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I liked it more than Batman Begins. The reason I was willing to see this movie was because I liked the first half of Batman Begins, you know, when he's not actually Batman, but thought the second half was ridiculous. I thought this movie was more .... continuous? The movie also had the benefit of being more focused by only having one major villain. Kind of the opposite of most superhero sequels, where they add more and more villains.

I was surprised by who lived and died in this movie, especially since I thought they might have been setting up Two-Face as the villain for the next movie. However, maybe it's good that they didn't. I heard some people complain that they didn't set him up enough as a person to go crazy. However, in this movie, until he went after Gordon and his family, he never killed any innocent people. If he continued killing people after he had his vengeance, then he probably wouldn't have been motivated anymore.

I agree with FO about point #2; at some point, I had to think, "Every single thing that happens is what he wants to. Is this remotely realistic?" (Okay, bad question to ask during a superhero movie).

This was right before he blew up the hospital, which made me think about that scene particularly. It -- and the ferries -- reminded me of the 911 conspiracy theories. He's able to load up that many explosives, and no one sees him? Or he gets someone else to do it, but what's in it for them? He gets normal people to do his bidding (until the very end) (such as when the cop wants to shoot the lawyer guy in front of Gordon) but none of them ever realize he can't be trusted and expose what he's doing? How can he do it himself? The guy couldn't so much as walk down the street without being identified by everyone. Then he just walks out of a hospital in broad daylight, which presumably the cops should have had staked out?

Josh Becker said something the other day that really resonated with me.

He said he was tricked and betrayed by Hollywood. He grew up trying to study classical storytelling and the great movies, and now no one cares about any of that, or even trying to make a great movie. Every movie producer would prefer to make the 17th Batman movie than the 1st of anything.

I guess I'm like his enemy, paying money to see a Batman movie (but at least I also paid him money for an autographed "If I Had a Hammer!").

I guess the thing is, what else can you do? It's not like I chose that movie over some other masterpiece that's at the multiplex. And people still need entertainment and to get away from the stresses of every day life.

I guess I could watch more older movies, like we had been doing, but even then you could ask what the point is. If you saw every movie on the AFI list, every best picture Oscar nominated movie ever, your opinions still wouldn't necessarily get any more consideration than someone who just says The Dark Knight is the best move ever.

This whole game is just a big rip off of Cecil anyway.

There was a scene in Casio in which Nicky (Joe Pesci's character) can't get his money from the bank. This dialogue is exchanged:

I think in all fairness, I should explain to you exactly what it is that I do. For instance tomorrow morning ill get up nice and early, take a walk down over to the bank and... walk in and see and uh... if you don't have my money for me, I'll... crack your fuckin' head wide-open in front of everybody in the bank. And just about the time that I'm comin' out of jail, hopefully, you'll be coming out of your coma. And guess what? I'll split your fuckin' head open again. 'Cause I'm fuckin' stupid. I don't give a fuck about jail. That's my business. That's what I do.

The difference is that Nicky didn't just deposit money in a savings account. As I recall, he invested in an account which probably usually but not always makes money and occasionally can lose money, and his investment lost money. (It also might have been in a CD, which doesn't let you take out your money at any time) So, the bank didn't do anything illegal. And after he makes that speech, his friend Sam (DeNiro's character) tells him that he might be able to threaten gamblers and mobsters like that, but not a straight guy like a banker; the banker will go to the FBI.

For the guy in Mask of the Phantasm...

-Even if he embezzled the money, it should still exist, right? Unless he gambled it away. He should be able to get it back, even if he has to take it out of his own account.

-It takes a lot of money to get into the position to be able to be an investment banker to begin with. He said he needed more money to give his daughter what she deserved. What, did she deserve billions instead of millions? Couldn't he have made a lot of money by running a business legitimately?

And, yes, it is true that people who have plenty of money still want more, and sometimes commit unethical business practices (eg., Enron) to try to get more. However, you can't just take it for granted that a random rich guy is likely to embezzle money. You need to explore his motivations and character.


Now, I know what typical internet fans would be saying at this point. "You can't have a movie about a rich guy getting trapped by bad decisions into eventually embezzling from the mob. That's boring. People want to see a movie about Batman punching the Joker."

People who say things like that are stupid and lack imagination. They're picturing it as boring because that's all they can imagine. Actually, people LOVE detail in their stories. That's why Stephen King is one of the best selling authors of his generation, and why Charles Dickens (who Orwell pointed out as using "unnecessary detail") was one of the best selling authors of his generation. And why are movies getting so LONG nowadays? As a random example, I just found out that The Dark Knight is 45 minutes longer than Ghostbusters. Movies aren't long because of simplistic money making reasons. Theaters would prefer for movies to be shorter because they could fit more showings in in a day. But being longer lets movies have more detail and subplots.

And in any case, that's the story the movie makers decided to tell. If you're gonna have the entire story motivated because a rich guy is embezzling from the mob, then you have to flesh that out. If you don't want to do that, then tell a different story.

That bothered me, too. Everything about that was rushed and not planned well - even the way they revealed her being the Phantasm. She takes off the disguise like GOB took off his stripper pants.

I guess they had to make her inexplicably weak at the end so she wouldn't just kill the Joker, who needed to return as a major character, and so that as a woman she could be saved by Batman.