I like that HBO Max is hyping this up as a big television event that'll presumably have critics reviewing it, rather than a quick direct-to-download release. No matter how the finished product turns out, we can't let the discourse be dominated by Snyder's fanbase, especially now that they've shown they have some pull with WarnerMedia (what a stupid name). These guys can like what they like and that's great, but their opinions are not necessarily representative of mainstream critics or audiences, and it'll be good to have a broader range of reactions to this than just the people who are already guaranteed to love it because it has Snyder's name on it. To put it another way, I don't want a revisionist history of this franchise to spread unchallenged that if WB had just stepped back and let Snyder do his thing without interfering, JL would have been a critical and commercial success - which is more or less what happened when the "ultimate edition" of BvS came out and was greeted with adulation by Snyder fanboys and largely ignored by almost everyone else.
(08/21)
On the notion of Crudblud reviewing
Batman and Robin and
Batman Begins:
https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=700.msg217513#msg217513A little bit of Bat-history is needed to contextualize B&R. Largely inspired by the enormous critical and commercial success of titles like
Watchmen and TDKR, the mid- to late 1980s saw a rise in comics that were at least superficially darker and more "mature," a trend that lasted for the rest of the decade and throughout the nineties, and some would argue is still going on today in certain corners of the market. Part of this trend was driven by fanboys eager to establish their hobby as being cool and socially acceptable, and part of it was driven by the comics industry looking to corner a market of teenagers and adults with a lot more disposable income than the kids comics were traditionally written for. With Batman in particular, many of these older fans embraced the grimdark interpretation of him pioneered by Frank Miller, and grew hostile to the very idea of him ever being lighter and more whimsical, despite the fact that he had been portrayed that way for almost his entire history.
I'm convinced that this attitude more than anything is what led to B&R being vilified as one of the worst movies of all time and killing the franchise for several years. In the eyes of its haters, its crimes weren't simply artistic, they were cultural. This was a movie with a weirdly artificial aesthetic, a ludicrous plot, cheesy dialogue, and seemed to revel in just how cartoon-like and toyetic it all felt.
Batman Forever was plagued by an awful pair of campy villains, but at least had a more straight-faced portrayal of its heroes. B&R, on the other hand, is pretty much nonsense the whole way through, and carries a distinctive veneer of self-parody. The fanboys absolutely overreacted, and there's an obvious parallel we could draw between them and the obsessive Snyder bros currently plaguing the DC movie landscape (as the
Vulture article I linked above does, like with Harry Knowles spearheading a hate mail campaign), but I'd be lying if I said I couldn't see where they were coming from.
On to the movie itself. It's bad, sure, but it's far from being one of the worst movies of all time, or even one of the worst capeshit movies of all time. I can't really say it's a better movie than
Forever in any kind of substantive way, but it's less boring and less irritating. Really, the toughest thing about trying to criticize a movie like this is separating the unironically good from the ironically good, and also the unironically bad. There's a lot of both. On the bad side, there's pretty much everything about Batgirl. Her new name and origin, Alicia Silverstone's twitchy-mouth performance, and how awkwardly she's shoved into the main plot are all terrible, and she's simply a plate too many for a movie this stuffed. I'm also not a fan of the constant bickering between Batman and Robin. I don't know why Robin is so determined to do things his own way when the movie makes it clear that he's hopelessly ineffective without Batman, and I don't know why the movie apparently wants us to sympathize with him when, again, Batman is objectively correct in every disagreement they have and clearly his superior in every way. It's annoying to watch and never comes to any kind of proper conclusion. And while this is not at all a major issue with the film, I think Poison Ivy ought to have been more conventionally attractive. I'm not trying to do a "2/10 wouldn't bang" thing. Uma Thurman is a lovely actress; the problem lies with her costume. It makes her look like a drag queen, and I have a sneaking suspicion that the resemblance was deliberate, although I won't try guessing why.
Conversely, there are a few elements here that I genuinely think are unironically decent. Disregarding all the Batgirl nonsense surrounding it, I like the subplot with Alfred's illness. It's handled with a grace and sensitivity missing from the rest of the movie, it added a personal dimension to the conflict without relying once again on someone close to Batman being kidnapped, and the moments between Alfred and Bruce feel surprisingly heartfelt. Speaking of which, George Clooney's charm and panache make him a perfect fit for both Bruce as a popular man about town and Batman as an unflappable stoic. I also like this version of Gotham, and I think it's presented a lot better here than it was in
Forever, with the statues being incorporated into the buildings and the characters being able to climb them. Pretty much everything else about the movie is just goofy, enjoyable nonsense, and it's long past time that the capeshit community stopped treating it like a pariah. And while they're at it, they could also stop all the revisionist nonsense about how Batman has always been dark and adult and make some room for lighter interpretations.
Also, I highly, highly doubt that Coolio was going to play the Scarecrow in a sequel. Maybe he misunderstood Schumacher, maybe Schumacher was bluffing, but yeah, I don't think that was going to happen. Schumacher was in talks with Nicolas Cage for the role, and there's no way he'd have set him aside in favor of Coolio.
