Olaf
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Joined: 26/2/2007
From: 41°N 93°W
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quote:
ORIGINAL: AxlReznor
quote:
ORIGINAL: Olaf
quote:
ORIGINAL: AxlReznor
If you don't want to see a dark and gritty superhero movie, Batman is not for you. Simple as that. Batman has been dark and gritty since the late 80's, and that's the tone relevant to his character.
If you want fun and witty, then there's the output from Marvel, which is evidently more thing.
Myself, I think both approaches are equally valid, but if they were reversed (dark and gritty Iron Man and fun and witty Batman) it wouldn't work at all, because it's wrong for the specific character.
My problem is the words 'dark' and 'gritty' being joined at the hip. Grant Morrison's work on Batman in the last decade has been often incredibly dark, but it's been shot through with a healthy dose of sci-fi surrealism (see also the weird places the character was going in at the start of the 70s despite being quite grim storylines).
'Dark' is relevant to the character (he's the Dark Knight after all). But 'gritty' isn't a requirement for me personally, which is why the Silver Age stuff and the creative successors to that more heightened style (Morrison, Moore etc) interests me way more than stuff like The Long Halloween. I *still* maintain that The Dark Knight Returns isn't meant to be gritty at all, and while I actually love Year One, the bulk of it isn't really a Batman story at all for me - you could write the same story about a random vigilante and it'd be the same. though it's quite clever on the part of Miller to focus on the most (only?) down-to-earth aspect of what makes Batman Batman, ie his relationship with Gordon, which is why it's the only 'gritty' take on Batman that really works for me.
Okay... people who like any Silver Age comics have no hope. 
Although, I do enjoy what Grant Morrison did with that stuff, making it all hallucinations as side-effects of prolonged exposure to the many gases and poisons he'd been exposed to, as well as an all-but-forgotten isolation experiment story. Was an interesting way to make all of that canon, and makes a frankly embarrassing period of comic book history far more grounded and realistic.
Also, if Frank Miller didn't intende The Dark Knight Returns to be gritty, he failed dramatically...
To be honest, I'm a Marvel sort of guy since my childhood and they fared much better during the Silver Age artistically speaking (the first hundred or so issues of the Fantastic Four are probably better than any Batman book I've ever read, personally), so I think that's why my affections generally lie there. It makes me sad that the period's taken such a beating from fans since the Nolan films came out though, since the originality and creativity of a lot of those comics gets overlooked due to them being 'silly' or unrealistic. And Schumacher's Batman films aren't really accurate in terms of reproducing that for me, contrary to popular belief.
And I will argue this about TDKR to my death. I don't know how anyone can tell me it's a gritty story with a straight face, despite its sci-fi dystopia setting, obviously absurd social satire, deliberately exaggerated character designs (there's a reason David Mazzuchelli didn't do this one), giant Batmobile tank with a neck(!), fight scenes with bulky cannibalistic mutants who then switch sides and call themselves 'SOBs', dat Ronald Reagan and A GIANT FIGHT AT THE END BETWEEN BATMAN IN A MECHANICAL SUIT VS SUPERMAN
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I tried to groan, Help! Help! But the tone that came out was that of polite conversation.
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RE: Charlie Brooker and superhero films - 
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