Meme status unlocked
Nov. 12th, 2010 02:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficIt's gone viral. Now I'm starting to picture YJ-era Kon/Cassie as AVPM Harry/Ginny. I also got reblogged by "Tits I Like." Finally, I have arrived.
So I was thinking about Batman movies. I'm sure we're all pretty excited about The Dark Knight Rises, even if the OCD sufferers among us wish they would change it to Batman Rises (SYMMETRY!!!). Lotta talk about who the villain's gonna be, what actresses will be in it, who Tom Hardy will play (my source says he's gonna to play himself. He's just gonna stay at Wayne Manor, talking about how much Star Trek: Nemesis sucked. "It was supposed to be my big break, but it broke me!").
A lot of people want to see Catwoman. And that makes sense, she's kind of the female lead of the franchise, plus she seems one of the characters best suited to Nolan's creative vision. Thief/prostitute who becomes a vigilante? Wears a catsuit and goggles? There's not that much there you have to tone down. Plus, a lot of fans want to see her redeemed from the eregiously shitty Halle Berry incarnation and the Michelle Phfeiffer version, which was good, but not really square with what the character has become. Sort of like Lex Luthor being a kook running a real estate scam instead of a captain of industry who opposes Superman out of deluded humanism.
Plus, it's been two movies. Batman needs to get laid already. The guy's spent, what, three hours of screentime either trying to get with Maggie Gyllenhall or wishing he had?
No offense, but I think Jake Gyllenhall has more attractive features. I'm just saying I can see where Heath Ledger was coming from there.
Some people say Julia Madison will be the female lead, to which everyone else went "who?" At least Vicki Vale had that "I'm going on a DATE with Bruce WAYNE" thing going for her.
Talia al Ghul has the whole bookend thing going for her, but she works best torn between Batman and her father. As a villain in her own right, it'd be hard not to see her as Ra's with less facial hair, or as irritatingly ineffectual. Just kill him or don't, lady. And bringing back Ra's would be pretty comic book-y for Nolan. I know, I know, Lazarus Pit, but hell, why not reveal that Two-Face was just in a coma while you're at it? And that Rachel survived, but was horribly scarred and now she's Catwoman?
The Riddler, I thought would've worked great. I liked the idea someone had about Edward Ngyma as a brilliant detective who becomes obsessed with capturing the Batman, to the point of creating a Zodiac killer alter ego (the Riddler -- throw in some of his Arkham Asylum characterization of killing the stupid and a few deadly "riddles" to be solved, bam, done. And that's the last time Saw should have any influence on the Batman franchise.)
An unpopular stance to take, I know.
But apparently he's out. I guess green just isn't fashionable this year.
If you want TDK to have any impact at all, you can't have Batman being an outlaw's entire impact being Commissioner Gordon going "right, capture Batman, I'll get right on that." So one of the ideas floating around is an operative sent in to take Batman down, either by the government or Gotham's own elite. Deathstroke and Deadshot's names were thrown around. Now, Deathstroke is too much of a Teen Titans villain for me to want to see him fight Bats, but Deadshot would work just fine. You can't tell me Nolan couldn't do anything contrasting his deathwish with Batman's broken-down, resigned-to-fight-crime status.
On the downside, is even a really cool mask excuse enough to cover up Tom Hardy's faaaace?
Then of course you have the longshots. Right along with the Julia Madison rumors (I still don't know who that is), you have Clayface. Now, even in his most low-key characterization, he's a guy who touches people and turns them into mud. I really don't see him working after "guy with scars" and "guy with dramatic Irish brogue". I suppose you could take him even lower and make him an out-of-work actor who's good with make-up, but I don't see him giving Batman much trouble, unless he's trained raptors to kill anyone who can't perform a soliliquy.
Then there's Mr. Freeze. A perfectly fine character, one that would even work well with the atmosphere Nolan's created, but unfortunately he's just too out-there. Get rid of the ice-cannon, the suit, the "science experiment gone wrong" origin and what have you got? A guy with a stupid last name.
By the same token you have Poison Ivy. She's been amped up in recent years to keep up with Batman becoming the God of Kung-fu, to the point of being able to sodomize Gotham with redwood-penises if it struck her fancy, but tone her down to an ecoterrorist with sex pollen and poison lipstick, that works. Still, not a lot of excitement there.
You'd think a bisexual redhead who's into tentacle sex would have more people wanting to see her on screen.
