"I think saying he's a "damn good writer" is an understatement. He's one of the best writers within comic books/graphic novels, basically ever."
Eh, he's a good writer. I'd rather judge his books than the guy himself. He's amazing at what he does, but it's not like he's a god, and he's not the best of the best of the best, no person is. He's just written some really good books, and they happen to be my favorites. It's much healthier for everyone involved if you say something along the lines of "Steam's great" rather than unironically shouting "PRAISE NEWELL!" as if affordable PC gaming was something without which society ould collapse suddenly and violently.
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"I see what you're saying with this, that most people go for dark and brooding with the superhero movies, but that's basically switched at this point. All of Marvel is basically fun and lighthearted, and if Suicide Squad pans out, DC will go the same route, though a more dark comedy approach."
That's not really it. I mean to say that the tone is best when it's balanced and capable of fluctuating. Unlike most Marvel movies, GoG has real downsides and the heroes' victory isn't really a foregone conclusion. There's real conflict, and actual emotions. In Batman's case, there is no fluctuation. You don't care about what's going on because there never really was anything good or worthwhile to begin with. First, it's a crapsack city, then it's a crapsack city being attacked by a mixed bag of psychos. There's no real change there, from a psychological or storytelling perspective.
"You're right, Nolan's movies contain a lot of the same tropes, but if it weren't for The Dark Knight Rises, I don't think you could claim he's made a bad movie. The guy's damn good at what he does. There's a ton of Batman comics in which there's no fun or whimsy (a few of which are some of the most famous Batman stories: The Killing Joke, Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum, Emperor Joker, The Black Mirror, etc.)"
I wasn't saying they were bad movies, I was just stating why I think Guardians of the Galaxy is better. And what are you talking about!? Emperor Joker is about the Joker after gaining Mr.MDsghsadjghsdlkahgoraw's omnipotence! There's nothing but fun and whimsy! The same thing goes with Serious House especially! The Killing Joke, the Blakc Mirror, they all have fun and whimsy! It's very dark, machiavellian, and morally reprehensible, but it's still there. That's the point. You're aware of the fact that you're reading a comic book, and you're okay with it because it's awesome. The antics the heroes and villains of Gotham get up to are absolutely absurd, and these stories revel in it. Yes, they introduce heavy doses of reality, but that grants perspective. That's what makes comic books immersive, and you can experience and explore the bizarre and amazing world that Batman lives in... Which is why running it through a depressing brown filter and replacing exploding jack-in-the-boxes, pogo-stick-murders, disco-dancing serial killers, and other interesting things in favor of some machines out of CoD: Advanced Warfare to show you what it'd be like if Batman were really real just isn't as entertaining or fulfilling to watch. If I wanted to watch characters I'm a fan of kill the shit out of each other in "gritty" psuedo-realistic ways, I sure as hell wouldn't have watched a Superhero movie, I would've spent my money on the new Expendables instead.
"Heath Ledger's Joker was an empty shell and had all the love sucked out? His performance was absolutely fantastic, and singlehandedly, overnight, became the definitive film version of the Joker. Not to mention critics and fans everywhere simultaneously stood up and said, "holy shit, comic books movies can be good!," and they were right."
The definitive one? Right. As in, he's the Joker that everyone remembers, because everyone's seen him recently. He was the best out of all 2 of the bigtime cinematic Jokers. Yes, Ledger's performance was fantastic. His performance. That's the key word, there. Performance. He was brilliant, the Joker himself was a simple anti-character. Nothing, except his precious performance, sets him apart. There is no new spin on the joker in this iteration, except for the fact that he's even less of a character than he ever was. Sociopathy incarnate, yes, but we don't ever get to learn about him. We don't ever get to see his breaking point or his motivation, he's just another implacable madman that pursues anarchy for some reason. Batman speculated that it was probably because he was a lonely man who just wanted to prove that humans are all animals like him, but he practically laughed in his face for saying such presumptuous shit, and went on to try and blow up the boats anyway. The Joker has no features other than being a pathological liar this time around. He isn't human, he has no origins, he's just a force of nature. That's incredibly badass, but nothing else. There's no depth to him, the Joker is merely one-dimensional, like most of the characters in the film. The Joker is the Nolan movies personified, in a way: Nothing new, really. Just incredibly badass.
And yeah, this was definitely the movie that made all the moviegoers and critics agree that superhero movies can be fantastic. It's not like there were any Batman movies before this that also came with with a bunch of nerd controversey before and after their release, but by and large had everyone considering it a good movie... I bet, if such a movie as this actually existed, that it probably would've been the movie that let all the publishers and big budget movie makers know that Superhero movies really are worthwhile pursuits, and brought the genre into the mainstream as a whole... But I'll choose to believe that Nolan's were the first and only batman movies, because I too don't want to remember that dark, dark period in between the 2nd Tim Burton movie and Batman Begins...
