Tuesday Talkback - Christopher Nolan's treatment of women

While talking about the Christopher Nolan Batman films last night on Twitter, I ended up in a long debate with a reader who asserted that "Nolan's treatment of women bothers me... just look at both Batfilms and Inception.  The women are useless devices and not characters."  This set off a long back-and-forth, during which I kept asserting that I thought Rachel was a fleshed-out character, and he asserted that she was only a plot device.

He also pointed out that she was the only [major] female character in two Bat-movies, which he equated to being a token character.  My feeling on this is that it would have been an even greater example of tokenism to make Lucius Fox or Alfred into a woman just for the sake of meeting some kind of quota.

It was also argued that Nolan "chose to write a story"  But I return to the point that Nolan's films are always incredibly focused, and like any writer, he clearly starts with the core conflict and themes and works outward from there.  In just about ALL of his films, the conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist is what drives the plot.  That doesn't mean that the other characters aren't fleshed out or that they don't have significant parts to play, but they're always in concert with the larger machine of the story.

In a Nolan film, no one is there JUST for the sake of being there.  As it should be, they always have a vital service to the story, the themes or the characters.  I point this out because if you reduce Rachel's part in the story to just a plot device, then don't Alfred, Gordon and Lucius all pretty much also fall under that category?  They don't drive the story, but surely all four of those characters are fleshed out to the point where they are more than a simple plot device.

In Insomnia, the driving core is homicide cop vs. serial killer.  In The Prestige, it's two rival magicians against each other.  Batman Begins: Batman v. Ra's Al Guhl/Scarecrow/Mob.  In The Dark Knight, it's the Batman/Joker/Harvey triangle that defines the story.  In Inception, I might argue that the DiCaprio character's most important relationship is that one with his dead wife, for it's that dynamic that gives the rest of the film its emotional resonance.

It was suggested that Nolan could have brought in characters like Harley Quinn or Oracle, but I don't see what they would add to the story that he was telling about Batman's relationship to Gotham.  Nolan's Joker didn't NEED a sidekick, so he doesn't have one, nor does his Batman need an Oracle on-call to do all his detective work for him.  (Bringing in some version of Oracle might have actually undercut the story, for she might well have rendered Batman's security system obsolete.)

So what do all of you have to say about this?  Do you take issue with Nolan's treatment of women?  Or is it just a case of this being where the story has gone.  (And let's not forget that most of Nolan's works are adaptations in one form or another.)

Before we continue, I want to lay this down - as much as it's popular to whip out the Bechdel Test, I ain't having that here.  I don't subscribe to the premise that a movie is inherently bad simply because it fails the Bechdel Test. 

After all, would any of these films have been better if they DID pass the Bechdel Test? And TVTropes does a good job of addressing how this test can be misunderstood.  I also came across this article about The Problem with the Bechdel Test.

Let's talk about context - not checklists.  It would be great if we could stick to the topic of Christopher Nolan and not turn this into a discussion about the portrayal of women in Hollywood films in general. 

Believe me, I've read plenty of incredibly sexist scripts and seen plenty of sexist films - but I don't see Nolan's films as falling into that category at all.

A great in-depth review of The Dark Knight

I'll level with you guys... I ran into post-production problems on the webseries and getting our footage into a Final Cut-friendly format turned into an issue that consumed far too much of my free time this weekend.

So I didn't have much time to compose my usual posts.  Never fear, I've found an alternative.

The Avengers opens this Friday and if you've been following my blog for a while, you probably expect that I'm pumped up for this.  I've never really be a Marvel Comics fan at all (save for Ultimate Spider-Man), but I've really enjoyed many of the movies based on Marvel Comics characters.

So as we anticipate what the hype would have us believe is the greatest Marvel movie ever made, why not take a look at a fantastic review of one of the most acclaimed and most successful comic book movies of all-time - The Dark Knight.  I recently came across a series of posts from some reviewers at Comics Alliance.  It was part of a series last year where they reviewed every Batman movie.

The Dark Knight review is a great discussion of the film's themes and structure.  They also do a fantastic job of breaking down the characters.  If you're a fan of the film, it's worth a look.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

One thing I really like about their series is that they attempt to put the lie to one of the popular perceptions about the Batman films - that Batman Returns is substantially better than either of the two Joel Schumacher films that followed it.  Both parts of the Batman Returns review are excellent at pointing out every last way in which the movie is terrible.

And in a move sure to infuriate most comic book fans, in both parts of another review, they assess that Batman & Robin is actually more coherent and consistent than either Burton film.  (I won't exactly say that they "defend" the film, but they make a good case for the notion that if you accept the film on its own campy terms, it holds together better than the incoherent mess that is the second film in the series.)

If you've got some time, check out my list of 10 Greatest Comic Book Movies Ever Made and its companion piece, The Worst Comic Book Movies Ever Made.  The posts are a couple of years old, but the recent entries haven't been good or bad enough to really merit displacing entries on either list.

Is the Warner Bros plan to make all comic book movies "dark and edgy" a smart move?

