save you"?). HCDuvall said he couldn't overlook the speech because it's given such import, and must therefore be Nolan's point of view. But it could just as easily be Gordon (and Batman) trying to impose meaning on a world where answers are cruelly lacking. There's a great discussion over at Neil's blog, about whether the Joker is truly a force for anarchy or whether he is in fact, another schemer, who's master plan was always to turn Dent. I have to agree with Omar Karindu and take the Joker at his word. He's so effective because he's a master of improvisation, and all the other players cannot fathom him. I read the hero deserved/needed rationalisation as an extension of this lack of understanding, and a pithy way to end the movie with its title, rather than a true statement of authorial intent.
We're told in both movies that the new breed of evil (that finds its apotheosis* in the Joker) is brought about by the Batman's existence, so he cannot be the answer to Gotham's problems. This irony is heightened in The Dark Knight when we see that Harvey Dent could have been the man to save Gotham, but is thwarted and corrupted by the new evil Batman brings with him. The film does offer a solution however; Gotham is saved, at least for the moment. But the Joker isn't defeated by Batman, or Dent - he falls when he realises that the people on the boats have not been corrupted, and refused to play his game. Maybe Nolan is telling us not to wait for Batman to save us, but to get on with saving ourselves.
(I mean, I don't know, I just really liked this movie. A!)
*Word of the blog?
[Editor's note: Yes, it is one of my favorite words. I got it from Bloom, of course, the master of the portentous].
Nevertheless, I think we could use something fully positive on the Dark Knight here, and James has written a very smart piece to that effect, one that nicely takes into account some of the things we said around here. The Hulk comparison seems particularly apt, as I have to admit to hating that movie, then turning around and seeing its brilliance years later.]
So it turns out it's impossible to overstate how good Heath Ledger is as The Joker. I know because I only just saw The Dark Knight, and if nearly a month's hyperbole isn't enough to oversell the performance, then nothing is.
But what of the movie itself? Geoff has said, and others have agreed, that by keeping the tension dialled up to fever pitch for the solid 2.5 hours, the movie ends up being exhausting. I think this is 100% accurate. I also loved the movie for it.
The Dark Knight in no way resembles the Summer Blockbuster it is supposed to be. It's too long, too intense, too upsetting. It reminds me of Ang Lee's Hulk in its ambition, refusing to conform to the expectations of a superhero comic adaptation. Where it beats Hulk however, is that I wasn't entertained only when the title character was onscreen.
It's a million miles away from the uncertain, try-to-please-everyone concessions of Batman Begins, which attempted an uncomfortable marriage of Year One's stripped-down realism and explosive action movie excess. This time out, I'm thoroughly convinced by Nolan's hyper-tech Batman, because now it's clear that Nolan is. Where Batman Begins seemed at pains to use technology to explain or justify the less plausible aspects of the comic book character, The Dark Knight is fully committed to the idea of a gadget-powered Batman. In hindsight, it's the ninja stuff that feels like the concession.
A lot of people have complained about the unexpected fourth (fifth, sixth, twenty-eighth?) act, but I found myself grateful they didn't cut the story in half: any other superhero franchise would've just ended the movie with the birth of Two-Face as its coda, teasing the next installment. Oh wait, I guess Spider-Man 3 doesn't, so we can be grateful that Harvey's treatment was infinitely superior to Venom's.
And then there's Gordon's speech, the hero Gotham deserves and the hero Gotham needs. My first thought was that this is the second time Nolan has ended a Batman film with a meaningless distinction (remember "I won't kill you but I don't have to save you"?). HCDuvall said he couldn't overlook the speech because it's given such import, and must therefore be Nolan's point of view. But it could just as easily be Gordon (and Batman) trying to impose meaning on a world where answers are cruelly lacking. There's a great discussion over at Neil's blog, about whether the Joker is truly a force for anarchy or whether he is in fact, another schemer, who's master plan was always to turn Dent. I have to agree with Omar Karindu and take the Joker at his word. He's so effective because he's a master of improvisation, and all the other players cannot fathom him. I read the hero deserved/needed rationalisation as an extension of this lack of understanding, and a pithy way to end the movie with its title, rather than a true statement of authorial intent.
We're told in both movies that the new breed of evil (that finds its apotheosis* in the Joker) is brought about by the Batman's existence, so he cannot be the answer to Gotham's problems. This irony is heightened in The Dark Knight when we see that Harvey Dent could have been the man to save Gotham, but is thwarted and corrupted by the new evil Batman brings with him. The film does offer a solution however; Gotham is saved, at least for the moment. But the Joker isn't defeated by Batman, or Dent - he falls when he realises that the people on the boats have not been corrupted, and refused to play his game. Maybe Nolan is telling us not to wait for Batman to save us, but to get on with saving ourselves.
(I mean, I don't know, I just really liked this movie. A!)
*Word of the blog?
[Editor's note: Yes, it is one of my favorite words. I got it from Bloom, of course, the master of the portentous].
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