main
side
curve
  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Amph ITT...I'm Batman (Discussion)

Discussion in 'Community' started by Import_Jedi, Oct 27, 2010.

  1. Darth_Invidious

    Darth_Invidious Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jun 21, 1999
    Funny you posted that. I may be willing to accept Selina being bi-curious and having such a relationship with Jen but even then, as GenAntiles posted, I've also seen women being chummy that way (and the only thing we saw onscreen was Jen hugging Selina, nothing else) while still being totally hetero. The butch, rough attitude may not mean anything other than an outward expression of the bitterness of her character. Maybe there's something sexual going on with Jen, or maybe there's nothing more than a deep friendship where such a display of affection means nothing other than that, one friend hugging another. But calling her out LESBIAN based on circumstancial evidence seems a bit much.
     
    GenAntilles likes this.
  2. I Are The Internets

    I Are The Internets Shelf of Shame Host star 9 VIP - Game Host

    Registered:
    Nov 20, 2012
    You would think that if Wayne is doing the actual Voice every time he dons the cape with no electical manipulation or what have you, he would have some pretty rough throat pain the next day.
     
  3. Jabba-wocky

    Jabba-wocky Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    May 4, 2003
    Indeed. It reminds me very much of Marvel's decision that it was "unrealistic" for Cyclops to shoot laser beams out of his eyes. Therefore, they retconned itw with the more scientific explanation that his eyeballs contained portals to alternate dimension and the high energy discharges are a byproduct of this open communication between the two.


    . . .
     
    Lord Vivec and Ender_Sai like this.
  4. tom

    tom Chosen One star 8

    Registered:
    Mar 14, 2004
    the argument is silly, mostly because it seems really far fetched that there would be a device in batman's suit that would change his voice to a gravelly voice that the actor is clearly putting on. if his voice is being altered by a device it should probably sound like it's being altered by a device and batman shouldn't have to clearly strain to change his voice.
     
    Order66Survivor and Bacon164 like this.
  5. EHT

    EHT Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Sep 13, 2007
    Yes, that is a much more logical explanation.

    And yeah... Darth Vader's voice is the result of machinery. Batman's is just the result of Wayne disguising his own voice intentionally. It's really not that hard to "talk like Batman".
     
    Order66Survivor likes this.
  6. I Are The Internets

    I Are The Internets Shelf of Shame Host star 9 VIP - Game Host

    Registered:
    Nov 20, 2012
    I wish the voice was manipulated so it could malfunction at random moments.
    "WhERe'S THe TRiggEr?"
     
  7. GenAntilles

    GenAntilles Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Jul 24, 2007
    Well the Begins suit is his first suit. He hasn't yet perfected it. Maybe he turned the voice off with Rachel as he didn't want to freak her out with the batvoice, that would be a reasonable precaution considering she was hit with fear gas. So maybe he turned the mics off, or maybe Darth_Invidious is right and it depends on the tone of voice he's using whether or not it activates.
     
  8. EHT

    EHT Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Sep 13, 2007
    Or he just doesn't disguise his voice as much when saying those lines to her... like he's subconciously letting his guard down around her.
     
  9. GenAntilles

    GenAntilles Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Jul 24, 2007
    He's not disguising his voice, the suit is. It may not be an explanation people like but the people who made the movies say that's the reason. Bale did the growl voice himself and then they used computers and what not to add to it and make it more growly.
     
  10. EHT

    EHT Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Sep 13, 2007
    That sounds like a lame retcon because some people made fun of the batgrowl. It didn't bother me, though, it fit with his disguise; he can't be seen to look like Wayne, so he shouldn't be heard to sound like him, either. Plus, something about it being manipulated when we can clearly see his mouth and see his lips moving in sync with his talking just seems silly... again, it's not like Darth Vader.
     
    Order66Survivor likes this.
  11. AAAAAH

    AAAAAH Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 8, 2012
    the cow makes his voice like that.
     
    Rogue1-and-a-half likes this.
  12. Valyn

    Valyn Jedi Master star 8

    Registered:
    Mar 2, 2002
    TAS Batman changed his own voice. And his Bruce voice was his "fake" voice.

    In the comics, Bruce also changes his own voice when in costume. It was matter of some concern for Dick when he took on the mantle after Knightfall. Gordon also noticed that Dick's Batgrowl wasn't Bruce's
     
  13. I Are The Internets

    I Are The Internets Shelf of Shame Host star 9 VIP - Game Host

    Registered:
    Nov 20, 2012
    No guys this scene from Batman Begins easily explains why he does the voice:
     
  14. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
    Don't you feel a bit silly with these explanations? Like, come on. It's a dumb explanation, like people writing into the Radio dramas that the noise you heard in space for TIE fighters et al was the result of speakers... :rolleyes:
     
    Order66Survivor and eht13 like this.
  15. GenAntilles

    GenAntilles Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Jul 24, 2007
    No not really it makes sense to me.
     
