Wednesday, August 29, 2012

The Dark Knight Falls


The more I’ve read and the more I’ve thought about the last Batman movie the more I’ve grown to question its merit.  I do think there were some amazing moments but I think it was mired in mediocrity for such a talented director and team.

There are numerous spoilers below.

Disconnect
The film often  felt disconnected from the other two movies of the trilogy and from the source material.  Since when does a story involving Batman take place predominantly during the day.  It just screws up the whole aesthetic.  The film has the words Dark Knight and the darkness in the movie is usually metaphorical.  It wasn’t just metaphorical it was dark.  Batman worked at night and used the night to his advantage.  In this universe (the film one) he was trained by the league of assassins.  Speaking of which if you were trained by an elite theater of ninjas one would think when you face down a great enemy you don’t start yelling like a cave man and throwing wild haymakers.  Nice martial arts training there.  Any decent martial artist who thinks being tense and muscling out a wild punch is superior to literally anything else is not such a good martial artist.  And you don’t use the same tactic twice when the first time resulting in a broken spine and severe head trauma.  Although the severe head trauma might explain a few things.  But fortunately the whole mask thing allows for a quick and easy way to win which the World’s Greatest Detective seemed to overlook the first time as an option.

It’s odd how a film so obviously predicated on the events of the who last ones can feel like it’s an odd man out.  For one thing the first two movies were about Bruce Wayne/Batman.  The cast of characters revolved around him.  The first movie, the origin piece introduced the main characters; Bruce, Alfred, Gordon, Fox, and Rachel.  It also introduced Ra’s and Dr. Crane (Scarecrow) as well as Falcone (the mob boss).  The second film burrowed a bit deeper into Gordon’s character and flushed out more the character of the mob bosses.  The mob has always played heavily in Batman’s universe.  It also introduced Harvey Dent and the Joker.  These two individuals were the turning point of the series.  This was the big choice.  The third film was the after effects of the choice made.  The second film was all  setups forcing choices (the Joker’s twisted intention was to force these kinds of games upon the supposedly incorruptible).  The third film introduced even more characters into an already crowded world: Selina, Blake (Robin), Bane, Miranda, Foley, and Daggett.  With such a cast it’s unsurprising that the last film was the also the longest.  There was an effort made to put all the characters on screen for more than a fraction of a moment but it made it feel like more of a collage than the story of one man our hero.  Sadly the best actors had the shortest part.  Morgan Freeman was barely on screen and the same for Michael Caine – and damn you Michael Caine for making people misty eyed every time you were in front of the camera with your whole relatable emotion strife.  I’m sure Anne Hathawy is a wonderful actress but it’s difficult to take a performance as serious when she’s in skin tight leather and performing acrobatics.  Not that this bother me mind you.

With this many people involved and so many plots swirling around it felt like Batman and friends the movie.  Honestly I felt that if we replaced the character and got rid of the whole Batman part it would had made much more sense.  Every part of the first two films as I sat in the theater I was thinking man Batman is awesome not this movie kicks ass.  Because that’s half the point of Batman.  He’s the guy we wish we could be except for the crippling paranoia, the lack of a normal life, the immense physiological scarring, and the constant pants shitting level of danger.  This film I thought hey this cool.  This whole motif and thematic relevance.

Villians or the legacy of the Joker problem
Part of the problem was the last film was just so good.  It had a few points that merit critiquing but it was so pitch perfect on many accounts that such trivial errors feel just so, trivial and of little consequence to the whole.  But this was not that movie.  Another reason is it’s hard to move on past the Joker.  He has cemented himself as the foil for Batman.  In the enormous and varied collection of rogues Batman has accrued no one can touch the Joker.  Joker is to Batman as Moriarty is Holmes.  A dark broken reflection.  The two circle each other eternally unable to truly defeat one another because of their own code and motivations.

Bane tested Batman but not on the same level.  Bane’s goal was vengeance.  Bane’s goal was to break the body and spirit of Batman.  He accomplished one of those things temporarily) and almost accomplished the other.  But Wayne rose from his trial.

