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DC Movies- if at first you don't succeed...


Cassandra

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It's a sacrifice he doesn't have to make. Just say the joker killed those cops. And that lady cop survived, so at least she knows that it was really Dent.

 

What I hate about it is that even if he had to make it, the writers allowed the Batman (did you hear that THE BATMAN) to be outmanoeuvred by the Joker.

 

The whole superpower of Batman is that he always knows what is going down.  I loved the fact that the villains my have appeared to have Batman in an impossible situation but the Batman's preparation and attention to detail means that he sees a flaw or has pre-prepared stuff that allows him to turn the tables at the last minute.

 

It distressed me that they think that having Batman make a decision to choose between girlfriend and political necessity is a relevant story for Batman.  I was waiting after he saved one to show why he knew the other was safe all along...

 

 

Doc

 

...similarly distressed by writers thinking that making Captain Jack sacrifice his grandson to save the Children of Earth was a suitable outcome for a hero in the Doctor Who universe...  :-( 

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Heard that before...that still doesn't explain a dead Dent with only Batman and Gordon in the area, and Joker already in police custody.  With the police only searching for Batman, the obvious and more believable choice for the public is to blame Batman for the killing spree and the death of Dent.  The argument to lie and blame Joker is possible, but its just as plausible to blame Batman and far more poetic.  Its also a perfect way for Bruce to retire as Batman which a part of him is begging to do.

Hide the body, say Dent was killed when the Joker blew up the hospital he was staying in.  Since nobody but Gordon or Batman know that Dent was wandering around being villainous, nobody would have any reason to suspect they were lying.  Indeed as Dark Knight Rises shows us, Batman's choice in the Dark Knight only made things worse.

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Hide the body, say Dent was killed when the Joker blew up the hospital he was staying in.  Since nobody but Gordon or Batman know that Dent was wandering around being villainous, nobody would have any reason to suspect they were lying.  Indeed as Dark Knight Rises shows us, Batman's choice in the Dark Knight only made things worse.

 

Sorry, making the argument for Batman to frame the Joker for the murder of Harvey Dent is not appealing in any way to me.  I can't believe it would even be discussed as 'a better ending' for a Batman movie.

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Again, the female cop whose mom or sister or whoever had cancer, she is still alive. She knows that Dent was being a villain. So framing Batman to protect Dent doesn't really help.

 

As far as the other dead cops, you don't have to frame anyone. People will just automatically assume the Joker, or the Joker's men, killed them.

 

As far as Dent goes, it's a bit more trouble to explain, but not much. "Dent died trying to help us. We don't know who it was holding us hostage. They were wearing a mask."

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Again, the female cop whose mom or sister or whoever had cancer, she is still alive. She knows that Dent was being a villain. So framing Batman to protect Dent doesn't really help.

 

As far as the other dead cops, you don't have to frame anyone. People will just automatically assume the Joker, or the Joker's men, killed them.

 

As far as Dent goes, it's a bit more trouble to explain, but not much. "Dent died trying to help us. We don't know who it was holding us hostage. They were wearing a mask."

 

The testimony of a disgraced female cop who is an accessory to Rachel's murder?  I can dismiss that as easily as you seem to dismiss that the ending worked fine.  I/We can find 'different' endings for the movie, but I can't find a reason why the ending we got was bad or didn't make sense.

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What I hate about it is that even if he had to make it, the writers allowed the Batman (did you hear that THE BATMAN) to be outmanoeuvred by the Joker.

 

The whole superpower of Batman is that he always knows what is going down. I loved the fact that the villains my have appeared to have Batman in an impossible situation but the Batman's preparation and attention to detail means that he sees a flaw or has pre-prepared stuff that allows him to turn the tables at the last minute.

 

It distressed me that they think that having Batman make a decision to choose between girlfriend and political necessity is a relevant story for Batman. I was waiting after he saved one to show why he knew the other was safe all along...

 

I agree with this sentiment, but I always felt it applied much more to Dark Knight Rises than Dark Knight. The third film in the series isn't even a Batman film from my perspective. Just the idea that he would repeatedly try to defeat Bane through brute (melee combat) force alone was so contrary to the character that he became unrecognizable to me.

 

And I sympathize with your frustration regarding THE Batman (vs. just Batman). However, it is but one name in a distinguished list of incorrect nomenclature that has entered the popular vernacular and will remain incorrect forever. Other examples include Frankenstein, Shazam, and the Macintosh (it is just called Macintosh; there is no the in front of it; the opposite of The Batman, I guess you could say). And then you have misspellings like Spiderman...

