Unofficial Trilogy… Filmic Comic Book Bookends Edition
(OPENING SIDENOTE: I like the title of this post.)
Today’s Unofficial Trilogy is about the nails in the coffin of comic book film series (or as in one case, a stake in the heart). Spider-Man 3 was saved by a summer reboot, otherwise this would have been an Unofficial Quadrilogy.
Oh, so dark these heroes… except maybe the last one.
This movie was, um, weird. It barely featured Wesley Snipes as Blade (was he out of the country evading taxes when this was made?), and the scene where John Michael Higgins interrogates him is laughable. Gay subtext in a James Bond superhero/vampire film? Well I never!
Two words: Brett Ratner (wow, I haven’t bashed on him in a long while). Two more words: cobbled mess. Four more words: I’m the Juggernaut, bitch! Two last words on The Last Stand: whiny Wolverine.
I was really upset with the lack of purpose this one seemed to have. And critic Chris Gore made a good point about it by stating something like this (I’m poorly paraphrasing):
His parents’ death made Bruce Wayne become Batman, but Rachel Dawes death made him not be Batman?
But then I read this article, and something happened… my opinion kinda sorta changed. I won’t go into too much detail, but the author basically regards the third film as a contradiction to the second film, and that in turn made me realize TDKR was the answer to the TDK problem that nobody asked. What I always enjoyed about the first film’s ending was that it agreed with my theory:
If someone figures out how to be a superhero/villain, then someone will figure out how become its opposite.
The Dark Knight answered that question perfectly. But what question did TDK ask?
Is a lie okay if it’s for the greater good?
TDK was all about bending means to certain ends. TDKR was about the inevitable collapse of those well-intended lies. Too bad it just felt shoddy and shitty.
(FYI: The above Batman poster was made by this guy.)
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