1. Expecting that the follow-up to The Dark Knight is going to be a film adaptation of The Dark Knight Returns.
Michael Doran had a piece on Newsarama that started some of conversation about how the logical sequel to The Dark Knight would have to be an adaptation of Miller’s mini-series, in order to complete the three-act structure of the films. Which makes a little bit of sense, if you say it in a really authoritative voice (or, maybe, if you can mimic Bale’s bat-growl), but is actually kinda silly. One, the Nolan pictures aren’t a trilogy and don’t need to be. Two, one of the main things that made them work is the cast, which would have to be dumped entirely in order to skip ahead twenty years. And three, everything that makes The Dark Knight Returns work doesn’t exist for this version of Batman.
See, the thing that makes The Dark Knight Returns effective is the idea that, after a spectacular crime-fighting career, explored over decades of stories in the various Batman titles, he left an indelible mark on Gotham City and cast a huge shadow that’s still felt decades after his retirement. His return is a huge deal, something that rattles Gotham to its core.
But the Batman hasn’t had that kind of career in the Nolan pictures. He’s been at it for maybe a year, if you figure that he hadn’t caught the Scarecrow yet and Wayne Manor hasn’t been rebuilt after the first movie (just enough time for Rachel Dawes to change the way she looks entirely), and if he were to suddenly vanish, twenty years later it’d be, "oh, remember when there was a guy who dressed like a bat and fought crime for a couple months a really long time ago? That was fucked up." You have to have the context of Batman as a legendary figure who changed the city forever for his return to be a big deal. Otherwise, he’d be running around opening shopping malls and struggling to get press. Twenty years is a long time.
And you can’t just set it earlier, maybe five years down the line, when his name’s still familiar and you can keep the cast, because it wouldn’t have any real impact. It’d be like Jay-Z coming out of retirement a couple years after The Black Album and underwhelming everybody. People would think he just, like, got busy and forgot to fight crime for a while.
And all of this leaves aside the fact that most of the major characters in The Dark Knight Returns don’t even exist in Nolan’s films. There’s no Robin, no Catwoman, no Superman, no Ronald Reagan… You’re left with old-guy Batman beating up old-guy Joker. There’s no point. The Dark Knight is hurtling toward half a billion dollars at the box office- there’s going to be a sequel, and it’s going to be pretty conventional. It’ll star Christian Bale as Batman in that nebulous late-20’s/early-30’s stage, he’ll fight a villain who hasn’t been in the series yet, and it’ll make another gazillion dollars.
2. Spamming LiveJournal political discussion groups with vaguely-coherent rants intended to convince people that their stereotypes of Russia are wrong.
So, like, Russia fought a war this weekend, and it was backed up by a dedicated set of blogging troops, out to win the war over the hearts and minds of the people of the world. Mostly on LiveJournal, because LiveJournal is owned by a Russian company and is the number one blogging service in the country. And those bloggers wanted the rest of the world to know that their troops were peacekeeping forces out to stop the genocidal Georgians from slaughtering the South Ossetians at George Bush’s command. But if you’re trying to convince the world that Russians are not the propaganda-spouting antagonists that much of the Western world has seen them as, spouting propaganda about the "peacemakers" actually serves to work contrary to your point.
And while it’s frankly delightful to see the nuttier online conservatives get a chance to kick it like it’s the 80’s again with big bad Russia as the enemy- seriously, it’s like the online political ranting equivalent of the Police’s reunion tour, playing venues that didn’t even exist when they were on the charts- I do feel it’s probably necessary to remind right-wing bloggers who are unable to see any amount of nuance in a situation like the one between Russia and Georgia that neither side is the hero or the villain, because it’s the real world and that shit is complex. So while I hesitate to interfere at all with their Red Dawn fantasies ("Wolveriiiiiiiiiiines!"), it’s probably for the best that this whole thing seems to have come to a relatively stable conclusion, at least until the next one.
3. Releasing an iPhone app for $1,000 called I Am Rich.
Well, mostly it’s just in bad taste, but boy, is it in bad taste. Like you’re not conspicuously consuming enough just by waving your iPhone around, you need to have a useless application to prove how little you value money? That dude should have created one called I Am Feeding Starving Children and donated the money to charity if he wanted to get his name in the news. At least then it might have been good press.
(cross-posted to dansolomon.com)
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18 users responded in this post
1. Since when will logic or reasoning ever stop idiot fanbois from whining about how much they want The Dark Knight Returns made into a movie. If it ever happened, it would be in name alone – unless Warner Brothers decide to forget what happened the last time they listened to the whiners regarding a series of successful batman films.
2. Actually the Russia/Georgia conflict is not that complex. It is however, still too complex for conservative objective moralists to wrap their simplistic little black and white minds around. Even though Russia and the US were never officially enemies in any war, the conservatives still want to go after “them commie bastards” even though the conservative leaders they’ve been cheering on for the past 30 years have been using Marxist doctrine in their economic plans by giving large tax breaks to the rich and expecting the resources to “trickle-down” through an unregulated elite to the working class below.
3. Between someone actually making it and people actually buying it, I got nothing.
Dark Knight sequel: I don’t know why it is that everyone has this huge hard on for trilogies all of a sudden, and why the general assumption seems to be that that’s the perfect length for a series. Sure it is for some series, but it isn’t madness to have more or less either.
Also, if anything has nixed the possibility of a The Dark Knight Returns movie, its definitely The Dark Knight itself. Now that the number 3 highest grossing movie of all time is something called The Dark Knight, good luck explaining to your average non-comics reader how The Dark Knight Returns isn’t a sequel to it (unless of course it is, but you pretty much covered all the bases on the problems with that…)
I Am Rich app: Judging by that article, I have trouble blaming the guy who made it too much. He sounds genuinely like a dude who was bored at work, and never actually expected people to buy it.
