I bet yinz thought I forgot about Batman.  Noooo nonononono....   I kill the bus driver.  Oh, wait - that's not it....  No, I just didn't want to gloat.  Yet.  It's unseemly, and I'm a better sport than that.  Besides, I wanted to ensure that I was right.  I mean, there was a lot riding on this movie.  Aside from Warner Brothers' coffers and Heath Ledger's lock on a posthumous Oscar, there is the matter of settling once and for all a longstanding debate over who is the greatest superhero.  But now that I officially win, it's gloating time.

....to admit defeat

That all changed in the twenty-first century.  Sam Raimi (a lifelong fan) made an awesome movie about Spiderman.  It took all of my forensic abilities, but I eventually won the day on the indisputable argument that there were two excellent movies about Batman and only one excellent movie about Spiderman.  But that argument was for naught two years later when Raimi achieved the impossible and surpassed his original outing with what was then the greatest superhero movie of all time.  I had no choice but to concede - at least for the time being.  We could resume the debate the following summer once we saw what the director of Memento might bring to the table in his reboot of the Batman franchise.

Now Daby and I don't agree on much, but one item that was never at issue was that Superman is the hero of choice for retards.  He's completely bland and boring (here's a surefire recipe for an uninteresting superhero: make him an alien and give him every superpower that you can think of) and he hasn't been relevant since Truman was President.  Oh, sure - there were a couple of overlong movies about him thirty years ago, but certainly there wasn't anyone out there stupid enough to claim that Superman might contend with the heavy hitters.  And then we "met" Jodi.  Make no mistake, her arguments are specious and she's way, way wrong - but at least her presence spices up the debate.  It was getting a little stale with Daby's stupid and tired arguments; a fresh jolt of different stupid has livened up these past few years.

And what, exactly, have those couple of years seen?  Well, I'm glad you asked.  First, there was the awesomeness of Batman Begins.  Then the first Superman movie in twenty years sputtered and flopped.  And then Raimi failed to strike gold a third time with a muddled and overlong emo-Spidey.  Meanwhile, the creative forces that made Batman Begins all kinds of awesome were hard at work making the best movie of all-time, ever.  The Dark Knight, in the mere eighteen days since its release, has grossed over $400 million dollars.  It's the fastest movie ever to that lofty plateau, and is poised tomorrow to become the highest-grossing ever superhero movie.  There's talk of it passing Titanic.  The critics have spoken.  The people have spoken.  Batman is the best.  Ever.  Case closed.

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Last weekend, when I was in Pittsburgh, Vrabel and I got to talking about movies.  That's no surprise; we always do.  One of the films that came up was Rescue Dawn, the Werner Herzog picture about Dieter Dengler - a German-born Navy pilot who escaped from a Laotian POW camp.  The story obviously resonates with Herzog, as this was the second movie he has directed about Dieter.  Little Dieter Needs to Fly was a documentary; Rescue Dawn was the dramatization of the same story.  Christian Bale was cast as little Dieter in the not-quite remake.

Now, Rescue Dawn had been on my rental short-list for a while.  I remember hearing about the movie when it was filming (one of the scenes in which the stars eat bowls of worms was apparently not faked) and it was fairly well reviewed.  The Video Vault tagged it as one of their best of 2007.  So I was a little surprised when Vrabel remarked that he could barely finish watching - that he figured it must be a spoof.  (These opinions were later verified and echoed by Vanna.)  Without going into too much irrelevant detail, it was determined that I must watch the movie as soon as possible, because public opinion was both divided and emphatic, to the point that we wondered semi-seriously if there were two different versions of the movie out there.  My email to Vrabel after last Monday's screening said simply: "Why did Christian Bale choose to play the part as if Dieter was retarded?"

So Bale's appearance this morning on the Today Show might shed some light on the subject.  To wit: maybe it isn't Dieter who is retarded.  If anybody can offer an explanation as to what the fuck is going on with this accent, I'd like to hear it.

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Return to Supermans

The punchline here is that this.... whatever this is.... is better than the latest Superman movie and the latest Spiderman movie put together.  Meanwhile, The Dark Knight continues to garner rave reviews and generally capture the collective imagination of the populace.  It's safe to say once and for all (as if there was still any doubt) that the great superhero debate is officially over.

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I surrender.  Yeah, I know I promised to stay on top of all the latest developments leading up to the theatrical release of "The Dark Knight" on July 18, 2008, but I just can't keep up any more.  The next Batman movie is destined to be the greatest motion picture in the history of time, and the accompanying marketing blitz is equivalent to the film's stature.  The last straw - the one that lamed that poor camel - debuted today on the Domino's Pizza website.  For the low, low price of one pizza, your online order will unlock special content - including a new trailer with twenty whole seconds of new Joker material.  Why would a pizza company promote a movie, you ask?  Well, why not?  It's synergy.  And it's probably "Xtreme," because Batman is the most Xtreme of all the superheroes.

