The Dark Knight Rises

[JiMMy-BoY]

I've seen this film 3 times now. I think it's now officially one of my all time favourites.

It was so good

[MilesSmiles]

im bothered by remakes of movies more than anything else you mentioned. total recall totally sucked btw. i can usually find some redeeming quality about a movie that justifies spending my time watching it, but aside from the cool futuristic toys theres really nothing that stands out from the original.

Well, I haven't seen it, I sorta wanted to, but I heard this about it. POSSIBLE SPOILER OR WHATEVER BUT THIS IS WHAT I HEARD ABOUT TOTAL RECALL: They took everything out of it that made the original cool. I.e. it's not on Mars, no Benny, mutants, Kuato, the language is for PG-13... when I heard that I got deflated about it. I'm not big on Colin Ferrel, but Jessica Biel and Kate Beckinsale are lookers and I heard Bryan Cranston played the villain, so I thought I might give it a shot....

reviews seem to range from 'it was aight' to 'it was terrible, don't see it.'

[Alex 909]

These things have always come and gone in waves. Zombies, vigilantes, vampires, superheroes; Whatever the public wants they get in bulk. There are always the stinkers like Amazing Spider-Man and Superman Returns, but with them come a few amazing films like The Avengers and The Dark Knight, so there's always that to look forward to.

I liked both Amazing Spider-Man and Superman Returns though admittedly can't defend the latter. Why didn't you like Amazing Spider-Man? As a lifelong Spider-Man fan I thought it was excellent, bar some misgivings with the plot.

But I'm the guy who thinks Dark Knight Rises is crap so what do I know

[Oyashenron]

So if I haven't seen the original Total Recall, would the remake be a fair substitute?

[Oyashenron]

I liked both Amazing Spider-Man and Superman Returns though admittedly can't defend the latter. Why didn't you like Amazing Spider-Man? As a lifelong Spider-Man fan I thought it was excellent, bar some misgivings with the plot.

But I'm the guy who thinks Dark Knight Rises is crap so what do I know

SPOILERS FOR AMAZING SPIDER-MAN AHEAD

I liked the casting and many aspects of the plot, but I found ASM shoddily edited. They apparently had to remove a large subplot involving Peter's parents from the film and it really shows. The mystery of where they are is built up in the first act and never touched on again. Another blatantly omitted subplot is the Lizard's gas turning random people into lizard-men. We see them transform and then turn back and there's no real reason why this would be shown unless (as I've heard confirmed) there was originally an action sequence where the lizard people rampaged through the city.
I'm a die-hard Spidey fan and what consistently ticks me off in adaptations of his story is the tone. Spider-Man is not a light, easy-on-the-mind comic. The protagonist shoots as many one-liners our way as webs, but he's suffering some immense pain from the loss of his uncle and his parents. Most of the villains really mess with Peter's personal life (Green Goblin, Venom, and Doctor Octopus come to mind), but we only really see them fighting Spider-Man and not Peter in the movies. Considering that Spider-Man began as a realist deconstruction of the Superman mythos, I'd like to see something like the Dark Knight trilogy done for Spider-Man. The movies we've gotten so far have been nerfed to an incredible degree for the sake of selling merchandise to children, so we never get to see the complex, interesting storylines like Sin's Past or Agent Venom put to screen.

On a non-critical note: I'd much rather see a Spider-Man TV series than another bunch of movies.

[Alex 909]

I liked the casting and many aspects of the plot, but I found ASM shoddily edited. They apparently had to remove a large subplot involving Peter's parents from the film and it really shows. The mystery of where they are is built up in the first act and never touched on again. Another blatantly omitted subplot is the Lizard's gas turning random people into lizard-men. We see them transform and then turn back and there's no real reason why this would be shown unless (as I've heard confirmed) there was originally an action sequence where the lizard people rampaged through the city.

