Nolan's Best

I haven't seen Insomnia or Following, but for the others, I'd have to put Memento on top with Inception just under that. Clever plots and technical achievements aside, I just really like and appreciate how masterfully both of those films are handled, considering their many difficulties. A lesser director would have bungled them.

After those, it's really a toss-up. I guess I'd have to put The Prestige there next, trailed by The Dark Knight and then Batman Begins. For me, The Prestige is a fun flick with real strength of character and heart from Bale. My only beef is that it takes a while to really get going (but when it does, wow).

I know a lot of people are high on the Batman films, and The Dark Knight specifically. I think they're fine films and have many moments of brilliance (particularly Ledger's Joker, who can't be ignored as truly great) and a stellar supporting cast. Unfortunately, Nolan's treatment of Batman is downright embarrassingly bad. You can't make the star of your show a growling, lumbering one-liner machine. (Michael Keaton's quiet, shadowy crusader was a better interpretation of the character.)

Bale is better as Bruce Wayne, but still doesn't hit the mark for me. I think part of the problem is that Bruce Wayne is so iconic and saturated with narrative baggage that it's tough to really distill him down to a believable person. Also, I actually think Joel Schumacher unknowingly hit the nail on the head when he cast Clooney back in 1997... he just had no clue how to do a Batman film.

It was a tie between inception and dark knight for me. I can't believe Inception only has 3 votes- kind of shocking. I liked Memento, but people say it is his best, and I'd have to disagree. I thought it was good for a beginning, but at times I felt like he was trying too hard to make it unique and confusing. I guess the same could be said for Inception but I felt more connected to that story than Memento.

The Prestige is the best !!

A tie between Memento and Dark Knight.

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Small digression: I wonder what Batman Begins would have been like under Aronofsky's direction.

i was a Inception Voter.

The way he's been treating his main characters of late, he'd probably end up dead.

Honestly, I would love to see what Aronofsky would do with Batman.
He'd be the best director for it.

I love what Nolan has done with his Batman movies.. But there were few things that lacked that could make it the best Batman movie ever.
Burton movies were far too campy & the plot was stale, Nolan brought about a lot of seriousness in the Batman universe that won most hearts.. But his movies still lack the mood that a Batman film deserves.

I think Batman Returns had the right mood & characters that Nolan Movies lack.
So, Aronofsky's style falls between these 2 universes, which makes him perfect.
But I am sure Aronofsky's Batman wont be as popular with the masses as Nolan's, but definitely a cult hit.

& lets not forget, most of the credit for resurrecting Batman in a serious universe was supposed to be Aronofsky's plan in the first place.

If Burton's Batman films were far too campy for you, I've got to wonder what you make of Joel Schumacher's Batman films.

What Schumacher Batman movies? j/k!
I have said quite a lot about Schumachers Batman movies around here.

B&R would have been great if it was considered as a spoof & worked on that way, it's clearly hinted to be a spoof, (Batman has a credit card! c'mon!)
I have no idea why at times it seemed like it was taking itself seriously, I guess it was because of the villains, they were totally lame & had little to contribute to the humor the lead characters were put through...
& there were far too many characters in 1 film.

Batman Forever once again had the potential to be a decent film, only until Jim Carrey shows up with his laser show.

I may or may not be in the minority here but I think Bale's Batman is just as good, if not better than his Bruce Wayne. I like the growl thing. I think one has to look at it as a form of disguise rather than an act of menace, although I am sure that's the intention too. Bale as Batman/Bruce Wayne is at his most interesting in Begins, but I liked that Nolan sort of pushed the boundaries on how 'good' he is in Dark Knight. After many viewings, I felt that Nolan wanted to convey that Batman was slowly but surely becoming more malevolent to the criminal underworld and for the most part, he conveyed it fairly well, I thought.

I also like Keaton's interpretation too. But I think I like Keaton's Wayne better than all. He's like a regular guy you could envision having a drink with.

I don't completely understand what you're saying. So you think Nolan's realistic, serious storytelling and tone combined with the characters of Batman Returns (Catwoman and the Penguin) and its mood would make a perfect film.