The Joker didn’t try to test Batman physically.  He tried to corrupt him.  Batman is rigid in his code.  It is the one thing that keeps him total psychosis.  Once he crosses that boundary there is nothing holding him back.  His lust for justice would turn him into another Ra’s Al Ghul.

Another point why Bane is not as exciting or as memorable (besides his poor use in the god awful Batman and Robin movie which is a prime example of why technology from Men in Black should be used and how) is because he isn’t as true a reflection of Batman as the others.  Ra’s was Btman once he eschewed his holiest moral stance.  The joker was the exact inverse.  Where Batman stood for order the Joker stood for chaos.  They both did all that could be allowed to force their societal direction.


Internal Logic and the hypocrisy of character
Generally when you work from preexisting stories you try to be true to the source material.  This was, to an extent, accomplished.  This was not a warm fuzzy romp of a movie series.  It was gritty, it was dark and it was unflinching.  As such the series portrayed Batman/Wayne as paranoid, angry, bitter and vengeful .  However in the last film he was completely inconsistent in this regard.  Or rather the script had inconsistencies here there and everywhere and even the central character who was well defined still ended up betraying the set expectations.  This is generally a bad thing.  When a story creates an expectation or a rule it cannot be dismissed or altered lightly.  That’s like creating a zombie film, taking time to explain a head shot is the only way to kill zombies and then in a pivotal scene a headshot doesn’t work then the best friend dies.  Which is kind of bullshit.

The main lapse in character here is Batman’s paranoia.  Wayne practically bankrupts his company to fend off the possibility of a nuclear disaster.  Once this had been made clear it has to be set in motion that that nuclear disaster will play out to an extent.  So on paranoia he hid the instrument of hope because of fear of the possibility of death.  But yet he constantly sets into motion events where Selina is allowed to betray him.  He gives her everything with no sign of hesitation.  He is unafraid of her possible betrayal.

Another lapse is he is not over Rachel, yet he, without much provocation whatsoever, sleeps with Miranda.  Or his calm acceptance of Blake’s knowledge of his secret identity.  He spends so much time protecting the secret identity for him to so lightly allow another person to know seems odd.  He hid the truth from Rachel even when he knew it would benefit himself.

And if he was so intent on protecting that identity how come right around the time Batman retired Bruce Wayne fell out of the public eye to become a recluse.  Then shortly after Batman comes out from hiding so does playboy Bruce Wayne with no repercussions or possible implications.  World’s greatest detective, huh?
Okay how about the whole Batman is a symbol idea?  Bruce out of rage created Batman to circumvent the law but to uphold order by foiling crime.  In the first movie he become a symbol.  IN the second movie he looks to another white knight but Dent falls.  In the third he looks to Blake as the person who could pick up the mantle in his absence.  But this negates an important part for the second movie.  The copycats near the beginning of the film.  They dress like Batman and fight crime in their own vigilante manner.  Yet Batman disavows them.  But Blake is okay.  In the comic books Bruce know he can never not be Batman and he understands deep down how he can’t stop and his only out is death.  It’s a beautiful moment of sorrow and true understanding of self.  The man is half-deranged.

Was the movie awful?  Not really but it fell flat a lot of the time.  The aesthetic felt off, the characters seemed wish-washy and I was as emotionally invested as the other times.  The only part of the movie that I really thought was awesome was the scene where Selina is negotiating with Daggett’s man and she executes as her various fail safe’s which all were necessary to stay alive.

Ben

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

The Problem With Apathy


I started this blog for a few specific reasons.  I wanted to be able to vent some rage and maybe get a few thoughts out there into the ether to positively influence the world at large.  But mostly I wanted to give myself a solid reason to write and to write consistently.  I love writing.  Oftentimes I love thinking about writing and musing about writing and starting new projects more than digging in an really creating but none the less I love it.  I love the whole process.  The agony over a single word, the scrutiny over a few line.  Writing, and then rewriting, then rewriting again.  I love the moment you realized you wrote a few hundred pages without realizing it.  Or the odd connection you get when you hit a flow state and words seem to appear, unbeckoned, as if you weren’t putting them paper by the machination of your hands but by conjuring them from another world.

