Rethinking my Worst Movie Ever

My wife and I caught Batman & Robin on television the other day and decided to watch it. Ever since it came out, I've always maintained that this is my least favorite movie of all time, not only because it was so disappointing but also for nearly killing the Batman franchise. (And yet again why we are so thankful to Christopher Nolan. Hail Nolan! Hail!) It was truly bad.

Sitting down to watch it again, I am struck that this movie is even worse now than when it came out, partly because of the Nolan films. The dialogue is still utterly atrocious, the acting too over-the-top, and the villains terrible representations of their comic book counterparts. (Especially Bane.) And yet, while watching it, I realized something, a truth that so many others have discovered while I stubbornly nursed this decades old grudge: it's actually a fun movie to watch in a so-bad-it's-good kind of way.

I am no stranger to this phenomenon: films made in earnestness that failed so hard they became awesome for other reasons. Plan 9 From Outer Space. Manos:The Hands of Fate. Most Nicholas Cage movies. They develop a cult following because of their stupidity and are, in fact, celebrated because of it. Such movies were the bread-and-butter of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and are still a huge part of Rifftrax. Bad movies can be fun in the right context.

Anti-heroes of the Bible

If there's one thing a geek loves, it's an anti-hero. We like the tough-as nails protagonist who plays by his own rules, takes no guff, and gets the job done even though the authority figures never give him an ounce of support. It's a fantasy of ours because we can relate to being an outcast.

As geeks, we do play by our own rules. We don't do what normal people do, watch what they watch, listen to what they listen to. But unlike the anti-heroes, when we go our own way we catch flack for it. That's why we like seeing people who get away with what we can't and say what we wish we could. We admire people who turn the world upside down, because that's what we'd love to do. That's why we love us some anti-heroes.

This Review of The Dark Knight Rises

Quick Review: A fitting end to the epic Nolan Batman trilogy. See it on Imax if you can.

Full Review: Christopher Nolan did not set out to make DC Comics' Batman. He made Christopher Nolan's Batman. If you are expecting to see the comics come to life, you might be disappointed. The Dark Knight Rises is an epic in the traditional sense, right up there with Lawrence of Arabia and even Les Misérables. I can understand why not everyone is going to enjoy it. The story is huge and ambitious, and it's more about the final journey of Bruce Wayne than it is about Batman beating up the bad guys. This is about a city under siege and the fight to reclaim it. It's about why it is Batman who matters, not the man underneath.

Of course, the best way to judge this movie is to look at how well it concludes the trilogy. Thankfully, Nolan stuck the landing and learned from the mistakes of the X-men and Spider-Man trilogies. (As did the studio execs, it seems) I'm certain many lessons were learned from the previous Batman franchise as well. Nolan kept the story simple and straightforward. Even with an expanded cast of characters, the focus was on one main villain and his plot to take over and destroy Gotham. Everything else, every subplot, every new face, served that story. Despite the nearly three hour running time, this movie never felt overwhelming or over-stuffed.

From here on in I'm going to be talking about some specific movie elements. We're entering into major SPOILER territory, so if that bothers you, stop reading now. I won't take it personally. Spoilers ahead:

Movie Third Acts That Worked

It is with scared trepidation that I await The Dark Knight Rises. It's the third movie in a thus-far fantastic franchise. The first, Batman Begins, was a mind-blowing reboot of the Batman story.  The Dark Knight was that rare sequel that was even better than the original. Naturally, we should have nothing to worry about with this third and final movie. Right?

I know you know the answer to that question. We've been down this road twice before with both the Spider-Man and X-men movie series. The first was good, the second even better, the third ruined the franchise so badly that both have since been rebooted. (And those reboots are so far pretty good.)

Even the earlier Batman movies were not immune to this phenomenon, though that time it took four films to take down Batman before Nolan had to reboot it. The question that hangs over the Caped Crusader's cowl like the Sword of Damocles is this: will history repeat itself, or will The Dark Knight Rises be one of those rare third acts that are actually good? We'll all see soon enough.

The good news is that there are some third acts that did manage to work. Sometimes they were just as good as the rest of the series, and on rare occasions they were the best ones of all. Because I prefer hope to despair, optimism to pessimism, I want to talk about the movies that worked. (And if we can all just toss the ones that didn't down the memory hole, that would be great.)

Six Silly Movie Premises that Worked

This summer, theaters were graced with Battleship, a movie based on the classic board game. While this crazy adaptation didn't work out so well, it hasn't stopped Hollywood from pursuing other silly ideas, including Ouija boards and Tonka Trucks. We’ve seen strange movies come and go, and sometimes those odd premises pay off in ways we just didn’t expect. They might not all be critical successes, but they will at the very least become cult classics.

So before we write off all these movie premises as Hollywood running out of ideas (again) let’s look at some other movies that had people scratching their heads until they saw the finished copy.

Origin Stories

Every hero has an origin story. Superman’s parents sent him to earth as his home planet exploded. Batman saw his parents murdered when he was just a child. Daredevil lost his sight when he was splashed with radioactive chemicals. The list goes on, and for most of our comic book heroes, tragedy is an integral part of their origin. It’s the defining moment that forever shapes them into the heroes they are.

This is often the case for those of us in the Christian faith. Many Christians came to the faith after suffering some horrible tragedy: losing a loved one, a debilitating injury, betrayal, abandonment, drug abuse, incarceration, divorce, or a hundred other unfortunate events. Those defining moments that brought them to faith left a permanent imprint and is integral to how they live their new-found beliefs.

This Review of Justice League #1

Quick Review: A great way to begin a reboot.

Full Review: If there's one thing the DC Universe loves to do, it's reboot itself. The last big reboot was Crisis on Infinite Earths, and smaller reboots (or retcons) happened in Zero Hour and Infinite Crisis to name a few. This time, through the series Flashpoint, the DCU got one huge reboot and reset. I won't go into the details, because as a some-time reader I'm not fully immersed in the continuity. Long story short: The Flash changed history and then changed it back, and in doing so reset the entire DC Universe and now everyone is starting over. (I don't suppose a "my bad" would cover that.)

And this brings us to Justice League #1, the issue that relaunches the brand new (again) DC universe. The story told is simple. Batman and all the other heroes aren't trusted and, in Batman's case, considered just as bad as the criminals. This first issue has Batman meeting Green Lantern for the first time as they fight an alien menace. This takes them to Metropolis, where they track down the only alien they know about: Superman.