  16. drg4

    drg4 Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jul 30, 2005
    The most disappointing movie I've seen in years; a trilogy-ending debacle on the scale of Return of the Jedi.

    The only silver lining is that unlike ROTJ, TDKR isn't necessary to complete the story. The Dark Knight had a fine ending, and I'm leaving it at that.
     
  17. AAAAAH

    AAAAAH Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 8, 2012
    i think i prefer batman's cowly-growly voice to bain's evil professor cyborg voice.
     
  18. Jabba-wocky

    Jabba-wocky Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    May 4, 2003
    Why would it depend on his tone of voice? That's stupidly redundant. You are saying that in order to avoid having to consciously alter his voice all the time, he built a machine that does it for him. . .so long as he is already consciously altering his voice? Does he also have a flashlight that only works under the power of direct sunlight?
     
  19. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
    I have two words for you; death metal.
     
  20. LordMortis315

    LordMortis315 Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Sep 2, 2012
    Bale should've taken voice acting lessons. ;)
     
  21. I Are The Internets

    I Are The Internets Shelf of Shame Host star 9 VIP - Game Host

    Registered:
    Nov 20, 2012
    You have a point there.
     
  22. Darth_Invidious

    Darth_Invidious Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jun 21, 1999
    What I suggested was that when Wayne speaks with a calm or neutral voice (i.e.during most of his interactions with Gordon) the device works "normally". As I said on a previous post, any and all inconsistencies with the voice can be explained by sound editing fumbling here and there. Or that, within the fiction of the movie (suspend your disbelief here Wocky, can you do that for just a second?), the device fails to compensate or otherwise warps the voice further when Wayne raises his voice or screams (i.e. SWEAR TO ME! WHERE'S THE TRIGGER!!). The Voice is simply not there anytime Bats is out of the suit or otherwise without the cowl on. During his first meeting with Gordon -- where he was wearing an incomplete Batsuit and only used a balaclava for a mask -- Wayne was simply whispering to disguise his voice. Same thing in the hospital scene in Rises. If Wayne were "in character" in both occasions, why wouldn't he use the Voice if it were all him?

    There is a very noticeable difference between the sound of the Voice in Begins and later on in TDK. When Batman first appears in TDK the sound of his voice has a deeper electronic timbre behind it that wasn't there before in Begins. You could say that the filmmakers had tried to "perfect" the Voice during that time (and yeah, failed miserably in the attempt). But wouldn't it be simpler to explain (again Wocky, within the fiction of the movie) that Wayne - being as smart as he is - and having a very competent Quartermaster in the form of Lucius Fox, simply didn't say to himself "hey, why am I straining my voicebox so much to disguise my voice when we could cook up a device that'd do it for me?"
     
  23. Arawn_Fenn

    Arawn_Fenn Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Jul 2, 2004
    Please. There is not one Ewok in TDKR. Not one!

    Batman taking the fall for Harvey's crimes is a fine ending?
     
  24. I Are The Internets

    I Are The Internets Shelf of Shame Host star 9 VIP - Game Host

    Registered:
    Nov 20, 2012
    Bane sounded like Max von Sydow on steroids.
     
  25. Rogue1-and-a-half

    Rogue1-and-a-half Manager Emeritus who is writing his masterpiece star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Nov 2, 2000
    It's a fantastic open ending. Ambiguous. Untidy. With loose ends. We used to have endings like that. They've kind of fallen out of favor in the movies.

    Also, I guess it's time for part one of my essay about Miranda Tate.


    Okay, before I actually start this next mini-essay, I’d like to point out that I have finally given a listen to FilmSpotting’s episode about the Dark Knight Rises. I might point out that any who isn’t listening to the weekly Filmspotting podcast is really missing out. The two co-hosts generally discuss a movie currently out in theaters for forty minutes or so; spend ten minutes or so on a game called Massacre Theater, in which they butcher a scene from a classic movie; and then spend the remaining thirty to forty minutes counting down a themed top five (example: in the Dark Knight Rises episode, they counted down their top five “stormy weather movies;” podcast before that, they did a great themed list with each of them giving their top five “seemed like a bad idea at the time movies,” ie. movies that really sounded like a bad idea, but turned out to be great).

