You Have My Permission To Lounge - Part 10

[Tacit Ronin]

Making a serious Batman movie with a chibi Robin would raise some serious questions. I can see why they have stayed away from that can of worms.

 

[Brother Jack]

Making a serious Batman movie with a chibi Robin would raise some serious questions. I can see why they have stayed away from that can of worms.

It would definitely be a difficult thing to pull off live action. Probably why it's never really been done. Robin's a hard character to get right, but I don't think it's impossible.

 

[Spider-Aziz]

'Robin's Reckoning' from Batman: TAS has the right idea.

 

[titansupes]

I've never exactly been a big Robin or Bat-family guy, but I think if they brought him in, he should be about 14/15. Somewhere around the Tom Holland Spidey range.

 

[Chip Chipperson]

gonna be great when a director who isn't afraid to utilize Robin comes along. I need a live action dynamic duo in my life again

 

[Spider-Aziz]

I like Robin, but I understand why they refuse to include one for the movies, and actually like it this way.
Wasn't Burt Ward a near 30 years old wonder when the 66 series was new?

 

[Pfeiffer-Pfan]

Burt Ward was only 20 when he started filming BATMAN.

 

[The Batman]

And he wasn't even 24 when the show ended.

 

[Awest66]

I've never exactly been a big Robin or Bat-family guy, but I think if they brought him in, he should be about 14/15. Somewhere around the Tom Holland Spidey range.

I actually agree with this. The new 52 did something to that effect.

 

[Awest66]

I have a question actually. A lot of this movie's detractors are of the opinion that Nolan didn't really want to make TDKR and only did so because WB offered to fund a non-Batman project if he did. They're basically saying he was pressured to make this movie

I still enjoy the movie but does anyone think there's any truth to this?

 

[titansupes]

^ Not at all. Obviously they would've been pushing for him to do it, and he would've been aware of the public expectation for it, but ultimately I'm sure he made it because he wanted to close out the story and had a take on it he believed in.

And let's face it, after the one-two punch of TDK and Inception, he was always going to get his funding no matter if he did the third one or not.

The people saying "his heart wasn't in it!!1" are the ones who don't like it themselves and so like to make-believe that it got a BvS-type reception all over instead of being a critically acclaimed, billion dollar earner.

 

[BatLobster]

Yeah, I've always found that to be a bogus claim. If anything, Nolan did a third film because he knew WB was going to make a sequel to TDK no matter what and he wanted to be able to close out his Bat-universe his way, rather than let someone else tamper with his baby. Which shows how much his heart was in it, if anything.

I definitely do think holding out on a third film gave him leverage when making Inception though, where the studio was willing to throw that kind of money at a script they didn't quite get on paper.

 

[The Joker]

I can't imagine Nolan as a director who would direct any movie he had no personal desire to do.

 

[Awest66]

I can't imagine Nolan as a director who would direct any movie he had no personal desire to do.

You raise an excellent point.

 

[Shikamaru]

Oh I absolutely think there's some truth to Nolan not wanting to make it. Granted it's not that simple: You don't either "want" or "not want" to make a movie. I do think he "wanted" it enough to come back, but not enough to polish it like his other films. By the end he just feels exhausted. Apparently they took a break halfway through the script due to feeling they couldn't come up with anything (good). After the break Goyer came back with an idea for a Superman reboot. That I think epitomizes how "obligated" they felt to do this, for whatever reason.

It's amazing just how much of Nolan feels channelled into Bruce: A guy who's been out of the game for a while, is exhausted but everyone wants him to come back. He comes back for "one last mission", then passes the "mantle" to another guy who will do his own thing with it. Bruce's arc is more-or-less how Nolan comes off to me when watching the movie.

Nolan also doesn't strike me as the kind of guy to be stingy of a franchise like that. For one, he didn't know if he'd be back after Begins. WB initially just wanted him to get the franchise back on track and do it in a way anyone could continue it after that (that's why BB is the least aesthetically grounded of the three). Second, he's always had a "one movie at a time" mindset. Why would he interpret a bad sequel as it "tampering" his vision? Unless they got Lucas to do the DVDs, I don't see how that's possible.

Yeah, I've always found that to be a bogus claim. If anything, Nolan did a third film because he knew WB was going to make a sequel to TDK no matter what and he wanted to be able to close out his Bat-universe his way, rather than let someone else tamper with his baby. Which shows how much his heart was in it, if anything.

I definitely do think holding out on a third film gave him leverage when making Inception though, where the studio was willing to throw that kind of money at a script they didn't quite get on paper.

Wouldn't that still count as him not wanting to make it? If ideally you don't wanna make another one but feel obligated to so someone doesn't "tamper with your baby", by definition your heart's not fully in it. At that point we're just arguing over semantics.

 

[Pfeiffer-Pfan]

I think he still wanted to do it, but any overwhelmingly strong interest may have been expelled after The Dark Knight. He wanted to produce a '''conclusion'', but also seemed a little over it.

 

[Awest66]

It's amazing just how much of Nolan feels channelled into Bruce: A guy who's been out of the game for a while, is exhausted but everyone wants him to come back. He comes back for "one last mission", then passes the "mantle" to another guy who will do his own thing with it. Bruce's arc is more-or-less how Nolan comes off to me when watching the movie.

