Jim wrote:The DC Universe is not real good at the credible disguises. Superman's disguise was a pair of regular glasses. A lot of their hero types just wore small around-the-eyes mask... no better than sunglasses...
I always wanted that scene in Smallville where Clark was messing around and put on a pair of somebody's glasses, just to try them out for fun, and then Chloe came in and went "Who are you?" And then when he took them off she went "Oh, Clark! I didn't recognise you with those on..."
That would have been funny as hell.
Anyway. I just rewatched Dark Knight for the first time since it came out, and I actually enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. After I first watched it I found that the flaws just nagged at me more and more as I thought about the film - basically I thought they squandered the level of realism they had built up in the second movie. Bane's plot to hold a whole city to ransom as some sort of Marxist overlord for months on end with a fusion reactor whose characteristics are entirely plot driven... it's all so cartoony and silly compared to the Joker's "Shoot people and blow stuff up" approach to mayhem. It really bugged me, first time around. But this time, I dunno... I still think that's an issue, but it just didn't bug me nearly as much as I remembered it doing before.
And I still do really appreciate what they have done with Batman/Bruce in these films. Previously the Batman movies have tended to just give us, well, Batman, doing Batman stuff. But there are three pretty distinct Batmans in these films; the first showing Bruce gradually feel his way into what he wanted Batman to be, and what Batman needed to be to be able to operate at all. "Young Batman", if you will. The second a middle aged Batman, one willing to compromise on some of the youthful integrity and honor and really get dirty in the process of saving the city. But I think I actually like the Rises Batman most of all. The old man Batman, struggling to deal with the physical and emotional legacy of all the things he's done and sacrificed. You can see the sheer
cost of the last two films weighing down on him physically and mentally. I found that both very interesting to watch in and of itself, but also thought it was a very nice tip of the hat to the previous films. So often sequels are just more of the same - as Neil Gaiman put it "the public know what sequels are about 'we liked that thing you did, and we'd like another one of those, please.'" But these films really aren't just "three stories about Batman", they really do feel like three chapters of one story. And most especially Bruce and Batman both feel like one guy seen in three very different phases of his life. And I liked that, a lot.
I still don't think Rises is as good as Dark Knight, but it's gone up quite significantly in my estimation.
Give a man a fire, and you keep him warm for a day. SET a man on fire, and you will keep him warm for the rest of his life...
