Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Jordan Stokes overthink Ben Affleck as Batman and The World’s End.
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Further Reading
- Three Colors Trilogy
- Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth, aka The Hero’s Journey
- The Trickster Redeem’d: A Lévi-Straussian Analysis of “School of Rock”
- The Ghost Ship Moment
will there be a place to discuss spoilers? i’ve been Overthinking the movie all month, and i’ve already seen it twice
Yes, the podcast and the comment thread are spoiler-friendly.
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
I haven’t listened to the podcast yet, but does anyone see The Network as the heroes? They remind me of the Culture, from the novels Bill Bailey is reading in Hot Fuzz. They’re trying to uplift humanity, and our pigheadedness and drunken stubbornness messes that up. I’m not sure if the creators intended that, but they do namedrop John Wydnham and the ‘cozy catastrophe’ (which comes with its own classiest assumptions) in various interviews.
There’s really only one correct answer to the Question of the Week.
What we’re looking for is a character that, like Batman:
a) Has access to large sums of money (say, as payment from the government for a particularly difficult drilling job);
b) Has working knowledge of classified military hardware (like a space shuttle and/or moon-machine-gun);
c) Enjoys saving the world (and has done so before); and
d) Has recently lost a father figure.
What do we get – oh, that’s right, just a little movie called ARMAGEDDON.
Are you saying that chiropteral vigilantism is a symptom of space madness?
I’m still listening to the QOTW, but my answer would be, “All of Them,” based off Grant Morrison’s “Final Crisis” having Darkseid send Batman back in time through the Omega Sanction (http://omegafactors.blogspot.com/p/what-is-omega-sanction.html). Every role Ben Afleck has played has been a time-and-space-lost Batman fighting his way back to his own reality.
Ben Affleck: Not the Batman we need, but perhaps the Batman we deserve.
Well actually, there is no Cornetto corporation it’s a brand name of famed British cheap food purveyors Wall’s.
Also this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biL6zAMkOQs
I haven’t seen World’s End yet but given how much reference to growing up in the UK during the ’80s is referenced in Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead I’m almost surprised you find them as accessible as you seem to.
Did Spaced make it to the US which is where the Cornettoverse started.
There is a million ways to be right…that’s why Gary is never wrong.
So there could have been a whole podcast devoted to Batfleck. I think the comparison to Star Wars is decent, and I’d say you can apply it to any “fandom.” I think it’s kind of meta how symbolic Batman has become (when thinking about how he proclaims in various “gritty” comic versions and the Bale films that he wants to be a symbol) to everyone in the real world. He symbolizes things like perseverance, hope, intelligence, objectivity, Good, overcoming exceptionally hard odds or circumstances- all sorts of things. Batfans feel like stakeholders because there’s a large emotional resonance with Batman among a great many of them. While the specifics of his story aren’t that common (a rich kid seeing their kids get killed that dresses like a bat to fight crime), the symbols and themes and messages are quite translatable and very universal. Granted, the themes from any pop culture item or icon can be translated to the real world, but the emotional tie is why the reaction was so visceral and why the number of people upset by the decision is so high. There was a Kickstarter last year where a guy planned to film a documentary about that phenomena, and it more than made its goal; haven’t seen it yet, obviously, but website here: http://wearebatman.com/ (the people personally interviewed are listed, and I know one of them is a writer/editor for TheMarySue, a nerdy news/blog for women that I follow, which is how I found out about it; and some of the people that have written/drawn the comics or worked on the movies are on the list, too)
SPOILERS
I thought one of the most compelling “reveals” in the movie was when we realize the little meeting shown at the beginning wasn’t a regular support group, it was for people on suicide watch. He was so desperate for his glory days, he would rather have killed himself than live in reality.
And so because of that, I want to point out that there’s an argument to make that Gary doesn’t grow up or change at all, really. His defiance of the Network is kind of childish, and in the end, he runs around with a bunch of teenaged Blanks, living out an extreme, idealistic version of his glory days. His character doesn’t really evolve at all- the world “ending” is his excuse to revert back to childhood.