well, duh. "Gotham".

Whereas I'm totally geeking out at the idea of Chicago being Gotham--go home team!

I saw most of The Prophecy over the weekend (except for the first half hour or so) for the first time. Loved both Walken and Viggo, as well as the whole concept of Evil Angels and Lucifer ending up on the good side. For all the apocalyptic rhetoric being thrown around the screen, it was appropriately over the top and a very fun watch. (Viggo creeped me the hell out.)

When I went to Chicago, it totally felt like Gotham to me, so I don't mind that.

I know some Chicago scenes were filmed in Lower Wacker Drive, so they should look cool.

I was amused upon seeing a GPD (Gotham Police Department) car back when they were filming.

Prophecy rocks. I love the semi-dead folks that Walken's character forced to work for him....

Chicago-ness of Gotham, and he's absolutely right, because I'm completely irrationally and unreasonably attached to Gotham being NYC.

But, like, New York is Gotham. That's all there is to say on the matter. And nto just because I grew up under the impression that all cities were like New York, but because of, like, history and tradition and shit.

(I know that, in the official universe, Gotham is, like, in lower New Jersey, and Metropolis is in Delaware. But that is S-T-U-P-I-D dumb.)

Spider-man 2 also insisted on dropping obvious shots of Chicago into a New York setting. (Avowedly New York, in that case.) What is with this blockbuster-superhero-comic-movie pretending-that-Chicago-and-New-York-look-at-all-alike business?

I'm okay with Gotham being an NY analog, and not needing to look like NY. They've not drawn it recently looking like NY, have they? So why should the movie be bound?

I do like what I found while googling:

Gotham has also been, since the mid-15th century, a term for a place with foolish inhabitants. Whether this usage actually stemmed from the real village, or was just a name randomly adopted for the purpose is not known.

It's not so much that it doesn't look like NY, and more that it looks really explicitly like Chicago. (Which I don't think is intentional, just that filmmakers tend to assume that audiences won't recognize places unless they're told to, which is why so many movies that take place in NYC have the CN tower in them.)

If Gotham is explicitly any real-world city, it's NYC. If it's not NYC, then it shouldn't be any real place.

(And I said it was irrational. So there.)

filmmakers tend to assume that audiences won't recognize places unless they're told to

Filmmakers are really, really stupid. I would be okay if they filmed in Chicago and tricked it up to look like New York; I would be marginally okay if they avowedly decided that Gotham is not New York at all, but some otherworldly city of baroque statuary (as Tim Burton did); but just cutting and pasting together footage from two different cities is called L-A-Z-Y.

Also, foolish. If you're going to tell a whopper, make it an elegant one, you know? Don't just slap "Rockaway" on the front of an Inner Loop train. Yes, Sam Raimi, I am talking to YOU.

Well, I'm pretty sure I'll never know the difference, so I'm okay.

I would be marginally okay if they avowedly decided that Gotham is not New York at all

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't this already been done? Does Gotham have a Statue of Liberty, or a Rockefeller Plaza, or an Empire State Building? Has it been being drawn like NYC this whole time and I'm so metropolis(har) impaired it's gone over my head?