The Dark Knight Rises What would it take for Batman 3 to beat Titanic's record?

[Joe Kerr_1000]

As we all know TDK set a precendent, and it came very close to domestically defeating Titanic, but in the end it didn't. For Batman 3, what do you think it'll take for me to either come closer to said feat than TDK, or even accomplish it?

 

[StorminNorman]

Batman 3 won't make more than The Dark Knight. No way. That movie had EVERYTHING going for it.

 

[Ibn]

Maybe not so much Batman 3. But a Batman movie with the actual Joker, along with a couple other villains thrown in. I think that would do it.

 

[Wiseman]

Batman 3 won't make more than The Dark Knight. No way. That movie had EVERYTHING going for it.

It didn't have Zac Efron in it

 

[Laderlappen]

Heath Ledger to return as the Joker.

 

[JonnyQ]

No doubt alot of people would go see Batman 3 after thinking the Dark Knight and Begins wooped ass so they want to see a third onet:

 

[DCnightwing23]

I was thinking that as well. What Joe Kerr said, cgi and voice, similar to Terminator with Arnold.

I wasnt too fond of it at first but i think it would bring in more people to the movies even if they get Depp as riddler.

They would also have to promote the film even more then TDK. Lets not forgot the tons of promotions for the film.

Depp would have to own the role such as Ledger did, staying in a hotel alone for a month just creating the character came out amazingly well.

 

[TheVelvetOnion]

If it was me, i could make it beat Titanic, only because i know story structor and some character history... some being that i would be able to tell a story without being too bogged down by the characters complete history...Which these two things made TDK good...

The key to this sequel is simply that it needs to be made if the right story is there, if ther right story isnt there then hold fire.

See for me, if i was going to make the next movie big, i would have to explain what the joker ment by a better quality of villian... I think The Joker set the mark, so we need to be extreme in the next movie and i think with characters such like Black Mask, Catwoman, Penguin, Riddler, -- There all expected to appear. Me personally believes that because someone expects it, the anticipation is set high and the disappointment level happens because you set The bar to high.

So i would chose Mr.Freeze - In Mr Freeze, i could forsee an epic story for a number of reasons. Firstly with Mr.Freeze - we couldnt simply follow his traditional man fell in ice and now wears a containment suit... It wouldnt fit into the nolan universe of batman... But doesnt mean we have an interesting character...

I see The Dark Knight as a bit of a Cause and Effect kind of movie, best demostrated by The Joker and Two-Face... The Joker set about giving gotham a better class of villian. He turned a good person into a villian. Two-Face. Well i see something similar occuring the Victor Fries...

What i would like to see would be to create a cause that effected several hundreds of people in Gotham. For that i would say we need something like the collapse of Wayne Enterprises... what would happen to Bruce? Lucious Fox? Alfred? see if Wayne enterprises was taken over or closed down, any funding in research would be stopped... See where a character like Victor Fries would be effected by this cause, He holds bruce wayne responsible for his research, which means that the villian of the film isnt targeting Batman...but Bruce himself... how can Bruce and Batman appear at the same time to of which we would need to see Batman's apprentice... i think it would be too obvious to have robin. But i like the idea of an apprentice, if i was to introduce a character to the universe as a sidekick to batman, i would do it via The Riddler... Edward Nashton would initally be an employee who discovers who Bruce Wayne really is and instead of going to the press, mostly out of fear of what The Joker would do if his identity was revealed. Edward joins Bruce to rebilled and be apart of the whole Batman saga. However obvously Edward would then at some point become the Riddler and breaking Batman;s trust which would make you understand why he is so avaisive to want Robin join him in the future. Because Edward a previous assistant was consumed by his ability that he didnt realise it made him a villian.

 

[TheVelvetOnion]

You risk over saturating the market if you bring back Joker, it may not live up to the same status... Depp as riddler wouldnt bring anything to the mix.

 

[ChrisB]

Heath Ledger would have to rise from the dead and portray The Joker one more time.

 

[DCnightwing23]

Honestly Titanic shouldnt even be holding that record. the Box Office was different when that film came out and its my personal opinion that that movie is highly overrated. The Dark Knight is more deserving of the record

 

[bgates87]

Something would have to happen to escalate the film to an experience that transcended the act of simply watching a movie. Something that would make people want to see it even if they didn't like Batman. Even if they didn't like going to the movies.

 

[Robin91939]

Not to sound disrespectful...


But, the only way that Batman 3 could beat The Dark Knight's box office, let alone Titanic's would be for us to find out that Heath Ledger's death was an elaborate hoax and for him to be secretly filming scenes for his return as the Joker in the third installment.

