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Christopher Priest vs. Christopher Nolan on Batman

01 Dec 2014 15:32 - 01 Dec 2014 15:34 #39201 by brantley
www.digitalspy.com/movies/news/a612919/t...html#~oX8G9dKVutj5tb

Might be worth commenting on here. The odd thing is that Priest's THE PRESTIGE, which Nolan brought to the screen, is very ironic. So is his best known previous novel THE INVERTED WORLD:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_World

--Brantley
Last edit: 01 Dec 2014 15:34 by brantley.

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02 Dec 2014 02:41 #39217 by TwiceOnThursdays
Replied by TwiceOnThursdays on topic Christopher Priest vs. Christopher Nolan on Batman
my take: not relevant.

I mean Priest is entitled to his opinion, and he's a talented story teller. What he is not is a talented film maker.

His comments really annoy me, is that half his comments are just wishy washy. "I have kids who like super heroes and they think this is pretentous". That's FIRST. It's not, "I don't like Nolan's Batman Trilogy because <REASONS>, and THEN, plus my kids didn't like it. He even talks about being in the theatre and OTHER kids not being into the movie. This is "evidence". That is his anecdotal evidence (that doesn't jive with my experience watching those movies in the theater) to back up his claims.

Of which he doesn't make many. Now, this could be the crappy interviewer chopping this up, but you can get the audio and ti' mostly what he says.

And lastly, we get to the what he directly says about why HE doesn't like the movie:

- It's a wrong move to take a superhero and give it psychological realism. There is no psychological realism. He's a bodybuilder who jumps off buildings.
- I don't like his other work, I think it's shallow and badly written.

#2 again, he doesn't bother to back this up with anything (again: could be interviewer). But if this is all you can say, then you aren't giving my any real critique. this is simply "I don't like them." uh, ok. Fair enough, but really this is super-boring and irrelevant, and saying it the way he does makes priest look a bit douchy. This does come after he admits to picking the -at the time - young director Nolan who had only made the Following over Sam Mendes who had just been nominated for 7 academy awards for American Beauty. (when they bought the rights to the Prestige it's before the rest of Nolan's movies had been made.) Priest thought he was talented, and wanted to encourage the young talent, Mendes was "made", but Nolan seemed skillful and really could have used a first hollywood picture. That's the opposite of a douchebag -- so I'm going to chalk it up to making off the cuff comments and just not thinking it's really relevant to talk to much about.

And #1, well this is a bit deeper than that. It means several things. It means that he doesn't like Batman -- who is not "a bodybuilder who jumps off buildings" and yes, Batman should have some psychological realism in his stories -- much more than say superman, Batman is deeply psychological. You CAN make a nice fun Batman (even on a bit more serious than Adam West Batman), but you don't HAVE to.

If you are an award winning writer and you miss this, it's likely because he's never ever taken any time to give comic books a real look, or any thought. It's probably not "real literature" (etc). At this point, I'm putting words in Priest's mouth -- except his quote not only dismissed Nolan's movies but ALL super-heroes (comic books, movies, etc) saying they should never have ANY depth.

It just smacks of someone being elitist (or he's not even bothering to give it any thought, which boils down to the same thing).

And mind you, I like Nolan's movies overall, but i'm not the biggest fan, i just don't find this article has any value at all. It really says nothing with any intelligence behind it, we just have Priest making some off the cuff statements. Even though he "really feels strongly" that super-hero movies shouldn't really try for anything. I'd love to hear him expand more on this topic, as he seems fairly intelligent to make some statement that to me just seems a bit idiotic.

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