The Amazing Spider-Man is Basically Batman Begins

Originally Posted July 12th, 2012 at Playeraffinity.com

I can pretty much guarantee that right now, as you're reading this, two people are arguing over who's better: Spider-Man or Batman. Comparisons are a fun outlet for expressing our appreciation for pop culture, but the answer is always personal, not scientific. After all, one character is a Marvel comics property and the other is THE GODDAMN BATMAN.

The movie-based version of "who's the best" is heating up, with Spider-Man getting a new movie last weekend, and Batman wrapping up his trilogy of films in just a few days. While most comic book fans are still holding their breath for the dark knight's swan song, The Amazing Spider-Man is a perfectly fine reboot of the "Spider-Man" fiction, but that's because it's basically the exact same movie as Batman Begins, give or take a hyphen. The number of plot points and means of re-establishing the fiction that Spidey borrows from Batman's reboot is astounding, and if you don't believe me, check just a few of these uncanny instances of overlap between the two franchises.

And yes, here be spoilers.

Pair An Up and Coming Lead From Overseas With a Promising Genre Director 

True, new Spider-Man Andrew Garfield was born in LA, but he grew up in Sussex, England, where he passed his British citizenship exam by appearing in a 2007 episode of Doctor Who, before garnering critical acclaim in The Social Network. Welsh born Christian Bale made a name for himself in indie and cult films like The Machinist and American Psycho, but his only experience in blockbusters before becoming Batman was opposite Matthew McConaughey in Reign of Fire. Point being, planning a new franchise for the long-term means getting a young, baggage-free actor with proven theatrical prowess.

Meanwhile, Marc Webb and Christopher Nolan both made their breakout features outside the realm of blockbusters, before quickly being given the keys to two of the biggest movie properties ever. The debuts for both influenced their respective superhero flicks: (500) Days of Summer's twee cuteness infected Peter and Gwen's relationship in The Amazing Spider-Man, while Batman Begins carried over Memento's thorough plotting and noir elements. You could also point to both filmmakers choosing to rely more on realistic stunts than CGI for directorial similarity, but let's dive right into the story.

Start With The Hero As A Child Experiencing A Character Defining Moment

Swap the openings of "Begins" and "Amazing," and nothing much changes. Both have the young hero playing at home before experiencing a key moment of trauma. In Bruce Wayne's case, he falls down a well and is assaulted by bats. For Peter, the saddest game of hide and seek ever ends with a break-in at the Parker residence. The cause is Richard Parker's research into spiders (you can tell because there's a doodle of a spider on their chalk board, like real scientists make), which forces Ma and Pa to leave Peter with Aunt May and Uncle Ben before going into hiding…or something. It's all pretty vague. Anyway, each incident creates a key trait for the hero: Bruce becomes afraid of bats, while Peter's abandonment makes Richard's arachnid research a lasting link between the wayward father and son.

Make The Iconic Death The Result of the Hero's Flaw

Spider-Man's big motivation has always been the death of Uncle Ben, which he could have stopped in the 2003 movie, but didn't, because he felt like being a dick. The update has Peter's identity crisis, a theme the film beats you over the head with repeatedly, result in Ben's death. Peter spends too much time at the OsCorp research lab learning about his father, gets in a fight with Uncle Ben over his abandonment issues, and storms off into the night, with Ben following. A bottle of chocolate milk and an armed robber later, and we've got one dead uncle and a seriously guilt-ridden Spidey.

Which isn't all that far off from what happens to Thomas and Martha Wayne in Batman Begins. Fear is the theme de jour this time, and while Batman's parents still get gunned down outside a theatre the way they always have, it's Bruce's fear of the Cirque de Soliel guys looking too much like bats that causes the family to leave early, and exit out into the incredibly sketchy alley built into the fancy opera house. If Peter had had a handle on his orphan angst, and if Bruce had just (Bat)manned up, there would be no call to a life of vigilantism.

