• Think of how much buttfucking must have gone on in Sodom.
  • 5,000 years later, and we’re still talking about it.
  • Those people fucked butts, man.
  • I thought you were talking about the Batman movies.
  • Eventually.
  • Now, please.
  • Oh, fine.
  • The Batman movies–Batman Agonistes, The One With The Joker, and The Shitty One–directed by Christopher Nolan and his impeccable education are both much better and far worse than you remember.
  • Sweet sweaty Jesus, do these movies take themselves seriously.
  • Enthusiasts, there are Themes.
  • Big Questions are asked.
  • About chaos and fear and panic, and the immovable burden of the past, and guilt, and what a man owes to his city, and ninjas.
  • The first picture, Suddenly Batman, is simply chockablock with ninjas.
  • Far more than you recall: the first half of the movie is ninja-centered.
  • They got the swords, the pajamas, the whole bit.
  • Liam Neeson’s on top of a mountain.
  • You can’t find ninjas on Craigslist; you have to go to the top of a mountain.
  • And Liam’s like, “Hey, Bruce, you’re from Gotham, right?”
  • And Bruce is all, “Yuh-huh. Go Knights!”
  • “Oh, shit, bro. We’re totally gonna kill everybody there.”
  • “Bro! Not cool! Why?”
  • “Dude, I forgot to tell you: we’re not just ninjas, we’re also kind of the Illuminati.”
  • “Not cool!”
  • And so on.
  • That’s all three movies: the bad guys’ plans always boil down to “I wanna teach Gotham a lesson.”
  • Mwah-ha-ha.
  • Anyway, Bruce Wayne was on the mountain in the first place because his parents were shot, and he was like, “Fuck you, crime,” and he wandered around the globe learning how to punch poor people.
  • Which, let’s face it, is not the healthy way to deal.
  • Li’l Orphan Annie didn’t hit any poor people.
  • Daddy Warbucks’ financial machination probably starved a bunch, and I’m sure he called the Pinkertons out on strikers a bunch of times, but Annie didn’t turn herself into a fearsome symbol of harsh justice who was also a ninja.
  • Annie just hung out with Sandy the dog and sang songs with her fellow urchins.
  • Whereas Bruce Wayne worked through his trauma by looping cable around policemen’s ankles and chucking them off roofs.
  • But he doesn’t kill, or use guns.
  • Except when he kills (Batman kills so many people) or uses guns (the Batmobile, Batcycle, and Bathoverdrone all have literal cannons on them).
  • Batman has a code.
  • This is what makes him different than the bad guys.
  • Also: the looming.
  • Nobody looms like Batman.
  • Darth Vader is good, but not like Batman.
  • We are told that Batman has no superpowers, but this is a lie.
  • Batman possesses psionic abilities that make everyone within a hundred-foot radius forget they’re holding guns.
  • I cannot count the number of times I shouted at the screen, “JUST SHOOT HIM, DIPSHIT!”
  • “NO, DON’T SWING THE RIFLE AT HIM!”
  • So many opportunities to put a bullet in the man, and every single time: form a circle around him and wait to get awkwardly punched.
  • The punching gets better in the second and third flicks, but the first movie’s fights are just fast cutting, mostly because once again Batman couldn’t actually move.
  • This was a feature of both the Burton and Schumacher films, too: ever since Adam West took off the spandex, the Dark Knight has been armored up in latex and rubber to the point of immobility.
  • And this was 2005, mind you.
  • We had put a man on the moon.
  • Surely someone could have figured out how to engineer a ball joint into the neck of Batman’s cowl.
  • Just do a helmet on top of a turtleneck.
  • But, no, we get a Batman that staggers around like Tor Johnson in a graveyard.
  • There is also the yelling.
  • Christian Bale’s bellow in Batman Bayou is positively restrained when compared with the (computer-enhanced) silly shouting he gets up to in the second and third flicks.
  • “HGGGGGGGGGH!”
  • That was an actual line in the script.
  • Batman has two superpowers: the gun thing and not needing a lozenge.
  • Try doing the voice; you’ll be hacking up blood in seconds.
  • Batman Begginstrips is a podgy movie that, like the others, makes not one lick of sense but it does introduce the best part of the Nolan trilogy.
  • The Tumbler.
  • Look at her.
  • Smell the justice coming off of her.
  • Fuck her tailpipe.
  • I think there’s five or six tailpipes.
  • Fuck all her tailpipes.
  • You’re getting weird again.
  • Shh.
  • The Tumbler (and the skittery rumble of her soundtrack) was the best part about the first Nolan film, save for Cillian Murphy’s soft, kissable lips.
  • Like a cross between an F-117 and a dune buggy designed by Frank Gehry, the Tumbler had a secret weapon, and that was that it existed and actually tore ass across Chicago.
  • There was, to be sure, some CG bullshit, but the vehicle was not created entirely of pixels inside some computer in the San Fernando Valley.
  • Like this piece of shit:
  • That’s from the Justice League movie, and the picture is of a toy because they did not build a real Batmobile this time.
  • There was a prop created:
  • But it didn’t have an engine, and so all the shots in the movie were not shots at all, but generations.
