Dark Knight Rises: Trailer 3

"This isn't a car."

Batman in the flight of his life.

Sometimes the Internet gives one a gift. A gift that keeps on giving.

Batman, with a lightsaber. Fighting a shark.

Batman Wedding Theme: Reasons in Favor

Anyone can argue in favor of a Batman wedding theme; there is no difficulty to be had in saying "your wedding needs to be Batman themed". But it takes a true genius to create an arbitrarily long list of reasons for why a Batman theme is the best wedding theme. So, in no particular order:

Reasons why "Batman" is the best Wedding Theme:

- Everyone wants to see their wife dressed as Poison Ivy at least once in the marriage; so why not start the marriage with a wife dressed as Poison Ivy?

- There is no greater symbolism of unity than emerging together from a Lazarus Pit.

- A Harley Quinn flower girl walking with a Robin ring bearer would be god-damned adorable.

- Provides an opportunity to say "Let's race to the honeymoon suite!" without sounding like a creep.

- Once the minister is dressed as Ra's al Ghul he'll be forced to call the groom "detective" throughout the duration of the ceremony.

- Bridesmaids + Catgirl outfits. QED

- If you really treasured the friendship of your best man you'd let him dress as Nightwing.

- The Bride's father will, undoubtedly, hate the groom on sheer principle. So, if you let the bride's father dress as the Joker he can at least hate in character.

- Releasing a flock of bats is simply more romantic than a flock of doves, and it helps control the mosquito population.

- When the bride changes her mind halfway through and runs out the best man can exclaim, "Tune in tomorrow - same Bat-time, same Bat-chapel" and it will all seem like part of the plan.

- If while consummating the marriage you yell out "Biff, Pow, SHAAZOOOOOM" you can argue that you were simply "enacting the theme".

- Finally affords you a legitimate reason for learning the Batusi; could there be a more perfect first dance as a married couple?

- Limousines are stupid. Batmobiles are awesome.

- Allows for creative reformulation of the wedding vows: "Riddle me this. Riddle me that. Do you take as your lawfully wedded husband, The Bat?"

- Dude, Bridesmaids in CATGIRL OUTFITS!

Batman: Arkham Asylum

Every once in a great while I experience such a transcendent moment of pure joy that I fear, even while grinning like an idiot, that I may never feel this happy about anything ever again. Batman, Arkham Asylum had three (THREE!) of these moments, and while I won't name them specifically, I will note that this is fully two or three more than most games tend to manage.

At the outset of the game, you (Batman!) are locked in Arkham Asylum, which has been taken over by the Joker (voiced by Mark Hamill no less! And Batman and Harley Quinn are also voiced by The Animated Series cast! Excellent!). What follows is punchin', sneakin', detectivin', and grapplin' hookin' (?) in what amounts to a big awesome wish fulfillment for anyone who ever thought it might be fun to fly across the room and surprise kick a guy in the face so hard his family tree cracks in half. I don't use such cliched hyperbole lightly, either. To be sure, a lot of the game is spent following a scent and sneaking through air ducts and entering data into the Bat Computer, and it does not take much gunfire to bring Batman down, but in a sneak attack or a hand-to-hand brawl, this Batman can bury a lead pipe in a guy's gut pretty easily. Non-lethally, of course. He's just knocking them out with his hand spring into a roundhouse that stomps a guys skull into the wall.

Combat control essentially boils down to pressing an attack button to punch and kick guys around. When enemies are about to throw their own punches, they flash a blue icon, and if you press the counter button at this time, you'll grab the guy's arm and elbow him in the teeth (or grab his leg and kick him in the back of the knee, or twist his fist backwards and knee him in the jaw, it's really a fairly varied arsenal of brutality). Yet another button will twirl Batman around like a pretty ballerina and he'll toss what I assume is fairy dust at a guy, which will (quite understandably) confuse him, making him much more susceptible to having his bones removed by blunt force. It's not very difficult to string combos together, though there is some measure of skill required to actually do these things effectively and without taking damage. Additionally, the game makes it a reasonably simple matter to swoop down on a guy, knock him out, grapple up to the rafters, then drop down on someone else and string him up by his ankles. Again, some skill is required on the part of the player to actually do this without being seen, but it is quite doable.

