the studios dont care about critics when it comes to thesd kinds of movies... all that matters to them is if they can sell enough tickets internationally...

@jriddle73 said:

@Tectash said:

The issue with dc is they haven't taken their time to actually try and make a good film since the Nolan era.

It's bigger than that. Warner Brothers has a very long-term problem with simply not knowing how to do these sorts of flicks. It has persisted throughout several different regimes there for decades. We're 17 years into the major boom in comic book movie adaptations--it began with BLADE back in 1998--to which WB, which owns some of the most iconic superheroes ever created, has contributed almost nothing of any merit. Wonder Woman has been launched as a screen project perhaps half a dozen times since the '90s, every effort falling apart. With the exception of a proposed tv series from a few years ago that made it to pilot stage then failed, there hadn't been a live-action Wonder Woman since the last original episode of the Lynda Carter tv series aired in 1979. Joss Whedon's effort to create a WW feature were cold-shouldered by the studio suits until he finally left, went over to Marvel and wrote and directed THE AVENGERS, which made $1.5 billion. For 10 years, WB tried to jump the gun by producing a Justice League movie to introduce a DC cinematic universe without first introducing the individual characters; each attempt has fallen apart. I can't speak for the 2nd installment in the Nolan Batman flicks, which is the film on which that trilogy's reputation seems to rest, but the 1st and 3rd Nolan Batmans were godawful messes.

The majority of what you said is on point. Although I disagree with you about Batman Begins and even to a degree The Dark Knight rises. Batman Begins resurrected Batman and was a critical smash. It didn't blow the doors off the box office but word of mouth grew quickly as evident by the DVD sales at the time. Without Batman Begins you do not get The Dark Knight. The Dark Knight Rises has flaws i wont deny that. Although I think a big issue is it is coming after TDK. How do you top that movie? Batman' s most iconic villain backed up by a breath taking performance. Short answer you don't!

The issue with Superman is they tried to make him Batman. Dark and brooding fits Batman's character. That does not fit Superman. No one is saying it needs to be as lighthearted and cheese as the Donner era but he is suppose to be uplifting and inspiring. Its okay for Superman to have a little bit of cheesiness. Superman Returns are the mistake of being a sequel far too many years later. As much as I love the Dinner era of Superman it is over. Audiences have moved on.

Superman Returns felt like a poor imitation of the Donner era. Watching all the actors try and imitate their previous actor's counterparts made it difficult to take them as their own take on each character. Not terrible but a misguided and unnecessary film.

Batman Begins was the correct way you reboot something. It did a story of Batman that we hadn't seen before. Amazing Spider-man, Superman Returns and even Man of Steel make a similar mistake. They do things we have already seen so it in ways feels like a remaster and not a good one. We've seen Superman and Spiderman's origin. We have also already seen the Donner Superman. Look at Man of steel it is basically a modernized Superman 1 and 2 subtract Lex Luthor and change the tone. Instead of being lighthearted, uplifting and cheese it is dull and dreary.

@Tectash said:

The issue with Superman is they tried to make him Batman. Dark and brooding fits Batman's character. That does not fit Superman.

MAN OF STEEL has Superman just casually helping cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people while showing no concern for them at all; it would be just about impossible to overstate how profoundly disconnected this is from any actual iteration of Superman. Jonathan Kent tells Clark it may have been better to simply let his schoolmates die in a bus accident than risk their learning of his abilities. Later, Clark stands there like an idiot and allows his own father to be consumed by a tornado when saving him would have been comically easy.

The movie also broke the scales on the Moron Meter. It's just a bunch of explosions, awful video-game action and consequence-free disaster porn sprinkled with those sort of unconscionable moments. A Hollywood hack director being given a few hundred million dollars to take a shit all over a venerable American institution. That's the short version. The longer one is here.

Superman Returns are the mistake of being a sequel far too many years later. As much as I love the Dinner era of Superman it is over. Audiences have moved on.

I had a strange and entirely unexpected reaction to SUPERMAN RETURNS. John Byrne, of course, revised the bumbling, doofus nonentity Clark out of existence in the late '80s. All of the comic and screen versions of Superman after that had incorporated these changes, which are an improvement, and I reacted very badly to seeing Brandon Routh trying to do an imitation of Christopher Reeve's long-out-of-date Clark. It was sort of like someone making a Dracula movie and the guy playing the vampire is doing an impression of Bela Lugosi--it just didn't work at all for me.