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The testimony of a disgraced female cop who is an accessory to Rachel's murder?  I can dismiss that as easily as you seem to dismiss that the ending worked fine.  I/We can find 'different' endings for the movie, but I can't find a reason why the ending we got was bad or didn't make sense.

 

I think everybody who knew she was involved, is dead.  And if you're going to prosecute her for something, it is certainly in her best interest to point the finger at crazy DA.  The ending worked okay, there's just no need for it.

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Sorry, making the argument for Batman to frame the Joker for the murder of Harvey Dent is not appealing in any way to me.

You don't have to frame anyone for anything; you just get vague on the details. Dent was killed in the confusion and violence after the Joker's attack, the exact circumstances are unclear, evidence is contradictory, not enough to indict anyone, we may never know exactly what happened OH WELL we have plenty of other dead bodies that we can directly tie the Joker, the important thing is that Harvey Dent was a good man who fell victim to the violence and madness instigated by the Joker. And if anyone tries to imply maybe something else was going on, you go full-on outrage I can't believe you're trying to impugn the motives of this good man who gave his life to protect us harumpf harumpf... Simple lie of omission; it's actually a far simpler lie to sell than pinning it all on Batman for no damn reason. I mean this is Gotham FFS; GPD covers up worse shit than that on their slowest days. And while not exactly morally stellar, it's far less morally objectionable than the plan they actually went with.

 

The only reason for it was Nolan needed an excuse to retire Batman so he could come out of retirement ala Dark Knight Returns in the 3rd movie.

 

The third film in the series isn't even a Batman film from my perspective.

You mean apart from stating outright that Batman had no impact on crime, and apparently the only thing that was really needed to turn Gotham into a crime-free utopia was tougher sentencing laws? And that despite that, the citizens of Gotham would immediately overturn those laws [legal mechanism unclear] despite 8 years of proven success, just because it turns out the guy the bill was named for wasn't a saint?

 

And apart from how after 8 years of completely giving up on trying to make Gotham a better city as either Bruce or as Bats, how he suddenly decides to come out of retirement just because he hears some guy named Bane is in town - doesn't know anything about him, mind you, just his name - and does so with zero plan and only succeeds in distracting the police so that Bane can get away?

 

Yep, sounds like a Batman movie to me... [/sarcasm]

 

The first 15 minutes of DKR were when I realized just how much Nolan - and apparently everyone at WB - genuinely hates the concept of superheroes.

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MCU Captain America doesn't seem stale to me.

MCU Captain America is heavily influenced by the era of comics in which Captain America's character was altered in ways I would argue Superman writers have never been able to successfully alter Superman. Perez's Superman comes to mind, but far fewer of his alterations became permanent facets of the character, as compared with Captain America from the sixties to the eighties.

 

And the fault often lies with readers, imo. Superman is simply not allowed to be changed. So the comics get around this by doing huge changes that everyone knows will be retconned out of existence in under a year.

 

As an aside, Batman began as grimdark. He's been every iteration, from campy to golden age in character to family friendly and back and forth. Superman definitely had campy details in the stories, but that was largely because it was written for kids, his character really hasn't had that many permanent details added on that stuck, campy Superman and golden age and silver age and bronze age all present a remarkably similar character.

 

I think part of the problem is also that he is a national symbol. But Captain America was, too, but the writers saw that it was unrealistic and extremely limiting to make him both a symbol of American ideals and a symbol of American authority, whatever authority that might be, whereas Superman writers have been largely unsuccessful in making a permanent change to the character that makes him a symbol of the ideals, but willing to involve himself in choosing whether the authority ought to have his services. This is not to say that there are not stories of him doing so, but that these have not stuck in the general viewer's idea of his character, and so, Doctor Manhattan before being manipulated into leaving Earth is the perfect depiction of the pitfalls of that characterization.

 

This is not my critique of what Superman is when well written, but what he always seems to default back to afterwards.

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Superman is simply not allowed to be changed. So the comics get around this by doing huge changes that everyone knows will be retconned out of existence in under a year.

 

That's not exactly true, its just that he can't change in any significant way.  But that's a flaw of comics on general, not just Superman.  A comic is successful and interesting in the way it presents a character, their setting, and their cast of supporting characters.  If you change that over time, you lose the magic of what made them work.  Taking Peter Parker out of school, marrying him off, giving him a child, etc... ruined the charm of Spider-Man.  But you keep putting out issue after issue for decades, and it can become stale.

