I went to see Batman yesterday. Marylou and I and some of the Moran circus troupe I was telling you about. There are bloody hundreds of them and they’re all geniuses in their own cackly way. Anyway Head Moran Cait, treated the lot of us to Batman at the Imax and afterwards to a japanese Restaurant for a slap up Hot Sake session.
Look at how many there are! That’s nothing; there’s at least another thirty of them back at their tent.
I was very excited about the film. I’ve been a big Batman fan for years and I thought that the first batch of films with Keaton, Nicholson, DeVito and big Arnie were an insult. Sure the new films are dark but that’s the way the comic started out, before it was corralled into the war effort and later after a few desperate years of Bat Mite and punch ups on Mars. IT’S THE WAY IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE!
We rode the tubes, falling out at Waterloo and then falling straight into the nearest food and booze establishment which happened to be the Royal festival Hall. I had a cappuccino, friendlied up with a cheeky whisky while Mary had coffee and some kind of Humous Focaccia. The Imax was packed and everybody seemed to be eager for the film to start but just as we were about to find our seats, CALAMITY! Some bloody alarm goes off and we’re told to leave the building. After standing outside for fifteen minutes or so we’re ushered back in and in no time we’re in our seats looking at a screen that is bigger than Jeebus. usually at this point would be tunneling head first down a massive bucket of popcorn but due to ’staff shortages’ there was concessions stand so I had to make do with half a bottle of warm water.
There was only one trailer but oh! what a trailer it was. The Watchmen film looks aces and I would implore anyone who hasn’t read the greatest, most culturally significant graphic novel ever written (and drawn) to check it out.
watchmen trailer
Then it was Batman and it was fantastic. I’m not sure which bits were the 3D bits, if any of it was, but it didn’t matter. Heath Ledger is, even after all the beautiful corpse hype, a brilliant Joker. Unhinged, funny and completely psychotic, the Joker of ‘Arkham Asylum’ and ‘Killing Joke’. Unfortunately the alarm went off a few times during the film and the lights went on and off and at one point the film stopped for five minutes. All of this was annoying, true, but I didn’t see the point in the anger and rudeness that I witnessed in the lobby later on. I didn’t want my money back (not that I’d spent any), I’d gone to see a film and I saw it. I don’t like ‘Rip-off Britain’ any more than you do but I don’t think what happened here was anybody’s fault.
We strolled along Southbank as far as Tooley Street where our restaurant lay. I had a red duck curry washed down with a couple of bottles of Tiger and a few tumblers of hot Sake which warmed my insides and rounded it off with more coffee and whiskey. Again this was all paid for and I thank all that is magic for having such beautiful, generous friends. After Keystone-esque capers on the tubes we finally arrived home and sat outside for a couple of hours singing songs and pretending to understand what Cait was talking about before wending our weary ways skyward and to bed.
Superheroes are, on the main, a rather dull bunch and none duller than that goody goody mummy’s boy; Superman. What a snooze that alien is, everything in his world(s) fits neatly into two categories, ‘GOOD’ and ‘BAD’. There are no shadows, no darkness. His character is wooden and a penny tossed in wouldn’t have far to sink. His alter-ego Clark Kent is a bumbling suit with self image problems which, presumably, is to deflect our curiosity about his real self but I don’t see why he needs to bother; as long as he keeps his glasses on nobody will ever guess that he and Superwuss are the same bloke which says plenty about the intellect of the inhabitants of Metropolis especially Lois Lane who knows both men intimately and still has no idea as to his true identity.
As for James Bond, well who wants to watch what is primarily a twelve year old boys wet dream. At least Carry On films had Kenneth Williams in them. I’ve never read the books so I can’t comment on their literary value but the films are scoreless draws on a freezing weeknight in Bournemouth. The acting in the last one was so bad that the director might as well have held two bits of two by four with ‘James Bond’ written on one ‘Boobs’ on the other and waggled them about (but not too much, don’t want them stealing the show). I knew what was going to happen when i saw the poster. Actually I also knew what was going to happen in Batman, after all it’s been happening for almost seventy years but the difference is that I care about what happens to Bruce Wayne and to Commissioner Gordon and Harvey Dent and The Joker. Empathy kids, that’s the difference… real people. Ok, real people dressed up as a bat but some of us need to hide behind a mask in order to express ourselves.
In Batman’s world nothing is ever as simple or as straightforward. His ass is torn. He is convinced of his mission, to rid Gotham City of it’s dark and seedy underworld elements and yet without them he does not exist. It’s as if every criminal, rapist, mobster he beats up/puts away is Joe Chill (the mugger who killed his parents) but what happens when they’ve all gone, when there are no Chills left? There is little doubt that all that grief and rage powered intellect and muscle would turn it’s destructive force inwards. So he needs them, especially the Joker, one of the greatest mythical characters of all time. With his burning intelligence and his first in Capebait Psychology from the Arkham Asylum he holds up a mirror for Batman to see what he really is; a tragic figure wearing a bat costume who shouldn’t spend so much time down the gym and who should maybe learn to relax a bit more. C’mon Bruce, Eat a Peach. This just winds up the Bat even more because, deep, deep down (and that’s a penny you wouldn’t hear land) he knows it’s true. He knows that all he’s done is thrown his lot in the with the crazies, oddballs and costume freaks, that innocent people have died simply because he exists.
He also knows that he would increase his effectivity ratio by getting Alfred to locate a really big BATGUN so he could really go to town on this house of mirrors Joe Chill infinity collective that stain his beloved streets but then that would make him as bad as the very people he has pitted himself against even though everyone else, including the few people who know his identity (how many is that? three? four?) wish in their hearts that he would. As Bobby Seale once said ‘Power comes from the barrel of a gun’ and he knew a thing or two about politics and what constitutes a fair fight. If, as Bruce Wayne so often says, Batman doesn’t need to be liked, he just needs to be whatever suits Gotham’s needs at the time, then he should get out the gun catalogue and splatter a bit of claret about the place sooner rather than later. It’ll make him feel so much better.