Superman Returns felt like a poor imitation of the Donner era. Watching all the actors try and imitate their previous actor's counterparts made it difficult to take them as their own take on each character. Not terrible but a misguided and unnecessary film.

They repeated lines of dialogue and even entire scenes from Donner's film. Bryan Singer is a solid director but he was looking to do a love-letter to that earlier work when what was really called for was a fresh start. In his defense, he came into a project that was pretty seriously off in the ozone. There's a good documentary about SUPERMAN LIVES, the movie WB spent years trying to make and while a lot of the people behind that movie had some great ideas, the overall impression is one of a complete mess in the works--a disaster trying to happen.

Batman Begins was the correct way you reboot something.

BATMAN BEGINS didn't get much of anything right. It throws the backstory of the Batman in the trash for a new one that doesn't work, is horrendously edited and looks like three entirely different scripts Frankensteined together, the most prominent being a meaner version of a villain plot from the old Adam West Batman series. It isn't made by people looking to actively defecate on the source material (as is the case with MOS) but it's from people who don't understand that material and don't care. I can't speak for the second Nolan Batman but as for his other two, Burton's first BATMAN puts them both to shame.

I wholeheartedly agree about your Superman analysis. Thing is Man of Steel has no brain to it at all. Stupid producers thought the reason Superman Returns failed is because of the lack of action. No far more was wrong with it than that. So they hand it to a fourteen year old Zack Snyder and gave him a bunch of money. Not a surprise it turned into disaster porn.

Also I vastly disagree on Batman Begins. Only problem I ever had was the editing. Here is my issue why do you complain that Nolan doesn't care about the source material but you praise Burton's Batman film? Burton openly admitted he was not a big fan of the source material. Only comic he ever really read was the killing joke.

Batman's parents being killed by the Joker and him so willingly wiping out criminals is not the heart of what Batman is. Are there comics where he has killed yes but he evolved into a hero which does not kill so willingly. I grew up on the Burton Batman films I enjoy them.

Myself though I think Nolan did it better. Batman Begins was more critically successful than any Burton Batman film. Batman 1989 only beats it in terms of cultural impact not reception wise. I felt Burton's Batman was style over substance. I felt Nolan balanced style and story better than Burton.

Here is the thing. If Nolan gets flak for taking liberation with the source material why is Burton exempt?

How does it throw his back story in the trash? His parents being killed by Joe chill is accurate to the source material. Him being trained by a league of assassins is accurate. I'm not saying there isn't any liberation but he got Batman's back story far more accurate than Burton did.

@Tectash said:

Here is my issue why do you complain that Nolan doesn't care about the source material but you praise Burton's Batman film? Burton openly admitted he was not a big fan of the source material. Only comic he ever really read was the killing joke.

That's what he claimed later when he was trying to distance himself from comics. Only he knows why he'd do that. His first Batman was the Golden Age Batman, with some Frank Miller thrown in, and it was clear the people behind it were familiar with that material. In my view, Burton made a mistake in having the Joker be responsible for the murder of Bruce's parents; that's standard Hollywood thinking for how to strengthen a narrative. But it also doesn't substantially change the character's narrative either. He's still the same Batman.

Burton understood some things about the character and how to portray him on film. A big item: It's impossible to put across the dark-and-mysterious aspect of the Batman and the fear he intentionally induces if you follow him around every second of the movie. If you want him dark, mysterious and fear-inducing, you have to portray him in that way. Burton understood that the Batman is, as I've written elsewhere, "a blatantly romantic fantasy awash in heaping helpings of glorious expressionism." Nolan made a great deal of noise about wanting to make an uber-realistic Batman but even if he'd fully followed through on this--he didn't--this is fundamentally misguided as even a goal. And whereas Nolan completely abandoned the comic character, Burton understood it and got it right. There's a scene in Burton's BATMAN wherein Bruce is standing on a street-corner watching the Joker stage a demonstration that ends with the villain liquidating a bunch of mobsters. Bruce is so intent on taking in what's happening that a bullet rips right through his coat practically hitting him and he never flinches or even blinks--doesn't acknowledge it. It's a small moment but it's the single-most intense representation of the character we've had in a live-action movie. That's the Batman.

Burton's second bat-flick is, as a bat-flick, a terrible movie. It works as a Burton movie but not as a Batman movie.

Myself though I think Nolan did it better. Batman Begins was more critically successful than any Burton Batman film. Batman 1989 only beats it in terms of cultural impact not reception wise. I felt Burton's Batman was style over substance.

With the Batman, a great deal of the substance is style. The production-design of Burton's BATMAN is second to none. BATMAN BEGINS just shoots Chicago, and not even in any interesting ways.

