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selenakSomething I forgot to mention: during those three times I watched The Avengers already, there were, of course, trailers for other superhero movies. If you don't want to be spoiled for Batman and Spider-man trailers, do not read further.
1.) The Dark Knight Rises (I think that's the title?) : aka Nolan goes third. Christopher Nolan's Batman films are basically the Wagnerian opera to the Stephen Sondheim musical that is Joss Whedon's Avengers. (Yes, I think that's a perfectly valid musical analogue and I dare you to say otherwise.) Now I'm actually fond of Wagnerian opera (see also: various reviews of seeing same performed), but I also have to be in the mood for it, plus the trailer reminded me of my Christopher Nolan admirations and frustrations. Visual epic grandeur: he has it, no question. And he's excellent with obsessive, screwed up male characters. But he and his world take themselves so very, very seriously, relentlessly, without a break. Which is fitting for Batman, I suppose, if you want to avoid the camp route, but: it also makes me feel I like a need to breathe after watching his epics and it keeps the characters at a distance for me. (Oddly enough, not in the Prestige, but in every other Nolan pic, not just his Batman films.) Whereas one of the things I appreciate about the Sondheim-Whedon approach is that while all of these characters have gone or go through horrible tragedies as well, most of them do have a sense of the absurd and a sense of humor, and so does the narrative, and this doesn't negate or cheapen the dark stuff at all. Something like the duet between Mrs. Lovett and Sweeney Todd after Sweeney had his epiphany - you know, the "have a little priest" one - would be impossible in Wagner - Wagner could have written Sweeney, but never a character like Mrs. Lovett. And it's impossible to imagine a moment in the Batman-Nolanverse on the lines one of the great visual gags of the film, Hulk, post-battle, knocking Thor out of the picture frame, which is a wrap up to a far earlier visual gag where Thor gets interrupted mid-passionate declaration to Loki by being tackled by Iron Man and also pushed out of the picture, with Loki wryly commenting "I'm listening". Indignities like that just don't happen to Batman. He may get framed for murder, but he's not punched out mid-big heroic moment. Indignities like that don't happen to the Joker, either; he always gets to finish his crazy monologues instead of being confronted with extremely unimpressed Whedonian characters tge way Loki was. And the angsty stuff comes in big, shattering aria form in the Nolan Batverse. I can't imagine a revelation like Bruce revealing in his low key manner, that oh, by the way, he tried to kill himself and the Hulk won't let him, with the SHIELD folk and the other Avengers taking that in and understanding just what he's saying there but then going back to arguing happening in a Nolan film; it would have been played not as a quiet, understated part of an otherwise stormy scene but as a Big Moment (tm) complete with philosophical statement about lone heroic destinies and the awfulness and tragedy of life.
Moving away from apples versus oranges and staying with the apples, the trailer offered me my first look at Nolan's take on Selina Kyle, which is the one thing I'm most curious about in this outing because famous for three dimensional female characters, Nolan is not. There are several interpretations of Catwoman to choose from - the bored socialite going jewel thief from decades past, the former prostitute remaking herself into a vigilante (I think Frank Miller came up with thish one in the 80s, though the small sketch from Year One was made into a more interesting and elaborate story by another writer in Her Sister's Keeper), Tim Burton's bullied secretary going empowered domina, and some others. Nolan's Selina, going by the trailer, shows up as a socialite but actually appears to be of poor origin, going by what she says to Bruce Wayne, and with a have-not grudge against the haves. The Dark Night caused a bit of a discussion about inherent authorianism of the genre and the depiction of the population of Gotham as people who can't handle the truth and need to be protected from it (though I thought that was balanced by how the Joker's suvivalist game actually played out, which was an affirmation of faith that no, humans (non-superhero, ordinary ones) can also be able to choose not to kill under extreme pressure instead of confirming humanity is rotten. Anyway, I'm not sure a class war story can be done well in Nolan's Batmanverse without ending up making some statements about only pyschopaths or misguided people being for a revolution, but that's actually not due to any Christopher Nolan viewing experience of mine and more due to Frank Miller's Return of the Dark Knight, so maybe I should be more optimistic. And get in the mood for Wagnerian opera again.