Sneaking and, to some extent, boss battles are pretty similar to what might go on in Metal Gear Solid, and power ups, exploration and some tools are pretty Metroid-esque in their execution. The game is unmistakably Batman, but given that super hero games are not typically heralded for their quality, I think it's important to point out that while the game play may be familiar in some ways, it's reminiscent of the greatest games as opposed to the worst. There are quite a few cameos by characters new and old, and those who don't appear in person at least leave their gloves and masks around for you to find, netting a piece of their character art and a bio.

There's a challenge mode that lets you try more challenging variants on some of the more memorable beat downs and sneak-fests, which was pretty nice of them. The bottom line, however, is that this is really the most fulfilling experiment in creating software that allows you to do things that Batman would do.

And that's why Batman: Arkham Asylum gets five exploding knuckle sandwiches out of a possible viking punching a polar bear so hard in 990AD that it ratified the US Constitution.

Spencer Taylor: Not The Joker

Ok. Even if we assume that Heath Ledger's Joker was right and acknowledge that rules and laws are little more that social constructs meant to allow for survival of the species? If we abandon our suckling at the teat of indoctrinated bullshit and rather objectively assess reality in a pursuit of Truth?

That DOES NOT MEAN that we dress up like The Joker and attempt to steal posters from the lobby of the cinema in which we watched Dark Knight, Spencer Taylor! No, Spencer Taylor! Bad, Spencer Taylor!

First of all, materialism is fucking stupid. Which, if you had watched Dark Knight and listened to The Joker, you would have fucking understood. So, if you're dressing like The Joker in order to steal Dark Knight merchandise? Sorry! You've missed the fucking point the guy you're dressing like tried to make.

Second of all, FUCK YOU, Spencer Taylor, for making fans of Dark Knight that much lamer by comparison to your stupid, worthless, fanboy ass. If you had just tried to steal the posters sans makeup and costume? Ok, not too bad, you're just a fan. But when you put on makeup and wear a damned costume? SORRY! You've delved into that other realm of fanboy which is lower and far more miserable and disgusting than those who simply hop around wearing cat ears.

I would like to assume that Spencer Taylor is just a fan who wanted to steal things related to the movie. But my real fear is that Spencer Taylor is one of those jackasses who hears a fictional character deliver a monologue about the futility and absurdity of organized society who then decides to go smash mailboxes and throw firecrackers at cats. Not only does motherfucker completely miss the fucking point of the monologue, but THEN he uses it as a half-assed excuse to be a moron who puts on face paint and tries to steal posters. And who the fuck steals a movie poster? The damned things are like $20 on Amazon.

Gah! There's nothing more frustrating than a jackass who misses the fucking point. And you, Spencer Taylor, completely missed the fucking point.

Ledger's Joker: Not the Crazy One

More and more it seems to me that the philosopher, being of necessity a man of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, has always found himself, and had to find himself, in contradiction to his today: his enemy was ever the ideal of today. So far all these extraordinary furtherers of man whom one calls philosophers, though they themselves have rarely felt like friends of wisdom but rather like disagreeable fools and dangerous question marks, have found their task, their hard, unwanted, inescapable task, but eventually also the greatness of their task, in being the bad conscience of their time.

Heath Ledger's Joker is not a crazy person, not a deranged sociopath preoccupied with murder or death. Joker's aim is not personal vendettas or individual, focused acts of strife. The Joker is not concerned with wealth, with power. The Joker is not even concerned for his own well-being or self-preservation. Heath Ledger's Joker, the most accurate portrayal of the fictional Joker character, is a Joker who is wholly sane, wholly cognizant of his place within the universe. And even though you might not recognize it, and the film, as is its obligation, masks it? The Joker is the one who is right. The Joker is correct.

That's what is so amazing about philosophy, about critical thinking, about objectively assessing reality and achieving a full, total appreciation for the way things are. When one does that, when the curtains are thrown aside and a character accurately assesses reality and acts appropriately they are portrayed as the villian, they are the one cast aside. They are the one who those addicted to the fabricated system feel compelled to stop. The Athenians killed Socrates. The Church censored Galileo. Batman beat up The Joker.

