Media Hype, Batman and Politics

So Batman Begins is one of my favorite comic book based movies, I personally even believe it was better then Tim Burton’s Batman. I loved how dark it was and think Christian Bale did an awesome job as he always does, remember the “Newsies” and “Swingkids” and don’t even get me started on “American Psycho”. Anyway I was pretty dang excited about the new Batman movie. And unless you live under a rock, you’ve probably been hearing all the hoopla about “Batman: the Dark Knight” since Heath Ledger’s untimely death. You’ve probably heard about how great Heath Ledger is and how he deserves an Oscar. Heck you’ve probably already been to the theater and watched it yourself; after all the movie grossed $158.3 million dollars.

Well the media has been deceiving you and you probably don’t even realize it or didn’t realize it. (for those of you who haven’t seen it and plan to stop reading now, for those of you who saw it take five minutes and ponder about the movie think really hard about all the scenes and the plot twists and stuff)

Ok so now you have refreshed your memory, you’re probably a little disappointed in the experience, aren’t you? You can admit it, don’t be ashamed. I’m not saying the movie wasn’t fun and enjoyable, I’m just saying it wasn’t done right and wasn’t that great. Of course it could be worse, Mr. Freeze…

So let’s dissect the movie. First off it was not a Batman movie, but a movie about the Joker. Now I’m not sure if the director re-edited the movie after Ledger’s death to make him more prominent or not but the movie was definitely about the Joker and not Batman. It was almost like Bale wasn’t even in this movie, except for a couple of small scenes as Bruce Wayne and some really annoying whispering (and I mean really annoying, Crystal turned to me at least 5 times complaining about it, which ironically was also really annoying whispering) the role of Batman could have been perfectly played by a stunt double. Now the media is raving about Ledger’s performance and it was good, but was it really Jack Nicholson good? Besides crazy is one of the easiest things to play (ask Crystal I play it all the time) I mean all Heath really had to do is not shower for a few days, where a purple suit some funky makeup and smile really creepily. Not really that difficult. Besides how good could his performance really have been when the scariest part of the movie was Maggie Gyllenhaal? I mean I’m not a huge Katie Holmes fan but she was a much better Rachel Dawes, it is totally unbelievable that Bruce Wayne would be constantly with at least 4 gorgeous supermodels constantly and still be hung up on Maggie Gyllenhaal; that just doesn’t happen! Now to her credit, her face wasn’t the only thing bad about her role; her wardrobe designer chose some pretty awful outfits that looked downright frumpy.

Alright back to the movie, there was not very much originality in there. Everything: the bank robbery, the cruise boats almost exploding, the car chases, the Joker lying about Harvey and Rachel’s location, the prison escape, the hostages dressed as the robbers; it’s all old hat. Not only were the scenes unoriginal they were entirely too long and drawn out, I mean I just about died during the ferry scene, from old age! Not to mention Morgan Freeman’s boring big brother rant and the incredibly predictable destruction of the sonar computer at the end. Plus the movie had two endings, one where it should have ended and then the other 30 minutes later, completely ruining the movie and a chance to do more with Two-Face.
This is how the movie should have ended. Two-Face has Officer Rodriguez call Gordon’s family. Batman captures the Joker and the Joker tells him about corrupting Two-Face. Gordon calls Batman and tells him his family is missing. At this point the main conflict of the movie, the Joker, has been captured and you have a cool cliff hanger and another good character to make a third movie. Instead Batman goes and kills Two-Face in 30 long drawn out minutes, gets blamed for being a bad guy (which I also thought was pretty lame) and the cops chase him into the night. What a waste of a character and instead of adding to the movie it detracted from it.
Another thing I couldn’t stand about the movie was the freaking audience! They had been so manipulated by the media they couldn’t help but clap 4 or 5 times during the film. It’s a film people, nobody in the film can hear you clapping.

So all that being said, I did enjoy the movie, I just wish someone would have asked me, a professional movie and TV watcher since I was born, how to make the movie. It would have been better. I think Aaron Eckhart was fabulous and really should have been cast to do Two-Face in the next movie. (BTW if you haven’t seen “Thank you for smoking” you should) I loved the disappearing pencil trick, the sonar cell phone\bat eyes and the sky hook extraction.

Now that I’ve been complaining about the media hype of the movie and how it didn’t really deserve it, I have to point out another place where media hype is killing me and that is politics. The American people bought into the media attention on McCain and Obama and it disgusts me. I mean the only candidates that I think would be worse for the country would be Huckabee on the republican side and maybe Hillary for the democrats though I’m not sure she would be worse, since we know she is completely self centered and therefore fairly predictable on how to manipulate her into at least not bringing on the Armageddon. Obama is completely unqualified to even be in politics and yet he has a 50/50 chance to be president in 5 months. McCain is no better. To paraphrase Tom Delay, McCain has no redeeming values. Now this statement would be 100% true if it was about Mr. Delay, but it’s about McCain so its only 99% true. I can think of two redeeming qualities of McCain.

1. He is not Obama
2. He is not the Antichrist (and yes I am referring to Oprah)

Any who I sure wish we could call a do over and hold the primaries again, maybe we could actually look at the content and quality of the candidates and make better choices on both sides.

Here’s hoping Batman 3 isn’t as screwed up as the Dark Knight and that whoever is elected President doesn’t get us all killed or do anything else equally as stupid.

Oh and if you want to see a good movie this summer, do yourself a favor and see Iron Man, it is by far the best blockbuster of the year and Hell Boy 2 was a close second.

Do yourselves a favor and see both of them in the theater.