Now the people who bought it on the other hand…
As above. The problem isn’t with the guy who wrote the app. That guy just saw a way to get him some of that Seinfeld Money.
I Am Rich was a great troll. I think there’s an Engadget story with a screenshot of the angry rant of some motard who actually went and bought it.
“The Dark Knight Returns” is the logical title for the third batman film if (ha ha) one gets made. But outside of the fanboy wet dreams its not going to be an adaptation of Frank Miller’s baby.
[i]I do feel it’s probably necessary to remind right-wing bloggers who are unable to see any amount of nuance in a situation like the one between Russia and Georgia that neither side is the hero or the villain, because it’s the real world and that shit is complex.[/i]
Sadly I’ve also had to explain this one to several leftie real life friends these past few days as well. The Right don’t have the monopoly on the goodies vs. baddies view of international relations.
Sadly I’ve also had to explain this one to several leftie real life friends these past few days as well. The Right don’t have the monopoly on the goodies vs. baddies view of international relations.
Sadly, most TV news coverage fits into this category as well.
I have to say, I actually find the “I Am Rich” app kinda funny. It takes the concept of making money off stupid people to just about the greatest possible extreme.
“Hey, guess what? I just spent $1000! So that I could prove to you that I spent $1000!”
If you can pull it off, good for you.
I think a lot of my ethical reaction to the guy who wrote the “I Am Rich” application is going to rest on how he spends that money. Of course, you could make the argument that anybody who so cheekily and cannily gets people to fork over tens of thousands of dollars deserves his payday, but I’m not entirely sure I agree.
Personally, I really hope he donated it to Medicins Sans Frontieres or something.
If fanboys want their Dark Knight Returns movie they should hit up Warner Bros. Animation department. They haven’t exactly produced the greatest material with New Frontier (from what I’ve read) or Gotham Knight (from what I saw). Not to mention the only way you could make a credible (to my mind) DKR movie is to get Micheal Ironside to play him. You know what I’m talking about.
I think people are getting the “trilogy” idea from the collective wisdom (no idea if it’s true, but I’ve read it several places) that David Goyer’s original post “Begins” outline was based on a three movie structure. I seem to remember Nolan saying something about three films before his first one came out, but I could be misremembering.
And yeah, you’re absolutely right about Dark Knight Returns not working as a movie at this point.
And by “post ‘Begins,'” I, of course, meant “pre-‘Begins.'” Oops.
Regarding the “I Am Rich” guy’s obligation to donate all his gains due to the illness or otherwise of how they were gotten (especially Patrick C.’s comment above) :
How rich (or otherwise) was he beforehand?
And yes, it makes a difference.
The “trilogy” thing is common for contractual reasons. Studios now try to lock in all the actors to a three picture deal, so if the movie’s a hit they’re committed to two sequels, if not their obligations can be worked off in other pictures.
The other thing to remember about a DKR movie is that movie audiences aren’t conditioned to the idea of “out of continuity” stories. Doing a DKR movie pretty much shuts the franchise down for another decade or so until a new generation of movie-goers is ready to accept a reboot of the franchise, and that’s not something you’re going to do for a staggeringly successful movie series.
DKR might get done at the end of the current cycle of films, after a couple of these movies tank at the box office and they decide to go out with a bang, but as a sequel to ‘The Dark Knight’? Nope. We get a current-day movie, an A-list Batman villain (my money’s on Catwoman), and more incomprehensible gravelly voices. 🙂
On the Dark Knight thing, yeah, Nolan has stated that he envisions a trilogy, and yeah, no way will the third one have anything to do with Dark Knight Returns. Also, The Dark Knight Returns is actually a pretty awful comic book, all things considered.
And on the “I Am Rich” app? Eight people bought it, and two of them reported it as an accidental purchase and had their money refunded. After Apple’s cut, the guy gets $4200 for the other six sales, and that’s before he has to pay income tax on it. In the end, he made enough off what amounts to a media prank (and the conceptual equivalent of a “first!” comment, in a way) to buy himself a new computer or take a vacation somewhere. Talk about a tempest in a teapot.
Finally, could you possibly note a guest post at the top instead of the bottom? It’s jarring to read all the way through a post and then find out that you’re not listening to who you thought you were.
They could use the title Dark Knight Returns. It’s a pretty snappy title. They could probably pull the Knightfall angle for the ‘return’ part.
I’d like to see an adaptation of DKR in animation. I thought New Frontier was pretty good, along with Superman Doomsday. Some of Gotham Knight was a little mixed, but I guess that’s to be expected when you’ve got a bunch of different animators.
I think the closest we’re gonna get to DKR in the next ten years is the fact that this movie was titled The Dark Knight – it’s a franchise killer, and while the actors could act older, there’s the possibility that Dent is..well you know if you saw it, and then Ledger being six feet under – those are key characters from the franchise. And of course the obvious problems you pointed out a swell.
As for the rich ap: The “accidental” purchases are as hard to believe as the “I bought it as a joke” is funny. 1000 dollar joke, and it’s on the dude who bought it. Apple never should have pulled it – forget that they made something like 1800 on the sales that weren’t refunded – it shouldn’t be their job to police what’s ok and what isn’t if it’s not some sort of malicious thing.
Personally, I think Dark Knight Returns should either be made in the slavish-Miller adaptation style (as Rodriguez and Snyder brought us), or wait a few years down the road and be made in an entirely different superhero film style.