ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

My goodness gracious, the on screen version of the Caped Crusader has certainly come a long way in the last 70 years. He started out as low-budget serial in the 1940s, with a costume that couldn't be taken seriously and stories suitable only for small children.

In the 1960s he was made to look silly on purpose so that the laughs would be intentional. Fans of Batman comics and superheroes in general cringed at the insult. In the 1970s, TV stations like WTBS channel 17 in Atlanta (yes, that TBS) showed Batman and Superman back-to-back in the afternoons.

In 1989 Tim Burton nudged the pendulum towards the serious side with "Batman", but he wisely concocted a recipe comprised of part drama and part campy humor. The public ate it up.

Ah, but England swings like a pendulum do, and so did the cinematic pendulum of Batman. The movies that followed bore an increasing resemblance to the TV series, right down to the tilted camera and the casting of comic actors, like Jim Carrey as the Riddler, imitating Frank Gorshin's performance perfectly.

Not until the 21st Century planted its feet firmly on the ground and marched along for half a decade did we finally get a version of this famous superhero that didn't elbow us in the ribs so often we got bruises from armpits to hips.

But the pendulum swung so far back towards the serious side that Heath Ledger's health problems were aggravated by the intensity of his role as the Joker, and the film itself was a bit too dark for my taste.

"Batman vs Superman" should be a real interesting experience.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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Hey, let's talk about the music in this version of Batman. How did you like it?

I thought it sucked. Here's why.

Listen to this suite of Danny Elfman's music for the first Tim Burton version of Batman, and actually count the number of notes in the main theme. Seriously. Just the part you could hum and have it recognized by a fellow fan.



There's five in the group, Well, five notes and then variations on the five, and then a few more notes with a key change or two, and then it gets complicated and dynamic, and it rocks your soul. Great stuff.

Now listen to The Dark Knight theme.



How many notes did you hear? I mean after all that heavy percussion that sounds like a washing machine on spin cycle when it's out of balance, and after the opening part that slams around for a while trying to sound real forceful and serious.

Through all that, there's nothing you could hum as a recognizable theme until finally it settles down to . . . two notes.

Two notes that repeat, endlessly.

I mean, one less note and it would be a damn fog horn! Never even a key change, something Danny Elfman employed masterfully in his theme. The Dark Knight theme just sounds like this:

Daaaaaaa — DAAAAAAAAAAAAAA . . . .

Daaaaaaa — DAAAAAAAAAAAAAA . . . .

Daaaaaaa — DAAAAAAAAAAAAAA . . . .

That's it. The most boring superhero theme in this universe and several others, especially the tone deaf ones.

I certainly hope Batman versus Superman has music that actually enhances the action, because we know there's going to be LOTS of action, and if all we get is an orchestration trying to play louder than the sound effects, the movie will be half as much fun as it could have been.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Robert (Butch) Day]

[kolchak]

I judge a movie by how much I have to fast forward, and I don't have to FF this one much.

Hypnotic opening scene. The eerie buzzing noise was used by the group 'Yo la Tengo' for the song 'Everyday'. (Great piece of music by the way).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BngcqnVurnc

William Fichtner played the bank official. He's really good in everything he does.

This is one of my favorite movies. Ledger totally deserved the Oscar.
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"God is not worried about the 21st Century. He knew it was coming." T.Shawyer

[Bud Brewster]

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Despite my lack of enthusiasm for this movie (and all the recent Batman movies, in fact), there are a few interesting IMDB trivia items I can share.

With 239 trivia items to chose from, I came up with three good ones — although I didn't read all of them.

I've combined the first two trivia items below because they're related, and I broke up the large blocks of text in both items into paragraphs, simply because good writing never inflicts large blocks of text on the reader. Readers need periodic breaks to think about the separate concepts they've read!

Writers call this "cadence".

Good writing presents a big paragraph on a complex concept, followed by a medium paragraph about a different concept, followed by one sentence that punctuates the previous concept (with an optional joke . . . if you're witty like me ).

Dumping large blocks of text onto the poor reader is like listening to a boring person tell you a long story — without ever stopping long enough to notice that you're glassy-eyed and yawning because you don't give a damn about what he's saying.

Having said that, here's what I found.
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In Sir Michael Caine's opinion, Heath Ledger beat the odds and topped Jack Nicholson's Joker from Batman (1989): "Jack was like a clown figure, benign but wicked, maybe a killer old uncle. He could be funny and make you laugh. Heath's gone in a completely different direction to Jack, he's like a really scary psychopath. He's a lovely guy and his Joker is going to be a hell of a revelation in this picture."

Caine bases this belief on a scene where the Joker pays a visit to Bruce Wayne's penthouse. He'd never met Ledger before, so when Ledger arrived and performed he gave Caine such a fright, he forgot his lines.

In preparation for his role as The Joker, Heath Ledger hid away in a motel room for about six weeks. During this extended stay of seclusion, Ledger delved deep into the psychology of the character.

He devoted himself to developing The Joker's every tic, namely the voice and that sadistic-sounding laugh (for the voice, Ledger's goal was to create a tone that didn't echo the work Jack Nicholson did in his 1989 performance as the Joker).

Ledger's interpretation of The Joker's appearance was primarily based on the chaotic, disheveled look of punk rocker Sid Vicious combined with the psychotic mannerisms of Malcolm McDowell's character, Alex De Large, from A Clockwork Orange (1971).

Note from me: I watched A Knight's Tale recently and I was impressed anew by Heath's awesome talent. It's hard to believe that the same actor played Will Thatcher and The Joker. The man was a world class actor.

I had to break up this next item below into paragraphs as well. IMDB won't let its members do this, but the item below is so well written I'm sure the author desperately wanted to present it the way I reformatted it.

Please notice the way I gave the separate ideas their own individual paragraphs — some of which are long, while others are short. Figuring out when to break the paragraphs is the fun part!

Heath Ledger's sudden death from drug toxicity on January 22, 2008 prompted immediate speculation over the film's state and Ledger's disposition prior to death.

Soon after Ledger's death was announced, Warner Brothers issued a statement that verified that Ledger had finished all of his scenes in principal photography, as well as post-production fulfillments (i.e., looping), thus making The Joker his final, completed film role.

Rumors abounded that playing the intense role had taken its toll on Ledger's mental state, causing him to become depressed and take a wrong combination of drugs as a result.

However, his family has since put such rumors to rest, by stating that far from being depressed, he had a lot of fun playing the role. Ledger did suffer from insomnia throughout his life, and would often take sleeping pills together with other prescription drugs (something his sister had actually warned against the night before his death).

Unfortunately, the mix he took on that night proved to be a fatal combination.

Note from me: I'm glad to hear this. I hated the idea that Heath was driven nuts by his own portrayal of a maniac, and he ended up making self-destructive decisions. This is a little less disturbing.

I mean, anybody can make a mistake.

The Batman theme is heard only twice in the film, as composers Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard decided that a heroic theme that a viewer could hum would overlook the complexity and darkness of the character. Hearing the tune only twice would create what Zimmer calls "a musical foreshadowing."

Note from me: Well, hell, this sounds like complete baloney to me. First of all, the title theme offers no heroic music which salutes the sudden entrance or the heroic deeds of the main character.

Second of all, the movie isn't structured to present scenes like that. We don't get the kind of heroic rescues and flashy moments I want in a movie like this. And that's part of the reason I don't care for the film.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)