2.) The Amazing Spider-Man. Poor Peter Parker. Doomed to be rebooted in continuities everywhere because the people in charge just don't want him to grow up. The big argument Quesada & Co. used for Brand New Day, which changed comicverse Spidey from a married adult who'd spent the last two decades being written in a stable relationship with his wife to a luckless eternal adolescent living with his aunt was that the appeal of Peter Parker otherwise was lost since according to them it consisted in him being a figure of identification only if, other than his superpowers, he was the eternally bullied unlucky in romance overlooked teen. But at least that happened after a few decades wherein the poor guy was allowed to actually grow and grow up, whereas the movieverse reboot happens with breathtaking speed. Now actually I'm not die-hard about the Sam Raimi movies as the best ever, and no, I don't mean that just the third is, err, flawed; the first two which tend to be praised by most have their big problems for me as well, though they certainly entertained me. And if the trailer is anything to go buy, Garfield!Peter actually quips, which makes him closer to the comicverse version than Toby!Peter. (I had seen the first Spider-Man film before reading any of the comics, so the first big difference I noticed when catching up on the comics was that being a relentless quipster is actually a core Spidey character trait, and it's suprising that Sam Raimi, otherwise quite at home with the quippy heroes, never used that.) Also a plus: Gwen Stacy seems to find out about Peter's secret identity early on. Which is good fo rme because I'm so over keeping-your-super-ID-from-your-significant-other tales right now. But it looks like a big part of the plot uses the Ultimateverse idea of Peter's parents being experimenting scientists etc., and you know, I never liked that all too much. Leave the "my parents were murdered! Therefore, I fight crime!" thing to Bruce Wayne, people. And the "your superpowers were no accident" thing of destiny is not something I like, either. To me, one of the appealing things about Peter Parker in the traditional 616 continuity is that he really had a normal life before that spider and wasn't chosen or or trained or inherited anything; it was just an accident, and what resulted from it was what he made of it.
Lastly: now I know Spider-man, like the X-Men, was licensed to other studios because the Marvel one had not yet been established when the first Spider film was made, and therefore we don't get crossover scenes, but a line or so of dialogue would be nice and not impossible.
1.) The Dark Knight Rises (I think that's the title?) : aka Nolan goes third. Christopher Nolan's Batman films are basically the Wagnerian opera to the Stephen Sondheim musical that is Joss Whedon's Avengers. (Yes, I think that's a perfectly valid musical analogue and I dare you to say otherwise.) Now I'm actually fond of Wagnerian opera (see also: various reviews of seeing same performed), but I also have to be in the mood for it, plus the trailer reminded me of my Christopher Nolan admirations and frustrations. Visual epic grandeur: he has it, no question. And he's excellent with obsessive, screwed up male characters. But he and his world take themselves so very, very seriously, relentlessly, without a break. Which is fitting for Batman, I suppose, if you want to avoid the camp route, but: it also makes me feel I like a need to breathe after watching his epics and it keeps the characters at a distance for me. (Oddly enough, not in the Prestige, but in every other Nolan pic, not just his Batman films.) Whereas one of the things I appreciate about the Sondheim-Whedon approach is that while all of these characters have gone or go through horrible tragedies as well, most of them do have a sense of the absurd and a sense of humor, and so does the narrative, and this doesn't negate or cheapen the dark stuff at all. Something like the duet between Mrs. Lovett and Sweeney Todd after Sweeney had his epiphany - you know, the "have a little priest" one - would be impossible in Wagner - Wagner could have written Sweeney, but never a character like Mrs. Lovett. And it's impossible to imagine a moment in the Batman-Nolanverse on the lines one of the great visual gags of the film, Hulk, post-battle, knocking Thor out of the picture frame, which is a wrap up to a far earlier visual gag where Thor gets interrupted mid-passionate declaration to Loki by being tackled by Iron Man and also pushed out of the picture, with Loki wryly commenting "I'm listening". Indignities like that just don't happen to Batman. He may get framed for murder, but he's not punched out mid-big heroic moment. Indignities like that don't happen to the Joker, either; he always gets to finish his crazy monologues instead of being confronted with extremely unimpressed Whedonian characters tge way Loki was. And the angsty stuff comes in big, shattering aria form in the Nolan Batverse. I can't imagine a revelation like Bruce revealing in his low key manner, that oh, by the way, he tried to kill himself and the Hulk won't let him, with the SHIELD folk and the other Avengers taking that in and understanding just what he's saying there but then going back to arguing happening in a Nolan film; it would have been played not as a quiet, understated part of an otherwise stormy scene but as a Big Moment (tm) complete with philosophical statement about lone heroic destinies and the awfulness and tragedy of life.