Well I, for one, am sick of this cross-pollinated corporate bullshit.  It cuts against the grain of the spirit of Batman - a self-made hero who maximized the power of his inheritance to buy a bunch of nifty gadg--  uh....  Okay then, Batman would never stand for the glorification of multi-national corporations like Warner Brothers Pictures or Dominos Pizza or the mighty Wayne Enterpri--  er....  Oooh, I got one: the shameless self-promotion belies the humility of a hero with the taste for the theatrical who has bestowed upon the local police department a beacon with which to summo--  oh....  Hmmm, I'm kinda hungry.  I think I might order a pizza.

the dark knight with pepperoni and mushrooms

all part of the plan

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Look, it's time we came to an understanding.  Yinz all know by now that the greatest motion picture ever made by a human being is set to drop this summer.  So to make a long story short, every time Chris Nolan so much as sneezes between now and July 18th, our crack staff at hotrod.vox.com is going to report it.  There's no need to thank us; it's the least we can do.  We're givers.

shattered glass

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Batman is cooler than Superman (or Spiderman), Exhibit #12,647

no rules

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I find myself oddly.... not saddened, exactly, but.... disappointed by the untimely death yesterday of Heath Ledger.  And there's really no good reason why.  I won't lie; my initial reaction when I first heard the news was: this isn't going to affect the new Batman movie, is it?  And it won't.  My second reaction was: that's a shame, he was a pretty good actor.  But the thing is, I don't know why I consider him to have been a good actor.  It's certainly not based on my own movie-viewing experience.  A quick visit to IMDB.com tells me that I have, in fact, seen only one movie in which Heath Ledger acted.  (That one movie, by the way, is the teen-comedy Shakespeare re-tread "10 Things I Hate About You,"  which is a supremely guilty pleasure.  I never fail to stop on it if I happen to find it when flipping through the channels on a weekend afternoon.  Please don't tell anybody.)  And several of his movies, I wouldn't watch if you paid me.  Basically, my opinion - as so many surely already suspect - is based on nothing.

So I am revising my position, and taking the Sean Taylor stance: it's a shame, his daughter has to grow up without her father.  But it's worth noting that being associated with Batman in any way all but guarantees credibility with me.  I never realized I could be swayed so easily.

Why So Serious? Oh... Right.

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You know, I should be in pictures.  Not on camera, mind you - that's my own personal version of Hell - but in marketing.  Lots of people will tell you that the movies have gotten dumber, but I don't think that's so.  There have always been terrible movies.  What has gotten dumber are the ad campaigns - specifically those that feel they need to show you every single moment of interest in the movie they hope you'll shell out ten bucks for in a few months.

The best movie advertisement I've ever seen was for "The Lost World," and it probably doesn't hurt that I saw it at the Uptown Theater.  I might even have seen it before "Twister," which was a singular movie-going experience in my life.  Anyway, the screen was black and as the light came up I could tell it was raining.  Strobe lights which had been installed in the upper corners of the theater flashed and as the sound - which had been turned up to eleven - of thunder pealed, the word "Something" appeared briefly on the screen.  This was followed by two more "lightning bolts" and "thunderclaps" and the words "Has" and "Survived."  Then there was lightning and thunder at the same time and a pan down to a digital T-Rex lifting its head to the sky and roaring.  Or whatever that sound is.  But I'll tell you what, I wanted to see "The Lost World," and, like, immediately.  That was probably the most visceral sensory experience I've ever had in the theater over a lifetime of movies, and it was just a fucking commercial.  Like I said, I should be in pictures.  I know what sells.

I saw this over the weekend, and man did it get me psyched for what's sure to be the movie event of 2008.  It manages to be both subtle and theatrical at the same time.  It's the best movie poster I've seen since "Premonition," which totally wasted an awesome idea.  I'm not saying this just as a Batman fan, but also as both a movie buff and a marine biologist - so you know I am serious.

The Dark Knight

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Oh, this is special.  Remember "Across the Universe"?  Of course you don't.  It's the worst movie of all time which came and went from the theaters this fall.  (I know it's the worst most of all time because nobody proved otherwise, despite the incentives.)  Well, it's ironic that - now that I check my original post again - I saw the preview before the latest Spider-Man movie, because the next project in line for visionary director Julie Taymor is a return to Broadway for "Spider-Man: The Musical."  And since it worked so well on the big screen, she's hoping to reunite with her "Across the Universe" cast to play Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson.  I, for one, think this is an incredibly sound plan. 

But wait, there's more.  The Daily Mail reports: "Ms. Taymor ... has been working with U2's Bono and the Edge on the score and lyrics.  [She] plans to weave her Spider-Man into a magical event, with trapeze artists, giant puppets and incredible costumes."  Anyone who knows anything knows Spider-Man and Bono and giant puppets go together like peas and carrots.  I can hardly wait for this latest masterpiece of musical theater.  You might say my spidey-senses are tingling with excitement and anticipation.

In all seriousness, this is proof enough that it's time to stop considering Spider-Man to be a credible superhero.  And Superman was discredited LONG ago.  That leaves Batman - as is right - standing unopposed as the best superhero ever.  Nobody would ever dream of giving the Batman legend the camp treatment.

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anybody who knows anything about anything knows that batman is the coolest;  these things have been empirically proven.  but spidey is okay too.  he's definitely second best.  he does, you know, have a nickname.....

spiderman is solid number two.  after him you've got wolverine and then a drop-off that resembles the grand fucking canyon.  no other hero even approaches these three.  spiderman does have the best song though; he has a hell of a publicist.  without the song to keep his memory in our consciousness, spidey could fall out of the top ten entirely.  i hear captain america just signed with drew rosenhaus.

Spiderman Original Cartoon Theme Song

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