This reason, the true force behind my blog, is why I jump back and forth between sociopolitical rage and light fluffy narrative conjecture.  But sometimes I lose focus of my primary reason.  I find the fun in rage wears off quickly.  People might find the brooding artistic type attractive from afar.  The pensive eyes and disdainfully glances are enticing at first sure but dealing with the sourness that accumulates is poisonous.  I’m not saying you should interrupt the sometimes cathartic anger with bursting into show tunes but a nice smile every once and a while doesn’t hurt.

And so this is my self serving reminder to myself.  But to extend outward to the readers I do have let me explain a few situations intrinsic to that of the writer.  There is often a need for failure among those who write.  There are a few reason for this.  One reason is the written word can very personal and  sense of ownership is attached to the thoughts.  Criticism of something you have slaved over is not always taken well.  Also there is this voyeuristic/exhibitionist side of writing.  There is often a want to hide the creation away from prying eyes and keep it to oneself.  Then there is the exclusion of the writers most favorite and simultaneously least favorite activity: editing.  There is sage advice in asking a writer what their favorite part is and cutting it out.  Embellishment is frivolous – unless, of course you are Charles Dickens and flowery language is not simple allowed but encouraged – and should be excised like a malignancy.  But there is that more immediate sense of failure, the one imposed not by laziness or fear of critique but of fear of success.  It’s odd but the idea of success can be terrifying.  Dreaming about making it big is fantasy and easy whereas actually working towards that goal realistically is daunting.  So often the writer torpedoes themselves.  It’s simply a hobby and they downplay its significance.  Meanwhile the resentment, the feeling of never making it builds and grows power.  It lurks over the shoulder.  It speaks to you as you write.  “If you were any good you’d be famous by now.  No one cares about what you say.  You syntax sucks and you’re funny looking.”  That voice is a jerk and doesn’t know what it’s talking about.  But these are the forces a would be writer must face down.  Essentially the enemy within, which is generally the force we always are at war with.

My other goal once I got a feeling for blogging would be to conquer the online medium as it were.  To create a website with a blog, webcomic, various webisodes, web videos and all manner of content I had a hand in.  I’ve had some starts and stops (mostly stops) with the ideas.  I’ve reestablished some manner of follow through with these ideas.  The inspiration is simple.  I don’t want to be an old man with a lot of regrets.  I’m okay with the majority of the mistakes I’ve made in my life but I don’t want apathy, of laziness or fear to stop me from achieving and experiencing the things I want before it’s too late.

Along those lines I’ve force myself to follow a new idiom: 30 day change.  I want to start down a path and consistently perform and grow over the course of a month.  Be it learning a new language, picking up a musical instrument (and learning it not just the act of hefting it into the air you grammar police jerk you), or in the case training for the warrior dash.  My training revolves around the fact that I never got into jogging and the course is a 5k with obstacles.  I want to be able to make good time and not have a throbbing knee at the end of it.  Last Sunday I took Mac to the reservoir and started easing my way into jogging.  Something I’ve never done before. I have every intention of kicking ass and being significantly better at keeping a good steady pace in a few weeks.

Apathy for me is something I have to remind myself to defeat.  It’s one of those insidious little villains that creeps up out of nowhere and seizes you.  But there is one more flaw endemic not so such to writers but perhaps to those of my age group that I on occasion fall prey to.  The feeling of being owed something.  The universe owes me nothing.  Just because I’m smart doesn’t mean I’m owed a good job, a nice salary or anything else.  I think this is something that isn’t always communicated and it certainly fucks up recent college graduates and I see it with a lot of what I like to term fucking brats in adult bodies.  There are plenty of people rapidly approaching thirty who still have crap jobs.  They hold out for the miracle for the school program they will eventually take that will set them on their new course.  Perhaps people forget a job isn’t handed out its struggled for.  I was awful at this in my early twenties.  It took me a long time to get where I am.  A lot of people have gotten lucky and achieved earlier (or worked harder) but I think as of late I’m head of the curve.  I took years of awful jobs to get one I don’t hate that pays somewhere in the neighborhood of not god awful.  I’m still not quite where I want to be but I’m okay with that.  I have plans, realistic plans.  And I think my generation for a large part is missing this rational head firmly planted on their shoulders mentality.  There seems to be disdain for taking a job below you.  As if being unemployed is worse than working fast food.  I’ve work food industry and it’s reasonably awful.  Yet still there are thirty year olds choosing to live at home rather than work their way up.  They yearn for the long shot hoping for someone to fix their problems.  All that time dreaming could be spent building a future.  But its hard work and it’s easier to dream.

