Tag: #Batman

  • Personal Review: Raiders of the Lost Ark (Part 2)

    This will be a series, as I showed this movie to my daughter for the first time over the weekend, and I will share her reactions to it.

    Raiders of the Lost Ark is my favorite action movie, in case you missed that from yesterday. This weekend, we decided it was time to watch the movie with my daughter. She is six and a half, which was about the age that I first saw Raiders. I had a few reservations about showing the film to her, and was also curious how she would react to a movie that has no CGI in it.

    Now, we are a nerdy, sci-fi/fantasy media devouring family. We have a video of our daughter at about six months old, totally mesmerized by the opening of Doctor Who, so we started early with this kid. She has watched all the Star Wars movies, all the Marvel Movies, the Batman movies (1989 to 1997,) she saw the new Star Trek, and Star Trek II. I feel that we have done a good job of allowing her to see movies that we feel inspire her imagination, and, with the exception of the Batman movies, show that doing the right thing is the right thing to do.

    About a year ago, at the start of the pandemic, I showed the kid the first ten minutes of Raiders, more or less to gage here temperature on the film. She wasn’t too impressed. I just chalked it up to that not everything I like the kid will like. Then over the weekend, as we were trying to find a movie to watch, the kid brought up that Raiders was my favorite movie, and she wanted to watch it. (I do have a Raiders poster in the office, and I own an Indiana Jones Fedora, but I’m not obsessed or anything.)

    This time around, she got into it pretty quickly, though she did think Indy had a lasso, and not a bullwhip. Some of the reservations I had were about the amount of violence in the movie. Unlike all the other action movies we had shown her where the violence is bloodless, characters in Raiders bleed when shot and punched. I would say that Spielberg’s Nazi rule was in full effect with my kid. As Spielberg said, no one feels bad if a Nazi gets hurt or killed. As for the stuntman/practical effects, she was totally on board; from the snakes, to the plane, to the truck scene, she was all in. I won’t lie, that did make me feel good that my kid hasn’t been warped by CGI.

    And then the melting face part came. As the scene started and the Angel of Death appeared, my kid didn’t make a sound. Nazis get shot by God lightening, she was silent. Faces melt and heads explode – she didn’t even cover her eyes. I thought, oh well, this must look fake to her. When I was a kid, it scared me shitless. My kid sat silent all the way to the end. When the credits started to roll, she looked at me and asked, “They just put it in a box and stored it away?” I seemed to remember asking my brothers the same question. Before I could answer that question, she added, “I don’t want to go to bed. The melting faces scared me.”

    Score one for the old special effects.

  • Personal Review: Batman Movies (1989 to 1997)

    My daughter is very big into superhero movies right now. Not sure how long this will last, but for now, I am happy to indulge her fandom. We have been through all the MCU movies, and we even did Superman (1978) and Superman II (1980), but pretty much fell off from the rest of the DC Universe. Then about two weeks ago, one of the kids at the playground was playing “Batman” and my daughter asked if there are any Batman movies. Well, it was time for my kid to learn about the wild world of Batman from 1989 to 1997; Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Forever, and Batman & Robin.

    Batman (1989): Out of these four movies, undoubtedly the best, and I would add that without this movie, there would have never been an MCU. It pretty much started the “serious” superhero movie. I will add that Michael Keaton is my favorite Batman. Sure, it might have to do with the fact that I saw this movie three times in the theater over the summer of 1989. The kid liked it, but didn’t get how Batman and the Joker “made” each other. I still have an issue with the Joker being able to shoot down the Batwing with one bullet. Either the Joker is a great shot, or the Batwing has some serious defects.

    Batman Returns (1992): The first question the kid asked as the movie started was if Joker was going to be in this one. I think that bodes well that Jack was a great Joker. For me, it felt like Burton was more interested in the villains than Batman, such as Batman was an afterthought. The kid liked it but wanted to know how Catwoman got her cat powers; magic, tech, or mutant? I’m not really sure. I will say that this movie does have a very slight touch of campy to it, which was a harbinger for the rest of the series.

    Batman Forever (1995):  The kid did not like it. She didn’t understand why Robin was a superhero, nor know who Two-Face was, and why The Riddler became an evil supervillain? Also, she really could not follow what the story was. For me, and I like Val Kilmer, but it seemed like Val was taking the role serious, and everyone else was camping it up. It also had a James Bond feeling of an ending, whereas the good guy goes to the secret lair to defeat the henchmen and the bad guy in a huge set that blows up. The movie was going in several different directions, never feeling like there was a cohesive style throughout. And then there was that “Bat Butt” shot, that my kid picked up on and laughed, and laughed, and laughed, and laughed…

    Batman & Robin (1997): Well… you know. It’s a mess, but we all know it’s a mess. About thirty minutes into the picture, my kid asked me if we had to finish it. Yes, I said, because this will make you a funnier person! Watching the movie, I don’t think there was a single idea that was shot down, everything went in it. And the puns. This movie might be the reason I hate puns so much.

    Now that we are done with these Batman movies, that will be it for the time being. The Christopher Nolan Batman movies are great, but just too adult for the kid right now. She needs to the good guy to win without question, but she is now beginning to understand that some movies are good, and some movies are bad. What I really hope happens next is that she learns to love bad movies.