Batman....then and now.....forever

the next time you're walking down crime alley mugging or thieving or killing waiting for a middle aged man in an outrageous costume to kick your butt, i want you to remember something. that middle aged man might say something cliched. or he might not. but when he's done with you, you're not going to be laughing, make no mistake about it

- in your darkest hour, ganja. toldja, didn’t i?! (what do you mean ‘get a life’? it’s not like anyone else is queuing up to quote me)

yes, mr. joker sir, i think he's going to wipe that plastic smile off your face, sir except i don't think you figure in the movie.. i can see him on top of one of gotham's numerous high-rises. or at least his silhouette. and when he says "i am vengeance. i am the night. i.am. batman.", i can smell the stink of your fear rising up through gotham's mean streets. but look at the dark side. at least it's better than getting busted by an overgrown boy scout.

then

if you're a gotham city criminal, it is simply your lot in life to suffer.

in the sixties, adam west would foil your devious plans by inflicting cruel laughing fits. you would have him and that boy brat, robin, dangling over a pit of toxic chemicals, with a snowball's chance in hell of escaping.

all you had to do was flip the switch.

but, no, you had to savor your triumph. you had to gloat and stick your tongue out at the two of '.em .mr. narrator would intone something like

'what will the caped crusader do this time? will batman and Robin escape? or will the joker have the last laugh? Find out tomorrow!!'.

after a good night's sleep, batman would suddenly recall that he has a voice activated bat-sock-it-to-those-bastards-belt that emits this migraine inducing sound wave. you and your underlings keel over; batsy and robin hand out a few knuckle sandwiches biff!

thug 1 goes flying towards the far wall. kapow!!

thug 2 (who patiently waits for thug 1 to be disposed before making a move) is deposited on the floor.

you would shake your fist at the heroes and slink away to sulk in your hideout. 'holy supersonics, batman!!', boy wonder would exclaim in an admiring tone that does nothing to quell those nasty rumors about the two of them being more than *cough* just friends.

those thugs never stood a chance - as weapons go, sword-pen-adam west's dork knight antics. you just can't fight and laugh at the same time. (ah! how come batman and robin are immune to the sound wave?, i hear you ask. that's where the earplug fitted bat-cowl comes in handy, you idiot. and it also ensures that our boys never catch a cold).

hollywood has been only slightly more kind to you. sure, jack nicholson played your part once. but before you could say 'tsk, tsk, batsy', they hired arnold. as if you didn't look stupid enough getting your ass kicked by george clooney.

when i first heard that made me feel a hell of a lot worse, christian bale is the next batman. bale of american psycho fame. he played patrick bateman (a not so subtle nod to norman bates, perhaps?) in that movie. patrick bateman is a loose cannon. given a chance, he likes to kill people by dropping chainsaws on them. he likes collecting trivia about serial killers. did you know what one serial killer would think when he saw a pretty woman on the road? one part of him would think, 'i want that woman'. and there'd be this other part that would wonder how her head would look on a stick. this sort of thing amuses pat bateman endlessly. pat bateman. destiny? hmm.

now

thank you christian bale. thanks for showing the world the batman i know and fear – a real mean motor scooter, an obsessed, driven psychopath who sometimes makes you feel he belongs in the same asylum that lodges most of his long term enemies. thanks for letting us know , in your own words from batman begins, that “clearly a guy who dresses up as a bat has some issues”(the way he spits’ bat’ out almost makes you believe words can taste bad).

yes, i caught the dark knight, something that deserves the three exclamation marks that will follow shortly!!!

six hours have passed since the fantastic last scene where- no, methinks you’d much rather watch it yourself. six hours have passed since the movie ended and my heartbeat’s slowed down enough for me to actually write something more than baleisbatmanisgodisbaleisbatmanisgod about how i feel. and now i feel that bale, as batman, is god. bale’s bruce wayne performance gave me the creeps- the guy should be banned from wearing dapper suits. remember ‘try getting a reservation in fucking dorsia’s now!!’ from american psycho? yeah right, like anyone could forget. *shudder* having an actor who can finally justify batman’s title as the dark knight, but what makes it great is that heath ledger rocks or outrocks “if there is a work like that” every one out their roles just as well as bale does, and that the script is fucking A and that you can actually watch the action sequences without going into a sulk over fireballs that move in slow motion.

i neither know nor care for what a non-batman fan would make of the movie. personally, while i may not exactly worship the ground the batman glides over (i know well enough to steer well clear of it if i ever take to a life of crime in gotham city), i did read the three hundred plus scanned pages of the long halloween (which scriptwriter david s goyer quotes as a big influence) comic in one sitting. and so if director christopher nolan had muffed the movie up, i would have considered writing a long, angry letter to dc telling them to stop making batman movies. the thought of spidey being better than batsy at anything, leave alone something as big as the box office, rankles.

mr. nolan, aware that there are worse things that can happen to one’s career than being the object of pissed off letters, does not disappoint. the movie is chock full of “gosh wow” moments –

crook :where are you?!

batman(whispers): here.

crook –egad!

bruce wayne (having just taken the god awesome batmobile for a spin) –does it come in black?

some arbit guy(on bruce wayne’s car) : nice car!

bruce wayne – you should see my other one.

my favorite one – “he’s here.” “who?” “the batman!”

michael caine’s turn as alfred is one of the best things about the movie. he transforms wanye’s soft-spoken, umbrella carrying butler into the friend, philosopher and guide that batman so badly needs. and he has a wicked, impudent sense of humor, ever so gently pulling master bruce’s leg. i hope the old man stays alive long enough to appear in the next batman movie (assuming that the dark knight will be the smashing success i figure it to be. who’d agree to spend a record breaking 100 million $ promoting a bad movie?)

gary oldman is a terrific jim gordon. although i long to talk about the many, many amazing aspects of the movie, i’m aware that doing so would definitely ruin your dark knight experience. but i just have to make a mention of the batman – scarecrow fight. pure evil! and the batmobile sequences….the ‘hundred plus through black and white, warhorse, warhead, fuck ‘em man white knuckle tight’ part of ‘fuel’ never made much sense to me, but now i have a rough idea of what james hetfield was talking about.

‘nitro junkie paint me dead’, indeed.

i can’t remember the last time i enjoyed a movie this much. the entire hall seemed to be filled with batman fanboys – some of the cooler moments were met with the cheering and clapping usually reserved for rajnikanth movies. in particular, the scene where bruce wayne returns to the cave to confront his childhood fear saw some of the loudest and longest sustained examples of whistling in a movie theatre since the legendary entry scenes of the superstar (where the camera would focus on his shiny new ‘sportshoes’ and then move up to show us his face, which was when our talaiva would yank his arm out to throw a snappy salute, grinning like a madman throughout).

the soundtrack? as a friend of mine from delhi would have succinctly put it - “it’s pUmpiNg!”