How does it throw his back story in the trash?

I've written a pair of articles on Nolan's Batman over the years. The one you want, in which I go through a lot of this in more detail, is here.

That's what he claimed later when he was trying to distance himself from comics. Only he knows why he'd do that. His first Batman was the Golden Age Batman, with some Frank Miller thrown in, and it was clear the people behind it were familiar with that material. In my view, Burton made a mistake in having the Joker be responsible for the murder of Bruce's parents; that's standard Hollywood thinking for how to strengthen a narrative. But it also doesn't substantially change the character's narrative either. He's still the same Batman.

No in my book it changes the narrative quite a bit. It makes Batman's motivation for fighting crime a cliche Hollywood revenge story. Really Batman's motivation to fight crime goes much deeper than that. The other thing is Burton completely ignored Gordon's role entirely. Take Burton's Gordon out of his films and the movie does not change much. Gordon is an essential part in the entire Nolan Batman trilogy. Better representation of the character in that regard.

Burton understood some things about the character and how to portray him on film. A big item: It's impossible to put across the dark-and-mysterious aspect of the Batman and the fear he intentionally induces if you follow him around every second of the movie. If you want him dark, mysterious and fear-inducing, you have to portray him in that way. Burton understood that the Batman is, as I've written elsewhere, "a blatantly romantic fantasy awash in heaping helpings of glorious expressionism." Nolan made a great deal of noise about wanting to make an uber-realistic Batman but even if he'd fully followed through on this--he didn't--this is fundamentally misguided as even a goal. And whereas Nolan completely abandoned the comic character, Burton understood it and got it right. There's a scene in Burton's BATMAN wherein Bruce is standing on a street-corner watching the Joker stage a demonstration that ends with the villain liquidating a bunch of mobsters. Bruce is so intent on taking in what's happening that a bullet rips right through his coat practically hitting him and he never flinches or even blinks--doesn't acknowledge it. It's a small moment but it's the single-most intense representation of the character we've had in a live-action movie. That's the Batman.

Nolan wanted to make a Batman that people could believe existed in the real world. No matter which way you cut it Batman is a fantasy. You act as if he abandoned the core elements and he did not. Now is it captured in it's full element no but we have the core things there.

Batman fighting crime in a Batsuit using gadgets to take down criminals, Batman using a Batmobile , Doing detective work, Working closely with Gordon to solve crimes

I never took Nolan's Batman as it saying it is 100% based on realism. I took at as a film that is more realistic than other superhero movies. Key word there more not totally realistic.

Burton's second bat-flick is, as a bat-flick, a terrible movie. It works as a Burton movie but not as a Batman movie.

I liked Batman Returns but can agree that the first does the Batman character far more justice than Returns does.

With the Batman, a great deal of the substance is style. The production-design of Burton's BATMAN is second to none. BATMAN BEGINS just shoots Chicago, and not even in any interesting ways.

I know a big part of Batman is style. Which is why I said I thought Nolan did a better job at balancing style and substance where as I felt Burton relied much more on style. Burton's production design is great but Nolan's is not to be sneezed at either. The cinematography from Batman Begins is rather solid as it is in all of Nolan's Batman films. Batman Begins, The Prestige, The Dark Knight and Inception all had the same cinematographer. Wally Pfister received Oscar nominations for all of those films. I am not saying Oscars mean everything but when you get nominated consecutively that many times it is obvious you're doing something right.

How does it throw his back story in the trash?

I've written a pair of articles on Nolan's Batman over the years. The one you want, in which I go through a lot of this in more detail, is here.

I read your article. While you pose some interesting points I must be honest I can't take someone's opinion totally seriously when they wont even finish a film. In order for a critic to review a film they have to watch it in it's entirety. The fact that you said you have not seen The Dark Knight at all and did not even finish the Dark Knight Rises makes me wonder if you were open or even gave The Dark Knight Rises a chance. I did not like Man of Steel and I hated BVS dawn of Justice with a passion. Thing is though I watched both of those from start to finish. Yeah I get that you hated Batman Begins but in order for people to take your word seriously you need to finish the other films. Since you said they went out of their way to throw out the source material I provided some links to show that claim is not true.

http://gothamalleys.blogspot.com/2011/08/comic-book-references-in-movies-part-v.html

http://gothamalleys.blogspot.com/2011/08/comic-book-references-in-movies-part-vi.html

http://gothamalleys.blogspot.com/2012/08/comic-book-references-in-movies-part.html

If you want to know who I think gets Batman more accurate than anyone it has to go to Paul Dini. He combines every single element of Batman there is. The fantasy side of him is still there while still being dark and extremely psychological. Batman the Animated series and the Arkham games are absolutely fantastic. Whichever version prefer is fine I just think it is awesome we have so many good interpretations of the character. We Batman fans are spoiled honestly. I think each interpretation has it's pros and cons.

