So, I gotta surprise for you this week. It's not much of a surprise to those of you who follow the facebook or the deviantart. But here it is, in lieu of a new Shootin' Jed this week, you get my amazing Batman fan art, with a Lady Gaga chaser. I am sort of very obsessed with the latest Batman movie these days. I'm not certain if I like it MORE than the Dark Knight, the cop out answer I'll offer is that I like them both the same for totally different reasons. Dark Knight had the Joker who is the ultimate cerebral villain, and an astonishingly entertaining chaotic force. The Dark Knight Rises on the other hand has Bane, who is spine shatteringly powerful, yet at the same time, elegant to the point of almost being regal. Plus he has that terrifying robot scream mask, that I wish had gotten more symbolic analysis in the movie.
Here's where my lack of focus veers off into the outfield.
As much as I love Dark Knight Rises, there are (at the very least) two major problems I have with it. Or at least, two major problems that don't revolve around all the EXTRA cool shit I would have piled into that movie.
Number one is Bane and his mask.
I guess it stands to reason now to add SPOILER ALERT to the heading, because I'm gonna talk about all kindsa shit that happens in this movie.
So Bane has this mask, right. They call him "The Maksed Man" throughout the movie. In the beginning of the movie, the C.I.A. agent who's interrogating Bane's henchmen shouts really dramatically over the noise of the jet engine "WHO IS BAAAANNNE!!??? WHY DOES HE WEAR THE MAAAAASSSK??" to which Bane himself later replies "No vun cared who I vas till I put on ze massk".
That part totally hyped me up, because I was all ready and rarin' for a very Nolan-esque dissection of the symbol of the mask, what it means and the images it invokes. I mean, did you see Batman Begins? Batman's mask is a HUGE plot point and all kinds of cool hidden meanings are swirling around it. I was hoping that Bane's mask would be kind of the antithesis to Batman's mask, and we'd have this amazing battle of fists going on simultaneously with the battle of symbols.
Sadly, it is at this point in the movie, that the subject of why Bane wears the mask is almost entirely dropped. No one mentions it again, until a short offhand line where a prisoner mentions that the mask "keeps the pain in". Then in Batman and Bane's final battle, Batman punches his tubes repeatedly, seemingly incapacitating Bane, or at the very least, slowing him down considerably.
Of course, the actual, physical reason Bane wears the mask is a no-brainer, to anyone who has read the comics. Bane wears the mask for different reasons depending on which version of him you're following. However, as far as I, and the rest of the comic-reading populace is concerned, this is a brand new Bane, and he requires a matching back story.
I guess I was hoping for a lot more than I got. EVEN THOUGH Bane is totally awesome and cool, and I totally heart Tom Hardy in this role and one day we're gonna run away together.
My second gripe comes in the form of Miranda Tate, a.k.a. Talia al-Ġūl.
So, for a lot of people, Miranda's betrayal of Batman came as a total surprise. It wasn't to me, because I unfortunately accidentally spoiled the plot point for myself by reading too much promo shit before the movie came out. All that aside, Miranda's reveal as Talia WAS kinda out of the blue. Especially since she spent the first act of the movie trying desperately to help Bruce with Wayne Enterprises, and the second falling in love with him. Then in the third act she is a "prisoner" of Bane until you find out she was working with him ALL ALONG!!! BWAHAHA! And all that time she was spending with Brice was just her trying to pry into his secrets n' shit.
Once again, readers of the comics and watchers of the cartoons will know Talia is a lot more complex than that. She isn't 100% evil and actually has helped Batman do shit before, even though they don't always see eye to eye. All this in mind, I would have liked to see Miranda in this movie a little more conflicted about the choice she makes. Her sudden betrayal makes her a really interesting double agent type character, but some kind of conflict I think would have made her more human, AND make her fit her canon a lot better.
ONCE AGAIN! I want to interate that despite this, I totally love Talia in this movie, Marion Cotillard plays her awesomely, and that horrifying face she makes when she's about the blow up Gotham is so psychotic and cute, I just wanna eat her up.
Essentially, I just wanna marry all the Batman villains.
Surprisingly, not Catwoman though. Anne Hathaway? I dunno, a little too classic girly for my tastes. But I digest.
So that's what kind of inspired this little piece of fan art.
Me imagining that Miranda Tate is having a crisis of conscience throughout the entire movie, until she inevitably decides that her mission is more important than whatever feelings she's developed for this guy, Bruce Wayne. Toss in a slightly doctored Lady Gaga lyric, and you essentially have my whole thought process, because I never think about anything at all without my Gaga filter on.
So, new Shootin Jed... soon, I guess. Be aware!
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