Scots Taffer on 11/8/2008 at 03:28
Okay, I'm a horrendous fucking geek but after my second viewing of TDK, I've decided on what I would've preferred to see.
[spoiler]Act 1:
- Character introductions as is ✓
- Wayne enterprises merger with crooked US business
change: completely remove HK element
- Mob / cops / Batman stuff as is ✓
- Batman goes after "hiding" US crook
change: introduce sonar here as part of a tense snatch & grab
- Dent takes the case to court etc ✓
Act 2
- Joker's next targets as is etc ✓
- Bruce Wayne again / intercedes in a Joker attempt on Harvey
change: not at the fund raiser, that's GONE
- Pressure on Batman / Dent = Batman etc as is ✓
- Truck chase ✓
- Dent/Rachel in warehouses ✓
- Joker escape ✓
Act 3
- Harvey in hospital ✓
- Joker bomb threat ✓
change: following this Harvey is unknown to be dead or alive
- Bridge & tunnel threat ✓
change: Gordon gets reports of his team being missing
- Ferries & hostage situation unfold simultaneously in different locations to stretch resources thin again
change: separate locations for each, Batman has to help hostages first then in process gets hunted by police after sabotaging/attacking SWAT
- Batman & Joker
change: police on Batman's tail, reports of dead cops comes in to Gordon but with no perpetrator.
another change: Joker confronts Batman with the truth that Harvey is now Two-Face and is out there, killing people, getting revenge and he'll destroy hope, Gotham is doomed.
yet another change: Batman stops him with the detonator as before but...this time
- Joker dies
change: Joker gets hurled off roof as before, sailing towards cars, cackling, laughing, Batman tries to save him but fails
- Gordon finds Batman before SWAT
change: the truth about Dent's fall, Gordon realises Dent is killing people, they need to find him, but the cops are after Batman, the murders now get pinned to him too so the Joker doesn't win, he's hunted, he escapes
The End.[/spoiler]
Reasons why:
[spoiler]- It's too much for one movie, we get this. It's too huge to cram two complete arcs in there without sacrificing one of them, Dent gets short-shrifted in the last 30 minutes into an incidental villain to be quickly dispatched; gone
- The HK stuff is just plain flabby and ruins the pacing and bloats the movie to fuck, it also adds nothing except for some coolness; gone
- Similarly the poor editing and nothingness of the fundraiser offers the question: why was this included in the end movie? it adds nothing; gone
- I have a lot of issues with the last forty or so minutes of the movie, so separating the hostages and ferries seemed natural because not only does it not make sense for the Joker to attract the SWAT team to his location (did he have any kind of plan for escape?) but it also allows some of the confusion in that scene to be alleviated and the dramatic tension to shift from that situation to the ferries again without polluting and diluting both scenarios with the same fight. Plus, it allows Batman to start getting tailed by the cops to allow for the pinning of the murders onto Batman and the creation of the same premise anyway.
- Leaving Dent alive offers an excellent parallel for the third movie, the white knight has turned dark and the caped crusader is as reviled as ever by the public and now has the police hounding him like a criminal too, a time for Gotham to be so dark offers a nice chance for them to try to reclaim Harvey before he goes too far.[/spoiler]
Stitch on 11/8/2008 at 03:50
Now do Spider-man 3.
Yeah, TDK really invites this kind of retroactive salvaging geekery. There a lot of great stuff there, but it's simply too much.
Still, I liked my proposed ending better, and there's no real need to kill Joker besides the fact that other superhero movies have (incorrectly) established death as the only satisfying conclusion for a villain.
Scots Taffer on 11/8/2008 at 03:55
Quote Posted by Stitch
Now do Spider-man 3.
I'm not a miracle worker, goddamn it.
Quote Posted by Stitch
Still, I liked my proposed ending better, and there's no real need to kill Joker besides the fact that other superhero movies have (incorrectly) established death as the only satisfying conclusion for a villain.