@jriddle73 said:

@Tectash said:

The issue with dc is they haven't taken their time to actually try and make a good film since the Nolan era.

It's bigger than that. Warner Brothers has a very long-term problem with simply not knowing how to do these sorts of flicks. It has persisted throughout several different regimes there for decades. We're 17 years into the major boom in comic book movie adaptations--it began with BLADE back in 1998--to which WB, which owns some of the most iconic superheroes ever created, has contributed almost nothing of any merit. Wonder Woman has been launched as a screen project perhaps half a dozen times since the '90s, every effort falling apart. With the exception of a proposed tv series from a few years ago that made it to pilot stage then failed, there hadn't been a live-action Wonder Woman since the last original episode of the Lynda Carter tv series aired in 1979. Joss Whedon's effort to create a WW feature were cold-shouldered by the studio suits until he finally left, went over to Marvel and wrote and directed THE AVENGERS, which made $1.5 billion. For 10 years, WB tried to jump the gun by producing a Justice League movie to introduce a DC cinematic universe without first introducing the individual characters; each attempt has fallen apart. I can't speak for the 2nd installment in the Nolan Batman flicks, which is the film on which that trilogy's reputation seems to rest, but the 1st and 3rd Nolan Batmans were godawful messes. Both GREEN LANTERN (2011) and JONAH HEX (2010) made it to the screen as utter clusterfucks. It's little-remembered now but GREEN LANTERN was supposed to be the beginning of the DCEU; this was abandoned after it flopped. Warner spent years developing then abandoning one Superman project after another around ideas so bad it's difficult to believe they were ever even seriously considered. Eventually, there emerged SUPERMAN RETURNS, which rejected the suggested radical revisions but had a raft of problems all its own. Intended to reboot the franchise, the film proved a dull and terribly misguided project that, after a disappointing reception, was also abandoned. Warner went back to some of those godawful ideas from prior revisionist projects and ground out the abomination that was MAN OF STEEL, which, among other things, tried to ape the Nolan Batflicks by adopting an inappropriately dark tone and turning Superman into a brooding anti-hero. The character, which had no more than superficial connections to any prior version of Superman, was dropped into a brainless, explosion-filled idiot-fest and, of course, Warner decided to use the film as the basis for their newest effort at a DC cinematic universe. It was reported that when WB executives watched BATMAN V. SUPERMAN, they thought they had a great movie on their hands. Don't know if that's true--they scheduled the movie in a traditional dead-zone instead of in the middle of Summer, which doesn't exactly bespeak confidence--but it sounds about right. On these projects, the executives at WB don't know WTF they're doing and pretty much never have.

Giving such a bland director like Zack Snyder the keys to the entire Dc universe is where they went wrong.

Definitely a major wrong turn, as was having no one on board who understood or cared about the material and then they scheduled so many movies in such a short period that there was no easy opportunity to course-correct. All of the behind-the-scenes reporting said Snyder would have been fired from JUSTICE LEAGUE after the poor reception of BATMAN V. SUPERMAN but production was already too far along to do so without risking harming BVS's box-office. Extensive studio meddling in SUICIDE SQUAD in the wake of BVS destroyed anything of merit that movie may have offered (not much, in my view--the take on the material was fundamentally misguided, a creative abortion). The Justice League project was originally going to be a two-parter directed by Snyder; WB canceled the second one. If reports are true about JUSTICE LEAGUE's budget, it will probably be the most expensive movie ever made and that was before any of the later work on it. The studio suits were so entirely unimpressed with the original that they went reshoot crazy. Reportedly, the reshoots were so extensive that they essentially remade the movie. And there's still another round of reshoots to come before its release later this year.

The production history of WONDER WOMAN is also troubled. As with most of the other projects, no one knew what to do with it. The suits hired five writers/writing teams. Not to work together on a script but to work on competing scripts--a first act from each, with the idea that the suits would choose what they liked best. The film was stuck with Zack Snyder's Wonder Woman, an horrific piece of miscasting. Michelle MacLaren ,the original director of the project, was run off of it because she wanted to do a large-scale epic, whereas the studio wanted to play it cheap and keep the budget to $100 million. After she left, she was smeared by an ugly whisper campaign. Patti Jenkins took the reins and the studio then opened its bank account; WW's initially-reported budget is already at $120 million and everyone seems pretty sure it's significantly more than that (it's gone through the nope-don't-like-it-let's-reshoot-it thing too).