But I don’t wish to simply look down from my life of reasonable comfort.  There are plenty of mitigating factors, a pretty common one  being crushing student debt.  Nevertheless I can only hope my generation gets it collective mind right.  We are eventually going to control the world and I hope we don’t fuck it up to much.

Ben

Sunday, August 5, 2012

The Problem with Immortality


Very few people wish to die, it just isn’t appealing.  Countless stories have our protagonist chasing after the fountain of youth, or some other paradise or device which grants forever life.  Medical science* is now catching up to a point where increasingly long life and near immortality, barring heinous injury and accidents, is possible.  This is exciting to say the least.

The one thing that intrigues me however is once we have a technology that allows us to live much longer and healthier how does this impact the world as we know because once this happens nothing will ever be the same?

Overpopulation

There are a few billion people in the world – it’s around 6.79 Billion – and that number is rising.  Back in the 1990’s it was under 5.5 billion.**  Now think about what happens when we drastically cut death but not cut birth rates (our population growth is around 1.14% annually).  Imagine New York city doubling in population.  Imagine once small towns exploding in population.  Think driving around L.A. is bad now?  It’ll only get worse.  We’ll have to revamp transportation, which America is already years behind as we tend to enjoy cars for every individual and shun public transport.  Highways will have to be built destroying homes and lives, tearing up pristine wilderness.  Urban sprawl will get worse, much worse.
With more people and less lands we’ll have another problems.

Resources Running Out

We may very well run out of food if we keep consuming in the manner we currently do, There could be dustbowl again in the main swath of America and countless other nations.  This is without a few more billion mouths to feed.  We chew through resources like we are indestructible because of the mentality of someone else with deal it and also if it’s really so bad why isn’t someone doing anything or what better idea do you have.

There are already countless poor and impoverished going hungry.  If we truly start tightening our belts on food demand being a fat American might not seem like such a bad idea.  Sorry, Tony Horton I think you might be screwed at that point.

But that’s just food what about things like energy and housing materials or just plain old metal.  We don’t have an infinite supply.  Fortunately things like reclaimed wood are coming into vogue (and are heinously expensive, which is upsetting as its taking preexisting materials like floorboards or telephone poles and making tables out of it for people with a bit too much money) but that isn’t going to help nearly enough.  We’d actually have to start heavily investing in renewable free energy like wind, solar and other methods.  With stable hydrogen cells perhaps?  One could hope.  But if we grow and we still have gas fumes expect global warming to get worse a lot faster.  With oceans rising the usable landmass  is going to shrink.  Goodbye shoreline.  However at the point it may be very shrewd to invest in housing a few thousand feet in or wherever the shore may be in a few years.

You could say invest in harvesting materials in space, a real things that is extremely promising and very possible but that only helps bring some materials in like metals, precious and otherwise, and ore.  This if course would flood the market and devalue the rest (asteroids have a lot of stuff on them like enough to tank small nations economies that need blood diamonds and other such trade).
But let’s assume we can cover the exploding need for resources.

