Batman Begins proved that Superhero Movies could live up to the talent cast in them. Jon Favreu said that after Nolan's cast in Batman Begins - it was far easier to get actors like Downey, Bridges, etc. to make a real, serious Superhero movie.
Talented, big name actors have been attached to superhero movies for years. It started with SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE and Gene Hackman, and continued from there, espeically with the Batman franchise. BATMAN BEGINS might have made recent superhero moviers more palpable to some. But this isn't a new phenomenon, per se.
The success of Batman Begins, a darker Superhero movie, helped oil the wheels of Watchmen's production.
So did 300, a nearly mindless action/gore fest.
WB was interested (at one point they lost the rights, have since gained them back), but waffled on WATCHMEN until 300 became a smash hit. It is a project that geared up and then died two or three times after BATMAN BEGINS came out.
Re: "spot fest," -- Too right. When a movie focuses on these big set pieces back to back to back the story doesn't have a lot of room to develop. Batman Forever, for instance, had a lot of good ideas in it and a lot of good moments, but due to the seemingly endless parade of fantastical sets and Batman-saves-the-day setups, the story was robbed of most of its good dramatic potential. The Flying Graysons die and once the Circus scene is over, Dick doesn't seem to have much to say about the matter. Sure he wants to go hunt down their killer but where's the emotion? It isn't there.
When you say "big set pieces"...
Like ninja hideout scenes?
Big Arkham asylum sequences?
Wayne Manor burning down?
And so forth.
I'm going to argue this point. BATMAN BEGINS has a similar dynamic to the previous Batman movies, and is every bit as "big" and "loud". Series of explosions, crashes, big things happening built around the concept of Batman's first appearance, instead of being built around an established Batman's ongoing adventures. Bruce doesn't go around displaying massive amounts of emotion in his quest to become Batman. No more than in any previous film, really. He does it for the purpose of the story, same as the previous films. And you cannot seriously argue there was no emotion or relevance to Dick Grayson's arc in BATMAN FOREVER.
No, the key element in making BATMAN BEGINS a success where previous movies faltered was something Tim Burton discovered during BATMAN, something Bryan Singer stumbled onto during X-MEN, and something Sam Raimi occassionally remembered while making the Spider-Man movies.
It was simply the moviemakers taking the material seriously. And that's it.
That is also why CASINO ROYALE succeeded. It has nothing to do with the comparative quality of the casts, or the size of the names involved, or the movies being any less big and loud than previous films. It's that the filmmakers took the mythology seriously, and it's really more or less as simple as that.
Did Casino Royale use modern technology and such? Sure. But the character that Daniel Craig played is the character that Ian Fleming wrote about. The character that Pierce Brosnan and Roger Moore played is not.
As has already been pointed out, that's not entirely accurate. The Bond in CASINO ROYALE was a bit softer than Fleming's. Again, what happened with CASINO ROYALE was that filmmakers took a step back, and they took the character and his world seriously.
You clearly have never read the old Batman stories. Joe Chill, for instance, is part of Batman's 1940 origin, and was never mentioned by name in Year One. Batman in 1939 blew a LOT of stuff up. He was that kind of guy. Batman in the 1940's was a master swordsman and hand-to-hand combatant. Ra's al Ghul was created in the 1970's. Now I know - Begins borrowed Heavily from Year One and The Long Halloween. But then again Year One and The Long Halloween borrowed heavily from the 1940's in their own right. Begins, as I stated in one of the first posts in this thread - combined all the best aspects of Batman from EVERY era, and put them together in one package. I think it's incredibly true to the character's roots.
What you are describing is not just the character's roots, so much as existing basic mythology elements, which the Schumacher films also featured. The Schumacher films just didn't take these elements as seriously. You are pointing out that the movie used elements from the comic books that had not been used before. I wouldn't call that going back to his roots, so much as just taking the best elements of the characters and the mythology and meshing them together.
Justice League? It's an obvious coward-move by WB to test the waters before they spend any money on any DC characters other than Batman or Superman. It's almost like they don't think Flash or Wonder Woman or Green Lantern could support films on their own, despite the obvious fact that, if nothing else, a tall beautiful brunette in a skimpy costume will sell tickets even if the script is piss. Now imagine if the script ISN'T piss. It's like PRINTING MONEY. Those idiots.
While I wish WB would make more superhero films...it just isn't that simple. GREEN LANTERN isn't something you make for $60 million. It's something that you make for $300 million and you pray it doesn't flop. And in a world where SUPERMAN RETURNS almost did...I can under WB's trepidation. To their credit though, they are still making attempts to get THE FLASH and GREEN LANTERN off the ground. And they have brought THE DARK KNIGHT and WATCHMEN. Really, over the last few years, they've had a pretty good superhero output, considering.
They have no reason to believe that at this point, when Superman has underperformed. If a big icon like him can't pull in the big bucks, then the lesser known heroes are an even bigger risk financially for the studio.
Exactly.
They did cheapen Vesper's end, I'll go along with that.
How so?
But I thought the atmosphere felt more like a Fleming Bond than any movie since OHMSS.
That's really not saying much, as Bond has been a parody of his movie self for so long. I would argue he's even been parody of his movie self since the first movie.
Fleming's Bond was a hardass.
So was Brosnan's. He just had terrible material to work with most of the time.
