Saturday, July 28, 2012

off to see "The Dark Knight Rises"

The new Batman movie beckons. My brother calls it "The Dark Pinga Rises." My buddy Dr. Steve is coming over today, and we'll be seeing the film together. I've been trying to avoid scuttlebutt about the movie, but most of the country saw it on the first weekend of its release-- among those folks my students at YB-- so I've heard a spoiler or two, alas. I'm just curious as to whether Bane breaks Batman's back, as happens in the comics, and whether this damage is permanent. My understanding is that it's not permanent in the comics, which makes me hopeful that it's not permanent in the movie, either.

Perhaps Batman's encounters with Bane will be like Batman's two encounters with the Mutant leader in Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns: at first, the Mutant leader kicks Batman's ass, but in the rematch, Batman fights less extravagantly and more wisely, using subtlety to defeat his opponent and eventually breaking all his major joints, leaving him a cripple lying in the mud. That would be a satisfying outcome.

Expect a review in the next few days.


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6 comments:

John from Daejeon said...

Wow, you might want to check your math again.

At an average ticket price of $7.92 (2011 avg. price) and a total first week take of $160 million, it averages out to slightly more than 6% of the U.S. population catching it during that time frame.

You might also want to change "most" to "relatively few." If 90% of the population had actually seen it, the U.S. gross would have been around $2,300,000,000 and not a paltry $160,000,000. You gotta love those movie publicists for really making mountains out of relative mole hills.

However, if you want to really blow your mind with some numbers, look at what the computer gaming industry is doing in comparison to the film industry. Let's just say, that that's where the money's at these days as Call of Duty proved last year by raking in $400,000,000 in sales in just 24 hours.

Now, you know why I get really dejected when I see that the latest comic book series that I am invested in is usually circling the drain with readership levels in the low thousands.

Kevin Kim said...

Jesus, John, have you never heard of exaggeration? Try not to be too literal.

Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

"Jesus, John, have you never heard of exaggeration?"

I see John's comment, but where's the comment by Jesus? Did he make the same hermeneutic error as John?

Jeffery Hodges

* * *

Kevin Kim said...

Jesus is one excitable Jew.

John from Daejeon said...

Kevin,

That's exactly what I figured your comment to be, but the real exaggeration comes out of all of those film/tv/marketing/etc. publicists' printers as they try to pry every last cent out of us by making it sound like we are the only ones left in the world that are missing out on the "genius" of a Bieber/Gaga/Modonna/Swift concert, the brilliance of a Nolan/Spielberg/Whedon/Howard/Scorsese movie, or the latest in high tech gadgetry from Apple/Samsung/Sony/Google.

The real news is that most people are now into computer gaming, and that just isn't as easy to promote for these publicists as the virtual world of gaming programs doesn't make for the same type of gossip as you have when real-life, flesh and blood, film/TV/music stars cheating on each other, dating other megastars, or when they fall from grace (a la Mel Gibson).

John from Daejeon said...

Kevin,

If you have the time, hte PBS series, Independent Lens, has showcased quite a few real-life heroes (and some of the truly despicable) over the years. "Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai," "Bhutto," "Summer Pasture," "Left By The Ship," "We Were Here," and "Hell and Back Again" are all truly inspirational and moving.

It's a shame that the movie theater chains can't show a preview or two for these great films before such studio popcorn flicks as "The Dark Knight" and "The Avengers" to drive a few more eyes to some of the more pressing issues facing our world as those PBS films document.