This is what I was largely referring to in my misgivings about the plot line. Sony dropped the whole 'The Untold Story' marketing campaign a couple months before the movie was released. Rumours were that Richard Parker infected Peter's blood so he had spider powers his whole life and the spider bite just unlocked them. Similar to Ang Lee's Hulk movie. His parents do get forgotten about after the opening 10 minutes of the movie and it is rather noticeable. Agree on the Lizard-men beingdropped. We get to see them change back to human form but there was no point in them.

I'm a die-hard Spidey fan and what consistently ticks me off in adaptations of his story is the tone. Spider-Man is not a light, easy-on-the-mind comic. The protagonist shoots as many one-liners our way as webs, but he's suffering some immense pain from the loss of his uncle and his parents. Most of the villains really mess with Peter's personal life (Green Goblin, Venom, and Doctor Octopus come to mind), but we only really see them fighting Spider-Man and not Peter in the movies.

See, I think Spider-Man can work in any tone of story. You can have stories like Sins Past or The Death of Jean DeWolffe but then you can have some fun stories, which don't need to leave a huge impact on the character, but can be fun. There was a Spider-Man/ Human Torch mini written years back, where 5 issues, all in different time periods, it shows Spidey and the Human Torch team up. The final issue leads to Torch finding out Peter is Spider-Man. That mini was hilarious with laugh out loud moments all the way. I think audiences would prefer to see a light-hearted Spider-Man film over a dark one. You'd get the smart arses going "Oh, but the dark tone is so ripping off Dark Knight and Batman" with a dark film. I'm not saying it can't be done but I think you'd have to take risks for it to work. Spider-Man is a very popular super-hero for kids especially. When I saw Amazing Spider-Man, I saw kids dressed up as him. I know they won't go so dark for a 15 (R) rating but I think you need some light-heartedness in there.

And I'd argue we saw Venom fighting Peter in Spider-Man 3. He was going for Peter, not Spider-Man after he got him fired from the Bugle. You could argue Green Goblin from the first movie but only that final battle.

Considering that Spider-Man began as a realist deconstruction of the Superman mythos, I'd like to see something like the Dark Knight trilogy done for Spider-Man. The movies we've gotten so far have been nerfed to an incredible degree for the sake of selling merchandise to children, so we never get to see the complex, interesting storylines like Sin's Past or Agent Venom put to screen.

Speaking of merchandise, I'm still pissed this wasn't in the film!

lizard-car-amazing-spider-man.jpg

As much as I like that story, I don't think we'll ever see Sins Past on the big screen, for obvious reasons. I don't know what Agent Venom is though. I'm 90% sure that we're going to see The Death of Gwen Stacy in this trilogy of films though and god I hope we do. I think that's as far as we may get with complexity, dark and interesting storylines that are still accessible for children.

Considering we're in a thread about The Dark Knight Rises, did the plot not bother you in this? With the plot holes, silliness of it at times and Bane's status being relegated to henchman in the ending? Those were my biggest gripes with the film.

[Oyashenron]

By Agent Venom I mean the plotline where the government puts the Venom symbiote on Flash Thompson with some electronic controls and he starts living his teenage dream of being a superhero. It's kind of superficially cool, but I think those elements would work well as part of a character arc for Flash. He's one of my favorite characters in the comics and I think it's kind of a shame he gets demoted to 2-dimensional bully status in the movies.

As for TDKR, even though there were annoying bits here and there, they were just scratches on an otherwise perfect product. ASM was like buying something on eBay and getting an empty box. I felt cheated out of half the movie.

[JiMMy-BoY]

So if I haven't seen the original Total Recall, would the remake be a fair substitute?

One of the best things about the original Total Recall is all the funny Schwarzenegger one liners.

The new one looks more serious

[Listed89]

Fantastic movie. Bit of a disappointing villain (or two), but other than that it was rather awesome. Pleasantly surprised by Hathaway, and great performances from Bale, Oldman and Caine as usual. Nice to see Richard, Goodwin and Marshal Mars there, too!