What's good about the characters in Batman Returns? I for one am not a fan of DeVito's portrayal of the Penguin. And the mood? What was better about the overall tone of that film compared to The Dark Knight?

Aronofsky has profiled himself as a filmmaker tackling heavy issues and weighty themes. If anything, I think his Batman films would be even more grim than Nolan's. He sure is ambitious, but I doubt that if he ever made a Batman film, it would be better than Nolan's.

I know I shouldn't play the comparison game, but for my money, there's no better depiction of Batman than Paul Dini's animated Batman voiced by Kevin Conroy (Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, Justice League Unlimited, Arkham Asylum). He strikes the perfect balance of intimidating crusader and intelligent crime solver without ever feeling, ironically, like a cartoon of himself. He's written and voiced like an extraordinary, but very real, person beneath the cowl.

Bale's Batman just feels like a caricature... a facsimile of everything that's superficially popular about the character. Past the gruff voice, iconic silhouette poses, and punching/kicking, there's really only cheesy one-liners. Where's the intelligence? Where's the detectiving?

He does some of that in Begins, but in The Dark Knight, he's relegated to the back in favor of the Joker. He's purely reactionary and completely inept, both narratively and intellectually, in comparison to the Joker. Maybe Nolan intended to highlight the Joker's unpredictability in that way, but I think it's partly because he realized he had created a sad sack in Batman and the one with the real charisma was Ledger's Joker. So guess who became the star of the show?

This is no more evident than in the "interrogation" scene. It should have been the moment in which the Batman and the Joker match wits, but instead, Batman sits there and is given only a few token lines while the Joker lays out his entire wily, captivating ideology. Batman might lay a few punches into his face, but character-wise, it's the Joker who pummels Batman. If ever there was an opportunity to establish your hero as equal and opposite to the Joker, it was that one. But I think Nolan realized that he hadn't built enough complexity and strength of character in Batman to do it. His Batman is a sullen, growling bruiser.

I don't know how it stacks up with some people's Batman ideal, but I sure don't think he's more like a caricature than the previous incarnations of Batman on film. Though if he feels like a caricature, isn't that kind of keeping with the theme of theatricality and symbolism? He's supposed to be ridiculously over the top. Half the value of Batman is in his theatrics creating fear and doubt and causing criminals not to commit crime in the first place. We see this in the opening scenes of The Dark Knight, when some thug sees the Bat symbol and decides against doing something.

Re: the Joker. yes, he absolutely gets schooled by the Joker. That's what makes the movie great; he's turned himself into a tremendously powerful symbol and even says early in the film that "Batman has no limits." And then he finds out that he does. I'm glad they did this; I would get no thrill out of watching a Batman who was just super-awesomely outwitting and destroying everyone. That would be far more like a caricature than the more human one we've been given. He screws up, but from that, he learns.

"Bruce: why do we fall?"

He is at that point, yes. He's relied on his strength, so he goes to it again, and it fails him. And in the aftermath of that failure, he regroups.


Keep in mind that Nolan has said from the very beginning that he envisioned a trilogy, so the first two films shouldn't be expected to wrap these things up. This is about the creation and establishment of Batman, which means he's still evolving.

BR has a surreal tone & mood.. same goes with the characters. The only problem with BR was the campiness in the storyline.
The entire Gotham city sets a certain dark mood.
BR's Bruce Wayne is what Bruce Wayne is actually like, Always trying to live a life but is deprived of it... He is not always wronged as Bruce Wayne because he is Batman, but because he chooses to be Batman over Bruce Wayne.

In TDK, Bruce Wayne is just willing to give up the mantle of Batman cos he wants to be with the one he loves & that a certain DA is good enough to rid the city of crime.. Bruce Wayne would never give up Batman, he has always shown fought crime as a personal satisfaction, Bruce Wayne is a psychotic, he is as insane as his criminals.
Batman's crimefighting act is personal & it's beyond just vengeance for his parents death.

Like I said above Aronofsky's film wouldn't be one that recieves a mass appeal.

I'd say it just goes to show how extraordinarily good the villains are in Nolan's Batman movies. Batman himself just can't stand out as much in comparison. That's not a diss on Bale. I think he does excellently as Bruce, but whenever Batman himself is onscreen he simply doesn't have as much presence. He's overshadowed by the enemies and the action.