    The reason I bring this up is because they opened the show with a surprisingly intuitive gag that I hadn’t thought of; they closed the show with the same gag, or rather outtakes from them trying to record the gag and failing to get it right. In short, the gag was that one of the hosts asked the other, “Josh, what are you?” to which the other host responded, in a garbled voice, “I’m Christopher Nolan’s reckoning.” Now, granted, that isn’t that great of a gag, but the hosts have spirit, if you know what I mean. But it leapt out at me because . . . well, first of all, with an opening like that, you’d expect them to give the film a negative review, but in fact, the segment was almost entirely positive, which seemed like a wasted opportunity. So, in short, I just have to borrow that. Because, you know, they weren’t really, but me? I am Christopher Nolan’s reckoning. That’s right, I just stole a title for this whole series of reviews about The Dark Knight Rises. But, honestly, doesn’t it just fit?

    Okay, so let’s talk about Miranda Tate. In this instance, it seems, to be fair, that some of the blame for the failures in her character rest elsewhere than on Nolan’s shoulders. That is to say it rests with the fans. Nolan was clearly very invested in keeping Miranda Tate’s identity as Talia under wraps. This was, unfortunately for him, a fool’s errand. It was evident from the very first announcement that Marion Cotillard would be playing a new love interest named Miranda Tate that she would in fact be playing Talia. Is this Nolan’s fault? I suppose not. There’s no fault in choosing Talia as a character to put in your movie and there’s no fault in attempting some sort of double identity for her. It’s the fault of the audience, at least those intense fans, for knowing instantly that this would be the way for the trilogy to end. It would have to be Talia.

    Evidence continued to pour in. Liam Neeson has signed on for a cameo; Josh Pence has been cast to play (for two seconds) a young Ras. Suffice it to say that I kept to an entirely spoiler free approach to the movie, outside of knowing who was cast and some general idea of their roles. To tell you just how out of the loop I was, I didn’t know Matthew Modine was playing Deputy Commissioner Foley until three days after I saw the movie! I’m totally serious. Dude’s changed a lot, okay? But I walked into the theater knowing in every fiber of my being that Miranda Tate was Talia. At that point, the only shot Nolan had at surprising me was to have Miranda turn out to be what he kept saying she was, simply a new love interest for Bruce. Obviously, Nolan couldn’t have gone that far.

    But there were things that could have been done to do more justice to the character of Talia (and, by do more justice, I mean actually have the character of Talia in the damn movie). Let’s look quickly at the problems with the character. First of all, Nolan decides to plunk the revelation of Miranda’s true identity in the dead center of the climax (a climax that was already not terrifically exciting or suspenseful, it’s true, but still, the climax). This is a problem because Nolan has to treat the character revelation as an out of left field shocker of a twist, which admittedly it was to people who weren’t readers of the Batman comics, I suppose. So, this means that Nolan isn’t just revealing a character. He’s introducing one. The audience member that this twist is for has not one frigging idea about the character of Talia. So, Nolan essentially has to give us the entire bio of this character. So, the movie screeches to a halt while the script tells us A. that Miranda Tate is Talia; B. who the hell Talia even is; C. why Talia has come to Gotham in the first place; D. what her master plan is; E. what her driving motivation is; F. what the connection is between her and Bane; and G. how she and Bane have come to this point in their lives. IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CLIMAX.

    Now, I want to point out that I hate it when people criticize works of art based on the “rules” of literature or structure or whatever. Often, it is by subverting or exploding those rules that works of art are able to achieve transcendence. However, it is worth remembering that breaking these rules doesn’t automatically mean you’ve created great art. The rules are there for a reason. And so I’m going to go ahead and say it. Screenplays, like novels, have a general structure to them; these structures are often tweaked and subverted to great ends, I admit that. However, I am going to go out on a limb with a major statement of fact: when you get to the point in your screenplay where the next thing you are going to write is the climax and you still have SEVEN major points of information about one of your main characters that you need to convey to the audience, you, sir, have not structured your screenplay correctly. Somewhere in there? You screwed it up. The climax is the last place, quite literally the very last place, that you want a lengthy infodump of the kind that Marion Cotillard is forced to deliver.

