Caltrops - Peter Molyneux's The Movies

Forum Overview :: Peter Molyneux's The Movies

by Fullofkittens 06/18/2005, 11:46pm PDT

I need clarification wrote:

Fullofkittens wrote:

Ray of Light wrote:

As a followup to the original Burton Batman, this movie would be fine. As a franchise-reviving punch, intended to make audiences forget the abortions that came between, it falls very very short.

How about if I only ever saw the Burton ones?

Much better than the Burton ones. That's not saying a whole lot, though. God, that guy's movies have the potential to be such MESSES.

Katie Holmes' acting (such as it is) is the weak point in an otherwise strong movie. The movie skates than very thin line between the inherent campiness of being about a comic book and exploiting the potential for great and REAL dramatic moments inbetween all the hooey. Plus, it's fun to watch.

Keeping it grounded was a great idea, and I'm much more impressed with Nolan now than I was with Memento.

Saw it tonight; it's hard to really make a fair comparison between Burton's and Nolan's versions. It would be like comparing The Terminator with Nightmare On Elm Street... they're both horror movies but one is neat-looking but campy and the other is grimy but thrilling.

I'd give it an 8, with the very first one getting a 6 (mostly on the strength of Jack Nicholson and on Danny Elfman's score.)

Positives:
-Good dialogue! - after seeing SW Ep. III, I was just overjoyed to hear a decently-written script read by good actors (except Katie Holmes and that Scarecrow guy.) Many good throwaway lines.
-wicked awesome Batmobile
-lots of good actors in support roles (Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine.)
-Christian Bale was maybe the best Batman. I liked Michael Keaton, too. But Bale was a hell of a lot more believable as an asskicker.
-Special FX: not overdone. The only fakey fx were the drug tripping, which can be fakey and not break with believability.
-if the animated series has anything to do with the comic book, they did a good job of portraying what an ineffectual wussy villain Scarecrow was.
-Did I mention the script was good? Man, what a difference that makes.

Negatives:
-as mentioned, the editor went to the Jason Bourne School of Broadcast Arts. During the fights and chases there was a cut probably every 12 frames. WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON? For all I know the way Batman takes on 7 guys at once is, he jumbles around their perspective so often that every time they throw a punch it comes flying back in their own faces.
-the Batman franchise has a long legacy of great soundtracks, from the duhnanananana score of the TV show to Danny Elfman's Greatest All Time Movie Score Hits Vol. 1 OST for the first Burton Batman. This score was a total nonstarter, brought to us by two of Hollywood's biggest purveyors of bombastic unmemorable film scores: Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard. Functional but completely forgettable.
-Katie Holmes has never been a great actress, but now she's also getting really weird looking. In the last "romantic" scene she kind of looked like a stroke victim, one side of her face "emoting" and the other one completely slack, eyes going in completely different directions.

Memento was good, too. At least it was the first time I saw it.