Given Nolan's tendencies to have a Big Bad (Ra's, the Joker) and a secondary threat (Scarecrow, Two-Face), we should probably consider that there'll be one of those here. If the Big Bad is going to be some law and order type gunning for Batman, then there'll be a crook he's trying to catch at the same time. If there's a criminal mastermind he's going after, then maybe Bullock and Renee Montoya will be causing him trouble.
That is, if America is finally ready for a fat guy and a hot chick to be paired up on-screen.
So it's likely there'll be an antagonist who doesn't have to carry the whole movie, but just piss Batman off while he's trying to do his thing. This would seem to be where most people would like to see Catwoman, not as the villain in a movie which hinges on Batman stopping her from... stealing something from rich people. If he fails, God help their insurance premiums.
For people who want all that Joker-y chaos without the ruminations on their own mortality that would come from recasting the Joker, there's Harley Quinn. As much as people say she's useless without the Joker, I can't imagine their dynamic flying with Nolan. I'm betting Heath Ledger didn't get many notes saying "Could you try to incorporate some whoopie cushions into your musings on the nature of chaos?"
But have Harleen Quinzel driven mad by the Joker, Hannibal Lecter style, and then putting on clown make-up to carry out his orders on the outside? Just the kind of thing to kick the main plot up a notch.
C'mon, ladies, it's the dudes' turn to be irrationally aroused by an attractive person in pancake make-up killing people.
Then you have the ones that you can see working, but aren't really exciting. There's Hush, who has a grudge against Bruce Wayne that borders on soap opera. As a boy, he tried to kill his parents, but Bruce's father saved his father's life, so he swore revenge on Wayne, figured out he was Batman, corralled all his enemies against him, and got Clayface to pretend to be Jason Todd risen from the dead but the real Jason Todd had also risen from the dead and he got in on it for a little while... Perhaps we should've rethought this when it turned out his idea of a costume was Band-Aids.
Then there's Black Mask. He owned a cosmetics company (because a villain in the make-up industry worked so well for Catwoman) but then mismanaged it to the point where Bruce Wayne had to step in and save him. He swore revenge... sorta like we do when a friend helps us move.
"This is for lending me that twenty when I forgot my PIN number!"
And so he turned to crime, which is apparently a major career path in Gotham. Someone needs to have a talk with those guidance counselors. Somehow, TAKING OVER ALL THE CRIME IN GOTHAM CITY turned out to be easier than selling make-up. He formed the False Face Society, with the gimmick that his men had to wear masks to commit crimes. And if that has to be a rule, you can tell where Bruce got his "superstitious, cowardly lot" jive from. Realizing that looking like the Red Skull doing a minstrel show wasn't much of a gimmick, the Black Mask was reinvented as a crime lord who graphically tortured his enemies. Also, he was dropped on his head as a baby. And attacked by a raccoon as a child. Basically, it's easiest to take him seriously as a villain if you're really, really stupid or Dan Didio.
They're both generic crime lord characters with no name recognition, a lame gimmick, and a personal grudge against Bruce Wayne. If that's what Nolan is looking for in a villain, the Penguin is a much better choice, and giving him a reason to hate Christian Bale isn't that hard.
Not that hard at all.
Killer Croc isn't in any way a Big Bad, but c'mon, he's a really strong douchebag with a skin condition. He can work. Bane uses really awesome steroids. I don't see what the problem is there, so long as you don't show him eating a pill and then Hulking out. It's the kind of pseudoscience that should work fine. The idea of him busting everyone out of Arkham Asylum to weaken Batman to the point of defeat? Just the kind of spectacle you'd expect from a trilogy ender (How to explain the Joker's absence? Just say he stayed in his cell. Brrrr...). Get Clifton Collins Jr. to bulk up, bring back Scarecrow as one of the escapees, the stuff writes itself.
Of course, it's a bit pointless to discuss villains when clearly whoever's chosen is going to fit to Nolan's theme rather than the other way around. The Joker was inevitable, and Ra's al Ghul was pretty intuitive. Catwoman is the next big part of the Batman universe that Nolan hasn't filled out yet, but like I said, it's hard to see her carrying a movie all by herself. Whoever's next isn't going to be there because he's popular.
No matter how well that worked out for Spider-Man 3.
Thematically, what I'd like to see is Batman coming full circle. He's become Batman, he's resigned himself to always being Batman, now it's time for him to make peace with that. End the trilogy on a note of hope, that even though he can never win, there's a victory just in fighting. And that means Dick Grayson.