But maybe that's not a bad thing. Maybe Bale's Batman shouldn't be our foremost concern during the movie. If he is, we've got a superhero character study and I don't think that is or should be the case. We all know Batman walks a thin line, yeah yeah yeah, we get the idea of him being the same personality type that produces a Joker, gotcha. No need to beat the audience over the head with grey zones and blurred lines.

All said and done, while he's no goody-goody like Superman, Batman is still a good guy, and there's no point in wasting a lot of time trying to convince anyone otherwise. Yes, he's got issues, we saw that originally in Keaton's Batman. But Bale's Wayne is a far more believable human being than any of the others, in my opinion. So I think the complexity of his character comes more from that side of his persona, not from some overstated inner conflict.

The Batman isn't a person unto itself; It's an idea. So Bale plays it right by making the Batman a growling intimidating agent of order, while simultaneously playing Bruce Wayne as a highly intelligent, somewhat melancholy, and totally empathizable, man.

Well, I've never really bought into this approach anyway. Sure, Batman is about symbolism, but I think it's sort of high-falutin' and egotistical that Nolan has Bruce/Batman talk about it several times in both films. It's like he's focused on being a symbol rather than simply being something to fear, which I think would be the closer goal of Batman. (In other words, Batman wouldn't aspire to be the symbol. He aspires simply to be feared, and the persona he creates to serve that practical need becomes the symbol, even if he never intended it to be.) I get that they have to slam the "he's a symbol" point over the head for most audiences, hence the many dialogue references to it. But for me, it's too much telling.

Also, I'm not sure I agree that he needs to be over-the-top. From the criminal perspective, he absolutely is. But when we're privvy to him kicking around a crime scene alone or testing theories in the Batcave, shouldn't he be... well, less of a growly stage performance?

Maybe he learns in the sense that the Joker isn't some common criminal he can beat into submission, but even that doesn't show much intelligence on the part of Batman. I get that this is a continuing establishment of the character, as you say, but Batman is supposed to be cunning and brilliant and I have a hard time seeing him completely unprepared for an enemy with even half a brain. Believe me, I'm not advocating that Batman outwit and destroy everyone he encounters. But in Nolan's films, he just seems to have this single-dimensionality to him that sees him grow (or more accurately, act) in reaction to others, and in spite of himself. I would just think that by the time someone like the Joker comes along, Batman would have progressed further than a millionaire vigilante beating up thugs in the street.



Well...



It's kinda like the difference between Brett Favre and Tom Brady, if you follow me. Brett Favre won most of his games through sheer will and luck, fighting for every down and throwing errant passes that somehow saved the day at many the eleventh hour. And that's how he played his entire career. Tom Brady, on the other hand, wins most of his games completely outhinking, outplaying and dismantling his opponents. Sure, he finds himself in the occasional nailbiter too, but he's a smarter player than most and his efficiency has grown and matured from preparation and the ability to anticipate.

All I'm saying is, Nolan's Batman could be a little less Brett Favre and a little more Tom Brady.

I know it sounds like I'm nitpicking. I really take the most issue with Bale's goofy growling, but it does feel to me like Nolan has stymied Batman's intellectual ability because it's more theatrical to make him a burly fighter that has to overcome huge challenges rather than, on occasion, anticipate and neutralize them. That's totally fine. I just wish we'd get something more akin to, say, a mystery, where we see Batman putting things together and figuring things out more than simply punching bodies and swinging from rope lines.

Oh, and IMHO the Schumacher vision of the Batman universe was simply atrocious. Maybe some people like the silly Adam West Batman, too. I hope they're the minority.

It's getting awfully Home Alone in here...

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Basically when Bruce Wayne's onscreen in Begins and TDK, all I see is



His Batman IS a caricature (esp in TDK), a blunt instrument more often than not and i'd agree he spends a lot of time reacting. I liked Keaton's Wayne as he seemed rounded as Wayne and Batman. the thing that's missing from Nolan's Batman is how Gotham is portrayed, he got close in Begins with the Narrows but missed it in TDK. Burton managed to make a Gotham a surreal, expressionist character in itself and maybe it was camp but Batman fitted into it.

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