The L.A. Times had an article yesterday about how Warner Bros. is still planning Green Lantern 2, but that they intend to make it "edgier and darker" than the original.

*sigh*

This, of course, is the big lesson WB took from the billion dollar worldwide take of The Dark Knight: dark and edgy = better. If that song sounds familiar, it's because that's what they said a couple years ago when announcing their intentions for the next Superman movie. I'm also pretty sure this isn't the first time, they've said all their superhero films will be "dark and edgy."

It's ridiculous that is their only judgement on why Green Lantern underperformed. I don't think the problem was that it wasn't dark enough, it's that there wasn't enough sense of fun and adventure. Oh, and the second act had problems.

Why did people like Iron Man? Because it was fun and because Robert Downey Jr. was charming and charismatic. The Spider-Man movies are among the top grossing films of all time and they were plenty of fun too. "Dark" works for Batman because that's the world he inhabits. But it's not Superman's world, it's not Spider-Man's world, and it's not Green Lantern's world. At least not in the degrees that Batman's is.

If you apply this sort of "one size fits all" assessment to every underperforming comic book film then you fail to examine each one as a unique property and a unique story. "Comic Book Movie" isn't a genre in the sense that "Horror" and "Comedy" are genres. If you equate Green Lantern to The Dark Knight, you might as well try to find a common element in the failures of The Godfather part III and the Star Wars prequels.

As I joked on Twitter, WB could make a Holocaust film about Hitler raping dead gerbils and when it failed at the box office, they'd think the problem was it wasn't edgy enough.

The comics have gone dark - sometimes successfully, sometimes not. The DC miniseries Identity Crisis was effectively dark and edgy when dealing in the moral greys that the Justice League was revealed to trade in, to say nothing of the shockingly brutal murder of Robin's father. It was less successful when the story's twists included a completely unnecessary violation of a beloved female character.

The Star Trek franchise succeeded when went darker with Deep Space Nine and used that to explore greater moral complexity during wartime. It was less effective in the final Next Generation film Nemesis, which featured the completely unaffecting death of one character and the mental rape of another. (Hmmm... I see a disturbing pattern developing.)

Dark is overrated. Sure, everyone remembers The Empire Strikes Back as their favorite Star Wars film, but they conveniently forget that when they were seven years old, that shit on Dagobah was boring as hell. It might be fun to rip on Return of the Jedi and the annoyingly cute Ewoks, but to the average 10 year-old who saw those movies as they came out, Jedi was probably the more exciting and "better" of the two.

Imagine if the same studio execs working on Green Lantern today had been put in charge of Return of the Jedi, and that Empire Strikes Back had been hailed as the superior Star Wars film as much as it is today. The Ewoks would either have been replaced with more ferocious, brutally violent beings, or we'd have seen the Empire's troops plow through the Ewok forces with all the intensity of the D-Day sequence in Saving Private Ryan. Jabba the Hutt would have raped Princess Leia, Han never would have survived the unfreezing, or would have done so with a horrible disfigurement, and Luke probably would have killed his father, only to end up in the Vader suit himself by the end of it.

Okay, maybe that wouldn't have happened. But must we always go "dark?" Don't we need some tonal balance in our superhero films?

Friday Free-For-All: The Joker Blogs webseries

I just discovered this! The Joker Blogs, which is a pretty cool idea for a webseries - featuring the Joker after his capture in The Dark Knight as he undergoes therapy with Dr. Harleen Quinzel.

A clever idea, a built-in audience, and an premise that allows for a low budget. That's pretty much a recipe for web series success.



I'm told subsequent episodes do a solid job of weaving in details from the movie and comic book continuities.

The 10 Greatest Comic Book Movies Ever Made

As I've said before, the bad thing about a decade coming to a close is the surplus of all the "Best of the Decade" lists. As I said before, the catagory of "Best movies of the Decade" is so broad that it's almost impossible to come up with a fair list, so I've decided to limit myself to subcatagories where I've reasonably seen most films that fall into them. This started as a list of the Top Ten Comic Book Movies of the Decade, but I soon realized that it was perhaps more fitting to do the Best Comic Book Movies of All-Time.

10) Superman Returns - This might be a controversial pick. It was released to strong critical reviews and generally positive fan reaction, but as time has passed, those fans have turned on it. I think it's a rather well-done movie that occasionally goes too far in its worship of the Donner films. (There was no need to make Lex's plot a "land scheme" again. If he'd just been obsessed with getting the Kryptonian technology, that would have been motive enough and it would barely have required changing anything major.) The script's biggest weak link is that it posits a thesis in Lois's article "Why the World Doesn't Need Superman," then never really tells us what Lois's argument was. Thus, in the end, that position isn't debunked as effectively as it could have been. I know many take issue with the super-kid, and I could probably spend a whole blog post on that. Here's what I said at the time - thematically it works for this movie, and though I can see it being a problem in the sequels, I'm willing to wait to see how those future stories handle it before fully condemning it. Of course, now it looks like we'll never know.