Not Robin. Let's face it, most audiences don't want to see a little kid in short-shorts beating up criminals. But just Dick being orphaned, Bruce adopting him, and making the transition from traumatized orphan to father figure. Plus killing the Graysons is a great way to upp the stakes emotionally without fridging someone Bruce cares about. You can even imply Dick will become Robin at the end, after a lot of training and growing up.
Okay, then Nolan's done with the franchise. So let the series rest for a while, do a sort of time jump with a Teen Titans movie showing a grown-up Dick (I'm going to get some weird Google hits from that) going from Robin to Nightwing. Get a new director to go in and do Batman in a way that's a bit more fantastical. Not all out Tim Burton, more... Matthew Vaughn. There are lots of great villains that just don't work inside Nolan's universe, and we can't just turn all of them into a guy in a leather trenchcoat. First movie, Bruce meets Jason, tries to turn him into Robin, but he's a little shit and he dies. I know A Death In The Family wasn't that hot shit, storytelling wise...
You can't tell me the president of Iran would make the Joker his U.N. ambassador. What next, would he deny the Holocaust?
But dropping a dead Robin into some conflict would really give it an edge. Next movie, Tim Drake, movie after that, Under The Hood (the animated movie had a much better explanation for Jason's return than the comics, one that would work well with Talia al Ghul as a femme fatale playing everyone against each other). Hell, have Jason kill Tim's father, that would be much better than Identity Crisis. You've got yourself a great little trilogy which, yeah, would be centered around the Batman-Robin relationship, but after three movies, you'd need something to shake Batman up a bit. There's all this flawed material in the comics that's full of potential, maybe it just needs a little hindsight to turn into a classic.
Anyway, never going to happen, but I'd watch it.
So I was thinking about Batman movies. I'm sure we're all pretty excited about The Dark Knight Rises, even if the OCD sufferers among us wish they would change it to Batman Rises (SYMMETRY!!!). Lotta talk about who the villain's gonna be, what actresses will be in it, who Tom Hardy will play (my source says he's gonna to play himself. He's just gonna stay at Wayne Manor, talking about how much Star Trek: Nemesis sucked. "It was supposed to be my big break, but it broke me!").
A lot of people want to see Catwoman. And that makes sense, she's kind of the female lead of the franchise, plus she seems one of the characters best suited to Nolan's creative vision. Thief/prostitute who becomes a vigilante? Wears a catsuit and goggles? There's not that much there you have to tone down. Plus, a lot of fans want to see her redeemed from the eregiously shitty Halle Berry incarnation and the Michelle Phfeiffer version, which was good, but not really square with what the character has become. Sort of like Lex Luthor being a kook running a real estate scam instead of a captain of industry who opposes Superman out of deluded humanism.
Plus, it's been two movies. Batman needs to get laid already. The guy's spent, what, three hours of screentime either trying to get with Maggie Gyllenhall or wishing he had?
No offense, but I think Jake Gyllenhall has more attractive features. I'm just saying I can see where Heath Ledger was coming from there.
Some people say Julia Madison will be the female lead, to which everyone else went "who?" At least Vicki Vale had that "I'm going on a DATE with Bruce WAYNE" thing going for her.
Talia al Ghul has the whole bookend thing going for her, but she works best torn between Batman and her father. As a villain in her own right, it'd be hard not to see her as Ra's with less facial hair, or as irritatingly ineffectual. Just kill him or don't, lady. And bringing back Ra's would be pretty comic book-y for Nolan. I know, I know, Lazarus Pit, but hell, why not reveal that Two-Face was just in a coma while you're at it? And that Rachel survived, but was horribly scarred and now she's Catwoman?
The Riddler, I thought would've worked great. I liked the idea someone had about Edward Ngyma as a brilliant detective who becomes obsessed with capturing the Batman, to the point of creating a Zodiac killer alter ego (the Riddler -- throw in some of his Arkham Asylum characterization of killing the stupid and a few deadly "riddles" to be solved, bam, done. And that's the last time Saw should have any influence on the Batman franchise.)
An unpopular stance to take, I know.
But apparently he's out. I guess green just isn't fashionable this year.
If you want TDK to have any impact at all, you can't have Batman being an outlaw's entire impact being Commissioner Gordon going "right, capture Batman, I'll get right on that." So one of the ideas floating around is an operative sent in to take Batman down, either by the government or Gotham's own elite. Deathstroke and Deadshot's names were thrown around. Now, Deathstroke is too much of a Teen Titans villain for me to want to see him fight Bats, but Deadshot would work just fine. You can't tell me Nolan couldn't do anything contrasting his deathwish with Batman's broken-down, resigned-to-fight-crime status.