That's what is so amazing about Dark Knight. Dark Knight is a celebration of the herd mentality, the preservation of the social system of fabricated rules and accepted norms which aids continuation of the species. Even Batman, for his part, is a champion of that system and despite his ability to recognize its problems his goal, first and foremost, is the protection and continuation of the system. The Joker has no such problem, no such self-inflicted dilemma. The Joker's entire motivation throughout the film is to drag Gotham, kicking and screaming, out of the cave and into the light.

In describing the natural state of man Hobbes wrote: "the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." The real conflict in Dark Knight, the actual fight and dilemma, is not Joker versus Gotham or Joker versus Batman. Dark Knight portrays the conflict between truth and idealized, false, fabricated faux-normalcy; our struggle against reality. Joker in his scarred, ugly, tattered self is that truth, that solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and shorty reality in which we live. Batman's character, interestingly enough, is clean, conformed, polished. Yet that conformity, that cleanliness and polish are in actuality little more than fabricated armor meant to protect his frail self from truth. Even the Batman identity itself is little more than armor to shield Bruce Wayne, the true person, from reality.

That's why I'll continually offer tongue-in-cheek praise for Dark Knight again and again. That's why I'll probably leave work early to catch another matinee. What is compelling is not the cinematography, the action scenes. It's not an enjoyable film or a compelling story. Dark Knight is a celebration, a defense, if you will, of humanity turning a blind eye to the truth. Dark Knight is a cinematic argument in favor of clinging to life within the cave. Batman is our inability to accept reality and our struggle against the facticity of our being. Heath Ledger's Joker is truth. And our reaction to Joker belies our fundamental nature as a frightened herd clinging to our self-sustained safeguards which protect us not against an external threat, but rather the objective, empirical truth of the world in which we live.

Saw Batman:

1. Batman wants some soup.
2. Batmanuel.
3. Disturbing The Joker.
4. Misdirection.
5. Hey, Batman!
6. Morgan Freeman.
7. Well paced.

Pretty good.

Batman is Silly; Dark Knight is Pretentious

Batman & Robin is on TNT...

I think this approach to Batman works better than the Batman Begins / Dark Knight approach...if only because Batman & Robin acknowledges how absurd the idea is...whereas Batman Begins tries to make it...realistic.

That's the problem I had with Batman Begin. It was so fucking silly and pretentious and inharmonious with itself due to that attempted realism. In Batman Begins they're trying to realistically portray some incredibly rich guy dressing like a bat who snoops around late at night fighting crime. They’re providing depth, backstory, motive and an appeal to realism.

But it can't be made realistic. It's not realistic. It's fundamentally absurd.

Gritty semi-realistic Batman works as a comic, as a cartoon. It works in forms of media which fundamentally suspend realism and create a new world in which the story can be told. I can understand cartoon Bruce Wayne prowling the streets of cartoon Gotham. That makes sense; that’s coherent. But if you have a real person, an actual human being, put on the batman costume, with the little ears and cape? That is silly. That is absurd. Trying to make that not silly…trying to make that realistic…is where it all falls apart.

George Clooney as Batman makes sense. Adam West as Batman makes sense. That casting, that approach to the series, acknowledges how silly the concept fundamentally is when made real, when portrayed by human beings, and finds a harmony with that silliness by embracing it.

But Christian Bale moodily brooding over his destiny, his lost parents, his grasping at an idealized form of justice all while dressing up as a widdle bat? That is fundamentally not harmonious, not realistic. It is inconsistent with itself.

I’ll watch Dark Knight and enjoy Heath Ledger as The Joker. But throughout the movie I’ll continually ask myself, “Why the FUCK is he dressed like a clown?” In the same way that when Christian Bale puts on his widdle bat ears I’ll continually ask, “Why the hell doesn’t he just shut up, make a large donation to the Gotham police department, and fuck Maggie Gyllenhaal?!”

Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, attempt to make realistic something which is fundamentally absurd. If they were just superhero movies? If they embraced the Superman, Fantastic Four, X-Men approach and abandoned realism to compliment the fundamentally unrealistic components of the stories? Then they would be awesome. But as it stands they are simply frustrating, inharmonious, silly, and pretentious.