That is the only way it could.

-R

 

[Darlton]

If it was me, i could make it beat Titanic, only because i know story structor and some character history... some being that i would be able to tell a story without being too bogged down by the characters complete history...Which these two things made TDK good...

The key to this sequel is simply that it needs to be made if the right story is there, if ther right story isnt there then hold fire.

See for me, if i was going to make the next movie big, i would have to explain what the joker ment by a better quality of villian... I think The Joker set the mark, so we need to be extreme in the next movie and i think with characters such like Black Mask, Catwoman, Penguin, Riddler, -- There all expected to appear. Me personally believes that because someone expects it, the anticipation is set high and the disappointment level happens because you set The bar to high.

So i would chose Mr.Freeze - In Mr Freeze, i could forsee an epic story for a number of reasons. Firstly with Mr.Freeze - we couldnt simply follow his traditional man fell in ice and now wears a containment suit... It wouldnt fit into the nolan universe of batman... But doesnt mean we have an interesting character...

I see The Dark Knight as a bit of a Cause and Effect kind of movie, best demostrated by The Joker and Two-Face... The Joker set about giving gotham a better class of villian. He turned a good person into a villian. Two-Face. Well i see something similar occuring the Victor Fries...

What i would like to see would be to create a cause that effected several hundreds of people in Gotham. For that i would say we need something like the collapse of Wayne Enterprises... what would happen to Bruce? Lucious Fox? Alfred? see if Wayne enterprises was taken over or closed down, any funding in research would be stopped... See where a character like Victor Fries would be effected by this cause, He holds bruce wayne responsible for his research, which means that the villian of the film isnt targeting Batman...but Bruce himself... how can Bruce and Batman appear at the same time to of which we would need to see Batman's apprentice... i think it would be too obvious to have robin. But i like the idea of an apprentice, if i was to introduce a character to the universe as a sidekick to batman, i would do it via The Riddler... Edward Nashton would initally be an employee who discovers who Bruce Wayne really is and instead of going to the press, mostly out of fear of what The Joker would do if his identity was revealed. Edward joins Bruce to rebilled and be apart of the whole Batman saga. However obvously Edward would then at some point become the Riddler and breaking Batman;s trust which would make you understand why he is so avaisive to want Robin join him in the future. Because Edward a previous assistant was consumed by his ability that he didnt realise it made him a villian.

I could see the Mr. Freeze thing because he works very well with the theme of redemption and stepping over the line for not-so-bad causes. Also, because he is very similar to Two-Face, in the sense that he was once a good person and he comits his crimes out of grief (except that Nora Fries is alive, while Rachel did die). The problem is his sci-fi elements. And I've never heard one single plot suggestion that left out the sci-fi in a way that worked. People try to make him into a serial killer, without no real purpose of saving his wife, some other times into a pyschopath that freezes people, etc.... he's just not a threat without the sci-fi. Ohter than that, one must have always in mind that Mr. Freeze purpose... his ONLY purpose, is restoring his wife's health. He doesn't do "revenge". He does "destroying everything else in the path of saving my loved one". You can always get any villain to target Bruce Wayne if that's what you want. Bruce is a high profile, very powerful man, and there are like a zillion of reasons for any badguy to target him.

Your version of the Riddler is the other problem, I think they already exploited the "employee finds out Bruce's little secret" completely. I also think side-kicks do not work in the adaptation of Batman, even less in this stage of the story, when Batman still has trouble dealing with his own issues, let alone the issues of an apprentice.

I also don't think you should think less of the "popular choice" villains because they're being highly expected. That's the whole point of it, to create expectations and satisfy them. I'm quite sure Joker and Two-Face were on everybody's minds when they were expecting TDK, and they still received them with incredible results. Bring the epxected bad guys. Bring Black Mask, Penguins, Riddler, Catwoman... as long as you don't make them predictable/uninteresting, they can't fail.

 

[Spidey 2007]

Ticket prices going up 5-7 bucks.

otherwise. no.

 

[Shifty]

If you take inflation into account Titianic would've made $921 million domestically.

So the only way Batman 3 could break Titanic's record is inflation + more money from IMAX and possibly 3-D cinemas. But that still technically would never top Titanic's record when adjusted for inflation.
And who cares.

 

[Crook]

Not to sound disrespectful...


But, the only way that Batman 3 could beat The Dark Knight's box office, let alone Titanic's would be for us to find out that Heath Ledger's death was an elaborate hoax and for him to be secretly filming scenes for his return as the Joker in the third installment.