On the downside, is even a really cool mask excuse enough to cover up Tom Hardy's faaaace?
Then of course you have the longshots. Right along with the Julia Madison rumors (I still don't know who that is), you have Clayface. Now, even in his most low-key characterization, he's a guy who touches people and turns them into mud. I really don't see him working after "guy with scars" and "guy with dramatic Irish brogue". I suppose you could take him even lower and make him an out-of-work actor who's good with make-up, but I don't see him giving Batman much trouble, unless he's trained raptors to kill anyone who can't perform a soliliquy.
Then there's Mr. Freeze. A perfectly fine character, one that would even work well with the atmosphere Nolan's created, but unfortunately he's just too out-there. Get rid of the ice-cannon, the suit, the "science experiment gone wrong" origin and what have you got? A guy with a stupid last name.
By the same token you have Poison Ivy. She's been amped up in recent years to keep up with Batman becoming the God of Kung-fu, to the point of being able to sodomize Gotham with redwood-penises if it struck her fancy, but tone her down to an ecoterrorist with sex pollen and poison lipstick, that works. Still, not a lot of excitement there.
You'd think a bisexual redhead who's into tentacle sex would have more people wanting to see her on screen.
Given Nolan's tendencies to have a Big Bad (Ra's, the Joker) and a secondary threat (Scarecrow, Two-Face), we should probably consider that there'll be one of those here. If the Big Bad is going to be some law and order type gunning for Batman, then there'll be a crook he's trying to catch at the same time. If there's a criminal mastermind he's going after, then maybe Bullock and Renee Montoya will be causing him trouble.
That is, if America is finally ready for a fat guy and a hot chick to be paired up on-screen.
So it's likely there'll be an antagonist who doesn't have to carry the whole movie, but just piss Batman off while he's trying to do his thing. This would seem to be where most people would like to see Catwoman, not as the villain in a movie which hinges on Batman stopping her from... stealing something from rich people. If he fails, God help their insurance premiums.
For people who want all that Joker-y chaos without the ruminations on their own mortality that would come from recasting the Joker, there's Harley Quinn. As much as people say she's useless without the Joker, I can't imagine their dynamic flying with Nolan. I'm betting Heath Ledger didn't get many notes saying "Could you try to incorporate some whoopie cushions into your musings on the nature of chaos?"
But have Harleen Quinzel driven mad by the Joker, Hannibal Lecter style, and then putting on clown make-up to carry out his orders on the outside? Just the kind of thing to kick the main plot up a notch.
C'mon, ladies, it's the dudes' turn to be irrationally aroused by an attractive person in pancake make-up killing people.
Then you have the ones that you can see working, but aren't really exciting. There's Hush, who has a grudge against Bruce Wayne that borders on soap opera. As a boy, he tried to kill his parents, but Bruce's father saved his father's life, so he swore revenge on Wayne, figured out he was Batman, corralled all his enemies against him, and got Clayface to pretend to be Jason Todd risen from the dead but the real Jason Todd had also risen from the dead and he got in on it for a little while... Perhaps we should've rethought this when it turned out his idea of a costume was Band-Aids.
Then there's Black Mask. He owned a cosmetics company (because a villain in the make-up industry worked so well for Catwoman) but then mismanaged it to the point where Bruce Wayne had to step in and save him. He swore revenge... sorta like we do when a friend helps us move.
"This is for lending me that twenty when I forgot my PIN number!"
And so he turned to crime, which is apparently a major career path in Gotham. Someone needs to have a talk with those guidance counselors. Somehow, TAKING OVER ALL THE CRIME IN GOTHAM CITY turned out to be easier than selling make-up. He formed the False Face Society, with the gimmick that his men had to wear masks to commit crimes. And if that has to be a rule, you can tell where Bruce got his "superstitious, cowardly lot" jive from. Realizing that looking like the Red Skull doing a minstrel show wasn't much of a gimmick, the Black Mask was reinvented as a crime lord who graphically tortured his enemies. Also, he was dropped on his head as a baby. And attacked by a raccoon as a child. Basically, it's easiest to take him seriously as a villain if you're really, really stupid or Dan Didio.
They're both generic crime lord characters with no name recognition, a lame gimmick, and a personal grudge against Bruce Wayne. If that's what Nolan is looking for in a villain, the Penguin is a much better choice, and giving him a reason to hate Christian Bale isn't that hard.
Not that hard at all.