    The climax is, in my opinion, dealing with some other problems (one isn’t entirely sure why the police decide the most efficient way to deal with Bane’s thugs is to simply charge down the street in a body, instead of breaking up into small groups and surrounding them; also, since they have guns, a hand to hand brawl isn’t the best tactical move either; and I’m not sure exactly why Bane loses his ability to beat Batman simply because Batman concentrates his punches on Bane’s mask, since you wouldn’t think that one punch to the mask would immediately render Bane unable to block punches and return them). For it to come to halt so screeching and jarring that Nolan has to lampshade it with a corny line about Talia’s “slow knife,” while Talia tells her life story (literally, her entire life story!) in what feels like ten minutes (and has to be at least five) of incredibly slow, poetic dialogue is simply the death blow. What small energy and tension that has been building up is dissipated completely and the film literally never recovers its energy, with the resulting chase scene just seeming loud and chaotic instead of legitimately suspenseful and nail-biting. The problem is so obvious that even apologists for the film are now attempting to argue that the film’s lack of energy and general lameness in those final action scenes is a deliberate attempt to create an anti-climax. Well, whatever; it is an anti-climax and if that’s what Nolan wanted, he was the only one and I think, all things considered, that he made a bad call on that. More likely, it’s just a problem that Nolan couldn’t or wouldn’t solve, thanks to his desire to deliver the Talia twist at the last possible moment. (And, lest we forget, he had something like zero motivation to fix the problems in the movie, since it was going to make a trillion dollars, whether he fixed the problems or not).

    There are myriad ways to fix the problem of the climax bogging down. Give us a punchy, fast climax and save the explication for the denouement. It’s the method of all the best mystery novels. I think of A Man Lay Dead, by Ngaio Marsh, the first novel to feature Inspector Alleyn. It builds to a wonderful climax, a reenactment of the murder that is the book’s mystery, in which Alleyn pushes and pushes and tweaks and tweaks until finally, the murderer is revealed in a moment of dark, grim emotion. Alleyn is predatory, cutting, vicious and it’s a devastating scene with high energy and a powerhouse sting in the tail. All the scene does, though, is reveal the murderer. How the murderer actually managed to commit the murder with a strong alibi isn’t really revealed; nor is the way in which Alleyn has figured out the identity of the killer. Those are saved for the next chapter, the final chapter, in which the explanation takes place. It’s an easy way to keep the climax moving and yet explicate fully. The difficulty here is that The Dark Knight Rises is already pushing the “too many endings” crowd. One shot of John Blake jumping on a bed in slow motion and the movie would be over the edge, if you know what I mean. Is there room for even more information in that slow ramping down of the movie to the ending proper? I kind of doubt it actually. After the climax, there’s a lot that has to happen; Wayne’s funeral, his resurrection, Blake’s resignation, the reveal of Blake’s real name and his discovery of the Cave, Alfred’s emotional bottoming out and his subsequent revelation in Italy, the reveal of the auto-pilot being fixed . . . I mean, man, that’s a lot of stuff. So I don’t think this would have worked really, to shoehorn Talia’s story into the denouement, any better than it did to shoehorn it into the climax.

    Another way to do it is to simply lay the groundwork early in the movie so that when the twist is revealed, the viewer is able to make all the connections in their head in an instant without needing the movie to spoon feed them everything in a lengthy monologue. I mean, in all the talk about Ras, it seems entirely possible that dialogue could have been inserted to indicate that there were rumors that Ras had fathered a daughter; then when Bruce finally leaps to the incorrect conclusion that Bane is Ras’ son, it could feel like a reveal that this is in fact the truth and that rather than fathering a daughter, Ras actually fathered a son. But then when Talia is revealed, the viewer will instantly say, “Aha! Bruce was wrong about Bane being Ras’ son! Ras did have a daughter! And that’s her!” and then you move on to continue the climax with hardly a beat missed. I suppose the difficulty here is the sheer volume of information that Nolan wants to convey about Talia. I’m not sure it’s all strictly necessary, at least all the detail. I mean, even without the ground work I think Nolan probably could have cut Talia’s monologue substantially, but clearly he was interested in creating some transcendent moment or something, which he actually whiffed, but whatever.

    But all of this is beside the point (also beside the point, but kind of not: I can no longer call these mini-essays; these are just full blown essays now. In my next one, I’m going to prove that Palpatine and Sidious aren’t the same person. And have a glossary.), since there is, as I said before, one very, very easy way to fix all the structural problems in the climax, open up the second half of the movie to way more character exploration and actually fix a huge moment in the middle of the movie where Bane’s actions make little to no sense. Like I said before, Nolan could have done all three of those things with one line of dialogue or, in point of fact, even one small camera move.

    Oh, man, though, this is long. Okay, look, I’m splitting this up. Consider this part one of my Miranda Tate essay. Part two comes tomorrow.
     
    Order66Survivor and Bacon164 like this.