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Rises came after Inception, right? Because I feel like Inception they gave him more toys to play with as far as fx and budget for cgi and stuff and then that carried into Rises and Rises just had a bit more focus on visual stuff like the football stadium thing and the bridge scene.

IMO Nolan can be great with all the visual toys--I liked Inception a lot. But my favorites of his films are still Following, Memento, The Prestige, and Dark Knight, all of which sort of pre-date the visual/technical extravagance of his later stuff.

Interesting, I'd go BB>DK>DKR, but I really enjoyed the League of Shadows backstory and all the time they spent on it.

Actually 2 different movies, both Schumacher direction with the butt shots and nipples on suits...who strangely enough also directed Falling Down

This isn’t about joker, but since we were talking about Nolan. I think there’s some truth here.

No one says 'give it to me and i'll do what you should have done 10 minutes ago' in conversation nor is there really an appropriate time to even feign it into one. Conversely, why so serious is pretty easy to work in, not that people are walking around saying that either. Come to think of it, while the why so serious line is easily recognizable because of the deliverance, I have no idea when it's said in the movie. Otoh, the i'll do what you should have done 10 minutes ago line is easily recognizable from the boat scene.

Put me in the column of firmly disagree that comic book movies would be in better shape if they had less why so serious moments and made it more about forcing some pre-conceived notions about humanity down peoples' throats...not that people should learn much from a fictional comic book movie anyway.

I mean, the unknown of that scene is what makes it so great, right? Can you imagine the inmates blowing up the other boat? I certainly can, and I certainly wouldn't volunteer to put myself in the civilians' boat because of what happened in a batman movie. And, likewise, can you imagine the civilians blowing up the prisoners' boat? I certainly can and wouldn't volunteer to put myself in the prisoner's boat either. The cherry on top is the ending where Deebo takes it upon himself to spare the civilians' ferry. But, the scene isn't great because of that, it's the sheer brilliance of the situation and the plot of the movie that make it great. Or to put it another way, would it really make the movie worse if the civilians blew up the inmates or vice versa? Aside from unmask batman, the Joker accomplished everything he set out to do including the corruption of Harvey Dent while turning Gotham into utter chaos. All while challenging Batman at every step Bruce Wayne took.

It's great to empathize with people, agreed. But, let's not go crazy here.

Yeah, totally disagree. For one, I think this is largely a dig at Snyder's movies which I would say are mostly heartless and humorless. Just taking Batman vs Superman, it's (to me) a total bore until Wonder Woman shows up and seems to be the only one enjoying herself. It's all about these heavy, aesthetically beautiful situations but there's no feeling to it at all IMO.

I think she's mostly right about what's good about that boat scene, of which the line is just an example. You can get caught up in the impossibility of the choice and how clever and evil it is, or you can remember that there is a real moral choice. If no one makes it, he wins. I'm not so much invested in the right choice being made, but without something compelling happening inside the boats it's just a clever plot device. One can appreciate that, but I don't know that it makes you feel anything.

The line itself doesn't seem that weird to me, but even then a lot of great movie lines (not saying this is that) would never be uttered by a human being. Realism isn't a requirement. "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown?" Come on.

I'd use Se7en to make the same point. There's a lot of interesting sets and cinematography, and a sort of surprise ending engineered by the villain, and that's all great - but that's not what makes it good. It's about Freeman being a jaded detective and Pitt reviving in him a sense of why he started doing the job. The best scenes are when Morgan Freeman goes to dinner at Pitt's house, and when Freeman meets Gwyneth Paltrow at the diner and they have their heart to heart about having kids. Then another when Freeman and Pitt are arguing in a bar about the usefulness of their work. There has to be some kind of humanity, and if it feels forced then it's not working. I'd argue Snyder is more guilty of trying to force it. Anyway, I think that's what she's getting at.

Great thoughts on Se7en, I think I've thought this but have never articulated it the way you have, agree with this 100%.

As an update I ran into mega nerd last night and was like yo, I didn't want to jump into your Facebook conversation for fear of getting gang-murdered by mega nerds but why you crapping on Batman? He says Batman is great, agrees with me on the Nolans and Burtons being great, but something about how the "neckbeards" like it too much to the point that it's unhealthy and also apparently the alt-right has already taken up the Joker movie as their anthem and are going to be inspired by it in a frightening way as discussed back on page 1 of this thread.

Perhaps we're talking about different things.

I agree that the audience needs to be invested in the characters and the characters need to be understood/logical/relatable/etc. No doubt. And, if that's all that was meant by humanity then, okay, I can get behind that. It's why Batman Begins is my favorite. The story is just as much the story of Bruce Wayne transforming to Batman as it is Batman being challenged by the League of Shadows. So, obviously, I find the human stories and character development extremely compelling. And, I would agree the characters in Nolan's Batmans are very deep and well developed which greatly increases the entertainment value for me at least. Compared to, say, Batman v Superman which had little of it. Also, agreed.

My wife asked me last night if I wanted to go see Joker in theaters. First time in a long ass time she asked if I wanted to go to the movie theater. Actually, maybe the first for a movie rated higher than G. I guess she was watching Bachelorette and there was a commercial for it and she remembered I liked the Batman movies. So, I guess we will probably go see it at some point. Kind of excited, to be honest.

*Eye roll emoji*
People are idiots.
This is the type of [expletive] that drives me crazy. People seemingly look at movies for themes that fit their narrative of the world. The movie isn't even out yet and there's already a political movement around it? Piss off.