Moving away from apples versus oranges and staying with the apples, the trailer offered me my first look at Nolan's take on Selina Kyle, which is the one thing I'm most curious about in this outing because famous for three dimensional female characters, Nolan is not. There are several interpretations of Catwoman to choose from - the bored socialite going jewel thief from decades past, the former prostitute remaking herself into a vigilante (I think Frank Miller came up with thish one in the 80s, though the small sketch from Year One was made into a more interesting and elaborate story by another writer in Her Sister's Keeper), Tim Burton's bullied secretary going empowered domina, and some others. Nolan's Selina, going by the trailer, shows up as a socialite but actually appears to be of poor origin, going by what she says to Bruce Wayne, and with a have-not grudge against the haves. The Dark Night caused a bit of a discussion about inherent authorianism of the genre and the depiction of the population of Gotham as people who can't handle the truth and need to be protected from it (though I thought that was balanced by how the Joker's suvivalist game actually played out, which was an affirmation of faith that no, humans (non-superhero, ordinary ones) can also be able to choose not to kill under extreme pressure instead of confirming humanity is rotten. Anyway, I'm not sure a class war story can be done well in Nolan's Batmanverse without ending up making some statements about only pyschopaths or misguided people being for a revolution, but that's actually not due to any Christopher Nolan viewing experience of mine and more due to Frank Miller's Return of the Dark Knight, so maybe I should be more optimistic. And get in the mood for Wagnerian opera again.
2.) The Amazing Spider-Man. Poor Peter Parker. Doomed to be rebooted in continuities everywhere because the people in charge just don't want him to grow up. The big argument Quesada & Co. used for Brand New Day, which changed comicverse Spidey from a married adult who'd spent the last two decades being written in a stable relationship with his wife to a luckless eternal adolescent living with his aunt was that the appeal of Peter Parker otherwise was lost since according to them it consisted in him being a figure of identification only if, other than his superpowers, he was the eternally bullied unlucky in romance overlooked teen. But at least that happened after a few decades wherein the poor guy was allowed to actually grow and grow up, whereas the movieverse reboot happens with breathtaking speed. Now actually I'm not die-hard about the Sam Raimi movies as the best ever, and no, I don't mean that just the third is, err, flawed; the first two which tend to be praised by most have their big problems for me as well, though they certainly entertained me. And if the trailer is anything to go buy, Garfield!Peter actually quips, which makes him closer to the comicverse version than Toby!Peter. (I had seen the first Spider-Man film before reading any of the comics, so the first big difference I noticed when catching up on the comics was that being a relentless quipster is actually a core Spidey character trait, and it's suprising that Sam Raimi, otherwise quite at home with the quippy heroes, never used that.) Also a plus: Gwen Stacy seems to find out about Peter's secret identity early on. Which is good fo rme because I'm so over keeping-your-super-ID-from-your-significant-other tales right now. But it looks like a big part of the plot uses the Ultimateverse idea of Peter's parents being experimenting scientists etc., and you know, I never liked that all too much. Leave the "my parents were murdered! Therefore, I fight crime!" thing to Bruce Wayne, people. And the "your superpowers were no accident" thing of destiny is not something I like, either. To me, one of the appealing things about Peter Parker in the traditional 616 continuity is that he really had a normal life before that spider and wasn't chosen or or trained or inherited anything; it was just an accident, and what resulted from it was what he made of it.
