bad bat casting

Second of all, here's this new Batman movie. I want to like this. I want to be a part of this. Batman is frigging cool! No super powers, just an angry guy, all effed up in the head! A vigilante bent on revenge! Dark, sinister! That's cool. But, oh, I think this franchise needs to go away for about 20 years.

The reviewer in the NYT said, "What Mr. Keaton couldn't bring to the role, and what Mr. Bale conveys effortlessly, is Bruce Wayne's air of casual entitlement, the aristocratic hauteur that is the necessary complement of Batman's obsessive megalomania."

He's wrong, man. Don't fall for it. Arrogance isn't Bruce Wayne's driving force. That would make him a Howard Hughes-type character. Any comic book reader worth his newsprint knows he's not. (That kind of character is much more like Tony Stark/Iron Man, who Stan Lee directly based upon Hughes.)

What drives Bruce Wayne is that he WAS raised in that world of "casual entitlement" until it was forever shattered by the murder of his parents. Wayne from that point on became obsessed with impossible revenge and THAT drove him to be Batman. He chose a bat as his symbol because he wanted to drive the same terror that he felt into the hearts of criminals. The earliest Batman actually KILLED criminals! But it's more than enough that Bruce Wayne seeks to SCARE them to death.

There is something vampiric about Batman (and I believe that the first 90 minutes of the first BLADE movie are probably the best Batman movie yet made). But that's not really who Bruce Wayne is. Dracula (I mean, the real Dracula, in the Stoker novel) feels haughtily entitled to murder because he knows that he is completely superior to humans. That's great. But that is NOT who Bruce Wayne is.

Bruce Wayne is obsessed with avenging his parents' murder, but that he can never do that is what tortures him. (This is why he and Superman share some sympatico, but are like the dark and light sides of the same coin. Superman is an interesting character because the torture he feels is that despite his almost unimaginable powers, he can do nothing to change the past and save his parents and his planet from doom. He's practically a walking god, and it means NOTHING to him personally. He's born defeated!) However, the great difference between Superman and Batman is that Superman feels defeated by a completely NEUTRAL force of fate. Nobody chose to destroy Krypton. It was just a natural occurence. So, it's far easier for Superman to channel his personal sense of tortured defeat into a healthy sense of caring for human beings. "If I can't save my home planet, then at least I can save my adopted planet."

Batman is different. He feels defeated by a force of EVIL that resides in the CHOICE any human being can make. Fate didn't take his parents away, like they did Superman's. Some scum bag one evil night CHOSE to kill them. So, Bruce Wayne decided to fight fire with fire, and that's another difference with Superman. It is that Batman makes a choice to plunge right into the deepest pool of evil and work some kind of societal redemption from within. Superman works social redemption from the outside -- he always remains untouched because he fights fate not human choice. But Batman always risks becoming what he battles because he too CHOSE to fight. He wasn't BORN with a gift of power like Superman.

But it seems all of this has been lost on the makers of the current movie. Makes the casting of Michael Keaton seem like a masterstroke, don't it? He did a darned good job of conveying this element of Bruce Wayne's personality -- the way Wayne was not himself when he was himself, but could only be himself as the Batman. I miss Michael Keaton.

Gary Oldman as Comissioner Gordon is bad casting.

"The weakest link of all is Katie Holmes," the NYT reviewer continues, "as Rachel Dawes. Part of the problem is that this is a man's world - at least it will be until Catwoman shows up in a couple of episodes - so her role is underdeveloped, and part of the problem is the casting itself. It is simply too difficult to accept the former 'Dawson's Creek' star, with her exceedingly youthful good looks and little-girl voice, as a tough-as-nails assistant district attorney who represents one of the last bastions of morality in this decaying urban cesspool."

Why would this surprise anybody? Such bad casting.

And Michael Caine as Alfred the butler is BAD casting too. First, I'm sick to death of Caine. He's a caricature by now. Second, he's way too old for the part. Third, he's a scene-chewing ham of the first degree. Fourth, blah.

And why have Morgan Freeman in this? As a Q type of character! Huh? This is moronic. I'm sick of Morgan Freeman too. Wise old black man, wise old black man, wise old black man. Sheesh! Isn't HE sick of those roles already?!?

And wasn't Liam Neeson DARKMAN? That's a better Batman movie than any Batman movie!

I'm avoiding this stinker-oo.

Yep, I'm back. Same Bat Channel!

MC