  • Which is, admittedly, 9,000,000th on the list of problems with Justice League, but it bears pointing out.
  • This new one is clearly just the Tumbler having gone through Snyderfication, a process by which all thought and color is vacuumed from an idea and regurgitated over a classic rock soundtrack.
  • Look at those back wheels.
  • Does the whole casing ride up and down with the shocks, because there’s no room for the tires to bounce.
  • Wouldn’t that design make the structure inherently weaker and more prone to attack?
  • You’re dumb and I hate you, Batmobile from Justice League.
  • Forgettable were the Schumacher versions
  • You’re trying too hard, Schumacher Batmobile.
  • Also, the placement of your front wheels only makes sense if you’re only going to drive backwards.
  • And, like Snyder’s piece of garbage, this design apes the previous (and creatively fresh) iteration, which was…
  • The Burtonmobile.
  • Or, as some refer to it, THE PHALLUS OF JUSTICE.
  • As with the Tumbler, the Phallus was driveable, but far more fragile.
  • It’s a Chevy chassis with a shit-ton of fiberglass on top, and the jet engine is not real.
  • Most engineers will advise against placing a jet directly in front of the driver.
  • The vehicle also turns about as well as a Ukrainian diner.
  • Also very tough to reverse.
  • There is literally no way to parallel park this car.
  • Lot of drawback, if we’re honest.
  • Unlike…
  • Ah, yeah.
  • The original onscreen (forgetting the serials from the 40’s) Batmobile is still a fan favorite, and why shouldn’t she be?
  • Look at her.
  • Fuck her tailpipe.
  • STOP THAT.
  • It’s a Lincoln.
  • A concept car from 1955 called the Futura, and that certainly would have been an apt name in 1955.
  • Dig those swoops and curve, Daddy-o.
  • The studio that designed Alfa Romeos built it and charged Lincoln $250,000 for it; they hauled it around to car shows and loaned it out to movies, and sometimes in the 60’s sold it to a guy named George Barris for a buck.
  • He made the hood a little gnarlier, and sunk a flamethrower in the trunk so that the car would shoot fire as it sped away from the camera, and painted the Batsymbol on the doors.
  • Took him a week-and-a-half.
  • Shit.
  • I was writing about the Nolan movies.
  • Why do you let me go on tangents like that?
  • All of this is your fault.
  • Anyway, there are other characters besides Batman in these movies.
  • You got Alfred, played by Michael Caine, who is on the verge of blubbering in every scene.
  • A bemused Morgan Freeman.
  • Gary Oldman’s American accent.
  • Gary Oldman’s American mustache.
  • Rutger Hauer and Eric Roberts, for some reason.
  • Nestor Carbonell’s mascara.
  • There are also bad guys with whom Batman squabbles.
  • The underwhelming Scarecrow, played by Cillian Murphy’s bottomless eyes and bedroom lips, and Liam Neeson, who is playing “Liam Neeson if he were a ninja.”
  • The iconic Joker, played by Heath Ledger when he was alive, and Two-Face, who also does stuff, I guess; his makeup looks a lot better than Tommy Lee Jones’ did, I’ll give him that.
  • And then the absurd Bane, played by Tom Hardy’s costume and neck muscles, along with Marion Cottilard, who is hot and evil, and also Cillian Murphy comes back for a cameo and remains delicious.
  • Plus Anne Hathaway as Catwoman.
  • She’s not a bad guy.
  • She’s morally ambiguous.
  • That’s what you call a bad guy who is also a hot chick.
  • There are two other women in the Nolan Batman trilogy, leaving aside Bruce’s murdered mother (who has no lines) and Jim Gordon’s wife, who spends all of her screen time standing in doorways worrying.
  • They both play the same character because, hey, a chick’s a chick.
  • Suri’s mom is in the first one.
  • Married to Tom Cruise.
  • She was in Dawson’s Creek.
  • I think maybe she was also in an Adam Sandler movie.
  • …
  • …
  • KATIE HOLMES!
  • I knew it would come to me.
  • She’s an abominable actress, but her face is crooked in an appealing way and she has a hefty bosom.
  • This makes her morally ambiguous.
  • Katie is replaced in the role of Rachel Dawes, no-nonsense District Attorney, in the second film by Maggie Gyllenhall and I cannot lie to you, Enthusiasts: I do not enjoy looking at Maggie Gyllenhall.
  • She has a droopy face.
  • As if her features might slide off her skull at any moment.
  • Then, she blows up.
  • This happens because Joker has forced the Batman to make a choice harbleyarble whatever.
  • The second one is dumb, but the third is just stupid.
  • All the cops?
  • Every single cop in the city went down into the sewers at once, enabling Bane to trap them down there?
  • Stop that.
  • That is foolishness and I will roll my eyes at you, Christopher Nolan.
  • Oh, and Neil Patrick Harris or whatever that kid’s name is.
  • Joseph Gordon Levitt.
  • It’s a hard pass from me on JGL, dog.
  • You can smell the child actor all over him.
  • And there’s a nuclear bomb but Batman threw it into the bay so everything’s fine (except if the wind was blowing in that day) and everyone got to live happily ever after.
  • Except for Heath Ledger.