Happy New Year — Batman Revisited and an Olive Branch to Misguided Liberals
–Richard E. Vatz
I just saw the Batman movie of years ago on G4’s “Movies That Don’t Suck.”
This was the one unpretentiously named Batman, and it reminded me again of how superior this movie was to the one I reviewed about two years ago, “The Dark Knight.”
Starring the unaffected Michael Keaton as Batman, in contrast to the manneristic poseur Christian Bale, and sporting the uniquely memorable and brilliant Jack Nicholson as the Joker, Batman is spellbinding throughout.
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In “The Dark Knight,” most of the positive, nearly unanimously mystified reviewers praised the psychologically fascinating Heath Ledger.
Whenever you get the liberal god-term “psychologically fascinating” and its synonyms in reviews of a traditional action franchise, you know that the writers, producers and directors — not to mention the actors — are obsessed with producing “art.”
That means the movie will be technically brilliant in service of a complicated, unfathomable story told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing (purists, footnote Macbeth here). The accompanying music should have been “MacArthur Park.”
Heath Ledger is the best thing in the horrible movie, but it is perfect only for masochistic myth destroyers.
If there is a more sensual actress than the young Kim Basinger, “Vicki Vale” in Batman, I don’t know who it would be, and Robert Wuhl makes one suspend disbelief. No one does in the Knight movie.
Some niggling, irksome readers will raise the question at this point, “How is this blog really about ‘Happy New Year’ and liberals?”
Well, I am looking for a pass on just this one blog — note that I could have discussed how the “Superman” franchise has gone crazy liberal with Superman’s fathering a child out of wedlock in “Superman Returns.”
But I didn’t.
Happy New Year, liberals. This is an olive branch. Let’s be more reasonable this year.
Professor Vatz teaches Media Criticism at Towson University and accepts dissent from his students except on his movie preferences.