Whatever the final budget--it certainly wouldn't have escalated into the $200 million range, for example--it would be almost impossible for the movie to fail at the box-office. Which is sort of the problem, really. If it's yet another bad movie like the other DCEU flicks, that's a recipe for diminishing returns.

I was just gonna say that; all of it.

You beat me to it.

@Tectash said:

No in my book it changes the narrative quite a bit. It makes Batman's motivation for fighting crime a cliche Hollywood revenge story.

The Batman's motive is revenge but he had no idea it was Jack Napier who had killed his parents; he only realizes that in the course of the movie. He went through a storyline with Joe Chill when he found him as an adult as well; the Burton alteration doesn't materially change anything. As far as he was concerned, that never-apprehended killer was Crime. It was Crime that killed his parents and it was Crime on which he vowed to make war. In the immediate aftermath of their murder, he devotes himself to this cause with an obsessive single-mindedness. By the time he's an adult, he's still just a man but he's more like superhuman in everything he's learned. He isn't Bruce Wayne. He's the Bat. Even before he becomes the Bat.

This is the mythical content of the character, the stuff from which it draws its power. The stuff that is entirely absent from Nolanbat, having been intentionally excised.

The Nolan character hasn't devoted himself to the cause. He hasn't spent years molding himself into a super-crime-fighter. He's just this whiny, emo guy who, right into his mid-20s, doesn't do anything. He doesn't become the bat because of what happened to his parents either; he doesn't really do it for any reason, just a sort of empty, unexplored altruism. There's no grand myth here, just a dull, made-for-tv movie-of-the-week.

The other thing is Burton completely ignored Gordon's role entirely.

He hasn't developed a relationship with Gordon yet, who is the older fellow from the Golden Age books. He leaves Gordon with the signal at the end.

Nolan wanted to make a Batman that people could believe existed in the real world. No matter which way you cut it Batman is a fantasy. You act as if he abandoned the core elements and he did not.

He did. Everything I've been describing is what makes the Batman such an interesting character. It's also what allowed him to get away with doing all kinds of insane things that are barely within the realm of human possibility; you buy it because that's all he's ever been--he's spent his entire life forging himself into that kind of weapon. The living avatar of vengeance and of justice. It sends a shiver down the spine. Whiny emo guy who spends a little time with some ninjas? Big deal.

Now is it captured in it's full element no but we have the core things there.

Batman fighting crime in a Batsuit using gadgets to take down criminals, Batman using a Batmobile , Doing detective work, Working closely with Gordon to solve crimes

He doesn't really do any detective work at all and most of the rest of this is just superficial stuff. The old Adam West Batman series did all of that as well

The cinematography from Batman Begins is rather solid as it is in all of Nolan's Batman films. Batman Begins, The Prestige, The Dark Knight and Inception all had the same cinematographer. Wally Pfister received Oscar nominations for all of those films. I am not saying Oscars mean everything but when you get nominated consecutively that many times it is obvious you're doing something right.

It means you know people and they like you. Pfister is definitely not the guy to throw at me. He's one of the most overrated cinematographers in the business; his work is flat and dull and he couldn't competently shoot an action sequence if the lives of his children depended on it; I haven't seen everything on which he's worked but he hasn't produced a single memorable image in any of the films I have seen. His reputation rests far more on that whole Nolan cult thing than on any sort of talent.

(In the spirit of full disclosure, I guess Is should confess I have some pretty strong feelings on both the matter of contemporary cinematography in general and the Academy Awards.)

I read your article. While you pose some interesting points I must be honest I can't take someone's opinion totally seriously when they wont even finish a film. In order for a critic to review a film they have to watch it in it's entirety.

I didn't write a review of THE DARK KNIGHT RISES.

The fact that you said you have not seen The Dark Knight at all and did not even finish the Dark Knight Rises makes me wonder if you were open or even gave The Dark Knight Rises a chance.

Because of BATMAN BEGINS, I had no interest in them and passed on them in real time. That's an indifference they earned; if a movie is lousy--and BEGINS certainly was--one tends to be entirely uninspired to see any sequels. I finally caught most of the third one on tv once. If anything, it's worse than BEGINS. When people praise that trilogy, they're really only talking about the 2nd one anyway. Maybe I'll see that one day. Nolan makes it worse for me; he isn't a talented or interesting director. For whatever reason, he attracts a particularly rabid cult but he doesn't earn that following.

