Antoine Doinel wrote:Again, specific examples would be nice.
I've given you a number of examples and you just keep asking for them. Why don't you watch the documentary and commentary on Batman & Robin?
The deterioration of the Batman franchise had as much to do with toys as it did with poor scripts and crappy directors.
And I've specifically pointed out how the decisions impacting the scripts and the directors are directly related to how the audience buying the merchandise reacts and what set pieces the toy companies want. Burton was booted for Schumacher, who was more parent and toy-friendly. You can keep asking questions, but I've already given you the answers.
In fact, Superman Returns was perhaps the most heavily marketed, cross promoted film of the last summer but it was still entirely Bryan Singer's film with a surprising amount of time spent on character and not on "toys".
That's right, and neither was Batman Begins. That no longer appears to be true.
Yes, Warner does have a history - as does pretty much every major studio - of pissing off directors, but there are just as many examples where they have left them alone.
That's a gross generalization and a poor attempt at rationalizing consistent behavior as ambiguous. You're not going to get away from discussing Warner's well known infamy in this respect just because you can name a number of other instances where directors were treated badly (or not). I've been sticking to the franchise and studio in discussion, and I think you can too.
As myself and jbeall have countered, nothing in terms of what has been shown so far displays that Warner's is meddling with Nolan's creative direction or tone.
Other than the fact Batman is firing spikes from his arms and arming himself with guns. You haven't addressed this at all.
So you're for the gadgets if they fit the story? They why are you spending so much time trying to convince me that Nolan has no idea what he's doing and that the gadgets are sole evidence of Warner's and Mattel's collusion to sell more toys. Could it be that it could actually fit into what will become the story of The Dark Knight?
There you go again. Point out in my previous post where I said "Nolan has no idea what he's doing". As for fitting into the story, I don't see how that changes anything. We've already established that the toy companies ask the directors to fit the toys into the stories. There's nothing in what you've posted that offers a contrary element to this equation.
Again, we're going to have to wait for story details to come to the fore. But it could it just simply be that hand-to-hand combat won't be enough to counter the Joker and potentially Two-Face in this film? Or perhaps the BatPod and revamped Batsuit will be used not as weapons but to infiltrate?
But we don't know. That's just it, you're assuming there must be a reason that there are blantantly contradictory elements to the character popping up in press releases timed to toy announcements. I'm just the one asking reasonable questions about why the potentially problematic elements popping up are directly related to toys.
The truth is neither of us know, but you're the only one already painting conspiracy theories about Mattel executives twisting Nolan's arm behind his back to include more toys.
Conspiracies, huh? That's pretty funny considering I'm using facts and showing how the toy companies are determining the release pattern of information relating to the film. Aren't you the one who said Nolan was running the ship on promos despite evidence to the contrary?
The very fact that the Joker's face is heavily scarred instead of done in a similar "clown" style that appeared in the first Batman film is proof enough to me that Warner's is allowing Nolan to continue down his path.
You mean like how the appearance of Burton's mutated, black-ooze vomiting, nose-biting penguin had absolutely no relevance to what they were asking him to do with the vehicles for the sake of toy sales? The evidence you keep asking for and then providing for your own arguments never seems to have anything to do with what we're discussing.
If you want to talk about "toyetics" and Warner's influence, then surely you can't ignore how each Batman sequel of the old franchise overstuffed themselves with big names stars. It's heartening that The Dark Knight boasts Maggie Gyllenhaal, Aaron Eckhart, William Fichtner etc among the cast. While the major roles have gone to recognized actors, not necessarily People magazine stars. If The Dark Knight suddenly had the involvement of Ben Stiller as Two Face for example I might be worried, but clearly Nolan has been allowed to find the right person for the role, not the biggest star to sell the toys.
This is irrelevant. Casting never had anything to do with the officially acknowledged relationship with toy companies... but whatever. Moving on.
I never suggested that Nolan is deciding the marketing rollout but his involvement with interviews and press articles even from this early stage is obvious evidence that he's more than happy to work with Warner's in promoting the film even from this early stage.
I never said he was unhappy, I simply said that the toy companies appear to be influencing elements of his production. This is another issue I find irrelevant. If he didn't have a problem with them asking for a giant robot with a cat for a head in his movie, I wouldn't care if he was happy or not. I don't see how any of this relates to a thing I've said. You've already agreed with some of my points and you don't even seem capable of acknowledging that.
As I said in an earlier post, it's entirely possible that Nolan is including these devices even though they serve no lethal purpose. If he doesn't want Batman killing people, he can still include spike arms and heavy machine guns if he works around the character's need to use them. It's like 80's toys where characters have swords they use for anything but attacking people or machine guns that knock down walls. If Nolan finds ways to work around the idea that Batman would use lethal force, you still have all these toy-friendly costumes and vehicles that appear to exist for little more than commercial appeal.
Unless you expect me to believe that Nolan decided it made more sense for Batman to drive around with guns for action requiring bombs or nets, rather than simply switch them out (it's a script, you can do these things)... you have clear implications that he's including completely pointless designs in his film that do not steer towards the aesthetics he's been working with since his first movie. Why would he do that unless he was asked? Can you tell me? Your only other option is that you would have me believe that Nolan thinks dudes who drive around with killing tools they don't use is badass. Then we have an entirely different problem.
