I know I'm in the minority but I hated the comic but I thought this movie was pretty great. They make Bruce much more sympathetic and they fixed the art which was just terrible in the comic. Can't wait for part 2
When the Truth sets you free it usually kicks the crap out of somebody elseshare
Interesting.. I am not a Miller super fan/nut. or actually Miller doesn't do the art, my bad. Varney. But still I found the reading to work much better than the movie medium.
Then again I admit it took me a while to get in to the style of the book.. maybe I'll begin to appreciate the film.. but as much as I LOVE Peter Weller, the voices all just seem way way off. And yeah, I LOVE Conroy in the role and reading the comic I definitely have that voice in my head. But he doesn't come off as gruff as I hear in reading of the comics.
I'm a monster fan of the GN, and just saw the cartoon, and I have to say I've very pleased with the adaptation. A lot of the complaints I hear are ones I shared to some degree: the characters don't sound like they sounded in my head, I wish they had added more grit, or some internal dialogue, etc.
I guess I couldn't really expect them to have Batman put a bullet through the mouth of the punk threatening the Ridley kid, so the lack of "darkness" is not really a fair complaint. And I don't think internal dialogues would have worked either. It would have seemed just a transposition of the book to screen, and not really a different medium adaptation. I'm happy with the way they added some more dialogue to take up some of the internal exposition.
All in all, I give this film a 9/10. Best superhero cartoon I've ever seen by far. Not perfect, no. But what many people here seem to be saying is this was not the BOOK, which IMO is unfair comment.
Well said, but... uh, in the graphic novel he shoots the mutant kid through the shoulder, not the mouth. The way it's drawn, it can be a tad unclear, but it's still specified later that Batman hasn't killed anyone. They don't pin a murder rap on him 'til... well... you know what happens in part 2. Now THAT'S a scene they BETTER not f&*@# up.
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It IS a bit ambiguous, but I still think Batman shot him through the mouth. The panel where the kid is slumping to the ground shows the kid leaning toward his right, with a bullet hole high and to his left. It looks to me about mouth height. Yes there seems to be a lower blood stain behind him, but IMO that is not THE bullet stain, as we can SEE the bullet hole higher up, and there is no stain behind it. IMO that stain is far too low and central to be Batman's. It would have been right in the center of the kid's chest, which is where the kid was. I think we're meant to assume the bullet was so powerful (perhaps armor-piercing) that it cored right through without leaving much of a blood splatter. But in any event, there is NO bullet hole in the kid's left shoulder, or anywhere else on his body for that matter, only the surprised "O" of an expression on his face, which suggests an instant death. That, to me, says "through the open mouth".
You don't stop a lunatic from shooting a kid with a shoulder shot. And a shoulder hit doesn't make that "dead" expression on a face, or take someone completely out of the fight, as was clearly suggested there.
And I figured the police simply never pinned that death on Batman. The kid was shot with the fat kid's military rifle, that had sprayed bullets all over the room, including into Spot. And with Batman wearing gloves, and only a toddler surviving (IMO), they'd never pin this one on him. And I don't think Batman would have considered that death "breaking his rule", as he deemed it the only way to save the kid.
But I could be wrong. The flaw in my argument is the lack of blood splatter around that bullet hole by the kid's head.
i always interpreted that part of the comic as batman killing him, and to me it was the one flaw with tdkr. the whole second half he is still battling with the decision as to whether or not he should kill the joker to stop many more from dying, and instead he just cripples him (which of course the joker later uses to get to batman). the fact that batman kills the mutant but can't do it to joker takes away any moral dilemma as far as breaking his one rule. the movie got this scene correct.
shareYeah it does seem slightly hypocritical to me too, but only a bit. IMO Wayne would not see shooting that mutant holding a gun to a toddler's head as breaking his rule. He would see that as a necessary life-saving police action, and not the capital punishment he was thinking about with Joker. In the tunnel of love, he almost certainly believed he could arrest the Joker without killing him - like usual - but was considering executing a prisoner in cold blood, something he swore never to do.
When you think about it (and he surely did) Batman's attack on the mutants in the dump must have caused some deaths, if only from friendly fire. Those wouldn't count in his mind, as he's doing all he can to prevent deaths. Same with the mutant holding the kid, there was just no other way. So I believe Batman would have not batted an eye at that, and not lost a second of sleep. It was just a life-saving no-other-option "police action".
IMO it's the difference between Kevin Costner killing the gangster at the Canadian border in Untouchables, and the one he killed at the end on the courthouse rooftop. The former was a police action, a necessary act to save a life (his own in that case). But the killing on the roof was a murder, it was him carrying out a capital punishment. THAT is what Batman swore he's never stoop to, and I don't think the mutant threatening the kid applied.
Some of the inner monologue plays an important part of the story.
It's a shame did keep some of it
As an illustrator and a comic art teacher, I have to say that the art in the comic is excellent and the art in the animated version is ...sort of half-decent. Storytelling-wise, the animated version is nowhere close to the original. And the dialog has been dumbed down a lot.
shareonly prob is yes the dialog was dumbed down and the inner mono was taken out for the most part
shareThe animated movie comes close to capturing the essence of the original story, but it doesn't take home the prize. I can only think of a handful of films (animated or otherwise), adapted from books or graphic novels, that improve significantly on the originals. This is good, but it ain't one of them. I just hope that Part 2 is at least as successful as Part 1.
"Loyalty. Honor. A willing heart. I can ask no more than that." - Thorin Oakenshield