That is the only way it could.

-R

That'd actually probably work against this film since most people would take it as a slap in the face because of exploitation.

A better scenario would be for Jesus to return, and announce he will lend us Ledger "one more time".

 

[TheVelvetOnion]

Alot of people has said that Mr.Freeze isnt Mr.Freeze without his sci-fi elements, however i feel we can work around that...

This is how i would portray him...

Dr.Victor Fries is a brilliant surgeon and research scientist... His area of expertise is Auto-Immune diseases and the treatement there of... For those unformilary Auto-immune diseases can paralize and blind people because they attack the nerve system. Dr.Fries has developed a new Nitrogen based Freeze system that can isolate the Auto-immune disease however its very expensive and still very experimental stages. So much so he's under constant watch and in constant look out for funding... Which is where Wayne Enterprises steps in... It works both ways, Wayne Enterprises funds the research and thus gets rights to distrabute the cure if it works, Dr.Fries gets the fame of finding a cure plus a share of the profits from the treatement. Which is something he's not really too much interested in as at this point he is one of the good guys who just wants to cure people. Because he has been working on this project for almost ten years and has been given the unofficle nickname of "Mr.Freeze" because of what his work involes. What i would have is having Roman Sionis be on the wayne enterprises board, He would be the one responsible for cutting the funds to Mr.Fries research... With no other funding available his lifes work is about to go down the drain, and to top this his wife, Nora has just been diganoised with the condition... So, furious... He quits his job, later breaking in and stealing all his machines and medical devices... Time is running out for Dr.Fries because he is about to lose the woman he loves, his life work, is only hope to show Gotham is if he operates underground... The question is then how far will he go to save his wife and life work... I would say these turn of events has made him a desperate man. So much so that he starts kidnapping people injecting them with the disease and use his machines to try and cure them. However the result could leave the victims frozen as the operation needs to be performed under extreme cold temperatures for it to work. The failed attempts he takes the bodys and dumps them in the river, The news papers refer to the unknown killer as "Zero" - two reasons, good way to introduce Vicki Vale and secondly its homage to his original name... He has become a monster through desperation and he has found himself down a path hes too far down to go back on. The eventuality is the confrontation with Batman with the result of him taking Nora to a private medical facility... Caught and about to be exposed, He tries the procedure on himself as one last final chance to show them all what he is capable of, But the procedure leaves his nervs deadend, he feeling numb but can still move. He has essentially frozen himself internally... the end result is that he dies, killing himself by accident and desperation, later we learn that the private hospital using notes from Dr.Fries had found a way to cure Nora's condition...

So there we have a Dr.Fries who doesnt initially become a Mr.Freeze but instead driven to distruction.

The reason i say about Edward Nashton being Batman's Sidekick, is formost to show why Batman works alone and why he has great reservations for Robin to join him in the far far future of the nolan verse of the movie. To me it would make sense that a young genius works out who Batman is however the knowledge is useless because the Joker will simply put a hit on anyone who reveals his identity. But as Edward Nashton is smart he figures why not join forces to which Bruce would initally see as a good idea, mostly because when you think of the Dark Knight, Batman saw Harvy Dent as someone who could become the public face of a hero of gotham to clean the streets. But he was wrong, See having Edward Nashton be played by someone you wouldnt expect like Michael Cera - and helping batman but is currupted by the thrill of power which eventually to Bruces realisation discovers that hero is a thin line and anyone can soon become a villian without realising it. To which thats what happens to Edward who dones the identity of The Riddler and resents Bruce for telling him he shouldnt be a hero. Edwards ideology is different to bruce hence the line being crossed.

 

[Darlton]

Alot of people has said that Mr.Freeze isnt Mr.Freeze without his sci-fi elements, however i feel we can work around that...

This is how i would portray him...

