I was going to go see the Dark Knight after work. I didn’t. I’ve waited this long because I abhor crowds, especially at the movie theater. I like to watch movies in peace, without crying children or people talking on their cellphones or loudly to each other. I like not having to see the shadow of someone else’s head in front of me, and avoid my seat being kicked by the person behind. Honestly, aside from the size of the screen and the quality of the sound, there is nothing positive about going to the theater.
Peter Weller is a fan of movie theaters, according to a quote attributed him on imdb.com. Weller, one of my favorite actors, thinks movies are superior to television because movies (during their theater runs, at least) require viewers to communally experience the picture. Well, Pete sounds like a hippie or some similar variety of bullshit for that remark; I disagree with him entirely. Other people detract from the experience of watching a film. Unless they all shut the fuck up, I don’t in a million years see how they could augment it … and if they’re all silent, what good are they, communally? Am I thrumming with them on a spiritual level? Bosh and poppycock. Bollocks and horseshit.
I still like Peter Weller as an actor, though. Screamers and Robocop are two of my favorites.
Batman is my favorite comic book hero. He has been since I started reading comics back in the early 80s. The Jim Aparo and Frank Miller Batmans were the two incarnations to which I was first introduced and they shaped my appreciation for the darker interpretation of the vigilante. I’m not totally swayed by Christian Bale’s performance (as an aside, every time I try to type Christian, I write Christina and have to correct it), and I’ve heard that the Dark Knight is full of histrionic acting and an excess of expository dialogue. Two things I hate in movies intended to be taken seriously, as I imagine the Dark Knight to be. In movies, especially, I think show don’t tell is the axiom to follow. I hate being talked to death by a film.
I liked Batman Begins, but I wasn’t overwhelmed. I was, in fact, disappointed by the apocalyptic plot. I know the Ra’s al-Ghul character from the comics and the Animated Series and he’s intriguing, but Neeson’s al-Ghul was not David Warner’s by any stretch of the imagination, nor did the former even approach the latter in quality.
When it comes to Batman, I prefer my plots to be as grounded as the hero himself. He has no super powers. He does not fly without the aid of technology (and even then, he swings on grapples for the most part — not quite sure how I feel about the hang-glider cape from the Nolan films), he is not bullet proof. He is just a man, a physical specimen and brilliant, but just a man. I like him as the detective not the grandiose-scale city (and perhaps world) savior. I like Jeph Loeb’s, Frank Miller’s and Matt Wagner’s Batmans (I know the syntax is odd, but it’s intentional). I would love to see Wagner’s “Faces” brought to the big screen. I wish Batman Begins had been a straight adaptation of Miller’s “Year One”. I love Klaus Jansen’s squiggly artwork fomr the creepy “Gothic” series published in Legends of the Dark Knight. “Shaman” and “Prey” and “Venom” would all be phenomenal if put on film.
But I do not run studios and I do not direct movies. I am just a consumer and, since the product is not enough to my liking for me to waste two and a half hours of my life in a place I’d rather not be, where I can’t piss without missing something and I have to deal with the rudeness of others (something I am rich with at the end of any given day), I will not pay to see this product. My lack of $10.50 will not, in any way, sway the hundreds of millions this film has grossed … but I will have it to spend on something else.
I suppose if I can’t see the Batman movie I’d like to see, that $10.50 in my pocket is at least a very minor consolation.