Wasn’t bad. Ledger certainly personified a reactionary’s notion of “anarchy.”
And that’s what the Batman formula is (reactionary, I mean). The character and his narrative are 100% hardwired with the Florentine Republican ideas that J.G.A. Pocock has done the best job of elucidating (coming from a vantage point that is anathema to me). All he wants to do is hang on. Exercise virtu and excise “corruption.” Keep the money in the hands of the people that are already (“legitimately”) rich, and the underclass in its place. The only “systemic” critique this concept is capable of generating is a law n’ order screed against legal loopholes that allow the criminals to go free.
That’s why I hate Batman–but you already know that if you’ve hung out here before. I really should check out what Morrison has done with the character–’cause Morrison, as you also probably know, is the one writer (or, the one living writer–’cause Mark Gruenwald had pretty much the same agenda) who seems to believe–along with me–that superhero comics should make inexorable war against the status quo/totalizing narratives.
I also saw the trailer for Watchmen.
Now there’s a concept that could go any way at all–politically. But who can tell from that trailer where that 300 guy is going with it? I’m not optimistic. How could I be? And what’s the point of a Watchmen movie anyway? The book was so cinematic that I would argue we’ve all SEEN the best film that could possibly have been made out of it. The trailer would seem to support that statement. It looks GREAT–’cause it looks EXACTLY like the comic panels…
Of course I’m gonna go see it.
Then I read this thing on The Spirit.
My only response to that is–the spirit is willing, but the Miller is weak.
good evening friends!
Dave
Days of Presents Past: A Motime Like the Present Archive 
Dave,
run, don’t walk to get Morrison’s Batman 663 from Winter/Spring 2007. I love this prose issue. Timothy Callahan wrote about it.
Morrison has overhauled his website and after registering you have access to a more or less regularly updated Morrison-penned section called “Head”. As you can read in his latest missive — it’s the second column in the “Head” series — he likes “The Dark Knight” very much:
I’m quite hard to please, and a movie has to be really good to get me jumping but this Dark Knight honked my horn from here to hell and back and I feel a need to spread the love like margarine over these, me own internet pages. It’s a work of art to look at, and as Nolan’s clear attempt to craft his own perfect all-time best Batman story EVER, the ultimate Batman story, it never veers off course.
I can’t wait to see it again.
…and is equally excited about the Watchmen movie:
As I discovered again, when I met Zack Snyder who showed us some of the astonishing footage for his film of WATCHMEN.
In the face of how incredible this stuff looks, (I saw the jaw-dropping trailer sequence as well as various other scenes) it seems a real shame that Alan Moore has artfully painted himself into the fundamentalist corner from which he now shakes a Goth-be-ringed fist at the world; stubborn, intractable, railing against his own personal Phantom Menace, across his own counter-culturally-approved lines in the sand.
In any other world, he’d have every right to be astonished and delighted by what these young filmmakers have done with his and Dave Gibbons’ work. His enquiring mind would surely be intrigued, if nothing else, by the strange, luminous soil in which his thought-cuttings have been recultivated as breathing, moving things.
Which is not surprising, if for no other reason than Morrison’s perpetual inclination to tease Moore, without having achieved the desired outcome, however – Moore’s attention.
FrF
yikes!
thanks Franz–I’ll check that stuff out–especially Bat #663.
all I can say for now is that, as usual, Morrison-the-reader/viewer (even of his own work!) impresses me so much less than Morrison-the-creator… (which isn’t so bad really–the other way around would be much worse)
Dave
I see the context of stability in the Batman project I just don’t see the film as reactionary as stated with the Nolans really spending so much time to explain when a Batman will not be needed.
One of the things that the film (vs. the comic) seems to offer is that class antagonism isn’t forever. That change is possible for all by choice. (it is almost like big Obama ad on terrorism)
X!
re: the hope that Batman will become unnecessary–yes, but only through the actions of other avatars-without-masks of civic republicanism (like Harvey Dent)…
not sure about the class antagonism stuff though–I don’t see any evidence in Nolan’s film that anyone is thinking about systemic problems that go deeper than the “oh man there’s a lot of crime in our city” level…
I’ll never understand why anyone would care if mafia honchos get imprisoned or not–they’re just bankers-on-the-bubble, after all… the world Bruce Wayne wants to realize would still need overthrowing, if you ask me!
Dave
I’m running behind on my movie discussions, but here‘s my take on The Dark Knight. I quote you somewhere in there.
Charles R.