Journal

Best. Batman. Ever.

25 Comments

I saw Batman Begins, and I agree with the multitudes who are proclaiming it the best Batman movie ever.

It’s still not better than Spider-Man, though. See, I came out of Spider-Man wanting to be Peter Parker. I came out of Batman Begins wanting to be Commissioner Gordon. Let’s face it — Batman has it ROUGH. Besides not having any actual super powers (other than super-determination and super-wealth), he’s just slightly crazy.

Gordon, though… as an honest cop in a crooked town, and one of the few people Batman trusts, he’s a hero I can identify with.

No spoilers here. Move along.

–Howard

25 thoughts on “Best. Batman. Ever.”

  2. /me notes “http://www.schlockmercenary.com/schlockprocess.html” is still down. 😉

    I’m curious what resolution you save your originals at. Any mistakes you’d advise against following in the footsteps of? I just started trying to be more regular about one-cells in an attempt to force myself to learn to draw better. While most of them are probably going to be an embarassment to myself (later, if not now), I’d still like to be as forward-thinking as possible with them.

    Got a keenspace account for the userbase, and to put myself into a system geared towards requiring updates.

    2. I scan at 466dpi, and the originals are 3.75″ x 13″. I save the original b/w scan (I only scan in black-and-white, to prevent aliasing, and to make pencil marks and paper blemishes disappear), I save the full-sized, layered Photoshop document, and I save a full-sized, flattened TIFF. Then I reduce for the web.

      –Howard

      1. wow. 446 dpi would kill my computer, I think. Stuff moves slowly enough at 320dpi, but that’s definitely something to conssider.

        What’s the benefit of saving the full-sized, flattened TIFF?

        :considers making photoshop actions:

        Thanks!

  3. I felt the same way — leaving Spiderman (both of them), I wanted to shoot webs and do the tarzan thing from building to building. Leaving Batman Begins, I wanted Batman to exist, but I didn’t want to be Batman. On a trivial note, I think that Batman Begins was a better movie, though: My suspension of disbelief was complete. Batman could exist, and if he did, this is how he’d get there.

    I think the reason I wanted to be Peter Parker, and not Batman (though I’d love to be Bruce Wayne) is because Peter Parker got a “break”. He got to skip all the hard work involved in getting to be Spiderman; his obstacles were mainly mental and not physical, as his skills were natural. (“Natural”. Riiiiiight….) It’s the standard American “Get Rich Quick” scenario, just with a different currency.

    1. suspension of disbelief – well not quite 🙁

      I found the movie very enjoyable. I want to make that clear before I make any other comments.

      I had a real problem suspending my disbelief for many of the technical aspects of the movie. The one that that unpleasantly jerked me out of my blistful disbelief was the microwave emitter. Did the writer and director both not realize that a microwave emmitter would fry people near it too? How could the electronics near the emmitter not get effected by that much electromagnetic radiation? And of course, where did they get the power to run the emmitter? Please don’t misunderstand me.. I’m not trying to blast the movie. I was really, quite rudely, interupted with these questions while I watched the movie.

      As you probably could guess, I sat in the movie wanting to be Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman). Could you imagine the fun he has with the tools at his disposal? All the fun and none of the danger!

  4. Superwealth IS a superpower. Ask any gamemaster whose characters take absurdly high levels of wealth during character generation. If Kevyn hadn’t been able to simply buy out Pranger’s Bangers (don’t kill Charp!) things would have been much different.

    Well, they might not be trapped 300 meters below a pool of molten radioactive slag, but you get my drift. 🙂

    Loxley

    1. I wouldn’t call it a “superpower” so much as an “advantage” – the same way Batman’s intelligence or honed strength and reflexes are extremely valuable advantages. It helps him carry out his job, definitely, but it’s not by any means superhuman.

      1. No, those are his personality characteristics.
        Batman’s superpower is definitely super-wealth. Why? He’s a superhero, he’s from comic books producedd by companies that live on superheroes, clearly he has to have some superpower.

        1. I disagree. One of the big reasons Batman is so unique is that he really is just a human. He doesn’t have “powers”. He can’t climb walls, he can’t fly, etc. At least, not without the use of gadgets, just like the rest of us. Your argument, to me, doesn’t hold water because Batman is canonically an exception to the classic superhero rules.