That's adimttedly a very interesting way to look at it (I wouldn't exactly call four years a while though) Would you have preferred another director taking over for Nolan right after The Dark Knight? Apologies if I've asked this before.

 

[BatLobster]

Wouldn't that still count as him not wanting to make it? If ideally you don't wanna make another one but feel obligated to so someone doesn't "tamper with your baby", by definition your heart's not fully in it. At that point we're just arguing over semantics.

I don't see it that way. I see it as him being protective over his baby, which is one part of it- but beyond that I think he felt they had a story worth telling, otherwise he wouldn't have done it. He's been very clear that he has to be able to invest himself fully in a project before he commits to spending 2 years of his life on it. I think he certainly had his reservations about returning initially- Heath's passing and the prospect of doing a third film that didn't suck were probably weighing on him. But I think he's the type of director that, once he makes a decision to do a movie, he's fully in it.

I could buy the argument if it felt like there was less effort was put into TDKR, but it was the most ambitious and complex of the trilogy just from a technical standpoint and up to that point in his career it was his most ambitious film to date. You can't say Nolan didn't challenge himself and his crew with the film. That's the mark of someone who isn't just slumming it.

This argument has always been a pet peeve of mine, simply because one reason I'm a big Nolan fan is that his films always give me the impression that he's giving 110% behind the camera to make each film something special, even if it's to varying degrees of success. There's always an effort there to go above and beyond in some way to make sure the film is delivering something you haven't quite seen before.

One argument I could buy however, is that the Nolan who made TDKR was very different than the Nolan who made his earlier films, and I think Interstellar and Dunkirk continue to reflect that. His interests and priorities shifted more towards the massive scale of the silent era and making movies that he can watch with his kids. So while I think TDKR is the most action/spectacle driven of the trilogy, I don't see that as his heart not being in it as opposed to it being part of his evolution as a director.

 

[Tacit Ronin]

Apparently they took a break halfway through the script due to feeling they couldn't come up with anything (good).

Given how rich the source material is, it's mind blowing how they couldn't come up with anything. No wonder they went with something as rote as a bigger, louder LOS rehash. I can't believe someone who was so keenly aware of Return of the Jedi's mistakes would repeat it.

 

[Shikamaru]

I could buy the argument if it felt like there was less effort was put into TDKR, but it was the most ambitious and complex of the trilogy just from a technical standpoint and up to that point in his career it was his most ambitious film to date. You can't say Nolan didn't challenge himself and his crew with the film. That's the mark of someone who isn't just slumming it.

I'm talking about it on a script level. On a technical level? Sure. Maybe that's what kept his passion alive during the script.

 

[Man in the Suit]

Nolan definitely cared about TDKR because it's the second best Batman/comic book movie. And it looks bigger than any superhero movie. Incredible filmmaking.

 

[shauner111]

If he didn't care about TDKR, then i guess 90 percent of comic book films have a sleeping director behind them, cuz nobody in that genre has come close to pulling off what he did on a technical level. And it's by far the most emotional conclusion to a superhero film, outside of maybe Logan (which is obviously more recent).

Nolan was just picky before committing to the third film. Since when does taking a break halfway through a script mean that he doesn't care as much. Every writer gets stuck, every writer needs a break from the material so they can come up with new ideas. Stop projecting your own problems with the movie onto the filmmaker. He loved making the film, he had energy, he pushed himself more, and he executed the story he wanted to tell since 2003 if he had the chance to create a full story.

 

[BatLobster]

Given how rich the source material is, it's mind blowing how they couldn't come up with anything. No wonder they went with something as rote as a bigger, louder LOS rehash. I can't believe someone who was so keenly aware of Return of the Jedi's mistakes would repeat it.

The source material being rich doesn't automatically mean it's easy to crack a story for a film, particularly a trilogy-capper which are always the toughest nuts to crack.

I also think it's pretty reductive to say the story was just a LOS rehash. The villains' plans were very different from Ra's'. If it were just an entirely different organization headed by Bane, would that have made it more original? I think connecting it to the LOS just helped tie the trilogy together and also added some consequences for Bruce's decision to kill Ra's. It also worked with the legacy themes in the film. I certainly don't think it was a case of, "Welp, we can't think of anything, guess we'll just redo Batman Begins". It clearly suited the story they chose to tell on a number of fronts.

Besides, the second Death Star was the least of ROTJ's issues.

 

[shauner111]

RotJ is trash. I revisited that thing months ago, and it was brutal. It should never be included in the same sentence as TDKR.

 

[Brother Jack]

I also think it's pretty reductive to say the story was just a LOS rehash. The villains' plans were very different from Ra's'. If it were just an entirely different organization headed by Bane, would that have made it more original? I think connecting it to the LOS just helped tie the trilogy together and also added some consequences for Bruce's decision to kill Ra's. It also worked with the legacy themes in the film. I certainly don't think it was a case of, "Welp, we can't think of anything, guess we'll just redo Batman Begins". It clearly suited the story they chose to tell on a number of fronts.

Bane's plan was fundamentally no different than what Joker and Ra's were doing. They each had essentially the same goal for Gotham: to have it destroy itself from within. The difference was in the method and motivation. If bringing the LOS back is lazy storytelling in and of itself, then so is "these people will eat each other" mirroring "this city will tear itself apart through fear".