9) Sin City - Based on co-director Frank Miller's graphic novels, this film is more a translation of the comic than the adaptation. Most shots directly duplicate frames from the various comics, and Robert Rodriguez's decision to use green screen to isolate the characters and put the environments in during post-production might be the most successful use of "green-screen filmmaking." The film looks unlike any other film out there, and though the ultra-violence might be a turn-off to some, the dark noir tone really works. Impressively, the directors not only managed to pull off the stylistic choice to include all the voiceover from Miller's comic - they got great performances out of actors who had been uneven in earlier roles. This was the start of Mickey Rourke's comeback, and the first time that Brittany Murphy didn't actively annoy me. On top of that, it was the first time Rosario Dawson impressed me, and even Jessica Alba does a good turn as stripper Nancy, bringing real vulnerability to the character. And those are the WEAKER actors in a cast that boasts Bruce Willis, Nick Stahl, and Clive Owen.

8) Spider-Man - At the time of its release, it was probably the best comic book movie since the original Superman film 24 years earlier. X-Men had already shown that it was possible to take comic book heroes seriously again, but Spider-Man goes one better by being remarkably faithful to the tone and look of the comics. The Spider-Man suit shows that superhero outfits don't need to be made out of black leather in order to look cool, while Sam Rami's direction evokes the feel and the composition of the comics. The second half gets a little goofy.. Willem Dafoe commands the screen with his over-the-top performance whenever he's out of costume, but the Green Goblin supersuit looks like something from a Saturday morning live action kids show.

7) Superman II - There are two versions available, the 1980 theatrical release mostly directed by Richard Lester, and the recently restored 2006 release directed largely by Richard Donner. The backstory: Donner shot 75% of this sequel while shooting the first film, but a dispute with producers over many issues led to his replacement and the reshooting of many parts of the film to the point where only about 30% of his material remains in the theatrical version. Though it still feels unfinished in spots, I prefer the Donner Cut for the faster pacing, the removal of many campy elements, and the restoration of some powerful scenes with Marlon Brando as Jor-El. However, in any incarnation, Superman II is a great film.

6) Batman Begins - The Batman series needed an enema after Joel Schumacher's wretched Batman & Robin in 1997, and this Christopher Nolan reboot certainly fit the bill. The hook: telling the early origins of Batman piece-by-piece, answering the questions of how he trained, where the Batmobile came from, the functionality of the costume. It's a testament to the power of this film that I've seen many, many different tellings of Bruce Wayne's parents' murder, but this was the only time that the murders hurt. It's brutal and powerful. Also, for the first time, there's a sharp distinction between how the lead actor plays Bruce Wayne and Batman.

5) Spider-Man II - The Spider-Man series gets its best villain in the form of Alfred Molina's Dr. Octopus as the continuing soap opera of Peter and his love Mary Jane develops. Though portions of the plot are reminiscent of Superman II, this is a fast, fun film that feels true to the comic. More than that, the ending makes it clear that makers saw this as a continuing story - not just an episodic series of action films.

4) X2: X-Men United - Finally! A superhero film with seemingly non-stop action. Despite the parade of characters the screenplay has to accommodate, the story never feels over-crowded. With all the exposition out of the way in the first film, director Bryan Singer is free to just tell an exciting story at breakneck pace. There are several great action scenes but standouts are the opening siege on the White House, Magneto's incredibly awesome jailbreak, and the attack on Xavier's School for the Gifted.

3) Iron Man - The best superhero movies know how to make the hero interesting rather than taking the lazy route of making the villain broad and colorful and just using the hero as a straight man to play the villain off of. (See: any Batman film produced between 1989-1997.) Iron Man is much more about Tony Stark in a way that recalls Batman Begins. Robert Downey Jr. carries this movie and even if you're not into superheroes, you'll find him entertaining. The lone weak spot might be the lack of a truly intersting villain, but when Downey is chewing the scenery, you won't care.

2) The Dark Knight - One of the few comic book movies that can be called a "film" rather than a "movie." Aside from the animated series, this is the first time that the modern Joker has truly been captured in an adaptation. Jack Nicholson was fun to watch in the 1989 Batman, but one never believed his Joker was truly insane. Heath Ledger pulls that off and gives a truly chilling performance. Christian Bale more than holds his own, but the story really belongs to Aaron Eckhart's Harvey Dent - Gotham's "white knight" - who pays the highest price of all.


1) Supeman - The Citizen Kane of both comic book and superhero films, and the one without which there were be no others. The best-known comic book adaptation before this was the campy 60s Batman series, whose legacy was convincing audiences and filmmakers alike that superheroes couldn't be taken seriously. The slightly less-campy Wonder Woman series in the 70s did little to change that. It wasn't until Richard Donner came along and told Superman's origins with all the seriousness of a Greek myth that the stigma was broken. I've raved about this film elsewhere, and any praise that doesn't go to Donner surely goes to Christopher Reeve for creating a Man of Steel who can be earnest without sacrificing any of his presence. Without this film, there would be no Batman series, no Spider-Man series, no X-Men and probably no Iron Man either.