          I mean, I guess we can argue the semantics of the word “superpower” all we like. But in my opinion, as far as the comic-book world goes (and the entire “superhero” mythology), “superpowers” are what separates the heroes (and the villains) from the regular citizens whom they are protecting (or harming). Superpowers draw the line between human and superhuman. But Bruce Wayne, even if he is wealthy as Croesus, is still a mere human. There are plenty of other rich people in Gotham and the world, but none of them are Batman.

          On the other hand, what does separate Batman from the regular citizens is the willingness and ability to fight crime, and the symbolic nature of his existence. None of this implies “superpower” to me, though, though it does strongly imply “hero”.

          2. Ignoring the fact that you’ve “distilled” my statements into something entirely different, then yes, I would say it would be possible. Obviously he wouldn’t be the Batman we know, but Batman could be Batman if he was just a guy in a black outfit (putting aside the money he’d need to spend – deal) who randomly shows up, scares the crap out of criminals, beats them senseless, and vanishes.

            One of the main ideas of Batman is that he is basically fear incarnate. You don’t need a utility belt to be that.

          3. Batman’s wealth is a superpower. How do we know? Because ordinary “non-super” wealthy people can lose their wealth. To my knowledge, Batman’s wealth has always been beyond that.

            We all have “powers.” Heck, some of us even have the “power” of wealth. Where superheroes become SUPER heroes is in the extension of those powers beyond what any of us could reach. And for all his “just human” schtick, Batman has superpowers.

            Barely.

            End of argument, please.

          4. So his wealth is a force multiplier in that regard. But it’s a force multiplier that makes him worthy of a comic book, as opposed to just your average run of the mill vigalante (or even off duty cop).

            I still think super wealth (Lex Luthor anyone?) is a perfectly reasonable superpower.

            You want an everyman who is tough as hell, doesn’t have any superpowers, and doesn’t have Bruce Wayne’s money? Try Frank Castle (aka The Punisher). Those two guys need to hang out sometime. Too bad they’re in seperate universes.

            Loxley

  5. When I read Frank Miller’s Batman stories, and the Year One stories that followed The Dark Knight Returns, that was my thought too. Gordon is tough, honest, a straight player – but without veering into naivete or softness. Batman is just way too tortured.

  6. See, the thing that stands out about Batman to me and how he is different from all other superheroes is this: Batman is the only superhero who actually sought out the position.

    All the others seem to follow the philosophy that is spoken by Uncle Ben in Spiderman: “With great power comes great responsibility.” They had superpowers and said, “Well, I’d better use these to help others.”

    Batman, on the other hand, said “There’s a lot of corruption in the world. Someone has to do something about it, so it might as well be me,” and then he went out and sought out the means to do so. He trained, he created a persona to strike fear into the hearts of villains.

    That aside, I just have to say one thing: That movie was phenomenal! 🙂

  8. Marriage and Angelina Joliee in the same post

    From personal experiance, protecting yourself from people trying to do you bodily harm for money is a great hobby to bring a couple together

  10. Better than Episode III?

    My co-workers claim Episode III was better than Batman, which I’m having a hard time believing, see as how people are raving about the latter. They’re die-hard Warsies, though, so I’m looking forward to Batman being much more enjoyable than Return of the Shit Sith.

    1. Re: Better than Episode III?

      RotS has more eye-candy. Batman Begins has more acting, more plot, more drama, better sword-fighting, and scarier bad guys.

      –Howard

      1. Re: Better than Episode III?

        I am rather amazed at that assessment. Both Batman Begins and Episode III were rather impressive entries in series badly in need of impressive entries. But I don’t see how Sith can be encapsulated in “eye candy.” I’ll gladly give Batman Begins the award for “acting” (any movie beats Sith there!) and “scarier bad guys,” and possibly even “plot.” But I still feel Sith is far better than Begins at creating a sense of “myth,” that sort of visceral iconic feel that both comic books and space-opera-fantasy rely on.

        When Batman went through training (despite naive Nichean philosophies as bad as any jedi stoicism) it was cool. Same for certain scenes of him swooping in on bad guys.

        But when Anakin and Obi-Wan face each other, or when Order 66 is enacted, I felt a much stronger sense of “myth” than anything in Batman. Call it eye-candy if you want, but it is far beyond the “okay, so they did a beautiful job of the background for this cliche space dogfight” that I think of as “eye-candy.”

        (That said, I love beautiful backgrounds for cliche space dogfights, too.)

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