And then there's
Batman Begins. It's kind of hard for me to revisit Nolan's Batman movies without being distracted by the fact that he laid the path for Zack Snyder's disastrous DC movies. There's a lot of shared DNA here. A hyper-masculine sensibility, an almost complete disinterest in women beyond an obligatory love interest the hero has no chemistry with, a portrayal of what should be larger-than-life fictional cities as generic and unremarkable, a pompous self-importance driven by a pounding score seemingly determined to reinforce just how unbelievably significant and important the movie is, a weird insistence on explicitly spelling out the themes of the movie through dialogue, as though audiences are too stupid to pick up on them unless the characters point it out to them, and a general sense that the filmmakers are embarrassed to be making capeshit to begin with. None of those were major reasons why Snyder's movies failed, but they were very disappointing trends that arguably had their start here. That being said, it would be wrong to seriously blame Nolan for Snyder taking the wrong kind of influence from his movies.
Taking those flaws into account, I still think
Begins is a great movie. Previous adaptations had never taken the time to explain what happened in between the deaths of the Waynes and the emergence of Batman (I think even the comics have always been pretty vague on the details), and I loved seeing a movie finally explore the whole process of how Bruce Wayne become Batman with a remarkable attention to detail. Having Bruce be trained by Ra's al-Ghul and the League of
Assassins Shadows is a change from the source material, but it makes a lot more sense than the idea that a few short years of mundane martial arts training turned Bruce into a master of stealth and combat. Discovering old prototypes of equipment in abandoned Wayne Enterprises projects is kind of an obvious explanation for how Batman got his gear, but at least there is an explanation, when, again, previous adaptations didn't seem to care about any of this. I also like the little touch of him incorporating his ninja gauntlets into the Batsuit, possibly as a reminder to himself to always remember his training and not become too dependent on technology. While I'm talking about the Batsuit, though, I have to say that while it looks a bit easier to move in than previous Batsuits, it's also considerably uglier. The armored cowl is the worst part. It makes his head look grotesque and distorted.
On the very important subject of Ra's al-Ghul. Fanboys have given Nolan a ton of shit over the years for pronouncing his name like "rawz" and not following the lead of the DCAU, where his name was pronounced as "raysh." After doing some research, I've discovered that neither pronunciation is exactly correct Arabic, and the best way to pronounce it would be something like "rah-us," with a glottal stop in the middle. Nolan's pronunciation is a bit closer! Personally, I think if they're not going to feel beholden to precise Arabic pronunciation, they might as well go with the one that sounds better, and I've always felt that "raysh" sounds a lot more imposing and dignified than "rawz." It's also the pronunciation that every subsequent adaptation featuring the character I've seen has preferred. Speaking of Arabic, Ra's is supposed to ethnically be an Arab. The furor over whitewashing hadn't really reached its height at the time, fortunately for Nolan and Neeson.
As for the character himself in this movie, Neeson is (his ethnicity aside) pretty great, and it's a lot of fun to see him in a darker role than the benevolent mentor he usually plays. I don't think the movie really expected anyone to be torn between supporting him or Batman. Like, obviously the guy who's trying to kill millions of people is in the wrong. However, Ra's could absolutely have presented a more compelling point of view, and I think the main reason why he doesn't is the foremost difference between this version of him and the one from the source material - his lack of longevity. Nolan made a point of excising virtually all the fantasy/sci-fi elements of his Batman movies, which naturally included the fact that Ra's has been alive for centuries due to his regular use of magic baths. And yet that was a key part of what made him an interesting opponent for Batman. Unlike many of Batman's other villains, Ra's isn't a product of trauma or "one bad day." It's time that has warped him. Hundreds of years of fighting for his version of justice have eroded any sense of compassion that may have once driven him, and now he sees assassination, terrorism, and mass murder as the best way to achieve his goals. In this way, he's essentially a warning to Batman of what can happen when moral principles are replaced with zealotry, and a dark challenge to see if he can really do better on his quest for justice than the man with centuries of experience.
I like Christian Bale as Bruce, not so much as Batman. He doesn't give the kind of charismatic performance that previous actors did, but he's not really trying to. Instead, he's a figure more sympathetic and identifiable than previous Batmen, someone who isn't so much larger than life as he is relatable. It's funny when he acts like a fool in public to shake off any potential suspicion of his secret identity, but there's also a real sense of pathos in watching someone so clearly virtuous humiliate himself and damage his family's legacy all for the greater good. I'm also of the opinion that Michael Caine is easily the best Alfred of any Batman adaptation. The warmth and kindliness radiating from Caine make it impossible to dislike him, and I was never once left in any doubt as to the deep bond going far beyond that of an employer-employee relationship between Bruce and Alfred. It really is kind of incredible that this aspect of Bruce's life had been neglected in the movies for so long before this.
That having been said, as mentioned, I don't care for our hero when he puts on the outfit and becomes Batman. I'd go so far as to say that this trilogy overall is often at its weakest when Batman is on screen. The action is terrible. I get that for this movie Nolan wanted to emphasize Batman's stealth and the fear he strikes into the criminals he fights, but there had to have been a better way to communicate that than how this movie shows it - or to be more accurate,
doesn't show it. The sequels improved the action by letting us actually see what was going on and letting blows visibly land, but this came at the cost of highlighting just how incredibly slow and ungainly he was. For all the effort they put into having him design his suit piece by piece, couldn't they have had him find some armor that didn't weigh so much he had to move in slow motion? And there's the voice. Literally everybody in the world has made fun of this at least once during the last twelve years, but it really is that bad. It's ridiculously goofy, and it distracts from the scene whenever Batman opens his mouth and that cartoonish growl comes out.