New Batman piece up at The Beat
My piece on Tim Burton’s ground-breaking 1989 Batman is up at The Beat. Due to The Beat’s recent flame-discouraging policy, response has been much more sober and respectful this time around.
What Does The Beat Want?
It’s been a big internet week for me. First, I launched this new blog (if you haven’t switched your Livejournal bookmarks, do so now!) Then, out of nowhere, someone I’ve never even met made this smashing video out of a monologue I wrote 20 years ago, and it’s caught on like internet wildfire. And now, my good friend Heidi McDonald at The Beat has started re-posting some of my earlier comics-movies-related analyses, starting with my look at 1966’s Batman: The Movie.
This is the first time one of my blog pieces has been re-posted in another forum, but the reviews are in and readers are ecstatic!
“You are a complete idiot!” – vlucca
“Although I wouldn’t level the charge of “idiot” as vlucca does,I would say ‘misguided’ or “sloppy.'” – S. Chapman
“This so-called “analysis” … seems to have missed the mark entirely!” – KET
“This isn’t so much analysis as it is a badly-written review of a film that the reviewer obviously doesn’t understand or appreciate!” – John
Feeder Birds returns!
Yes, it’s true! The new installment of my long-gestating graphic novel Feeder Birds will be presented as part of
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‘s long-running cartoon-slide-show evening CAROUSEL. If you, like me, are in New York City next week, this will be where you will want to be. In addition to me, there will be actual talented cartoonists present.
WHEN? Thursday, May 28, 2009!
WHERE? The new Dixon Place, that’s where! 161 Chrystie Street, btw Rivington and Delancey!
HOW MUCH? $15 smackeroos, that’s how much.
See you there!
Some more thoughts on Watchmen
I’ve been thinking a lot about Watchmen this week, which I think is a good sign, and paying attention to the online response to it. I’ve seen everything from "This movie is evil and you are evil if you want to see it" to "It puts me into a state of homosexual panic because it shows the penis of one of the characters" to "My favorite panel was not dramatized in the way I imagined and therefore Hollywood is evil and should be destroyed."
Some thoughts on Watchmen
Well I liked it.
For those familiar with the book, it’s all in here, or all the parts that matter anyway. The director understands, and loves, the source material, but he hasn’t let it stand in the way of creating a cinematic narrative. A rather dense cinematic narrative at that.
For those unfamiliar with the book (and I maintain that one should never be familiar with a movie’s source material to enjoy the movie), as long as you keep in mind that Watchmen is, in essence, a detective story that pauses, often, for some very long digressions, I think you should be fine, but let me know. The people who really, really hate the movie I think get lost in its narrative ellipses, where the detective plot is put on hold for, say, a series of involved flashbacks or for a sub-plot involving a character’s sex life. Long digressions like this can make a story feel long, but I was never bored by Watchmen and was frequently thrilled, and even surprised, in spite of having re-read the book recently.
The problem with Watchmen, if it’s a problem, is that without the digressions, which are all thematically resonant and serve to deepen the story, if you cut all that stuff out, it’s just another superhero detective story. In a sense, the narrative digressions are the real "point" of the story, and the movie (like the book) uses the detective plot to deliver those digressions.
From a marketing standpoint, of course, the movie is a "tough sell" — it’s got multiple protagonists (four by my count), not a single character to "root for," a complicated plot that keeps looking backward to tell us about characters we barely know yet, a "meta" approach to its subject matter (it’s a superhero story that worries that having superheroes might not be such a good thing) and takes place in a weird alternate-universe 1985. All of which makes sense when you read the book (or it did when I first read it in 1986), but again, you tell me.
As for the learned critics who have screwed in their monocles, tucked in their ascots and sniffed in disdain at this rather ambitious piece of popular culture, describing it as trash and its audience as sociopaths, in time they will look like idiots, if they don’t already.
Saturday Morning Watchmen
If you can’t wait until tomorrow to see Watchmen, allow yourself to reminisce with the late-80s animated version of the tale (click on the flashing "Watch this movie" thing).
Boy, those were the days. I loved the episode where they tangled with the mummies, although I guess my favorite was the Transformers crossover.
Via, whom else, The Beat.
Nota bene
Michael Kupperman, one of America’s greatest cartoonists, has a blog. You should go read it.
¿Qué el protagonista desea?
I was pleased as punch that What Does The Protagonist Want? was been linked to by the popular Spanish-language comics blog La Carcel de Papel.
I admit I was a little confused when I discovered the reference to me the other day — it’s exceedingly rare that anyone confuses me with an authority on comics, much less someone from the Spanish-speaking world. I read the piece with great interest, but alas, my Spanish is no better than what I have picked up by watching Dora the Explorer with my daughter.
The piece begins:
Superheroes: Batman Begins part 2
Yesterday I laid out the basic structure of Batman Begins. And while structure, as any screenwriter knows, is the name of the game for a successful screenplay, it is not the only thing that makes Begins such a detailed, well-considered movie.
Assuming the reader is already familiar with the structure, here are some observations I have in chronological order:
Superheroes: Batman Begins part 1
WHAT DOES THE PROTAGONIST WANT? Bruce Wayne, orphaned at eight, wants to overcome his fears and honor his father. This turns out to be rather more complicated than he suspects.
Batman Begins presents a radically new vision (for the movies, anyway — this stuff had been around the comics and the animated series for many years beforehand) of the Batman story, grounds it in a startling new sense of reality, presents not just a caped crusader and a wacky new villain but a whole wealth of good guys and bad guys, all following their stars in increasingly complex and interconnected ways, all of it bound together with the one fantastic conceit of a young billionaire who dresses up like a bat. It strongly reminds me of the Casino Royale re-boot, which brought the James Bond character to a new level of immediacy while retaining enough of the series’ fantastic hallmarks to still qualify as escapism. There is still enough silliness in Batman Begins to make it a recognizable "superhero movie" (grand, outsized villains with colorful personalities and an ambitious scheme to destroy an entire city, spectacular action sequences that teeter at the brink of believability, production design that borders upon science-fiction) but it’s presented with a sober, straightfaced earnestness that’s nothing less than shocking after the garish camp of Batman & Robin. The Dark Knight would successfully develop all of Begins‘s good ideas into an even more complex, startling vision of modern urban justice.