Week 28

Batman: The Sucking Returns

Judgement is in: According to friends and yours truly, latest saga on Batman adventures fail to satisfy. Fail to entertain. To top it off, it sort of ... sucks too. Oh no! Explain that Mr. Karun! How dare you go against box office wisdom!

Ahem. Let me explain.

I am not sure if my negative review is due to failed expectations which were built up too much by pre-release rumor, but I can say with certainty that logical inconsistencies, and that over the top "Batvoice" was what did this movie in for me. I mean, I always found Bat costume always ridiculous compared to, say, Iron Man's armor which looks like a true knight's armor and is equipped with clever gizmo's which any fanboy would salivate over; But also, at some point in my growth I must have concluded that capes really do not make sense for a superhero who does not have superpowers and needs all the flexibility he can get. But there is more.

How can a Harvey Dent transition from such a doo-gooder, into the two-face we saw at the end of the movie? How can Morgan Freeman's character who scares people using his vigilante hero friend, object to using surveillance equipment to help catch criminals? I mean, c'mon! None of this make sense!

On other parts of the movie, it increasingly feels like director Nolan fell victim to Batman canon, you know, THE NEED TO STICK TO HISTORY. Why the need? Haven't we seen enough Jokers, two faced enemies, and other "normal" people who are just "bad". No superpowers? Why does every superhero "must" have an enemy in the same "power range" as him? Can't they have a kick-ass really bad-ass supervillain that can clean Batman's clock? You know in comic book world, Batman did go head-to-head with Superman, and he kicked his ass. Twice.

Plus. Fighting scenes suck. All you see two pointy ears that go up and down once in a while and bad guys sort of... fall around, and down, and that's it. What is the point of this? There is nothing new here. It sucks. Big time (to borrow a Dick Cheney euphemism). Really. Couldn't you do anything better? I am also tired of mindless sadism purported by bad guys in movies... This is what the new Joker represents - mindless, pointless violence. Isn't there enough of this on our streets, on our neighborhoods, in our families? Sure, art imitates life, but then why is Batman this "non-violence" BatGandhi who "shalt do no harm"? If Joker was supposed to be Batdude's mirror image, than Batdude must kick the same amount of ass as Joker does. There was a disconnect there.

All of this makes the latest box office results for Batman all the more puzzling. Fear not dear Reader. I have an explanation... If we use Stuff White People Like blog's thinking patterns , Batman would fall into a category of a movie that white people would love to talk about, just because a semi-famous actor died in it (it's very important he was semi-famous, so he can be "discovered" and be talked about posthumously) That is ALL. You don't need any other publicity stunt, a push, or leg-up so to speak; The death of Heath Ledger right after the movie finished filming was all this movie ever needed. The man will earn a posthumous Oscar he probably deserves - he was so out of character that usually begets an Oscar in Tinseltown, which will at the same time push the box score of this movie to stratosphere.

Job well done. Good director time was wasted but, hey, money is coming in ... My $10 was wasted too but I consider this an education. Fuck man, I stayed throughout the whole movie to punish myself so I don't repeat this mistake again... So No more Hulk, no more Batman and no more Superman for me. Don't give me that X-men III crap either.