My main objection to this movie, and even more so to Batman Begins, is that it is a detour away from genuine artistic development for one of our best young directors. Certainly, it’s depressing to think Christopher Nolan, who gave us a mindbending near-masterpiece in Memento, already spent a few years of his life on one Batman movie and is now preparing another, which will occupy him for more precious years. Is making a better Batman movie than Joel Schumacher really a worthy goal for a talent so large? For Bryan Singer, the stakes may be slightly different since none of his movies, including The Usual Suspects, has been as amazing as Memento, and since his best work, in fact, was in another stupefyingly expensive comic book movie, X2. Nonetheless, $260 million (and Lord knows how many months and years) could have been used to make four (seven? ten?) more interesting movies. These big successes may well bring great future opportunities to Nolan and Singer (and the money and adulation may be hard to resist), but they won’t get these years of their lives and careers back. Will they be glad they spent them this way?
"A sinister cabal of superior writers."
Article comments
1 - Ty
"magical sharpness and clarity"
WTF?????
IMAX may be big, but it's the equivalent of a old school 70" big screen (4:3 ratio) TV.
If you want sharpness, clarity, the whole works, it's all about DLP.
If IMAX is the equivalent of one of those old big screen TV's, DLP (in movie theaters) is the 42" crystal clear HDTV.
Your proposition that IMAX is sharp and clear is laughable at best. You have obviously not seen a movie in DLP at the movie theater. It will BLOW you away. It uses no film, purely digital, so no cigarette burns or anything else filmy.
Many more colors and LITERALLY the sharpest picture you will ever see.
Check it out. You'll be amazed.
2 - Anna
I thought that superman wasn't as good as I thought it was going to be. To me they skip 1 and 2 and went straight to 3. It left me confuse but, I loved the grahics and the actors. Me personally I pefer the old Superman because of the story line. I was happy to hear the same old music thou =).
3 - Sterfish
You make an intriguing point about directors "wasting" the best time of their careers on comic book films. I think it's a little elitist to say that by doing these films they are getting away from "true" artistic development. Both Nolan and Singer succeeded in bringing art to the superhero genre, something that hadn't been the case in recent memory. In the case of Singer, he's actually honed his skills on these types of films. Compare the direction of the action sequences in X-Men, X2, and Superman Returns, and you will see a progression in his ability.
Nolan and Singer (along with, to some extent, Peter Jackson and Sam Raimi) are trying to redefine the way people view a blockbuster. They have succeeded in creating films that are as good dramatically as they are entertaining. Hollywood has always lived by the notion that big budget summer films are mind-numbing and that only the dramatic films of fall are worth honoring in non-technical categories. I believe that with directors like these at the helm of big movies, we might get to a point where budget and time of release do not dictate a movie's artistic worth.
4 - handyguy
No elitist here...Jackson's Lord of the Rings and King Kong are among my favorites of recent years...and as I mentioned in the review, superhero movies with more directorial personality, including some by Tim Burton, Sam Raimi, and even Singer's own X2, are a lot more interesting to me than these two play-it-safe, restore-the-franchise Batman and Superman entries. They're not terrible, just not very exciting. And Nolan in particular could do better. Singer seemed inspired by the X-Men material in a way he does not in Superman Returns, so maybe he could stick to this genre and make a great film...probably should be based on something more Marvel-neurotic than DC-square, though.