Killer Croc isn't in any way a Big Bad, but c'mon, he's a really strong douchebag with a skin condition. He can work. Bane uses really awesome steroids. I don't see what the problem is there, so long as you don't show him eating a pill and then Hulking out. It's the kind of pseudoscience that should work fine. The idea of him busting everyone out of Arkham Asylum to weaken Batman to the point of defeat? Just the kind of spectacle you'd expect from a trilogy ender (How to explain the Joker's absence? Just say he stayed in his cell. Brrrr...). Get Clifton Collins Jr. to bulk up, bring back Scarecrow as one of the escapees, the stuff writes itself.
Of course, it's a bit pointless to discuss villains when clearly whoever's chosen is going to fit to Nolan's theme rather than the other way around. The Joker was inevitable, and Ra's al Ghul was pretty intuitive. Catwoman is the next big part of the Batman universe that Nolan hasn't filled out yet, but like I said, it's hard to see her carrying a movie all by herself. Whoever's next isn't going to be there because he's popular.
No matter how well that worked out for Spider-Man 3.
Thematically, what I'd like to see is Batman coming full circle. He's become Batman, he's resigned himself to always being Batman, now it's time for him to make peace with that. End the trilogy on a note of hope, that even though he can never win, there's a victory just in fighting. And that means Dick Grayson.
Not Robin. Let's face it, most audiences don't want to see a little kid in short-shorts beating up criminals. But just Dick being orphaned, Bruce adopting him, and making the transition from traumatized orphan to father figure. Plus killing the Graysons is a great way to upp the stakes emotionally without fridging someone Bruce cares about. You can even imply Dick will become Robin at the end, after a lot of training and growing up.
Okay, then Nolan's done with the franchise. So let the series rest for a while, do a sort of time jump with a Teen Titans movie showing a grown-up Dick (I'm going to get some weird Google hits from that) going from Robin to Nightwing. Get a new director to go in and do Batman in a way that's a bit more fantastical. Not all out Tim Burton, more... Matthew Vaughn. There are lots of great villains that just don't work inside Nolan's universe, and we can't just turn all of them into a guy in a leather trenchcoat. First movie, Bruce meets Jason, tries to turn him into Robin, but he's a little shit and he dies. I know A Death In The Family wasn't that hot shit, storytelling wise...
You can't tell me the president of Iran would make the Joker his U.N. ambassador. What next, would he deny the Holocaust?
But dropping a dead Robin into some conflict would really give it an edge. Next movie, Tim Drake, movie after that, Under The Hood (the animated movie had a much better explanation for Jason's return than the comics, one that would work well with Talia al Ghul as a femme fatale playing everyone against each other). Hell, have Jason kill Tim's father, that would be much better than Identity Crisis. You've got yourself a great little trilogy which, yeah, would be centered around the Batman-Robin relationship, but after three movies, you'd need something to shake Batman up a bit. There's all this flawed material in the comics that's full of potential, maybe it just needs a little hindsight to turn into a classic.
Anyway, never going to happen, but I'd watch it.
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no subject
Date: 2010-11-12 10:10 pm (UTC)There are lots of great villains that just don't work inside Nolan's universe, and we can't just turn all of them into a guy in a leather trenchcoat.
Nolan's baddies had suits. Sure you're not thinking of Frank Miller's "The Spirit"?
But apparently he's out. I guess green just isn't fashionable this year.
I don't see what would've been so hard about putting Matt Bomer in a suit with a green hat. He's not that far off from the Riddler on White Collar.
Deadshot
Already used in Gotham Knights, which is dubiously canon, but I don't think Nolan would override that. Unless he shows up and mentions meeting Bats before. It sounds like the usual Noodle Incident joke to anyone who hasn't watched GK.
Killer Croc isn't in any way a Big Bad, but c'mon, he's a really strong douchebag with a skin condition. He can work.
Yeah, that's what GK did. Cannibalistic serial killer, no less. Tried to eat Batman, hasn't been seen since. Since he was hopped up on Fear Toxin, he likely won't remember Batman, unless you have him make a creepy "I remember your smell. You tasted good." bit.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-12 11:58 pm (UTC)And I maintain that Michael Emerson would be the cat's tits as Riddler.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-12 10:13 pm (UTC)Actually, IIRC, that was all right in Black Mask's original origin (yes, awkward turn of phrase), which I remember reading as a kid, because it advertised itself as the debut of the Black Mask, and I've not seen any earlier stories about him.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-12 11:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 12:02 am (UTC)As an adult, I reread it and found myself continually tripping over all the reasons why it was jaw-droppingly idiotic, and yet, as a little kid, it was haunting as hell.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 12:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 12:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 12:35 am (UTC)