I discovered a really stupid review of Batman:

After much unnecessary padding and delay, the film settles down to its central story line, which turns out to be a thinly veiled and thoroughly trivialized reworking of 9/11.

Uh...what? Oh, wait:

Their plan even involves hurtling a very large engine of death at a skyscraper that is the symbolic heart of the city. Sound familiar?

Did he forget the part where the point of that plan had nothing to do with the engine of death or the symbolic heart of the city and everything to do with the microwave whatsamawhozit and the water mains underneath Wayne Enterprises? For fuck's sake. Everything is not about fucking 9/11. Except War of the Worlds, because Spielberg said so.

I think it's perfectly valid to read that in as a symbolic image even though it's not the overt focus of the plot. Symbolism is kind of big WRT Bats, after all.

Maybe so, but the review seems to imply that the entire villain plot, which is about releasing fear gas and causing mass panic so the city will destroy itself, is like 9/11, which seems absurd. Unless you make the leap that terrorists/villains like to make people scared, which isn't a radical, 9/11-specific notion. Or anything not already found in the Batverse pre-9/11.

Besides, if it were so "thinly veiled," someone else would have mentioned it by now.

I think you can draw parralels, but I think that it's reading into it to think that that's what the makers of the movie were referencing. P-C, I think you last point is most relevant. I mean, they're friggin Super-Villains, they destroy cities. It's what they do . Asking Bats to fight people who aren't acting like Supervillians is silly, and, you know, their motivations were better and clearer than the majority of the Supervillains I've seen, and it's kind of nice that we can find parallels between our cultural icons and actual events and issues. I'm confused as to what kind of Bat-movie this guy would have liked.

I think you can draw parralels, but I think that it's reading into it to think that that's what the makers of the movie were referencing.

Yeah, I agree. Because once I started thinking about it, I could start making some arguments by twisting things around, but I never made the connection in my mind until this guy brought it up.

I mean, they're friggin Super-Villains, they destroy cities. It's what they do .

I want to see a supervillain's résumé.

EXPERIENCE

GOTHAM CITY
8/04 - 3/05
*Ran organized crime syndicate
*Delivered narcotic substances in a timely manner
*Executed unfit minions

METROPOLIS
2/04 - 3/04
*Held city hostage for three weeks
*Demanded large ransom with conviction and aplomb
*Fought Superman and lived

CLEVELAND
9/03 - 1/04
*Served coffee to tired patrons
*Calculated totals without the use of a computational device
*Deceived customers with friendly demeanor

Bastard would probably get a job before I did.

their motivations were better and clearer than the majority of the Supervillains I've seen

Heh. I liked how in the beginning, the League of Shadows came off as this good organization working for peace. But then you realize their methods are a bit...unconventional, and they're actually pretty eeeeevil. I don't think their good intentions held much water once they set on Gotham. They're like the Sith!

[nevermind]

I think this is one of those things where what you bring to the film colors it so heavily. As a non-New Yorker, and someone to whom Gotham felt more Chicago than NYC, it didn't ping at all, but it's not a constant ping on my radar like it is if you're right there all the time.

eta: P-C, hee

I love the supervillain resumé

Also, totally not here, because I'm revising a paper. Really.

Hee. My flist (okay, one person) has given me another stupid review, from a person who doesn't like that the movie is serious and feels real:

Bale’s intensity — he badgers the corrupted with screams as piercing as a bat’s, only at a lower pitch — seems sweetly misplaced. Let’s not forget that what we’re talking about is a cartoon.

Or, you know, a comic. Which is a different medium.

He wants us to believe that this Batman is as tuned in to social fears as Michael Moore in Bowling for Columbine, but Nolan’s insistence that what Batman does really matters is the funniest thing about the movie.

This seems to imply that Nolan has some gun control agenda, when of course Batman has had a stringent no guns policy...forever. And yes, let's have a superhero movie that presents the role of the superhero as completely unimportant and superfluous. It may have been done, but that's not Batman. Batman does matter, that's the point.

So he wants a super hero who spends years training in various skills and disciplines and dresses up like a flying rodent just because? Even the Adam West stories worked on the principle that the crimefighting mattered.