And while I'm sure the release of the pictures of the new suit and BatPod were to due to the toy convention, it was also a clever ploy to snuff out any speculation that would have arisen by fanboys assessing the next film based on toy designs instead of what would actually appear in the film.
What kind of backwards logic is that? The timing points to the complete opposite! How does scheduling of Dark Knight PR around Mattel imply that the power structure is the other way around? Please explain this to me.
They learned a lesson from the bumbling of the marketing people at the Sony who routinely had toy designs and other material of Spiderman and related villains leak prior to official stills and trailers.
Preventing leaked material has nothing to do with an official announcement relating to an industry supported, annual event. There is no logic to what you just said at all.
Moreover, the Harvey Dent and Joker websites have been pretty genius teasers. I don't recall any film in recent history building positive buzz at this level a full year prior to its, than this film.
What the hell does advertising have anything to do with content? You do understand that Internet campaigns are run by third parties, right? You always argue studio marketing is some kind of reference for film quality, which just leaves me puzzled. As for buzz, yeah I remember a pretty recent film to strike far more positive word-of-mouth than this. It was called Spider-Man 3.
This just sounds completely paranoid.
And that's a pretty obnoxious simplification of the effort I've put into talking to you. And you call me arrogant...
Making a comment like that just tells me that you believe in some kind of magical bubble where studio execs' primary concern is the well being of the artistic filmmaker they hired. We're talking about the same studio that only hired Bryan Singer last minute because there was no one else and McG didn't tell anyone he had acrophobia. Their only concern is that the flagship product for Batman (the films) helps them sell everything else included in and related to the property. If they perceive for even a moment that the franchise would be better off with different talent at the helm, they'll start headhunting. "Family friendly" is just the most obvious and potentially stupid choice for them to make, but one that might seem more beneficial if the Batman and Superman films don't start clearing more than their budgets.
As you well know, character designs, plot elements, even the targeted movie-rating are all decided in pre-production. If Warner really didn't like the direction Nolan was going in he would've been sacked long before the websites have gone up and certainly long before filming has started underway.
You mean like Catwoman? Or Batman Returns? Or maybe Batman & Robin? Your concept of the way Warner operates seems completely oblivious to how they've been handling this franchise since it's inception. They've always been reactionary, which is precisely the concern I've been projecting here since my first post about this. Warner will leave a director to his devices unless they think they need someone more malleable after getting backhanded by the press and audiences. Burton and Schumacher did exactly what they wanted until it pissed off enough of what Warner considers their target audiences. As I said, this includes parents.
Both Burton and Schumacher were receptive to their toy interests and there is nothing you've provided to assure me that Nolan isn't as well. Of course he might be happy, he's probably getting anything else he wants, including Miike Joker. There is plenty here to suggest, even Nolan's own statements, that he is taking a dramatically darker approach to the franchise and that people will be surprised. I'm glad he's trying to do what he believes is best and I hope I'll enjoy the bits that don't feel like Toyetic time, but he's leading himself down the same path that destroyed Burton's grasp of the franchise. It's a cause and effect event that has already played itself out. I'm simply showing you that the toy interests in the series is growing to a larger extent that it was, and the value of these investments are going to have a direct impact on what Warner thinks is appropriate for the future of the Batman films.
Period.
And certainly prior to his interviews with USA Today among others. Nolan is a huge selling point alone for the rebooted franchise, and if Warner really wanted to sink their ship, then yes, they would hire Ratner.
Batman is the selling point, not the filmmaker. I would bet you money that if you were to quiz half the guests leaving a theater after the first film, most of them wouldn't know who directed it. X-Men: The Last Stand still made more money than any of Singer's features and the X-Men film franchise already has two spinoffs scheduled for 2008-2009. Fox proved that no one cared about a creative shift of that degree and there's a pretty valid argument that the huge second weekend dropoff wouldn't have existed if they just had a better substitute helming it. Despite Superman Returns coming out the same summer, a lot of people who saw X-Men 3 did not know the director had changed at all. You're overvaluing the importance of Nolan at Warner because you're a serious movie enthusiast that posts on a Criterion message board.
All I initially wrote was that I thought Nolan was more than capable of handling a sequel with theoretically more villains and a few more gadgets, while keeping the same tone and quality of his initial film. I wasn't dismissing what you wrote you at all. I merely offered a two line counterpoint.
I wasn't referring to those lines. I was referring to any other debate I've ever had with you on this board including what you've posted here since your emoticon response to a joke. You have fundamental problems with my responses, and it goes far beyond this thead or whatever the subject matter is.
You are the one who went off about how you feel like Clint Eastwood in Escape From Alcatraz and if you can't see how arrogant that is, then I don't know what to tell you either. Dude, you really have to learn how to present your opinions as just that opinions - not facts - and drop the know-it-all attitude.
You seriously need to get over yourself, Antoine. You're lecturing me about how inappropriate it was that I made an analogy where I referred to myself as a movie character... on a message board.
