LMP
Blue Crack Supplier
I've been thinking a lot about Batman lately, and think that this topic is too expansive to try and fit into the Random thread. So if anyone has any thoughts or opinions regarding the Batman comics, movies, or TV shows, let's talk about them here.
Ported over from the Grammy thread derail:
I'm judging it from a performance perspective, even though the real-life circumstances do play into it in a significant amount. The Penguin's story is the dominant one of Returns, akin to Harvey Dent in TDK, and his origin/characterization is just as morphed as The Joker's in TDK as well, if not moreso. The realism in the Nolan series works for those particular set of films, but what makes it work is the attention to the central ideas of the characters, regardless of any need to follow the previous origins exactly.
My idea of Batman falls more in line with the Animated Series and any comic that may enforce that, since there is a focus on realistic dramatic arcs (Hell, it reinvented a lot of the more extravagant characters, like Mr. Freeze for instance) in a hyper-realistic setting. But that's just me and my friends from Burma.
Ported over from the Grammy thread derail:
Yeah, he's the villain.
Speaking of DeVito, it's baffling to me why no one puts his performance as The Penguin in Returns on a similar level to Heath Ledger's as The Joker. It's just as transformative, if not more so, and his character has a real tragic and dramatic arc that's more demanding, and he nails it. Returns is a great film, but a terrible Batman movie, whereas TDK is both, and Ledger's premature death coupled with that performance sealed it as near-legendary, which it should be, but it's a shame DeVito's Penguin and to a somewhat lesser extent, Eckhart's Two-Face, get pushed to the side.
/Batman derail
I can get behind all that.
Well, having a great film behind the character helps. Having the death story of Ledger helps too. And the Peguin seemed a little more forced than the Joker, especially considering Ledger's Joker was the more "realistic" one compared to Nicholson's "fell into a chemical vat" Joker. A lot of circumstance went into it that shouldn't influence how we judge the performances, but I wouldn't say it's baffling.
I'm judging it from a performance perspective, even though the real-life circumstances do play into it in a significant amount. The Penguin's story is the dominant one of Returns, akin to Harvey Dent in TDK, and his origin/characterization is just as morphed as The Joker's in TDK as well, if not moreso. The realism in the Nolan series works for those particular set of films, but what makes it work is the attention to the central ideas of the characters, regardless of any need to follow the previous origins exactly.
My idea of Batman falls more in line with the Animated Series and any comic that may enforce that, since there is a focus on realistic dramatic arcs (Hell, it reinvented a lot of the more extravagant characters, like Mr. Freeze for instance) in a hyper-realistic setting. But that's just me and my friends from Burma.