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Post by tonebone on May 20, 2021 11:50:00 GMT -5
I don't mean to be contrarian, but I hate BOTH of the Burton Batman movies, and I hate BATMAN RETURNS the most. It is the only ONLY movie I have ever paid for and walked out in the middle of it. Catwoman, obviously, was the bright part of the movie, but EVERY thing else about it drove me crazy. Batman machine guns and sets fire to the goons in the street, Cabwoman's origin is nonsense, the Max Shreck character was boring and ONLY slightly interesting because it was Walken in a wig, but the thing that REALLY killed it for me was the Penguin. Burton took a classic Batman rogue and turned him into something that is Penguin in name only. He's a mutant with physical deformities that seem penguin-like ( ) is DROWNED by his parents, and found and raised by PENGUINS in... Gotham City? He has a beak nose, and flippered hands, and is raised by penguins, learns to speak, read, and dress, yet eats raw fish (with green blood). He has an army of sentient penguins and is, despite his handicap and limited education (by penguins, remember)a technological weapons genius. It was so freaking stupid and disturbing and disrespectful to the original character. It was on par with Shaq's portrayal of Steel. No relation. This portrayal, sadly, even was foisted on the Animated Series, to an extent. To millions of kids, Penguin has flipper fingers. I decided that if Burton showed him ONE MORE TIME, eat a raw fish, I was leaving. He did. I did. Burton made 2 good movies... Pee Wee's Big Adventure, and Beetlejuice. Everything else is, in my opinion, stylized, pretentious, overwrought crap. And don't get me started on Planet of the Apes. Planet of the Apes is AWFUL. But Ed Wood is one of my favorite movies of the 1990s. I will admit to being wrong... I forgot about Ed Wood, also an excellent movie. So that's 3 out of 20 or so.
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Post by chadwilliam on May 20, 2021 12:30:52 GMT -5
- Originally, Brainiac was a non-robotic humanoid with a very long life span. It was only six years after he had been introduced that he was retconned into being a robot. When introduced in the newspaper strip, his name was Romado. - I suspect most people think of Jimmy Olsen as a camera man who snaps pictures of Superman just like Peter Parker does for Spider-Man. Not sure when this changed, but for the longest time he was a cub reporter. - Speaking of Spider-Man, since the first Tobey Maguire film, how many people associate "hero learns he has strange new powers when a waitress spills a tray of food and the event unfolds in slow motion to his eyes" with Spidey and not The Flash from whom the sequence was stolen? - Do people still think of Luthor as criminal scientist or has respected businessman taken over these days? - Oliver Queen was originally a rich guy who collected "Indian-lore" and made it his business to learn how to use bow and arrows since the items were part of his collection. Not sure how much of this survived the Golden Age other than he used to be a rich guy. Roy Harper was a kid who lost his father while flying over a "mountain of stone". He spent years stranded there with his Indigenous companion Quoag who taught him how to use a bow and arrow. I suspect that Quoag was rarely mentioned after that origin in More Fun 89 (if at all) and that while I know that the future Speedy learned his trade without the help of The Green Arrow even with the Silver Age retcon, I'm not sure if these days, things haven't changed so that it was the senior Queen who taught a wet under the ears urchin all he knows about crime fighting. - Superman's heat vision works separately from his X-Ray vision. Originally, Superman didn't so much have heat vision as he simply turned up his X-Ray vision to melt things. At some point, the two powers seem to have their own switches. - Jason Todd was originally a red-haired circus acrobat whose parents were murdered by Killer Croc due to a screw-up by Dick Grayson. Killer Croc used to be an intelligent enough criminal to have successfully run Gotham's underworld for a time. Jason Todd used to be dead. - The Joker is insane. Early Golden Age stories, in fact, had him feign insanity with a rather distraught Batman wondering if this now meant his battle of wits with his greatest foe would now have to come to a close. - Bruce Wayne was confined to a wheelchair in the storyline leading up to Detective Comics 600 - a result of a failed assassination attempt. He was once again confined to a wheelchair after having his back broken by Bane in the storyline leading up to Batman 500. Most people know about the latter incident but not the former.
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Post by badwolf on May 20, 2021 13:10:00 GMT -5
I think with Batman Returns you just have to accept that, like most of Burton's films, it is a kind of fairytale, and roll with it.
But my favorites of his are Sleepy Hollow and Corpse Bride.
