Saturday, February 09, 2013

Me vs. Batman

I... I totally fail at superhero movies. Possibly the time has come to admit that. I keep trying to like them, and a lot of the time, I succeed. I mean, I liked The Avengers a lot. For instance. But sometimes the genre just defeats me.

Like Batman. Apparently I just don't get Batman, or something? I found Batman Begins, which everyone else seems to think was brilliant, to be unbelievably boring. I did enjoy The Dark Knight a heck of a lot more than I expected to, though, I think largely because it made the Joker into a really scary and interesting villain. So I just sat down to watch The Dark Knight Rises on DVD with fairly high hopes, and... I made it a little over an hour in. Seriously, guys, what the heck am I missing? As far as I could tell, it was pretty much all blah, blah, blah, angst, blah, blah, I'm supposed to feel sorry for Bruce Wayne but he's just kind of annoying, blah, blah, more angst, blah, blah, really sloooooow plot stuff that I suppose might make more sense if I remembered anything at all from the last two movies, blah, blah, a few one-liners that would actually be funny if delivered with any charisma, blah, blah, Catwoman in lots of slinky outfits, blah, blah, awkward vaguely political commentary about rich people, blah, blah, gadgets that are supposed to be cool but aren't, blah, blah, villain who might or might not be cool if he ever eventually gets any decent amount of screentime.... And then it got to the point where we hear all about how Annoying Angsty Bruce shut down his awesome new energy-crisis-solving fusion reactor because he found out how someone had an idea about how you could use nuclear fusion to make bombs and... and... I'M SORRY, I TRIED, BUT I JUST CAN'T DO THIS ANY MORE. I know, I know that it's the stupidest thing in the world to expect or even want decent science in a superhero movie, but I AM CRYING INSIDE NOW, AND IT HURTS ME.

I feel as if I ought to apologize to Batman fans, and to the world. I feel as if somehow not liking Batman is... is un-American? More than that, possibly un-human. But I just can't.

If you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to go and watch some old British sitcoms now, instead. That will make me feel better. Yes. That will help.

8 comments:

  1. Haven't seen any of the new Batman movies.. but I can understand.. I mean it is about a playboy billionaire who pines about because he couldn't do anything right in the last movie. I found watching the Brave and the Bold or the Batman cartoons better stories of Batman (but mainly because I want fun superheroes.. moping ones aren't my thing.)

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    1. Yeah, that's pretty much exactly what at least the first hour was about. I... couldn't relate. :)

      I have actually liked what I've seen of the Batman cartoon.

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  2. The Chris Nolan films were, for me, a case of diminishing returns. Or something like that. I was ecstatic that Batman Begins was the first Batman movie to even faintly resemble the comics I used to read (I could never understand why people went ga-ga over the Tim Burton films). I really liked The Dark Knight but didn't find it as emotionally involving as its predecessor. And then The Dark Knight Rises was just one big nonsensical "meh".

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    1. The fact that I never read the comics is undoubtedly a factor. But it's nice to know that I'm not the only one to feel that way about The Dark Knight rises. And that also makes me feel better about not finishing it. :)

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  3. And yet, there's actually a lot of Bane from the comics in The Dark Knight Rises.

    I enjoyed them all, though I worry that the third one may be the one that doesn't hold up as well. It's certainly not as electric as the previous film, which has that wild animal that's the Joker running through it, but I did like it a lot. (Particularly Tom Hardy and Anne Hathaway.)

    Still, I can understand it's not for everybody. The same way, even though I'm kind of sick of superhero origin stories in every reboot, I'm actually pretty okay with another Superman origin story in Man of Steel. Just something about that story that works for me. To each his/her own.

    But to be fair, Bruce Wayne has a fair amount to mope about.

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    1. Bruce undoubtedly has legit stuff to mope about. I just don't necessarily enjoy watching him do it. :)

      But, yeah, despite the fact that I'm glad to know it's not just me, I'm fully prepared to accept that it's mostly me on this one. I may just be missing the Batman portion of my brain.

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  4. The only Batman in my brain is the campy 60's TV version. "Holy sardine, Batman!"

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    1. That does tend to stick in the brain. :)

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