I did not like Man of Steel and I hated BVS dawn of Justice with a passion. Thing is though I watched both of those from start to finish. Yeah I get that you hated Batman Begins but in order for people to take your word seriously you need to finish the other films.

If I ever decide to write about the others, I will.

Since you said they went out of their way to throw out the source material I provided some links to show that claim is not true.

http://gothamalleys.blogspot.com/2011/08/comic-book-references-in-movies-part-v.html

Only this first one of these is directly related to BEGINS and it doesn't really make much of a case for its premise. As I said before, BEGINS basically throws the source material in the trash while ripping off various elements of Miller's Batman and the Long Halloween. Most of the items the article lists that are outside that are utterly innocuous--basically finding something in the movie then scouring the comics to try to find something similar. Standard-issue cityscapes that one sees in literally every movie set in a city are attributed to the comics, Bruce dressed like a prole, which happened in Year One, is attributed to some other story, the hole covered with wooden planks, Bruce returning to Gotham, a woman thinking he's been partying, the look of Arkham (which actually isn't at all like its comic counterpart)--this is stuff that's only there to try to pad a list and make it look like the comics had far more influence than they did.

If you want to know who I think gets Batman more accurate than anyone it has to go to Paul Dini. He combines every single element of Batman there is. The fantasy side of him is still there while still being dark and extremely psychological.

I have a (very) few issues with the work of the animated gang too but MASK OF THE PHANTASM remains the definitive screen treatment of the character; nothing done live action has ever touched it or B:TAS. Those are ambitious, magnificent projects that ran with what Burton started in his first film and ended up turning in some of the best work ever done on the character in any medium. They're the opposite of the Nolan flicks though; they're neck-deep in the source material and not only honoring it and adapting it but expanding on it and making all sorts of positive contributions to the mythos (their reworking of Mr. Freeze is probably my own favorite).

We Batman fans are spoiled honestly. I think each interpretation has it's pros and cons.

I wouldn't necessarily say we're spoiled, because the Batman has been subjected to some pretty terrible indignities at times, but yeah, the great work featuring the character is damn-near bottomless. In the last few years, I've become particularly fond of some of the Elseworlds Batman projects. The dystopian vampire trilogy by Doug Moench and Kelley Jones (loved their regular work on the character). Howard Chaykin's red Batman (GREAT book!). Even the Russian Batman in Mark Millar's Red Son (which was one of the best Superman stories in ages).

@jriddle73 said:

@Tectash said:

No in my book it changes the narrative quite a bit. It makes Batman's motivation for fighting crime a cliche Hollywood revenge story.

The Batman's motive is revenge but he had no idea it was Jack Napier who had killed his parents; he only realizes that in the course of the movie. He went through a storyline with Joe Chill when he found him as an adult as well; the Burton alteration doesn't materially change anything. As far as he was concerned, that never-apprehended killer was Crime. It was Crime that killed his parents and it was Crime on which he vowed to make war. In the immediate aftermath of their murder, he devotes himself to this cause with an obsessive single-mindedness. By the time he's an adult, he's still just a man but he's more like superhuman in everything he's learned. He isn't Bruce Wayne. He's the Bat. Even before he becomes the Bat.

This is the mythical content of the character, the stuff from which it draws its power. The stuff that is entirely absent from Nolanbat, having been intentionally excised.

The Nolan character hasn't devoted himself to the cause. He hasn't spent years molding himself into a super-crime-fighter. He's just this whiny, emo guy who, right into his mid-20s, doesn't do anything. He doesn't become the bat because of what happened to his parents either; he doesn't really do it for any reason, just a sort of empty, unexplored altruism. There's no grand myth here, just a dull, made-for-tv movie-of-the-week.

Bruce was lost after his parents died. As anyone would be after their parents were brutally murdered. He was shown a path by a teacher and he then decided to do his own thing with those teachings. On the plane when he says as a man I am flesh and blood I can be ignored I can be destroyed but as a symbol I can be everlasting. That is straight out of the comic books. So he is a whiny emo because he was lost after his parents died? After being lost and finding his purpose he vowed war on crime. Seeing Bruce go through this training adds character development that the Burton films lacked. Want to know an issue the Burton movies have? The villain is more interesting than the hero is. In my book Nolan did a better job at balancing it. Making the villains interesting while we are invested in the hero's motivations.