Develop The Costume Piecemeal

Both Spider-Man and Batman spend their first nights on patrol dressed in duds courtesy the local Salvation Army before really developing their signature looks. Spider-Man uses a heavily modified spandex speed skating suit, while Bruce Wayne assembles his armour from Wayne Tech inventions and items ordered through the company in bulk, so as to avoid suspicion. Apparently the police are less likely to suspect the guy with thousands of bat-shaped masks of being Batman than the guy who has none. Speaking of which…

The Police Hate The Hero

Just to stack the deck against our protagonist before the big bad is revealed, Spider-Man and Batman end up on the wrong side of the law they're trying to enforce. In Batman's case, it's because many of Gotham's finest are in the pocket of organized crime, whereas Spider-Man manages to piss off every cop he encounters by showing how completely inept they are. There's always that one good cop on the force though, but more on him later.

Promote A B-Tier Villain Into A Mentor/Father-Figure Related To The Parents' Death

The problem going into The Amazing Spider-Man was that all the classic villains had been used in the original trilogy; what remained were a bunch of one-note high-school basketball mascots like Rhino and Scorpion, of whom the Jekyll and Hyde-ing Lizard proved to be the least ridiculous. Meanwhile, pre-Batman Begins, pretty much no one would be able to tell you who Ra's al Ghul was, much less pronounce his name. The purpose of choosing newbies as heavies was two-fold: first, it distinguished the new films from the old ones, and second, the leeway allowed by having an unknown villain meant they could become a foe that helps better define the hero.

In each film, the hero is taught under the wing of an older mentor who knows of their tragic past, before said mentor reveals their true intentions. They're also responsible for the death of the hero's parents in some way. Ra's' League of Shadows plummeted Gotham into the recession that got the elder Wayne's killed during a mugging, while Kurt Conners, the Jekyll to Lizard's Hyde, worked with Peter's father before betraying him to the conspiracy that killed them…or something. Seriously, I cannot overstate how ill-formed the parent conspiracy plot is. The ultimate result is that the hero fighting the villain is as much about getting a little parental payback as it is stopping an attack on the city, which in both cases just so happens to involve...

The Villain Attacks the City Using Chemicals

Blowing up a city with bombs? Too cliche. Holding the city ransom with a giant laser? Too tacky. Today's villain is all about dispersing clouds of chemical agents through downtown. And both Lizard and Ra's have enough flair to spice up the attack with some thematic consistency; in the latter's case, the green fog falling on Manhattan turns folks into human-animal hybrids, while misty white fear gas gives Gotham's citizens a deadly case of the heebie-jeebies. Our hero is immune to the stuff but what about his policeman sidekick? Well good thing…

The Love Interest Will Provide An Antidote For The Good Cop

The love interest, in addition to having worked with one of the villains at some point, and learning her super-suitors identity by film's end, will be the only one available to give the good cop the antidote he needs to help the hero save the day. Rachel Dawes inoculates Sgt. Gordon from the fear gas, allowing him to set up Batman's big train derailment. Gwen Stacey, on the other hand, gives her father, Captain Stacey, the counter-agent to Conners' mutagen, which he hands-off to Spider-Man before blowing a few chucks out of The Lizard. It's a dramatic finale, made all the more so because…

The Climax Is Staged At A Place of Familial Importance

Not only does Peter Parker have to defeat his father's old lab partner at the end of The Amazing Spider-Man, he does so on the roof of the OsCorp building, where Richard Parker did the research that got he and his wife killed, and developed the spider that gave Peter his superpowers. Batman meanwhile gets a double dose of daddy-issue resolution, by fighting Ra's not just on the train that Thomas Wayne built, but one that just so happens to be on a collision course with Wayne Tower. Congrats guys, you made your daddies proud by defending their homes away from home, which is all the more impressive because…

The Hero Is Seriously Injured Before The Final Battle

When running up against an 8-foot tall reptile or a martial arts master, chances are that the guy with his name in the title is going to win the final showdown. Since the hero's victory is an inevitability, the only thing to do is make it seem more difficult by forcing him to fight wounded. Batman suffers a nasty gash to the body, courtesy a flaming log, before confronting Ra's, while Spider-Man gets winged in the leg by a crack-shot cop who fires at ol' webhead, despite being given explicit orders not to shoot Spider-Man only two seconds prior. In both cases, the injury doesn't really factor into the final conflict, but it does heighten the stakes during the build-up.