"Pretty lame to go after the low hanging fruit of Bale's voice, when it's already been criticized to death, already."
But that's precisely the thing! In every other well-written portrayal of Batman there is, they take the time to truly establish defining parts of his personality. Be it anything as deep as his fears to as trivial as his sense of humor (or lack thereof) every story brings to light at least something above the generic Batman formula. And yet this Batman has had three whole movies to develop, and the only thing new or remotely interesting we've learned about this guy is that he sounds like Bob Dylan doing an impression of Riddick. Just like the Joker, he's badass, but nothing else. The low-hanging branch merely connects the rest of the bunch.
"Except there's so much more to the first two movies in the Nolanverse Batman trilogy. How about the performances, especially Ledger's, the costumes, the makeup, the dark humor as opposed to "so quirky" Joss Whedon-esque comedy that everyone seems to wank off to, nowadays. Or the fact that this is an absolutely excellent Batman adaptation (should've been trilogy) (at least until the absolutely gobshite that Rises was when it released)."
The performances were amazing. The costumes were elaborate. The makeup was very convincing. It's very good. Ra's could clearly capture the larger-than-life presence of Ra's, Bale, silly voice jokes aside, perfectly captured Batman's attitude, and was an amazing Bruce Wayne, Heath Ledger was Heath Ledger, but the characters were all very one-dimensional. They were good actors, but the characters weren't really characters. They didn't sound like living, thinking beings, they sounded like writers just saying shit that they thought was vaguely characteristic of them and/or looked good on a screenplay. They may as well have been writing, "Hey, I'm Batman. Are you Ra's al Ghul?" "Yep." "Alright, just checkin'."
They were excellent actors, there were excellent costumes and makeup, but it doesn't matter if you give Pavarotti and the two other tenors electric guitars to play face-melting solos and go on to belt out the most glorious rock opera that has ever been belted out as they burst forth from the grave in a magnificent blaze of holy light and pyrotechnics displays: If you make them sing the phone book, it's going to sound like the goddamn phone book, no matter the execution.
"Once again, I don't know why everyone is jerking off to status quo of the barrels of "funny" dialogue that gets spewed in basically every recent Marvel movie, when you can have comedy like the pencil scene in Dark Knight, that's at the same time brutal as fuck, but pretty darkly comedic at the same time. Not to mention a lot more subtle than the dialogue in Whedon movies that continually beats you over the head with "this is funny, right guys!?""
I'm not trying to argue the merits of either kind of humor, since that's purely subjective. The point is that Guardians has an upside. Having an upside makes you care about what's happening, that's why Game of Thrones was fun to read for about one or two books, that's why Shakespearean tragedy is a fun read. They're very dark, crapsack worlds, but you have time to get to know characters (where in Batman you get al the time in the world, but learn nothing new except whatever you may project onto these comparatively blank slates from prior knowledge from other media) and learn about how the crapsack world is really worth fighting for. You can feel for and with these guys because you know about how it is in this realistic, relatable world. A story that has no conflict isn't interesting, but niether is a story that's all conflict. The dark humor was very effective in establishing how bad the bad guys were, and how badass the good guys, but that's all it does. That's the recurring theme here: it's badass and nothing else. When there's good times for more than a few minutes, you get to see another equally human side of the characters that makes them interesting, and gives actual impact to the low points, (which, in turn, gives actual impact to the high points) but in Nolan's Gotham, it's ALL low points, ALL the time, so it comes off as bland sequences between extended periods of awesome action and magnificent bastard villains being magnificent. The pencil trick felt like it was just another thing that happens literally all the time in Gotham. In fact, in a place like that, I feel kind of incredulous that the bodyguard wasn't expecting that shit.
"As above, the first two Batman movies did a hell of a lot more than just one right. I think a film should be judged based on acting, the quality of the screenplay and dialogue (if any is improvised), the cinematography, make up and costume design and all of the other technical aspects that generally get ignored, and not just how funny you think it is or how sad it made you feel (especially since making a person sad isn't actually that much of an achievement, since emotional manipulation isn't hard to pull off, anyway), but what do I know?"
A movie is a storytelling medium, so it should be judged on the story it tells and the manner in which it tells this story. Guardians did a whole lot of things right too, but at least the story was worth watching more than once. The technical details are all well and good, but I'm sure it was also very difficult to make Aliens: Colonial Marines, and look what that effort accomplished. The entire point of a movie is to tell a good story, (or at least tell a story well,) and Guardians does it better. Yes, making a person feel isn't an achievement, but the thing is, it was all the "emotional manipulation" of all those explosions and Hans Zimmer 'BWAAAA's that made me feel like it was, in fact, the greatest superhero movie series of all time. But after watching 2 for the third or fourth time with and without company, I realized it just didn't hold up to scrutiny, and in hindsight, neither did Batman Begins either. Guardians is an action movie, and it's not much more, but it's a very good one, and it at least doesn't pretend to be anything more.
