Listen now | Today’s movie is The Batman directed by Matt Reeves. We both think this is probably one of the best looking superhero movies we’ve seen in a long time. The visuals of this movie are definitely its strength - everything from the cinematography to the production design works really well. Where this movie falls flat is with its story. Ultimately, it’s just… boring.
I’m much more negative on this movie. The whole thing felt so lifeless, like they actively tried to suck any fun out of the premise.
Take the first crime scene investigation. Batman and Gordon don’t play off each other at all; Gordon just feels like he’s doing a bad Batman impression. Nobody has any thoughts on the weirdness of a bat reading reading a greeting card riddle. Nobody tries to lighten the mood with gallows humor. The characters don’t bounce around theories about the clues; Batman just flatly says the answers. Nobody acts like an actual human, and there’s just nothing to connect with.
The Nolan films at least had fun with Bruce Wayne’s over the top persona, Heath Ledger having the time of his life, Morgan Freeman’s dry wit, etc. And even extremely dark mysteries like Seven or Chinatown have a bit of levity to make the characters feel human and relatable. Here it’s like the creators were embarrassed to be adapting a children’s superhero comic about a guy dressed like a bat fighting a guy who writes riddles. And rather than just adapting a different story, they wildly overcorrected and stripped out any signs of life.
Also, this movie really did not need to be three hours long. We spend so much time uncovering a big conspiracy, which turns out to be… a mob boss ratted out another mob boss a few years ago, and this somehow let him take over the police department? It’s not very interesting and the details never make sense. Why did we spend half the film on it?
It sounds like you and I are mostly on the same page here. As I said in the podcast, it's just hard to take it seriously when a guy in a ridiculous bat outfit is slowly walking around a crime scene grunting. I'm not sure why that's supposed to be interesting as opposed to silly.
I had a hard time with the Nolan batmen as well, though. While Heath Ledger was spectacular, most of the other aspects were not. The editing was a mess, the scripts were a dog's breakfast, and Christian Bale's weird Batman voice is as silly as The Batman's weird "bat guy walks around a crime scene" stuff.
Really, the Tim Burton Batman is probably still my favorite, because it's just a weird comic-book-feeling movie, even if it doesn't really capture actual Batman very well (I guess)!
I agree with the lifelessness of relationship between Batman and Gordon and Alfred, but I kinda like his relationship with Catwoman. It's not great but I was surprised that they went for almost oversentimentality with that. Same thing with Nirvana music, diary writing, dark eye makeup, it was not what I expected. Maybe on a second viewing it will not hold up, but at least I thought they tried to convey a mood.
For Seven, I think the plot beats are similar, with Riddler being arrested but having planned another crime for conclusion. But Seven is definitely miles better than The Batman, the writing is very clever and is like a commentary on the whole genre. It's a dark thriller but I think it also can be read as a parody, like the two inspectors watching an "upside-down" abstract painting, the "wax statue" with hanging little trees, etc. The Batman has none of that layered complexity, I thought of it more as a solid B movie or something.
Columbo is good, although apart from Peter Falk the acting is so terrible that it's kind of hard to watch. I read all the Agatha Christie books as a kid, and some of them are pretty good, but I was pretty young at the time so I'd probably have to read them again to be sure :)
But my all-time favorite is by far the Granada Television rendition of Sherlock Holmes. Jeremy Brett is just incredible as Sherlock Holmes. I highly, highly recommend it! Some episodes are better than others but Brett is spectacular in all of them.
For reasons I'm not clear on, you seem to be able to watch them on YouTube. Which doesn't make much sense. I guess someone is not policing the copyright? Or maybe they just don't care? But for example, if you search "Norwood Builder" on Google, the full Grenada version in HD comes up at the first hit _from four years ago_.
So I'm not sure what's going on there. Maybe it has been abandoned? I hope not, because it would be nice to have a good restoration at some point...
Yes I noticed the visual similarities between Riddler and Batman. They also appear from nowhere in the dark so at the beginning of a few scenes I was not sure which character it was.
For voice-over I think it is extremely hard to do convincingly. In The Batman I didn't find it particularly bad and I understand what they were trying to do, but I agree it's not great. There's Element of Crime by Lars von Trier which is a detective story with internal monologue, but I have not seen it in a long time so I can't say if it's very good. Else for voice-over in general there's Days of Heaven by Terrence Malick that I like but it's not because of voice-over per say, it's because the writing is kind of unique. There's also Inherent Vice but in this one it's interesting also because it goes in and out of diegesis. And the writing is incredible too in my opinion.
Thinking about it, I guess detective fiction is somewhat of a difficult genre. I like stuff like Twin Peaks where they play with conventions, but I would need to go back and watch\rewatch more traditional detective noirs to compare, it's like it's less memorable to me or something, it does not stick as much.
I thought a 3-hour Batman movie was ambitious and there are some amazing shots (the shot in which you see Batman in reverse walking in front of the fire is really cool.)
I guess putting some really bright light directly in the lens from time to time is a thing now... but it didn't bother me as much as in Dune, it felt more integrated with the plot.
As for the plot, I thought it was similar to Seven by Fincher, without the humour (like the Warhol Sauce cans, etc.) I really liked the exposition, I thought it set the mood very well. After that the plot and character development felt more generic. It's not bad but it felt flat a little bit.