Promise A Bigger Bad Guy Next Time

Having successfully dusted off his wings and reintroduced the caped crusader to the world, while also having turned a no-name villain into a memorable on-screen adversary, Batman Begins ended with a hint that the most legendary villain of the rogues gallery, The Joker, was coming next. It was the perfect note to end the film on, having blown audiences away before teasing that "you ain't seen nothing yet."

And The Amazing Spider-Man tries to do the exact same thing. An after-credits sequence has the newly imprisoned Kurt Conners pleading with a nefarious unseen figure to leave Peter Parker alone, as he appears to be further up the chain in the Parker parent conspiracy. This points strongly to the next villain being…Norman Osborn? Mysterio? Hell it could be J. Jonah Jameson for all we know: most newspaper horoscopes are more accurate and informative than this bit of half-baked sequel-baiting.

It's the last, and certainly most laughable, example of The Amazing Spider-Man trying to pull from Batman Begins' playbook, only to come up with a handful of empty webbing. What Marvel didn't seem to get is that the reason we compare Batman and Spider-Man is because they're distinctly different, and as such, deserve different movies. Imagine a dancing, emo-haired Batman, and tell me I'm wrong once you've stopped vomiting.

Six Ideas for Batman's Movie Future

Originally Posted to Playeraffinity.com, August 25th, 2012

As it's been pointed out for the better part of a month now, there's plenty to admire (or more bluntly, slavishly fawn over) about Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Trilogy. He not only proved that people will pay a ton of money to see summer movies that are more emotionally and intellectually stimulating than $250-million dollar versions of Rock 'em Sock 'em robots, but also showed that a reboot can be a reinvention instead of just a rehash. And perhaps best of all about The Dark Knight Rises, is that it brings his Batman trilogy to a definitive end, granting audiences closure as he and Christian Bale ride off into the sunset with no intention of even returning to Gotham...

...which is probably why some Warner Bros. exec is currently pulling his or her hair out trying to decide what to do next, since Nolan has burned down the franchise torch so close to the handle, whoever he passes it on to next is going to get burned. Where can Warner possibly go after the unparalleled success of The Dark Knight Trilogy? Is it time to hit the reset button and start from scratch, or see where the few threads left dangling may lead?

Here are a few different thoughts and angles to consider now that the prospect of making a great new Batman movie seems even more daunting than after the boondoggle that was Batman & Robin. First, let's explore the many possibilities of rebooting the Caped Crusader, then discuss the options for a slightly more direct sequel to the trilogy. And if you're one of the three people who hasn't seen "Rises" yet, prepare to have it spoiled.

The Reboot Route

Distance Yourself From The Nolan Films As Much As Possible: 

One of the biggest problems with Marc Webb's recent superhero reboot, The AmazingSpider-Man, is that it's aesthetically indistinguishable from Sam Raimi's original trilogy, and offers only slight changes in tone and characters to get us through the same origin story we've already seen. Having to watch two Batman origin movies in the same decade would suck, as would trying to make a reboot in the vein of The Dark Knight Trilogy. Whoever winds up following Nolan will inevitably be ill-equipped to recapture his kinetic, more realistic take on Batman, so no one should even try.

The best course of action will be to either take an approach that's either much lighter, or even darker. As for setting up the character, any reboot would be wise to alter the traditional story heavily, or skip over it altogether. Whoever doesn't know that Bruce Wayne's parents got shot when he was young, and that he has a thing for bats, probably doesn't care about Batman in the first place.

Follow Marvel's Lead: Fun First, Brand Building Second

Sure, a lot of The Dark Knight Rises' success at the box office is due to it offering a darker, more mature alternative to Marvel's breezy and more gratifying superhero flicks, but Batman's been goofy a heck of a lot longer than he's been moody. A return to Batman's campier, but more accessible roots would help give a new film its own identity, while also giving DC the opportunity to build towards something they've wanted for years: a "Justice League" movie.