The other thing is Burton completely ignored Gordon's role entirely.

He hasn't developed a relationship with Gordon yet, who is the older fellow from the Golden Age books. He leaves Gordon with the signal at the end.

He still did nothing with Gordon in Batman Returns.

Nolan wanted to make a Batman that people could believe existed in the real world. No matter which way you cut it Batman is a fantasy. You act as if he abandoned the core elements and he did not.

He did. Everything I've been describing is what makes the Batman such an interesting character. It's also what allowed him to get away with doing all kinds of insane things that are barely within the realm of human possibility; you buy it because that's all he's ever been--he's spent his entire life forging himself into that kind of weapon. The living avatar of vengeance and of justice. It sends a shiver down the spine. Whiny emo guy who spends a little time with some ninjas? Big deal.

How was Bruce whiny? You are doing a poor job at convincing me of that point. As I said earlier who wouldn't be lost after their parents were murdered? He was lost got over it and became Batman. Hardly would call that emo.

Now is it captured in it's full element no but we have the core things there.

Batman fighting crime in a Batsuit using gadgets to take down criminals, Batman using a Batmobile , Doing detective work, Working closely with Gordon to solve crimes

He doesn't really do any detective work at all and most of the rest of this is just superficial stuff. The old Adam West Batman series did all of that as well

No yes he did do detective work. Tracking down Flasso interrogating him and listening in on Crane's conversations. This led him to find out where the drugs were coming from. Which in turn led him to figure out that Crane was working with Ras Al Ghul.

The cinematography from Batman Begins is rather solid as it is in all of Nolan's Batman films. Batman Begins, The Prestige, The Dark Knight and Inception all had the same cinematographer. Wally Pfister received Oscar nominations for all of those films. I am not saying Oscars mean everything but when you get nominated consecutively that many times it is obvious you're doing something right.

It means you know people and they like you. Pfister is definitely not the guy to throw at me. He's one of the most overrated cinematographers in the business; his work is flat and dull and he couldn't competently shoot an action sequence if the lives of his children depended on it; I haven't seen everything on which he's worked but he hasn't produced a single memorable image in any of the films I have seen. His reputation rests far more on that whole Nolan cult thing than on any sort of talent.

I could buy that if he had been nominated once or even twice. I find it hard to believe someone got lucky four times consecutively for the same category. You could look at one nomination and go okay luck, 2nd okay luck, 3rd okay luck, 4th okay luck. Or he might know just a thing or two about cinematography. Nah lets go with luck.

(In the spirit of full disclosure, I guess Is should confess I have some pretty strong feelings on both the matter of contemporary cinematography in general and the Academy Awards.)

I have strong feelings on the academy awards as well. Plenty of times I have disagreed with the choices they have made. Fact is though I find the cinematography to be superior in Nolan's films over Burton's. Personally I do not think Batman 1989 aged that great. Superman the movie which came before it I think is a better film at the end of the day. It understands the character it is adapting far better than Burton did his. That is why the second one does not go off the rails as far as Batman Returns did. Superman 2 is not quite as good as the first but it still honors the character of Superman. That is why no Superman movie after the Donner films has managed to even come close in terms of critical reception. Donner's Superman has cultural impact as well as raving critical reception to back it. The only thing Burton's really has is cultural impact. critically it was surpassed by all of the Nolan Batman films. The reason I do not think it aged well is because it feels like a stage play rather than a film. Blade Runner which came years before it holds up far better than Batman 1989 does.

I read your article. While you pose some interesting points I must be honest I can't take someone's opinion totally seriously when they wont even finish a film. In order for a critic to review a film they have to watch it in it's entirety.

I didn't write a review of THE DARK KNIGHT RISES.

Fair enough but you can not chime in completely on The Dark Knight trilogy if you are not willing to watch the others.

The fact that you said you have not seen The Dark Knight at all and did not even finish the Dark Knight Rises makes me wonder if you were open or even gave The Dark Knight Rises a chance.

Because of BATMAN BEGINS, I had no interest in them and passed on them in real time. That's an indifference they earned; if a movie is lousy--and BEGINS certainly was--one tends to be entirely uninspired to see any sequels. I finally caught most of the third one on tv once. If anything, it's worse than BEGINS. When people praise that trilogy, they're really only talking about the 2nd one anyway. Maybe I'll see that one day. Nolan makes it worse for me; he isn't a talented or interesting director. For whatever reason, he attracts a particularly rabid cult but he doesn't earn that following.