Dr.Victor Fries is a brilliant surgeon and research scientist... His area of expertise is Auto-Immune diseases and the treatement there of... For those unformilary Auto-immune diseases can paralize and blind people because they attack the nerve system. Dr.Fries has developed a new Nitrogen based Freeze system that can isolate the Auto-immune disease however its very expensive and still very experimental stages. So much so he's under constant watch and in constant look out for funding... Which is where Wayne Enterprises steps in... It works both ways, Wayne Enterprises funds the research and thus gets rights to distrabute the cure if it works, Dr.Fries gets the fame of finding a cure plus a share of the profits from the treatement. Which is something he's not really too much interested in as at this point he is one of the good guys who just wants to cure people. Because he has been working on this project for almost ten years and has been given the unofficle nickname of "Mr.Freeze" because of what his work involes. What i would have is having Roman Sionis be on the wayne enterprises board, He would be the one responsible for cutting the funds to Mr.Fries research... With no other funding available his lifes work is about to go down the drain, and to top this his wife, Nora has just been diganoised with the condition... So, furious... He quits his job, later breaking in and stealing all his machines and medical devices... Time is running out for Dr.Fries because he is about to lose the woman he loves, his life work, is only hope to show Gotham is if he operates underground... The question is then how far will he go to save his wife and life work... I would say these turn of events has made him a desperate man. So much so that he starts kidnapping people injecting them with the disease and use his machines to try and cure them. However the result could leave the victims frozen as the operation needs to be performed under extreme cold temperatures for it to work. The failed attempts he takes the bodys and dumps them in the river, The news papers refer to the unknown killer as "Zero" - two reasons, good way to introduce Vicki Vale and secondly its homage to his original name... He has become a monster through desperation and he has found himself down a path hes too far down to go back on. The eventuality is the confrontation with Batman with the result of him taking Nora to a private medical facility... Caught and about to be exposed, He tries the procedure on himself as one last final chance to show them all what he is capable of, But the procedure leaves his nervs deadend, he feeling numb but can still move. He has essentially frozen himself internally... the end result is that he dies, killing himself by accident and desperation, later we learn that the private hospital using notes from Dr.Fries had found a way to cure Nora's condition...

So there we have a Dr.Fries who doesnt initially become a Mr.Freeze but instead driven to distruction.

I had read this idea of yours before, and it's good, but my main problem with it is that it's not movie material. Maybe for a television series, for one or two episodes, but the threat is too small and too local to match the threats we've been acostumed to in the Nolan series. You're just making him a serial killer with a very slow killing rate, seeing thar he needs to kidnap them, THEN put them under a slow medical process, and THEN toss them in the river. Let's say he does this not one by one but in groups of people... such groups would have to be very small because he's not working with the mob, he's working alone, so he cannot handle large groups of peole. 4, 5 patients tops. Where's the threat on the city on that? There's none. Batman encounters him and he wouldn't be able to present any kind of resistance. Where's the threat?

I like the lack of pain he can show, some people here have talked about a condition that has that exact sympton, inability to feel pain. I think they had that on an episode of House with a girl that had the disease and she talked about how she needed to continually check her temperature, to make sure she didn't have a fever. That's cool. Maybe the adding of little sci-fi elements could work, and we're certainly making important steps to get a decent robotic-body technology (like a mecha, or Iron Man thing). That could work with Freeze, a way of enhancing his strength. But those things were in the comics because they were NEEDED. Even more so in the Nolan series, where even the secondary villains present city-wide threats, either psychological (Two-Face and the risk of the city losing hope) or phyisical death (Scarecrow developing the fear toxine).

The reason i say about Edward Nashton being Batman's Sidekick, is formost to show why Batman works alone and why he has great reservations for Robin to join him in the far far future of the nolan verse of the movie. To me it would make sense that a young genius works out who Batman is however the knowledge is useless because the Joker will simply put a hit on anyone who reveals his identity. But as Edward Nashton is smart he figures why not join forces to which Bruce would initally see as a good idea, mostly because when you think of the Dark Knight, Batman saw Harvy Dent as someone who could become the public face of a hero of gotham to clean the streets. But he was wrong, See having Edward Nashton be played by someone you wouldnt expect like Michael Cera - and helping batman but is currupted by the thrill of power which eventually to Bruces realisation discovers that hero is a thin line and anyone can soon become a villian without realising it. To which thats what happens to Edward who dones the identity of The Riddler and resents Bruce for telling him he shouldnt be a hero. Edwards ideology is different to bruce hence the line being crossed.

First, like I said before, they already walked the "employee finds about Bruce's secret" route, and to trace that back again with different results would be silly. If Reese caved to threats from Fox AND you say the Joker threat is still in force (even with him in prison, which I don't understand) why wouldn't Nashton break under the same circumstances? To show the same plot with different results is redundant and poor writing at this stage.
Second, in my opinion, you don't need another event to show why Batman doesn't work with side-kicks. That would be necessary if he was now open to the possibility, but he isn't. You already had a scene that established his rejection of side-kicks... the scene with the copycats. Another plot to show that same thing would be redundant, and one that makes him initially take a sidekick under his wing, at this point, would be totally contradictory. A change of characterization that big needs much more justification than what it's available to you.