I would not say it's a great movie or anything but I was pleasantly surprised with that one.
I’m much more negative on this movie. The whole thing felt so lifeless, like they actively tried to suck any fun out of the premise.
Take the first crime scene investigation. Batman and Gordon don’t play off each other at all; Gordon just feels like he’s doing a bad Batman impression. Nobody has any thoughts on the weirdness of a bat reading reading a greeting card riddle. Nobody tries to lighten the mood with gallows humor. The characters don’t bounce around theories about the clues; Batman just flatly says the answers. Nobody acts like an actual human, and there’s just nothing to connect with.
The Nolan films at least had fun with Bruce Wayne’s over the top persona, Heath Ledger having the time of his life, Morgan Freeman’s dry wit, etc. And even extremely dark mysteries like Seven or Chinatown have a bit of levity to make the characters feel human and relatable. Here it’s like the creators were embarrassed to be adapting a children’s superhero comic about a guy dressed like a bat fighting a guy who writes riddles. And rather than just adapting a different story, they wildly overcorrected and stripped out any signs of life.
Also, this movie really did not need to be three hours long. We spend so much time uncovering a big conspiracy, which turns out to be… a mob boss ratted out another mob boss a few years ago, and this somehow let him take over the police department? It’s not very interesting and the details never make sense. Why did we spend half the film on it?
It sounds like you and I are mostly on the same page here. As I said in the podcast, it's just hard to take it seriously when a guy in a ridiculous bat outfit is slowly walking around a crime scene grunting. I'm not sure why that's supposed to be interesting as opposed to silly.
I had a hard time with the Nolan batmen as well, though. While Heath Ledger was spectacular, most of the other aspects were not. The editing was a mess, the scripts were a dog's breakfast, and Christian Bale's weird Batman voice is as silly as The Batman's weird "bat guy walks around a crime scene" stuff.
Really, the Tim Burton Batman is probably still my favorite, because it's just a weird comic-book-feeling movie, even if it doesn't really capture actual Batman very well (I guess)!
I agree with the lifelessness of relationship between Batman and Gordon and Alfred, but I kinda like his relationship with Catwoman. It's not great but I was surprised that they went for almost oversentimentality with that. Same thing with Nirvana music, diary writing, dark eye makeup, it was not what I expected. Maybe on a second viewing it will not hold up, but at least I thought they tried to convey a mood.
For Seven, I think the plot beats are similar, with Riddler being arrested but having planned another crime for conclusion. But Seven is definitely miles better than The Batman, the writing is very clever and is like a commentary on the whole genre. It's a dark thriller but I think it also can be read as a parody, like the two inspectors watching an "upside-down" abstract painting, the "wax statue" with hanging little trees, etc. The Batman has none of that layered complexity, I thought of it more as a solid B movie or something.
Now I need to know Casey’s favorite mystery movies and books.
Columbo is good, although apart from Peter Falk the acting is so terrible that it's kind of hard to watch. I read all the Agatha Christie books as a kid, and some of them are pretty good, but I was pretty young at the time so I'd probably have to read them again to be sure :)
But my all-time favorite is by far the Granada Television rendition of Sherlock Holmes. Jeremy Brett is just incredible as Sherlock Holmes. I highly, highly recommend it! Some episodes are better than others but Brett is spectacular in all of them.
For reasons I'm not clear on, you seem to be able to watch them on YouTube. Which doesn't make much sense. I guess someone is not policing the copyright? Or maybe they just don't care? But for example, if you search "Norwood Builder" on Google, the full Grenada version in HD comes up at the first hit _from four years ago_.
So I'm not sure what's going on there. Maybe it has been abandoned? I hope not, because it would be nice to have a good restoration at some point...
Oh snap I didn't know there was a Blu-ray! How is the quality?
Yes I noticed the visual similarities between Riddler and Batman. They also appear from nowhere in the dark so at the beginning of a few scenes I was not sure which character it was.
For voice-over I think it is extremely hard to do convincingly. In The Batman I didn't find it particularly bad and I understand what they were trying to do, but I agree it's not great. There's Element of Crime by Lars von Trier which is a detective story with internal monologue, but I have not seen it in a long time so I can't say if it's very good. Else for voice-over in general there's Days of Heaven by Terrence Malick that I like but it's not because of voice-over per say, it's because the writing is kind of unique. There's also Inherent Vice but in this one it's interesting also because it goes in and out of diegesis. And the writing is incredible too in my opinion.
Thinking about it, I guess detective fiction is somewhat of a difficult genre. I like stuff like Twin Peaks where they play with conventions, but I would need to go back and watch\rewatch more traditional detective noirs to compare, it's like it's less memorable to me or something, it does not stick as much.
I thought a 3-hour Batman movie was ambitious and there are some amazing shots (the shot in which you see Batman in reverse walking in front of the fire is really cool.)
I guess putting some really bright light directly in the lens from time to time is a thing now... but it didn't bother me as much as in Dune, it felt more integrated with the plot.
As for the plot, I thought it was similar to Seven by Fincher, without the humour (like the Warhol Sauce cans, etc.) I really liked the exposition, I thought it set the mood very well. After that the plot and character development felt more generic. It's not bad but it felt flat a little bit.
I would not say it's a great movie or anything but I was pleasantly surprised with that one.