Marvel launched the "Avengers" initiative with Iron Man because he's the most relatable and charismatic character in their roster; the same could be said of Batman for The Justice League. While next summer's Man of Steel is rumored to get the team-up ball rolling, early teasers make it appear nearly as grounded and serious as Batman Begins was, and the whole point of crossovers is that they're meant to be fun and exciting, something The Avengers did really well.

To wit, i'm going to say three words no one wants to hear: bring back Robin. It's really easy to hate The Boy Wonder, even Christian Bale said he wouldn't do a Batman movie if Robin was in it, but Batman having a sidekick makes him part of a team, which is what The Justice League is all about. A young companion helps to lighten the tone, and means Bruce Wayne's past doesn't have to be the main through line all over again.

Make The Darker Knight

It's hard to imagine a PG-13 rated superhero movie that's somehow bleaker than one in which love interests tend to die horribly and the hero's hometown does a six month LARP of Berlin circa 1945, but Batman's source material has some seriously grim alternate versions to draw from.

Take, for instance, Batman: Earth One, the newest comic to modernize Bruce Wayne's originsby reimagining the death of Martha and Thomas Wayne as political assassinations, and Gotham's police force as completely at the mercy of organized crime. Best change: prim and proper butler Alfred gets turned into a gun-toting S.A.S. badass, who trains Bruce in crime fighting, even though he should probably be the one out on the streets cracking skulls in the first place.

Or Warner could revive their original plans for the post-Schumacher era and use Darren Aronofsky's plan for a "Batman" that's part Se7en, part Dirty Harry. Instead of inheriting the Wayne estate, Bruce becomes a street rat under the care of an auto repairman named Big Al. For high-tech weaponry, Bruce has cobbled together junk, including an armoured Lincoln Continental straight out of Mad Max. While he slowly develops a secret identity that includes a hockey mask, Jim Gordon is a suicidal Serpico figure looking to violently end corruption in Gotham, and Selina Kyle is busy running a local cathouse. The latter option in particular would need something stronger than a PG-13, but a bump up in age rating is about the only way you'll out-dour Nolan.

The Sequel Route

Blake-man Begins

By conventional standards, the end of The Dark Knight Rises is about as sequel-ripe as you can get. With some instructions left by the presumed dead Bruce Wayne, hero cop John Blake finds the Batcave, and one can imagine Bruce also left a bunch of details on how to access all the hideout's special toys, and what day garbage is. Granted, it's unlikely that Blake is as well versed in martial arts as Bruce, but he's as determined to bring justice to Gotham as the original Batman, due process and civil rights be damned!

This leaves open a few options for Blake as the new protector of Gotham. John Blake does sound suspiciously like Tim Drake, a former Robin who started hanging out with the big boys once he ditched the red and green tights to form his own secret identity, Night Wing. Keeping on the name train, the reveal that Blake's full name includes "Robin" in it could mean that's the new identity in store for young John, although most superheroes will recommend coming up with an alias that doesn't actually contain parts of your real identity.

The obvious direction would be to have Blake go for the brass ring and become the next Batman. It'd be a clever way of acknowledging that the title can pass not just from actors, but from characters too. Plus, they could follow Grant Morrison's recent run of Batman & Robin comics where a (temporarily) dead Bruce Wayne is replaced under the cape and cowl by former Robin, Dick Grayson. The Robin shaped hole in the dynamic duo was then filled by Damian Wayne. Who's Damian you ask? Well to answer that, we should consider …

Talia Is Alive and Preggers

Here's what we know about Talia al Ghul: she's got serious ninja skills courtesy her father, Ra's, she and Bruce had an impromptu foyer fling (and considering Bruce's celibate streak, chances are the bat-condoms in his wallet were expired), and her death was about as convincing as Katie Holmes playing a district attorney. Unless we see a funeral, closing your eyes and slumping over doesn't cut it. During the climax of the movie, when everyone was busy watching Bruce re-enact his favorite scene from The Avengers, Talia could have easily slinked away somewhere safe to later discover she's going to have a Bat baby.

In the comics, Damian Wayne was the son Talia and Bruce, raised by the former to be about as nice as anyone could expect from a kid named Damian. But after some fast-tracked daddy issue resolution (i.e. Bruce dying), Damian settled down and became an official part of the Bat family, filling in Dick Grayson's shoes as Robin just as Grayson was filling in Batman's.

