verbaltoxin: What I like most about the '89 Batman film is that it is so quotable. It's really an adaptation of the 60s TV show when you think about it. The characters spend most of their time vamping and making wise-cracks, the violence is pretty cartoony and the Joker is inexplicably possessed with all these Joker-faced gadgets, trucks and helicopters.

The main issue I have with the Nolan Batman movies is that when you try to make a superhero story too realistic, you all but abandon the point of having a superhero. He's just a crazy guy in a suit. A "real" superhero is a guy like Phoneix Gold up Seattle, and all he is is a poser with a costume and some pepper spray. So I prefer my comic book properties to be more like the Avengers - fantastic and unrealistic, but still grounded in humanity. I like the Nolan movies, but there is the sense of walking the tightrope so the movies don't get too realistic, lest you destroy the entire fantastic premise it's predicated upon.


And here I was told just this evening on Fark that Batman '89 had nothing in common with Batman '66

/vindication!

verbaltoxin: I don't hate Tim Burton films (Quite the opposite in some cases). His last several though have stuck to formula and he doesn't seem to have the same, subversive and surreal wit he used to have with past films. His best stuff lately are things he's written and/or produced, but not directed.

People hate on Burton's Batman because it seems so campy compared to the gritty crime drama that the new films are but I always dug his gothic German expressionist version of Gotham city over "Chicago" in the Nolan films. And casting a wispy comedic actor like Michael Keaton was inspired, IMO. No, it had nothing to do with the muscle bound ninja that Batman was supposed to be and that was what was cool about it. Burton's Batman had nothing to do with the comic book version. He was a guy out of his league physically but did his shiat anyway.

And Burton did a lot better job of making Bruce Wayne a broken, mentally unhinged individual. Nolan's Wayne has none of that. He could be a regular cop except for the costume. There's a lot more to be said about Burton's Batman than he's given credit for.

And the Batmobile is a lot cooler, if less practical.

Carth: Most people who hate musicals still enjoyed South Park:Bigger Longer and Uncut

That was probably because South Park was a cartoon. I'm just not wired to accept that people in real life will stop the story and just break out into song and dance for no reason. The exception being The Blues Brothers because it was sort of a cartoon in its own way, the music was good and there were really only a couple of actual "musical" scenes that interrupted the narrative. But the musical as a concept, I just was never able to understand. But I'm obviously wrong, musicals are hugely popular.

I never stopped liking Johnny Depp. I just don't watch the movies he's in that I know will suck. In fact I just watched a documentary on Hunter Thompson narrated by Depp on NetFlix streaming and it was great.

Depp can do 10 more movies with Burton under a ton of make-up and that won't change the fact that he was in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. So free pass.

I kind of wish Depp would find his inner rebel again, the one that made him pass up all the heartthrob roles he was being offered after 21 Jump Street and do some amazing films that were wildly different. It feels like he's been stuck in a rut for most of the last decade, constantly returning to the same characters or some mild variation thereof.