The Tim Burton/Kevin Smith Feud

[Noir]

is there a place where i could read Smith's script?

http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/superman-lives-script.html

 

[DaRkVeNgeanCe]

I feel Burton just wasnt the man for re-booting Superman.

 

[Noir]

Neither was Peters..

 

[DaRkVeNgeanCe]

I guess not, personally regardless of the haters I love Singer's Superman.

 

[Noir]

SR was very good imo.. Way better than Edward Superhands.

 

[DaRkVeNgeanCe]

hahah I can agree with Edward Superhands just makes me laugh.

 

[El Payaso]

I feel Burton just wasnt the man for re-booting Superman.

Neither was Peters..

Neither was Smith.

 

[Noir]

Smith could have done a good job if he didn't have to include giant spiders and goofy **** like that.

 

[DaRkVeNgeanCe]

Im not a big fan of Smith myself, like Ive said before hes highly overrated. I wish he would have done Green Hornet though, instead of Seth Rogen he'll ruin it.

 

[El Payaso]

Smith could have done a good job if he didn't have to include giant spiders and goofy **** like that.

According to Smith himself, he couldn't handle a Green Hornet flick.

 

[DaRkVeNgeanCe]

That sucks though, cause I really wanted to se a serious GH film.

 

[Noir]

he said he couldn't handle DIRECTING a Green Hornet flick.
He didn't say anything about writing it.

 

[batman strikes]

here, with the rest of the concept art:

http://www.bamkapow.com/gallery.phtml?gk=9

His Metropolis looks like Coruscant..

Some of those designs are from Ratner's and J.J. Abrams era on the Superman project and i'm specifically speaking of the city that looks like coruscant, which is actually Krypton. The concept art of baby Kal-El's ship is also from that project.

 

[Noir]

No. Those are all from The Burton era, you can see Sylvain Despretz's signature at the bottom, he was only Art Director on the Burton era.

 

[Nightwing1977]

Its Edward Superhands.

He kinda look like a Borg to me. You know, from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

 

[Noir]

I am Kal-El of Borg, Resistance is futile.

 

[GoogleMe94]

i think kevin smith is a fatass loser. never liked the guy, his movies suck and full of potty humour and i find him just creepy and a kind of pervert, and a total nerd. hes extremly stuck up and snobby and seems to have made a career out of attacking anyone who doesnt like him or agree with him. burton is like this big genious fighting with a little immature kid.

 

[DocLathropBrown]

It's late, so forgive any spelling errors....

I liked Jack Nicholson (even though he didn't act much at all)

Just because he chose to portray the Joker in a more sinster way than over-the-top scary in-your-face insane doesn't mean he didn't act in the film, or get into the role. Sinister is just as valid a portrayal of the Joker as there's ever been. Alex Ross said it best:

"He's just this evil guy who's always been nasty, and this accident allows him to open up his nastiness to a new, creative level."

Comparing him to his other roles, although the sinister aspect remains, his performance as the Joker has little in common with the man himself or his other performances, sinister qualities aside.

There's no internal conflict whatsoever.

The screenwriter Sam Hamm begs to differ.

"The basic premise is that this guy is insane. And Batman is the manifestation of his insanity. And then he meets this girl and realizes 'hey, I could have a normal life', but it's in stark opposition to the life he's chosen for himself.

We don't get to know the title character at all until like 1/3 into the movie.

Burton was 'respecting the character's privacy'. And trying to keep the mythical, mysterious aspect to Batman to translate the tone of the comics. Yes, he tried to adapt the comics. And for a great many, did so.

Hamm says; "If you show the literal process by which he becomes Batman, you lose all of your credibility. Because if it was possible, why hasn't anyone really done it?"

Not to mention the fact that since the films were based directly off of the original comics of 1939 (By Burton and Hamm's admission), the Wayne murder is all that we really know about him. Although, hints are dropped throughout the film. He's shy, brooding, conflicted. He bought a suit of armor in Japan, so he's probably been around the world.

All little parts of the whole, my friend. You can't let movies like Batman Begins make you spoiled enough to miss subtle character building.

The prince songs were ear piercing, and even if you liked them by some weird turn of logic, they had nothing to do with the plot.

Not Burton's decision. Blame WB for that one. Thankfully, Prince made the songs to fit the Joker's 'voice' or persona. The ones that did not were relegated to background music in the film.

Kim Basinger can't act and wasnt an engaging love interest and was in the movie solely because she was doing Jon Peters,

Obviously, she can act. Otherwise she wouldn't have won an Academy Award. And before someone makes a pithy remark, since the Academy targets artsy films and not fluff, she didn't get one for no good reason. Unless you can successfully argue otherwise. And she didn't get with Jon Peters until AFTER she'd been cast and the film was being made. She was the most available to take the part after Sean Young had injured herself.

Learn the facts before you argue. It helps.

