Comments on: Why So Serious?, or, I Miss the Giant Penny

By: Chris Flinn

Chris Flinn — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 17:17:58 +0000

The problem is that it is just too hard to walk the line from being true to the comics without being too campy. It is easy to forgive so much when reading a comic. But when you are watching it on the screen, at times, it is hard not to stop yourself and say, “Wait, is that guy really wearing a bat-suit?”. “Are people really taking him seriously?” I really liked the movie (a lot), but if Nolan and crew do anything other than what they did, they cross the line and it doesn’t work. It becomes silly. You’re right, the Burton films don’t hold up (I hated the second one anyway). Someone put the trailers for all the movies online to compare to Nolan’s and the first four movies looked ridiculous. (The third and fourth film could have really come straight from the TV show.) It’s just for a character like Batman to really work on the screen, you have to have the realism.

By: Cory

Cory — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 21:42:34 +0000

I loved the fact that as a superhero movie it had the guts to completely abstain from origin stories and flashbacks. Batman was Batman, Joker was Joker…who cares how they got there. It left so much more room for interesting storytelling without all the baggage.

By: jmackley

jmackley — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 04:45:49 +0000

Yeah. I agree with you. It’s a good movie, but it’s not a fun movie. Ledger was great, in a really scary role.
I guess that at its heart, it’s not a super-hero movie. It’s a movie about a
mass murderer, and an almost supernatural mass murderer at that.
It’s like those oscar bait movies that everyone appreciates but no one wants
to watch a second time. Gangs of New York, There Will Be Blood.
It’s impressive, but you walk out unnerved and challenged, but without that release of
tension you expected from your comic book movie.