The Job Market and Economy

Think getting a job is hard now?  I am grateful that in a few years the first wave of baby boomers will start retiring in droves (unless they stay on a wee bit longer due to say the tanking of retirement funds linked to the stock market or sheer outright greed) and that will free up a bit more mobility in the market allowing people my age and older to move up and people younger to grab those bas level out of college starting out jobs.  But if people live longer and healthier they’ll need money.  This is already happening anyway with senior citizens staying alive longer.  Just think about job competition for a manger job with an active hundred year old.  Being fifty will look young.  And resumes will look a whole hell of a lot different.  Intern – 15 years, Jr. Analyst - 25 years, Analyst – 10 years, Sr. Analyst – 30 years.  The skills and credentials would go on for pages.  Think a college degree is useless now?  Although it might be nice to have a few more educated people walking around.

More Generations Together at Once

This is one of the things that intrigues me the most.  I remember eating dinner with my grandmother and her manner struck me at how utterly different her generation was from mine.  I understand my parents generation as I had live with them my whole life and felt their governance and rules.  But my grandmother’s generation, understanding to my mother, seemed so alien and antiquated to me.  While my mother was obviously connected to my generation there were obvious moments where there things she simple could not intuitively grasp.  That’s only three generations.  If we expand life expectancy to two hundred and we assume a generation every twenty five years that’s eight or so at once.  Imagine a twenty year old having a conversation with their great, great, great grandfather.  This might be extremely exciting as so many points of view and cultures will mix and overlap at once.  If that was happening today we’d be talking to people who were around before any of the world wars, before there were cars and airplanes, before there was cinema.  Think how fantastic and exciting it would be to be alive to see the advances of humanity if we keep moving forward.  Imagine what I might be like to be alive in a hundred years.  But there are issues with this of course.

Loss of Connection

It constantly surprises me when I think back on things from my childhood and realize that was over twenty years ago.  To me that feels like a long time.  And it isn’t a particularly short time.  To a ten year old that’s incomprehensible.  To an eighty year old is certainly doesn’t feel as long.  But I remember when the movies of my childhood came out and it shocks me, but it shouldn’t, that younglings today have no idea of these things.  You ever have a conversation and talk about actors who have died that you liked.  That’s going to be all sorts of fucked up in fifty years or a hundred years or two hundred years.

But more importantly think about how many people from older generations that have issues with using a computer or the internet.  It is so pervasive and ubiquitous it seems like children now are born with a mouse in their hand.  It would be like not know how to use a phone many years ago.  That kind of adoption is going to be really hard in a hundred years.  When we have ocular implants or simply creat things with our minds or any number of fantastic new fangled stuff that science will majestically plop into our undeserving laps.  Or what about language.  Think kids today are fucking up the language well just wait to those kids have kids and so on and so forth and you’ll have to communicate to the little bastards a tenth of your age.

Wealth

One thing that does scare me is this; one things the rich have to deal with just like everyone else is death.  They can’t keep the money forever it has to keep flowing.  If they live two hundred years or more we may well all be very fucked.  Wealth is just a pretend resource we agree holds value.  It ceases to hold value once we discount it.  A dollar is worth what we agree to assign to it and no more.  If the 1% live forever just think of the harm they could do.  Of course this might mean that we all have enough time to catch up and save up.

Dreams Come True?

With the possibility of endless time it does feel invigorating.  With the clock not ticking we’ll have time to chase dreams with abandon.  If we fail that’s okay we can try again in fifty years.  Or we can spend a hundred years slowly building up money to buy our dream business.  But conversely without that ticking clock we may very well lose inspiration.  Death has always inspired.  Knowing we only have a limited time has forced so many great people to perform.

War

But if we no longer have to die will people be willing to throw their life away for the pursuit of life liberty and happiness?  Will we still have soldiers willing to kill and be killed?  Will murder and death seem all the more ugly as it should be useless?  I can only hope that long life will bring peace but somehow I think it may only bring discordance.


But my favorite though is this; if I had hundreds of years to live I see no reason not to learn ten languages, basket weaving, how to play ten instruments or so, learn to ride a horse, get a few Phd’s, and explore the world and the many, many things I just won’t be able to do with my time as it is.  Plus if we have other people who actually go out and educate themselves we’ll truly have another renaissance and bring some more enlightenment to this age which we are always in need of.

Sadly there is one obvious downside.  I'll have to remember a whole lot more birthdays and that's a pain in the ass.

Ben