Bruce Wayne and Vicki have no chemistry

The film is constructed that way on purpose. Bruce can't relate and won't let her in. How can they find chemistry? He's obviously attracted to her for various reasons, chief among them being the idea that she represents a peace that he hadn't found other than in a bat costume avenging mommy and daddy. But in the end, he has to turn her down, because he's driven by revenge on Naiper, but mostly because he can't ignore the duty he's taken to save Gotham from people like The Joker.

Why do you think she wasn't around in BR? She left because Bruce had trouble coming to grips with himself enough to give up his foolish crusade. It says so right in BR.

nothing is interesting or engaging about Bruce wayne/Vicki nor is there anything about him that makes us care about them/like them.

Not even the fact that she deduces his identity? Nor the aforementioned fact that he is his last chance at salvation? How about her pleading with him at the end to chance his ways? Her interest/obsession with him and her attempt to unravel his secrets (which we unravel with her)? And he's a little busy being Batman to be the great emoting lover that would interest you, methinks. What is so interesting is that the relationship is doomed the failure, we can see it in Vicki's face at the very end of the film. She realizes that she isn't as important to Bruce as a rubber Bat costume. And she shows no joy in seeing him later.

The Joker shoots down the batplane with one shot from a super-long gun after Batman zeroes in on him with a crosshairs and fires repeatedly at him with high-powered machine guns.

As said before; throwback to the comics. Funny how Burton adapts something accurately from the comics and people can't even appreciate it. It wasn't supposed to make sense anymore than the Joker surviving death several times in the comics is. Don't let Batman Begins fool you. Batman comics are seldom the deadly serious and scientifically realistic melodrama that Goyer and Nolan gave us.

And again, as said by someone else, if the Batwing were armored enough to survive an explosive shell, then it wouldn't be able to fly.

And isn't it a little convenient that Joker killed batman's parents? I mean, it makes it a little more grand but not in the long run.

Yes, it is. And I'll also tell you why Burton really did it; it's the only logical assumption.

His primary inspiration was "The Dark Knight Returns", and with the Joker and Bats being bitter rivals in the book, he wanted to capture that. But how do you make two people who've only been fighting for the span of a month of three (presented abridged in a two-hour film, mind you) bitter enemies who hate each other as if they've been fighting for years? In Batman's case, you make him responsible for the worst thing any Batman villain could ever do; make him kill the parents. And then Batman, and therefore the audience, is compelled to hate this guy's guts. And by default, it makes the Joker the rightful ruler of the "worst of the rogues galley" as no other villain to come in the series could ever top his deed.

Anybody who knows batman knows that he's batman not out of revenge or the hope of one day killing his parents' killer, but to assure that nobody ever finds themself in the same situation he did when he was 8.

Considering the fact that he didn't even know who his parents' killer was until the last third of the moive, after he's already been Batman for several months at least, your argument holds no water. How could it have been about revenge if he didn't know who his parents' killer was until AFTER he became Batman? He just found the guy and figured vengeance would be pretty sweet.

If it's all about vengence then he's not really a hero. And if it's all for vengence, would he really continute being batman having killed the joker?

It's not all about vengeance, as I've already proven to you. And that's a lame question, don't you think? Did you see the end of BATMAN? The letter he gives to the city, the fact that he's still Batman in the last frame of film and into the next film proves that it must not have been about vengeance, because he's still in the suit. Burton's Batman isn't the fool you take him to be, just because he got vengeance doesn't mean Gotham didn't need protecting.

Of course, the downside to Bruce getting his vengeance is shown by Bruce being much darker and almost anti-heroic until the last act of Batman Returns which was retroactively explained in Batman Forever when Val Kilmer's Batman describes to Dick Grayson what revenge does.

"You kill him, and what then? Then you go out into the night to find another face, and another, and another and then you wake up one day and realize that revenge has become your whole life."

His recognition of his self-destructive behavior in Selina Kyle in Returns brings him back from the brink. But unfortunately, Selina couldn't get out of her own way enough to go with Bruce back to some kind of moral standard, so he wasn't able to get closure on his inner demons until helping Dick Grayson away from revenge helped him find fulfillment in himself.

All of the variables are there in all three films. You just have to add them.

Take the part where Bruce, protected by a small tray under his clothes, gets tries to intimidate the joker when he merges into Vicki’s apartment. Forget the absurdity of relying on a book-sized tray as a bulletproof vest — what’s the point of Bruce’s actions? What’s he trying to accomplish?

Michael Keaton ad-libbed the scene.

"He's using a sort-of psychological ploy. He draws the Joker's attention away from Vicki and he's also sort of frustrated that he's caught without his suit so he can't go ahead and flatten his foe."

It sort of ties into the theme of dissociation that Burton, Keaton and Hamm were going for. Can he rise to the Batman's level of bravery or skill without the suit to unlock or give him the persona he needs? He's flesh and blood, he can be ignored, he can be destroyed, but as a symbol he can be incorrubtable, he can be everlasting.

What’s the point of the Joker’s “Who do you trust?” PR campaign against Batman, as if the two of them were running for mayor?