 

[TheVelvetOnion]

You bring up some good points about the Riddler, however i disagree with your comments on Mr.Freeze. In my mind his threat would be minimal which is what we both agree to but his story isnt the full factor of Batman 3, i only see it as a part...

The cause and effect which the Joker had done has escated in several ways... The Joker could very easily continue his work after being incarsorated...have we forgotten harley quinn? she hasnt been in the movies previously but can easly be introduced....

The way i see it is simply who could of been effected by The Joker's rain in the previous movie...

Those that are effected because of this combins the several peices of cheese that makes the wheel of the complex story that would feature Gotham...

Hence why i believe the movie should be called Gotham... because The Joker wanted to give the place a better class of villian... so we need to show that.

I'm thinking were going to need multiple villians with different stories, not necessary working together but its the gravity of what The Joker did in the dark knight that has caused this...

For example here is how i would figure several characters involvement.

Because all the mob bosses were killed either by Two-Face or Joker, there is a gap... The mob now have no money and no leader... Enter Roman Sionis -- however like Bruce i would have Roman as a duel identiy guy... The Black Mask - operating as the kingpin of crime for all mobs hoping to rebuild its finances. Then you have Roman Sionis who is a good friend of Bruce Wayne and a member of the board at Wayne Enterprises. Because of what the Joker did, Roman has found a gap in the market, however using Wayne Enterprises, redirecting funds and hiding it from bruce because he simply trusts him. Roman then causes the whole "Victor Fries story" which is just a small part of the story but again a big part. So not only do you have the rise of a new Mob Boss, there is also the threat of a desperate guy working against the clock... He also serves as a good distraction as to what is really going on. Ontop of all this we could introduce Haryle Quinn, the psychatrist assigned to work on Dr.Jonathan Crane and The Joker -- Both have key parts in the rise of chaos in Gotham... Dr.Jonathan Crane had contacts that of Roman Sionis... he was the middleman between Dr.Crane and Henri Ducard... then you have The Joker's plan to bring a better brand of villian to gotham. See both have key points that caused the rise of The Black Mask... Harley-Quinn was fascinated by The Joker, his idealisum makes sense to her... So Harley would be instramental to The Black Mask's creation. I would do this by having bruce wayne semi-retire from his role as batman, Joker points that without batman there is now chaos anymore, harley then kills Roman Sionis family so that Roman would blame batman for not being there to save them. He becomes the Black Mask and is on a witch hunt to stoke out The Batman... and kill him basically, he doesnt know who batman is... not only that he is also still friends with bruce wayne. Maybe what if Black Mask does discover that Bruce is Batman and he wants to break him down piece by piece... like destroying his public image then destroying his alter-ego The Batman... He does this by bringing down Wayne Enterprises, which causes Mr.Fries scenario... Bruce has to come out of retirement because Mr.Freeze is causing chaos - however Batman fails to save Mr.Freeze from his own experments and he dies, the news that Mr.Freeze was an ex-employee of wayne enterprisese boeds terriblely for the company, Bruce is a broken man to the point where he discovers who The Black Mask is by probably Lucious Fox who has been investigating him. If i was to add Edward Nashton it would probably be by aiding Lucious Fox discover who The Black Mask is.... or maybe have Commisioner gordon do it... either way, both know each others identiy and the confrontation occures...

The Black Mask and Batman fight.

 

[8wid]

Haven't you heard, the Titanic was unsinkable.

 

[Matt Murdock]

Heath Ledger.

 

[matrix_ghost]

To answe the question of this thread

1 Make the movie as engaging as the The Dark Knight. Most movies tend to open with big numbers but afterwards fall fast. Granted the July date worked miracles because most of the big competion was in May/June.
However The Dark Knight kept chugging along.

2 Make a visually stimulating movie. I'm not saying to go overboard with CG sequences. However i think certain scenes can benefit from something extra like 3-D. That however depends on what kind of characters will appear. Honestly i don't think that 3-D would've helped The Dark Knight storywise.If you had a guy like say Mr Freeze , he would be someone who is visually interesting.

3 Last but not least. LOADS more IMAX theaters.
Revenge Of The Fallen opened in 169 IMAX screens and made 14.4 million in it's 5 days.

 

[Timstuff]

Christian Bale has some advice.

 

[DCnightwing23]

Lower that huge $#@%ing amount of inflation for the overrated movie called Titanic. It should be done, cause honestly the economy is so much different then it was when that film came out. The Dark Knight should be number one and we all know that.