Lastly: now I know Spider-man, like the X-Men, was licensed to other studios because the Marvel one had not yet been established when the first Spider film was made, and therefore we don't get crossover scenes, but a line or so of dialogue would be nice and not impossible.
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Date: 2012-05-05 11:17 am (UTC)Could a similar story work in an X-Men or Avengers movie? It probably could, because it can slide by with some humour, lampshading and bringing the arguments out into the open.
ETA: And that Spider-Man trailer just looked...so dull. It was nice to see some quippy Peter, but the atmosphere around him made him out to be sullen teen rebel, not boy-with-big-heart-and-big-mouth. Of course, that could just be trailer issues!
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Date: 2012-05-05 12:18 pm (UTC)All true. I remember some complaints when Anne Hathaway was cast, which I didn't understand. (I mean, my mental picture of Selina Kyle is older, but everyone starts young, and certainly Heath Ledger and Mr. Big Blue Eyes weren't exactly 40 something character actors, either.) It really depends what the script will give her.
Could a similar story work in an X-Men or Avengers movie? It probably could, because it can slide by with some humour, lampshading and bringing the arguments out into the open.
Well, to be fair, there is one key difference in the set up of either when compared to a Batman movie (Nolan, Burton, any Batman film really), and that's that however much a Batman film uses its ensemble (and Nolan actually did a really nice job with Gordon, Alfred and Lucius Fox), it is at its core still a film about one hero, his obsessions and his arch nemesis (or plural of same). The X-Men films and the Avengers are team movies by their set up, and though some team members are given more prominence than others, as long as it doesn't go into Wolverine-in-X3 territory they still have that difference in set up from the get go. So if you bring in a villain like the Joker, it would never be Joker versus one particular X-Man/Avenger, let alone letting the two give mutually give birth to each other as Tim Burton had it in his first film, and that difference already alters the story.
It was nice to see some quippy Peter, but the atmosphere around him made him out to be sullen teen rebel, not boy-with-big-heart-and-big-mouth. Of course, that could just be trailer issues!
True. The first Avengers trailer would have never made it able to guess how prominent a role Natasha had, for example. Still, I do hope they remember Peter isn't James Dean!
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Date: 2012-05-05 12:32 pm (UTC)Indeed, but Thor and Iron Man are based around one hero (Captain America was much more of an ensemble film, I think) and they can still deal with a more complex set-up. I think the problem with Nolan's Batman, for me, is that the movies aren't very interested in Batman (as opposed to Bruce Wayne) so they don't set up what he and his villains can and can't do, and all magical worlds need rules. There's no sense of the level of any particular threat. Is the Joker a real threat or are Gotham people easily panicked? Do people often crack up and become supervillains or is this a deep psychological trauma for Harvey that could not be predicted? If Batman surveils all your phones once, why not all the time? The universe, maybe because it is so focused on Bruce Wayne, reads as less coherent. Wagner, on the other hand, has rules!
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Date: 2012-05-05 01:10 pm (UTC)But yes, I see what you mean, and I agree, though I would argue that the Nolan films have to be seen in reaction to the previous Batman films, and with the arguable exception of the first one, none of these were as interested in either Batman or Bruce Wayne as they were in their respective villains, so Nolan to me read as constantly arguing "hey, Bruce is interesting, too, people" with his films and overdoing it. Which of course doesn't excuse the lack of clarity and lack of set up rules, but there you go.