He's trying to get the people of Gotham to trust him..... so he'd be able to kill them easier. He'd have a harder time trying to kill citizens if they were running away from him.

Then there’s the bit in the newsroom with Vicki and reporter Knox (Elliot/Alexander) musing about who Bruce Wayne really is, how there’s “nothing in his file… no photos, no history, nothing.” Hello? Nothing on Bruce Wayne, millionaire playboy?

In Burton's films, instead of an obnoxious or foolish facade, this Bruce just keeps out of the public spotlight. If there's no photos or history, people have less material with which to make a connection between him and the Batman. Quite, clever, really.

In the opening sequence, we see a couple with a young boy wandering lost in Gotham’s mean streets, stumbling at last into a dangerous alley where a couple of thugs rob them at gunpoint. The resonances between this incident and the seminal event in young Bruce Wayne’s life, emphasized later in the film by a flashback to the murder of Dr. and Mrs. Wayne, are too striking to be ignored. Yet when Batman shows up, what does he do? Kicks one of the thugs through a door and menaces the other one a bit, telling him to warn his criminal friends about their new enemy. Does he recover the stolen property and return it to its owners? Does he see to their safety in any way? Is this helpless family any better off than the Waynes were when there was no Batman looking over Gotham? If the movie doesn’t care, why should we?

How do we know that he didn't do something between the time he left his lookout point on the Cathedral and got to the rooftop where Nick and Eddie were holed up at? A stretch, I know, but in all fairness...

And so what? He isn't interested in broadcasting himself to the public at large, he just wants all crime eliminated, which logically does more good in the long run than stopping to help every boo-boo that the Gothamites get. He's got a city to clean up, he can't waste time. The sooner all criminals are too cowed to do anything wrong, the sooner Gothamites are safe. He doesn't have time to waste just freaking out the citizens. Would YOU really be receptive to a weirdo in a Bat suit after you got mugged and a gun pointed at you? Those people were in no mental shape to take seeing a six foot bat confront them.

The one thing I've noticed about people who criticize Burton's material is that they all have a sufficient lack of knowledge on the intimacies of the human condition. They would read body language and read between the lines in real life. But they don't for a film? I wasn't aware that we were supposed to turn our brains off when the projector turned on. If youre not looking in life, the subtext will pass you by, and it is so for many films, including most of Burton's. If it was people reading too much into them, there simply wouldn't be such a high percentage of people who appreciate his work. It's films like Batman Begins that oversimplify that make people completely blind to the intricate nature of a director like Tim Burton, especially in regards to his work on the Batman films.

You don't have to like him, but realize that there may be more to his work that you're seeing.

 

[El Payaso]

Very well said, Doc LB.

 

[The Guard]

As for the Batplane--long barell, big bullet, and planes can't be heavily armored and still fly.

It was an explosive shell, not just a bullet. Which is why it explodes. It's in the script, the novelization, and the comic book adaption. Batman says "Explosive shell, I'm hit".

And that's not Tim Burton's Superman costume. That's Superman when he first returns to life again, essentially on life support. Tim Burton's actual Superman costume was dark blue, with blood red cape, gold and red stylized S-shield and red boots. It looked like a sculpted, sleek layered armor version of the Superman suit. That's not Metropolis, either, in any of those photos. I believe it's supposed to be Krypton.

 

[The Guard]

As for the Batplane--long barell, big bullet, and planes can't be heavily armored and still fly.

It was an explosive shell, not just a bullet. Which is why it explodes. It's in the script, the novelization, and the comic book adaption. Batman says "Explosive shell, I'm hit".

And that's not Tim Burton's Superman costume. That's Superman when he first returns, essentially on life support. Tim Burton's Superman costume was dark blue, with blood red cape, shield and boots. It looks like sculpted, sleek layered armor version of the Superman suit. That's not Metropolis, either, in any of those photos. I believe it's supposed to be Krypton.

 

[The Guard]

As for the Batplane--long barell, big bullet, and planes can't be heavily armored and still fly.

It was an explosive shell, not just a bullet. Which is why it explodes. It's in the script, the novelization, and the comic book adaption. Batman says "Explosive shell, I'm hit".

And that's not Tim Burton's Superman costume. That's Superman when he first returns, essentially on life support. Tim Burton's Superman costume was dark blue, with blood red cape, shield and boots. It looks like sculpted, sleek layered armor version of the Superman suit. That's not Metropolis, either, in any of those photos. I believe it's supposed to be Krypton.

 

[Matt.S99]

http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/superman-lives-script.html

Thanks Noir. Question, im just skimming through the script right now, is L-Ron the ''gay robot'' peters wanted?

 

[Noir]

Thanks Noir. Question, im just skimming through the script right now, is L-Ron the ''gay robot'' peters wanted?

Yeah.. the "gay '3PO."

 

[Matt.S99]

Oh Jeez........Are the spider and Polar bears in it too? Lol