The Batman (*SPOILERS*)

[KabutoRyder]

I give you folks who enjoyed this movie a lot of credit. For me, this is the most bored I've been watching a major superhero movie and glad I held out to see it on HBO Max.

Even with the ability to start and stop over multiple viewing attempts, I've nodded out 3 times thus far with 1:20 minutes to go! Between the dialogue, dark color schemes, the rain...everything about this movie is designed to put you out!

This was me bro. Fell asleep the first two times I tried to watch, finally had it on my second monitor screen at work and was able to get through it all. Not looking forward to another one especially with rehashing the Joker yet again.

[godisawesome]

Something I find kooky is when people say this movie is like SEVEN, directed by David Fincher. And when they say that, it's meant to be a good thing--that the movie aspires to be of that high quality.

Yet when JOKER was out, people said that it was like two Martin Scorsese movies--TAXI DRIVER and THE KING OF COMEDY--and when they said that, it was meant to be a bad thing--that Todd Phillips was ripping off Scorsese.

Either it's a good thing for younger directors to take inspiration from older directors or it isn't. Anyways, I don't agree with either comparison.

There are elements of JOKER that are like those Scorsese movies, but there's a lot about the look of the movie, its perspective and the performance of the actors that make it a distinct work of art. And the story it tells goes in a completely different direction. Ultimately, even for a grounded movie, Joker is a fantastical character beyond the types in those Scorsese movies.

The only thing that I find similar about THE BATMAN and SEVEN is they involve a serial killer who plants clues. Otherwise they are completely different movies set in different worlds. And personally, I don't like SEVEN--the woman in the movie isn't allowed to be a fully formed person and simply exists for the sake of the plot--and the whole movie leaves me feeling cold. So saying that THE BATMAN is like SEVEN doesn't make me think highly of it.

I think there might also be a bit of a two-sided disadvantage for Joker in public discourse because it's a tragedy, compared to The Batman still, despite everything else, being an escapist adventure.

A good chunk of comic fans are there for escapism and have a natural disinterest in too much tragedy, while at the same time some who view themselves as having "fine artistic taste" hold tragedies to needlessly high standards. (I say needless because I think those standards are hand-in-hand with a pretentious over-valuing of a limited genre of art, but that's just my opinion.)

I'd add that, if I had to guess, there's probably some critic out there who sees both films as taking inspiration from older directors, and views Joker as inherently of greater artistic value because they regard tragedy as of inherently greater value, full stop, but they're also not the type to communicate to "plebians" like ourselves.

[Immortal Weapon]

*shrug* I can see that I'm never going to succeed in making my point here. I think it's quite an intelligent point, but nobody cares and it would be useless trying to force it.

I can see why the Batman gets compared to Seven. It uses the same template as that movie, make it work within the context of a comic book movie and succeed at it. That video discusses how it made it work