I did not like Man of Steel. I still watched BVS Dawn of justice all the way through. Nolan is not a talented director in your eyes. That does not mean he is not talented in the eyes of others. Memento, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and Inception all were critical darlings. The Dark Knight Rises received good acclaim and even his movies which are not as highly acclaimed as those I listed still get decent reception. He has yet to have a critical flop on his hands in terms of directing. So when you say he has not earned a following do not act as if you speak for everyone else. I do not think people should harass or belittle others for not thinking he is good but we are entitled to think he is great. A movie or director does not have to get through you in order for it to be considered great. There are plenty of films or directors I do not like that others are head over heels for. I am not that into There Will Be Blood but I would never try and deny that it has a strong place in film history.

I did not like Man of Steel and I hated BVS dawn of Justice with a passion. Thing is though I watched both of those from start to finish. Yeah I get that you hated Batman Begins but in order for people to take your word seriously you need to finish the other films.

If I ever decide to write about the others, I will.

Which I doubt you will. The Dark Knight is almost a decade old. If you have not seen it by now I doubt you will ever see it.

Since you said they went out of their way to throw out the source material I provided some links to show that claim is not true.

http://gothamalleys.blogspot.com/2011/08/comic-book-references-in-movies-part-v.html

Only this first one of these is directly related to BEGINS and it doesn't really make much of a case for its premise. As I said before, BEGINS basically throws the source material in the trash while ripping off various elements of Miller's Batman and the Long Halloween. Most of the items the article lists that are outside that are utterly innocuous--basically finding something in the movie then scouring the comics to try to find something similar. Standard-issue cityscapes that one sees in literally every movie set in a city are attributed to the comics, Bruce dressed like a prole, which happened in Year One, is attributed to some other story, the hole covered with wooden planks, Bruce returning to Gotham, a woman thinking he's been partying, the look of Arkham (which actually isn't at all like its comic counterpart)--this is stuff that's only there to try to pad a list and make it look like the comics had far more influence than they did.

No not true. Those connections could not be more obvious. You just dislike the movie therefore you have to write it off. Nolan did not throw the material in the trash. If we are going that route then Burton did as well. I have seen all of Nolan's Batman films. I have seen all of Burton's Batman films. Returns completely threw away what he was going for in the first. Here is the reason. Burton in the first one had more studio execs involved. They were looking over his shoulder and demanded certain things be in the film. After the film was released and it was a massive hit the execs were like okay have at it buddy. Then he made Returns where he had much more creative freedom than before. And then we got Batman Returns... That shows me Burton did not care about the source material of Batman to begin with and has even admitted that himself.

If you want to know who I think gets Batman more accurate than anyone it has to go to Paul Dini. He combines every single element of Batman there is. The fantasy side of him is still there while still being dark and extremely psychological.

I have a (very) few issues with the work of the animated gang too but MASK OF THE PHANTASM remains the definitive screen treatment of the character; nothing done live action has ever touched it or B:TAS. Those are ambitious, magnificent projects that ran with what Burton started in his first film and ended up turning in some of the best work ever done on the character in any medium. They're the opposite of the Nolan flicks though; they're neck-deep in the source material and not only honoring it and adapting it but expanding on it and making all sorts of positive contributions to the mythos (their reworking of Mr. Freeze is probably my own favorite).

We can at least agree on Paul Dini. Keep in mind one thing though. Animation does not have the same restrictions a live action movie does. Liberation is not a bad thing if it is done well. Sometimes liberation can make certain things better than the source material. Mr Freeze being a prime example of that. Another case would for Zod in Donner's Superman. Zod before Terrence Stamp was a forgettable villain that no one really knew about. Terrence Stamp is what made that villain iconic. Quite obvious as every adaption of Zod has in some way channeled that form of Zod whether it be lines or origin story.

We Batman fans are spoiled honestly. I think each interpretation has it's pros and cons.

I wouldn't necessarily say we're spoiled, because the Batman has been subjected to some pretty terrible indignities at times, but yeah, the great work featuring the character is damn-near bottomless. In the last few years, I've become particularly fond of some of the Elseworlds Batman projects. The dystopian vampire trilogy by Doug Moench and Kelley Jones (loved their regular work on the character). Howard Chaykin's red Batman (GREAT book!). Even the Russian Batman in Mark Millar's Red Son (which was one of the best Superman stories in ages).

Oh there have been bad adaptions of the character but in my book he has been good in many eras. I like Burton's, Nolan's, Paul Dini's, Frank Miller's and Jeph Loeb's the most.

It looks like you're getting your wish.