Agreed re: Captain America. Thor and Iron Man in relation to Batman Begins as far as origin films centred around one individual hero are very interesting to analyse, now that I think of it. I mean, there obvious surface similarities, aside from the "origin" theme; Bruce and Tony share the millionaire/super hero thing (and the fact they don't have innate superpowers, they create the advantage that gives them fighting power themselves), Bruce, Tony and Thor are all coming from a position of privilege (the big difference between them and underdog-to-superhero types like Steve and also Peter Parker). But the big traumatic life changing moment is very different. For Thor and Tony, it comes when they're adults (in years if not emotional maturity) and it results in them questioning at least part of their world view so far, and going from living their privileged life for their own sake to trying to give something back and do the hero gig for others as part of the trauma. With Bruce, the big shattering event comes when he's a child and while Batman is a work in progress that's not complete until the end of the first film, he clearly is aiming for some type of avenging persona from the get go, building his entire life towards this from childhood onwards. Bruce has already few human connections to begin with as Bruce Wayne and loses those he has except for Alfred in the course of his two films, though he makes a new one as Batman with Gordon; Thor and Tony do have friends at the start of their stories but have to learn to relate to people in general differently (with differing success). And I think part of Nolan's problem is that he insists it's part of Bruce's tragedy that he's the solitary hero protecting a community whom he doesn't, and can't really belong to, which, valid interpretaton of the character except that the whole justification for Harvey's image needing to be preserved etc. with the corresponding need for Batman to be vilified was the least convincing part of second film, and there isn't really anything that's stopping Bruce from relating to people as Bruce Wayne other than that he plainly doesn't want to.
Mind you: there's a problem with Harvey Dent that's due to the comics origin and not to Christopher Nolan. I mean, today the idea that a character goes supervillain because of a facial disfigurement if previously he's been a passionate crusader for good is just hard to make believable, not to mention the inherent -ism there. (Also: all those women in Pakistan or elsewhere fighting to get their lives back after suffering just that fate due to mostly their own family members have yet to start a supervillain career, and they're who comes immediately to mind when talking about someone throwing acid at someone else's face in real life.) Nolan tried to sell it with the Joke bedside scene and Harvey as a Bruce parallel, but that moment when he kidnaps Gordon's son (insert grrr, arggh about Lack Of Babs here) still comes out of nowhere to me.
Going back to Marvel, Obediah Stane and what's his name from Iron Man 2 aren't what makes their respective films memorable nor are they given the type of narrative weight the Joker and Harvey Dent get in the second Nolan, but Loki gets that kind of treatment in Thor. Now you know I don't hold with the "awww, poor Loki" reaction for Thor but compared with Harvey, his development from where he's at the start of Thor to where he's at the end of the Avengers is far more consistent.
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Date: 2012-05-06 01:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-07 04:54 am (UTC)*lolsob* this is my tragedy as a Spider-Man fan, especially one that really likes grown-up PP.
Indignities like that just don't happen to Batman.
Those indignities are one of the reasons that the film felt grounded to me. Realistic. It's something about Joss' writing that's always really worked for me. No one is always bad ass, even Black Widow. :) I really enjoyed that Loki was played like that a few times as well because it showed just how in over his head he was and just how fallible he really is, which is one of the things I love about Loki. A lot.
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Date: 2012-05-07 06:18 am (UTC)It's something about Joss' writing that's always really worked for me. No one is always bad ass, even Black Widow. :)
Yes, same here. After writing this post, it occurs to me that early AtS has a bit of a running gag with the Angel = Batman comparisons, but the key difference is of course that Angel lives in the Jossverse. So in the AtS pilot, when he jumps heroically in a car in pursuit of the villain, he next finds out he picked the wrong car. In the second episode, Lonely Hearts, when Angel shoots a Batmanish Thingie into the ceiling so he and Kate can swing away to safety, it brings down the ceiling. Little touches like that are something that just fit with the Marvelverse, whereas you can't imagine them happening to Christopher Nolan's Bruce Wayne, and that's why The Avengers, space invasion and all, feels more emotionally "real" to me.
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Date: 2012-05-07 06:25 pm (UTC)