Imagine this then: Talia's shame at failing to fulfill Ra's plans for Gotham forces her into hiding, where she raises and trains Damian, preparing him for his legacy as the heir to both the League of Shadows, and Wayne Enterprises. With Bruce too busy completing his bucket list of countries to bone Catwoman in, a young Damian comes to Gotham to find the mysterious Batman his mother has told him so much about. When he finds John Blake instead of dear old dad, a more experienced, wiser John Blake takes Damian on as his ward, training a replacement that, like Bruce, has some serious family issues. It not only sets up a fresh story dynamic, but also seeds possibilities for more sequels, by having a future Batman waiting in the wings.

Take Batman Global

Speaking of Grant Morrison, before DC comics decided their continuity had become as tangled as Christmas lights caught in an airplane propeller and hit the ol' reset button on everything, Morrison started a "Batman" series that saw Bruce Wayne taking his fight against crime around the world. Batman Inc. had Gotham's guardian branch out across the globe, finding promising crime fighters to enlist as Wayne-funded protectors for their respective regions.

While Gotham has been the most important uncredited character in Nolan's films, it's taken quite a beating over the years, and increasing the scope of the "Batman" universe would help open new story opportunities. The Dark Knight already had Batman kidnapping an oily criminal accountant from China, so there's precedent for a Batman without borders. And last we see Bruce Wayne, he's out and about in the world, so who knows what new and exciting villains beyond the skyscrapers of Gotham need a good thumping from the original masked vigilante.

Review: Inception

Originally Published: July 18th 2010 

How do you capture a dream, something so surreal and fleeting, that we barely remember it five minutes after waking up? People talk about the dream-like qualities of films by Tim Burton and Terry Gilliam, but few directors approach the things we really dream about. For as much as we think about the impossible while we sleep, it’s seems just as common to conjure up ideas based on ordinary, everyday life. Just think about how many times you’ve had that dream about an upcoming exam or a previous event in your life that you’ve all but forgotten. Filmmakers tend to focus on our more whimsical fantasies but with Inception, director Christopher Nolan dives into the dreams that really stick with us, the ones that seem so real that it’s only after we’ve woken that we realize it was all a mirage.

In the presumably near future, corporate espionage has risen to a level where morally flexible parties resort to extracting secrets from their rivals by accessing their mind through dreams. Cobb (DiCaprio) and Arthur (Gordon-Levitt), a pair of such extractors, are propositioned by a wealthy industrialist to do the exact opposite, insert an idea into a subject in order to control them. The operation is known as Inception. Without much care as to the science or technology driving the plot, Inception quickly establishes the ground rules for dream-invasion; an architect creates the world of the dream while the subject inserts their subconscious into it, whereby their knowledge manifests itself as documents often hidden in secure locations. Akin to what we’ve all experienced, death or a feeling of falling snap participants out of the dream. Simple enough, until it’s revealed early on that there can be dreams within dreams, operated by different architects at each level. If that weren't enough, time grows exponentially with every level, each layer feeling longer than the last.

Only thirty minutes in, Nolan makes it clear that he’s not going to make it easy for the audience. Like much of his previous work, Inception is an elaborate movie, one that drip-feeds you just enough information to keep up. The exposition, rather than forced, feels like a cheat-sheet as the film constantly dares the audience to keep up with it. Things only get more confusing when Cobb’s unbalanced subconscious begins to take over. As it turns out, living in dreams is a dangerous proposition, after all, how can someone exit one reality and accept that the new one is real? While there are themes similar to that of 1999’s The Matrix, Nolan’s take on multiple realities is far more haunting because most people have experienced that feeling of a dream so real that it becomes accepted as the truth. The constant question of what’s real pervades the entire film and will leave it open for wide interpretation in the future.