Well, the reason I suggested death is because as he sails towards the sea of cop car lights, whooping and laughing, and the music crescendos I suddenly realised that the Joker had won and that his death wouldn't be a conclusion but merely another failure of Batman's - if he tried to save him and fucked up, I mean. That's why I like him dying... that and it's neat, continuity wise (but that's a little after-the-fact rearing its ugly head).
jtr7 on 11/8/2008 at 04:47
Great stuff, Scots.
Tonamel on 11/8/2008 at 04:49
I disagree with having the police blame Batman for the murders without Batman suggesting it first. They have a number of speeches about how Batman is "whatever Gotham needs him to be." It's an important character point that he's willing to become a hated felon (as opposed to a respected vigilante) if it's for the good of the city.
Side note: I wonder if "felon" and "villain" are etymological cousins?
As for the ending, if you want to kill the Joker, that's one thing that The Killing Joke did well. Batman might not be able to kill the Joker, but the Joker is more than capable of committing suicide to make it look like Batman killed him.
Scots Taffer on 11/8/2008 at 04:53
Quote Posted by Tonamel
I disagree with
having the police blame Batman for the murders without Batman suggesting it first. They have a number of speeches about how Batman is "whatever Gotham needs him to be." It's an important character point that he's willing to
become a hated felon (as opposed to a respected vigilante) if it's for the good of the city.
I didn't mean to suggest that, I see that I did... I wanted the police chasing him for the SWAT team sabotage and that to dovetail in nicely with the concept of Batman losing his moral code by his apparent "murder" of the Joker. But Gordon and Batman alone now know the truth about Dent (and Batman) and they choose to mask his White Knight reputation for now, allowing Batman to become the Dark Knight as he hunts Two-Face.
I too think the "what Gotham needs" is an excellent character point that flies in the face of anyone that says Batman didn't develop or grow in this movie. He makes the largest sacrifices of anyone.
Taffer36 on 11/8/2008 at 04:58
I don't read them comics, but from what I read in another thread in a different forum, the general consensus for awesome seemed to be Bane. Again, I have no idea who that is, but I'm just relaying the message.
I rather liked the last bit of the film with Dent. The only thing I was iffy on was his actual death as I thought there was a lot more potential left for Two Face becoming futhur of a villain, but the rest of it was handled excellently and I think it completed the whole ordeal on morality rather nicely. The whole point of the film was about how humanity can come in second to self-preservation and that morality can be fluid. The scene with the two ships was nice as it reinstated some hope in the audience, but we're still left with the fact that the struggle will continue as Dent, the "White Knight" falls from his moral pedestal.
Shakey-Lo on 11/8/2008 at 07:40
I don't know that the fundraiser 'adds nothing', it shows Bruce Wayne publicly getting behind the idea of the 'white knight' which is thematically important and it also introduces Rachel to the Joker, which obviously is important later on. The scene just needed a decent ending, rather than leaving the Joker in limbo.
N'Al on 11/8/2008 at 09:27
Quote Posted by Scots Taffer
Which is really all I meant by "Batman can't become second fiddle to the villains" in the sense that, as long as Batman is intimately involved with the characters that exist as the movie's central villains - Ra's Al Ghul and Batman had history, the Scarecrow was an incidental villain, Joker was created and defined by Batman, Two-Face was an incidental villain - then they'll continue to nail the right tone. The problem is when Dr Freeze is just some guy with a freeze ray going batshit on Gotham... well, yeah, who cares basically. Similarly for a good chunk of the other villains.
I see and, again, I agree.
Having said that, Ozzy Osbourne as the Mad Hatter trying to bite Batman's head off for movie 3, am I rite guys?!?
Yell Piranha on 11/8/2008 at 09:34
Quote Posted by Shakey-Lo
I don't know that the fundraiser 'adds nothing', it shows Bruce Wayne publicly getting behind the idea of the 'white knight' which is thematically important and it also introduces Rachel to the Joker, which obviously is important later on. The scene just needed a decent ending, rather than leaving the Joker in limbo.
I agree here. I thought Wayne's "I believe in Harvey Dent" speech was a crucial part of the film, for both Batman and Dent at that point.
Im also with Angel Dust on the 3rd film. The focus needs to shift back onto Batman/Bruce Wayne and think that could be a good way to do it.