 

The flaw is an ongoing series that must come out every month rather than telling story arcs of the character.  Its the American TV vs British TV comparison: American shows keep going until they suck so bad they are canceled (or just keep going anyway like the SImpsons), and British shows tell a story, and stop.  When they have a new story, they put out a new series.

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That's not exactly true, its just that he can't change in any significant way.  But that's a flaw of comics on general, not just Superman.  A comic is successful and interesting in the way it presents a character, their setting, and their cast of supporting characters.  If you change that over time, you lose the magic of what made them work.  Taking Peter Parker out of school, marrying him off, giving him a child, etc... ruined the charm of Spider-Man.  But you keep putting out issue after issue for decades, and it can become stale.

 

The flaw is an ongoing series that must come out every month rather than telling story arcs of the character.  Its the American TV vs British TV comparison: American shows keep going until they suck so bad they are canceled (or just keep going anyway like the SImpsons), and British shows tell a story, and stop.  When they have a new story, they put out a new series.

Oh, I totally agree on the source of the problem. I was just pointing out that Captain America had changes that are now canon in his personality and direction, mind you, those changes were still true to the character, and so work to a large extent, while this really has not worked with Superman. Superman seems square in relation to Captain America, which is actually pretty hard to achieve.

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Ironically, the fact that Superman could do practically anything he wants, but chooses to do what he believes is right only because it's right, is the thing I find most compelling about the character... who I have to admit has never much interested me, in any incarnation.

 

Most people seem to have forgotten that John Byrne's relaunch of Superman in 1986 was a significant redefinition of the character from his preceding form, and was in no small measure an attempt to eliminate some of the problematic elements in earlier depictions. His nigh-omnipotent power level was drastically reduced. More effort was taken to rationalize how his powers functioned. His Clark Kent identity became a serious, competent person rather than a klutzy joke. Superman's personal memories of Krypton were eliminated, making him much more a son of Earth than of Krypton. The "Superboy" phase of his life was erased. His relationship with Lois Lane was allowed to evolve. Clark's father was a living presence in his life. The nature and history of Krypton was majorly altered. But later writers kept chipping away at these changes, taking him back closer to what he had been, which IMHO has often not been for the better.

 

I would argue that for much of his history, Superman has been much less an agent of America than Captain America has been. Supes was raised with American ideals, but Cap was deliberately created by the American government as a symbol of the country. There have been few stories showing Superman acting on behalf of the government, but Cap worked for the American military initially, and has worked for SHIELD for more than one extended period. I believe that's why he's been shown going through phases of questioning his allegiance and what he truly stands for, when he's been disillusioned by the American authorities, like his classic Nomad story line. IMO the way he's been depicted in the MCU is very much within the spirit of his comic-book character arc.

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If you change that over time, you lose the magic of what made them work.  Taking Peter Parker out of school, marrying him off, giving him a child, etc... ruined the charm of Spider-Man.

I disagree with this attitude so much. "Changed" is not a synonym for "ruined," and is almost always preferable to "held completely static for decades."

 

In the specific case of Peter's marriage, I thought letting Peter grow up and change really strengthened the character, and some of the storylines around his marriage with MJ were quite well done. (Say what you will about Straczynski's run on Spidey, but he wrote the Peter-MJ dynamic really well.) And there was something genuinely comforting to know that despite everything Pete went through as a kid and everything he's still going through, he nonetheless managed to find a little bit of happiness for himself. That's not a bad story for people to hear now and then.

 

What ruined Spidey for me was when they retconned away all that progress because "fans don't want to see a married Spider-Man." So we're back to Square 1, and nobody learns from anything? No possibility for character growth? What the hell is interesting about that? Where's the drama in knowing that no matter what a character goes through, nothing is ever going to change?

 

The only alternative is the DC approach of rebooting the universe every 5 years so you have an excuse to keep everyone in the exact same place and keep retelling the same damn stories over and over again. Yawn.

 

By contrast, if Marvel had kept Carol Danvers in the same box she'd been in since the 70s, no one would care about the character today and she certainly wouldn't be getting her own movie. But by letting the character evolve (starting with 2005's House Of M, and really taking off when DeConnick took over), they not only made her a far more interesting character, but they also opened up room for new characters to come in behind her.

 

I hope you don't feel I'm picking on you personally CT - I'm addressing a much wider attitude. (You just happen to be the guy that pushed the button - sorry for that!) But I genuinely feel like this instinctive, visceral resistance to change is the biggest problem with fandom today and is the main reason we can't have nice things.

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