As convoluted as the plot may be, the film itself clicks along at a methodical pace. At one point planned to follow up 2002’s Insomnia, the complexity of the subconscious spanning plotlines are handled with such timing and precision that it’s clear Nolan knew his story inside-out. Despite the multitude of storylines occurring at varying real-time speeds, the script locks together with a military precision you wouldn’t expect to exist in something as unwieldy as the subconscious mind. The idea that you convert the length of real time minutes into near exact dream world hours seems a bit of contrivance but it’s beautiful to watch in motion. Such an unusually rigid approach to dreams may frustrate some viewers, but it’s intriguing to see how Nolan tries to wrangle together rules and principles based on things most of us have experienced from our own dreams.

Inception barrels forward at an unstoppable pace, especially near the end where just as it seems there’s no way things can get any more hectic, the film one-ups itself.It’s during the many action sequences that the audience may find the time to figure out just how each dream stage affects the others, which is alright because the more complex the story gets, the less enticing the action becomes. There’s an early shootout in Japan and a breathtaking chase through Mombasa which mirror Bond and Bourne respectively and this is where Nolan’s action is best; on a smaller scale where he can use the talent he’s shown directing the action sequences of the Batman franchise. When things get bigger, such as in a traffic jam shootout or the assault of a frozen hospital, the action becomes decidedly more muddled and it’s easy to check out. That’s not to say that there’s an absence of late set pieces; there's a particularly unusual fistfight in the third act that is jaw-dropping. By using the freedom of dreams to full effect, each layer consists of a wholly new locale, from a New York hotel to the previously mentioned hospital in the mountains. The film is consistently entrancing even when the action isn’t because of Wally Pfister's crisp cinematography and the responsibly balanced use of CGI and real stunts.

In many ways it would seem that Inception is a film more concerned with spectacle than narrative but it's a film that continually defies expectation. While the actual plot of the film is just a heist film with a unique objective, the world of Inception and the characters that populate it are entrancing because it seems like Nolan is just scratching the surface of a much bigger universe formed over the last decade. Aside from the two mind invaders, there’s a young architect played by Ellen page who is recruited to both design the dream of the subjects and share the audience’s ignorance as to the specifics of the Inception program. Marion Cotillard appears as Cob’s dead wife but don’t let the trailers fool you; she’s not just some distant memory of Cob’s past. As Mal, Cotillard gives a weighty and surprisingly terrifying performance. There’s also an illusionist, a chemist and a number of Batveterans who make up the rest of a large, star-laden cast. It might seem a bit crowded but the performances are stellar throughout, particularly DiCaprio who finds a perfect balance between being suave and constantly on the breaking point.

Like many heist films, some of Inception’s best scenes come from the group of thieves preparing the assault on the mark’s mind only to see their plan go horribly wrong. Yet most of the characters give indication of a much deeper back-story than is being given, as many of them appear to have a long history with mind manipulation. There are references given to old jobs performed by the extractors and the training undergone by marks to withstand mental invasion, all while the mysterious Cobal Engineering is given brief mention as the owners of the government developed Extraction program. It seems like there’s so much more to this universe than one film could possibly cover and even after two and a half hours, my appetite was not satiated. That’s not to say I want Legendary pictures to fast track a sequel for two years from now, but the world of Inception feels so rich that it has replaced the Batman franchise as the property I want Nolan, and only Nolan, to come back to.

Considering how frequently his name appears in this review, you’ll have probably noticed by now how difficult it is to separate Inceptionfrom its creator Christopher Nolan. Like a lot of people, I see Nolan as one of the most reliable filmmakers working right now. In the last decade he’s made five other movies and by my count at least four of them are great films. It’s not just that he makes entertaining movies; it’s that he makes entertaining original movies that perform well with mass-audiences. Even with established properties, such as Batman or The Prestige, Nolan’s worlds are always worth visiting. He in many ways seems like a beacon of hope in an industry where the unoriginal succeed and the the crap usually rises to the top. Inceptionchallenges a lot of things; the notion that original ideas are unprofitable, that carte-blanche direction is dangerous and the idea that a blockbuster has to be zero-recalcitrance fluff.  While Inception may have a few faults, Nolan has created a wholly satisfying and original film that's as entertaining as it is audacious. I can't wait to experience it all over again.

Five out of Five

Inception

2010 USA

Directed by Christopher Nolan