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Post by tarkintino on May 20, 2021 13:10:37 GMT -5
I don't mean to be contrarian, but I hate BOTH of the Burton Batman movies Same here. Agreed 100%. I believe that's an accurate description of all of Burton's films, along with a splash of his being obsessed with anyone/thing that's odd/weird/strange. One note.
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Post by Cei-U! on May 20, 2021 15:31:23 GMT -5
I don't hate any of Burton's movies (well, maybe the two Alices) but I don't love many of 'em, either. The ones I do are Pee-Wee's Big Adventure and Big Fish, though I'll also sit through Mars Attacks if I see it playing on cable. He's definitely at his self-indulgent worst when he's paired with Johnny Depp.
Cei-U! At least his Bat-films are better than Schumaker's!
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Post by kirby101 on May 20, 2021 15:37:03 GMT -5
I do not hate Burton, I just have grown cold over his Batman movies. He his very hit and miss. Some of his movies fall flat, Like PotA or Mars Attacks. But Edward Scissorhands, PeeWees Big Andventure, Ed Woods, Sweeny Todd, Alice in Wonderland, Big Eyes, all films worth watching.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on May 20, 2021 15:44:09 GMT -5
I'm just bored with Burton. And mostly don't think he's done anything interesting in a very very long time (probably since Ed Wood).
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Post by berkley on May 20, 2021 15:47:06 GMT -5
I like Burton's visual flair but he's never made a great movie. I like bits and pieces of the ones I've seen, but none of them hang together as a complete film. Mars Attacks has a lot of good comedy moments but the overall story is too slight to support a full-length movie. Dark Shadows again contains some nice comedic lines and looks fantastic, but starts to feel like over-conventional Hollywood formula towards the end.
Generally, I see him as a big talent who's never quite realised his potential. I've never seen Ed Wood in its entirety but even so, I suspect it might be his best film!
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Post by Hoosier X on May 20, 2021 16:50:17 GMT -5
How could I forget about Mars Attacks!?
I love Mars Attacks! I’ve seen it a bunch of times.
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Post by kirby101 on May 20, 2021 17:04:57 GMT -5
I really disliked Mars Attacks, it was just cruel to all the characters. I get it was suppose to be cartoony, but it lacked any heart.
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Post by badwolf on May 20, 2021 17:11:03 GMT -5
I hated Mars Attacks! And I can't stand to watch Pee Wee.
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Post by Prince Hal on May 20, 2021 17:42:04 GMT -5
I grew up with Mars Attacks cards. Mars Attacks was serious business. I wanted those cards translated into a movie: giant bugs, heat rays, mass destruction, horrific slaughter. There are no stupid jokes in those cards, no arch self-awareness, no satire, nothing but elemental fear, anxiety, violence and revenge. This was a lost opportunity.
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Post by The Captain on May 20, 2021 18:59:33 GMT -5
Wait, all this discussion of Tim Burton and not a single mention of The Nightmare Before Christmas? Out of all of his films, that's the only one that I really love.
My biggest problem with Burton is when he tries to "reimagine" something that another person did before him (and most likely did it better). There is one good scene in his Willy Wonka version (the greeting at the factory, where the singing dolls catch on fire and melt), but the Apes, Dark Shadows, Alice, etc. movies are just him putting his weird spin on something that already exists, like a kid taking the Mona Lisa and giving her a tattoo and pink hair.
When he has an original idea to work with, he does far better. Pee-Wee, Ed Wood, Edward Scissorhands, Corpse Bride, even the first Batman, Sleepy Hollow, and Mars Attacks (not his ideas, per se, but things that hadn't been done before on film, not counting the 1960's Batman which bore little resemblance to Burton's) have a certain "magic" to them that his adaptations just don't.
Plus, I'm tired of seeing Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter chewing scenery together in his movies.
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Post by kirby101 on May 20, 2021 20:44:51 GMT -5
Nightmare was his movie, but he did not direct it.
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Post by Deleted on May 20, 2021 20:59:22 GMT -5
I always assumed that while we see DeVito's Penguin arrive on the shore ala Moses, he was raised as part of the Red Triangle Circus as their Aquatic Bird Boy.
There were some really great ideas in earlier drafts of both Burton films. I particularly liked the Penguin is really Max Shreck's younger brother angle or the buried treasure storyline that features the prototype Court of Owls, the Raven Society and how they are the ones who had the Waynes murdered. Hopefully Sam Hamm might revisit some of these ideas in his upcoming Batman '89 comic series.
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