Dark Knight and Naruto...

[seawasp]

No, that isn't an idea for what might just be the most twisted crossover fanfic EVAR, just the two subjects this post is on.

There may be SPOILERS herein, so don't read any farther if you don't want to see anything you might not want to see...




We just finally watched "The Dark Knight". For me, it's a very unusual film, in that I can say I enjoyed it -- but JUST BARELY. I probably won't ever watch it again. It's far too dark -- much darker even than "Batman Begins", its predecessor.

Yes, I know, part of the modern trend is to emphasize that there are costs for what even heroes do, but in "The Dark Knight" the costs just get excessive. It's not bad enough that many people, good and bad, get killed. It's not bad enough that Harvey Dent, heroic crusader and honestly Damn Nice Guy With The Guts To Face The Mob ends up scarred, nuts, and then finally dead; no, we ALSO have to kill off the woman Bruce Wayne loves, AND we have to end it with him being hunted by the law for killing Dent, etc.

First of all, the last bit there is just wrong. That's SPIDER-MAN. He's the one who almost gets himself killed heroically fighting a psycho, and then takes the rap to protect the other guy's rep. The Bat lets people face the TRUTH about what's going on. Even if he has to beat the truth into them with brass knuckles.

Second, it's just Too Much. Batman's dark, but he's a hero, and a hero shouldn't have to trade one life for another -- especially not in a setup situation by someone like the Joker.

On the positive side, Heath Ledger's performance as The Joker was absolutely stellar. He had the terrible lunatic presence of Jack Nicholson looming behind him, threatening to overshadow anything he tried in the role, but he rose to the occasion and gave us a very different -- but at least as terrifying and deadly -- interpretation of that quintessential nutjob. He'll deserve any posthumous award they choose to confer on him.

(Freaky Side Note: I had a couple DVDs in front of me earlier, one was The Dark Knight and the other was the Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, and for a moment the way I viewed them made it look as though Christian Bale was one of the actors in Prince Caspian. Batman in Narnia. Now THERE is a freaky crossover idea.)

Naruto: I had caught pieces of early episodes of this and it was VERY not-impressive, filled with the kind of humor I have little patience for and with apparently little else to recommend it. However, my wife and I have been watching Naruto Shippuden (which is sort of the Dragonball Z to Naruto's Dragon Ball), and it's quite good -- vastly less stupidity and a lot more plot. Some of the villains are absolutely top-notch, too. Orochimaru, in fact, is providing considerable inspiration for how I can improve upon and tweak the capabilities of Lord Voldemort in my Harry Potter campaign.

My major gripe about Naruto Shippuden (and it applies to Naruto itself as well) is what the hell is WRONG with the producers of the show that they have to have a DOZEN openings and closings, AND ALL OF THEM SUCK? They span a range from "wussily mediocre J-pop crap" to SWEET HOLY MOTHER OF JEBUS MY EARS, MY EARS, THE HEADPHONES, THEY DO NOTHING!!!!

You'd think with multiple chances to have a listenable OP or ED, they'd manage ONE. Most of my favorite anime had ok-to-great themes for at least one season. Instead they seem to have held a competition to find the lamest bands in Japan and pick their worst songs to use.

Comments

[shana.livejournal.com]

Gotham City needs ninjas! (Also daleks).

[laptop-mechanic.livejournal.com]

Or Dalek Ninjas.

[midnightlurker.livejournal.com]

...This explains so much! West, Keaton, Kilmer, Clooney, Conroy, Bale... even the comic portrayals from fifties Sprang to Miller's Goddamn Batman, they're all the same guy! Bruce Wayne is a Time Lord. :P

[seawasp]

Him and James Bond.

[seawasp]

In this particular continuity, Bruce Wayne basically WAS trained to be a ninja. He's a ninja in a bat costume.

Now, it's true that they need Daleks.

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

Of course the "Batman hunted by the police" idea hearkens all the way back to the original Detective Comics where Bats was more often than not on the wrong side of Gotham's finest.

[seawasp]

It wasn't his being hunted by the cops that's the problem. It's being hunted FOR SOMETHING HE DIDN'T DO.

Like I said, that's Spider-Man's schtick -- getting all the blame for things he didn't do, and not getting the credit for what he accomplishes, except for three-day moments that fade quickly as soon as the next villain frames him.

[ross-teneyck.livejournal.com]

See, I thought Dark Knight was brilliant, to the point that the upcoming Watchmen movie is now completely redundant because DK has already covered that ground.

The point of the ending of the movie -- I thought -- was that Batman isn't a hero. He's heroic, yes, and he's definitely a good guy -- but the hero of the movie is the guy who works to bring down the bad guys from within the system of justice and law. Batman, by his very nature, subverts the very structures that he wants to serve and so everything he does carries the seeds of its own destruction. Batman simply cannot clean up Gotham by being a vigilante, and that is the "TRUTH about what's going on" that he is forced to confront himself.

Now, one can quite well argue that this kind of deconstruction is not appropriate for the Batman franchise of movies, because people go to them wanting to see a superhero and not a philosophical examination of superheroics in general. I might even have made that argument myself, except in this case I thought the deconstruction was so brilliantly done that I couldn't help but like it.

[seawasp]

I just don't agree it's appropriate for BATMAN.

Yes, he is a vigilante. And sometimes he's on the wrong side of the law because of that. But he's the necessary COUNTERBALANCE in his world to the limits placed on the force of law -- the fact that the bad guys have no such limits, and in his world that permits monsters to be born who are beyond the ability of normal law to handle.

He's chased by the law, but not for things he did not do. THAT was what was wrong with that part of it. He's chased for things he DOES do. it's Peter Parker who gets chased for things he didn't do, and who gains no credit for those he does.

Also, there's dark and there's just plain black, and this was just darker than I am willing to put up with. It was enjoyable. Once. Not again, though. By contrast, Batman Begins was positively perky. And THAT was riding my dark threshold really close.

[hallerlake.livejournal.com]

I didn't like that he took the fall for Dent's death - made the ending kinda flat - but I thought the rest of it came together beautifully. The Joker succeeds in killing someone? Heck, that was the way Jason Todd went out, right?

I loved the influences that Ledger took from The Killing Joke. Thought that made for a heck of a Joker portrayal.

[purplekitte.livejournal.com]

Aww, but the Sasuke crucifixion shot in one of the openings seems appropriate to the season. But yes, I agree. Naruto was mostly everything cliched in a shonen anime done badly, while by Shippuuden most of the characters are much better developed and sympathetic without being lame.

Orochimaru... I seem to recall most of the interesting interworkings of motive and politics are touched on in the anime to indicate they're there, but with the shallow on-screen world building there is, most of his smart plans and machinations are off-screen. And he vomits snakes, that's really the appeal there.

[seawasp]

I dunno; I saw some pieces that seemed to give us a good idea of what Orochimaru was doing, why, and how. He was essentially a Mad Chakra Scientist -- one of the original candidates for Hokage -- and he's powerful enough, and clever enough, to have joined Akatsuki, gotten what he wanted from them, and then blown them off and they -- powerful as they are -- can't handle him alone.

[purplekitte.livejournal.com]

He does have a wonderful fight with Sarutobi, that was one of the highlights of the first series. And how Akatsuki thinks Kabuto is their inside agent is cleverer than I first remembered, as I forgot all the twists and double-crosses involved. Akatsuki thinks he ran off in tears after Itachi met him.

Stupid Sasuke.