Ben Affleck is Batman

[Catwoman]

I must be the only one who finds no issue whatsoever with Batman branding sex offenders and setting them up for their demise. If I had a child (particularly a daughter) and had to explain those scenes to them, then it might bother me more and when I have children I will wait a bit on letting them watch this, but as it is, I liked it but then I'm someone who feels like real life society is far too lenient on that kind of trash. So you have a sickness that makes you prey on children, hm? What do we do with a sick dog? Exactly.

As for which one is more brutal, I don't know. I wouldn't want to come upon either one if I was a villainess though, because I doubt it'd end very well for me lol.

[riddler]

Was Batman only branding sex offenders though or everyone he caught? He was pretty close to branding Lex and I don't think Luthor was a sex offender.
On the subject of Married with children, that show was one that pushed the envelope, at the time the most raunchy show on TV was all in the family. Despite all the limits it pushed, fox caved quite a bit, it was given a late Sunday night time slot and there was one episode they were not allowed to air (the court episode)

[Catwoman]

Was Batman only branding sex offenders though or everyone he caught? He was pretty close to branding Lex and I don't think Luthor was a sex offender.

Good question. Lex did some REALLY horrible things though so I would assume he only reserved it for the worst of the worst. If the solo movie is a prequel to this then we may get to see whether the line was clear cut or very blurry day to day.

[Catwoman]

All this Married...with Children talk is making me reminisce about my Kelly Bundy days...not good. lol.

[johnnygobbs]

Good question. Lex did some REALLY horrible things though so I would assume he only reserved it for the worst of the worst. If the solo movie is a prequel to this then we may get to see whether the line was clear cut or very blurry day to day.

And this once again gets to the nub of why I refuse to see this film, and why I am so frustrated when some posters here seem to attack anyone who criticises it.

This Lex, from everything I've read, strikes me as a totally irredeemable and pathetic little brat.  If they'd made the character either a truly evil yet charismatic, assertive and intimidating villain, or one that was a pathetic nerd with daddy issues but was still remotely sympathetic and redeemable, it might make for a fascinating, compelling character, but everything I'm reading, including Catwoman's above comments, just confirms my fears that this character is no more than a truly hideous, despicable POS, albeit one that looks and acts like a jittery daddy's boy with Asperger's.  Basically a nerdy hate-figure punch-bag (according to one poster here based on MOS critic Max Landis, which strikes me as extremely petty and mean-spirited on Snyder's part) for the macho alpha-men (Superman and Batman) to beat-up on.

Please someone tell me I'm wrong...and if I'm not, can we all please dispense with the 'you have no right to say anything until you've seen it' BS?  I am not disposed to shelling out the equivalent of fifteen dollars for the 'pleasure' of watching a two-hour-plus film I know I'm going to hate...and that's simply going by the comments of the (apparently few) people who actually like the film. 

[johnnygobbs]

Was Batman only branding sex offenders though or everyone he caught? He was pretty close to branding Lex and I don't think Luthor was a sex offender.

It wouldn't surprise me if he is later revealed to be one, considering how mean-spirited this depiction of Luthor seems to be.  One can only hope the character is entirely rebooted/ret-conned before Snyder gets a chance to do anything else with him.  I can't imagine Jesse Eisenberg will want to return to the part considering the universal hate his performance has elicited (currently he's apparently almost a dead-cert for a Razzie nomination next year).

[johnnygobbs]

BvS has its creepy moments, but I still don't find it as dark as BR. Batman does deal with sex predators, but then again, Catwoman viciously stopped a creep from raping a woman, and the Penguin's intention to massacre infants is not something for the faint of heart. BR is still a hell of a lot more gory than BvS too.

It's quite debatable if Affleck and Keaton's Batman are more brutal than the other. Both are dark and tortured men; one became cynical and bleak after recent events, and the other still can't fill this empty void in his life despite avenging his parents. But if you want draw a comparison in Affleck's favour, we don't see him taking any pleasure in a crook's demise like Keaton does with the strongman (yes, that scene is meant to be a cheap joke, I'm not one of those wowsers who get upset over that. I'm only playing the devil's advocate).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't BvS meant to take place in a world approximating our own (sex-trafficking has been a truly heinous and prevalent act throughout history, however, it has only really come to the forefront as a pressing issue for organisations such as the United Nations to tackle within recent years, and it appears that the film is being topical in addressing this particular evil).

By contrast, Batman Returns takes place in a fairy-tale type world in which an infant can be raised by penguins to be later heralded as Gotham's 'new golden boy' and a credible mayoral candidate with no questions asked, thirty-three years later.  There is a faux-naivety to the world Burton presents that extends all the way to the credits where the would-be rapist you refer to is credited as a 'Mugger'.  Moreover, look at the way The Penguin intends to kidnap and kill Gotham's 'first born' children; via an absurd circus train that passes through Gotham's streets entirely unabated for acrobats and clowns to bundle little tykes into animal cages.  It's hardly social-realism, and nor is it meant to be.  Arguably it's about as nasty and unsuitable for children as the (admittedly scary) Child Catcher's exploits in 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' or the naughty kids transforming into donkeys in 'Pinocchio'.  And unlike the latter, Pinocchio excepted, Gotham's 'first-born' are rescued before any permanent damage can be done to them.

And sure, Batman does kill a few circus goons in Batman Returns, and he does so with a disturbing glee, but once again, we're meant to accept his actions entirely in the context of a world in which a woman can fall one hundred feet from a skyscraper window only to be revived by stray cats.  Remember, that we never see the Strong Man blow up.  We merely see confetti.  How do we know that Batman hasn't tested the 'dynamite' he is carrying prior to his encounter with the big man?  Perhaps it isn't dynamite at all?  As for the pyromaniac clown who gets set alight by the Batmobile's engines, well in reality he'd be a goner, but I suspect within the context of this fantastical world, he merely rolled about in the snowy ground, and ended up with a few burns for his troubles.

Suffice to say, context is everything, and Batman Returns' violence is meant to be taken no more seriously than Wile E. Coyote getting perpetually destroyed by one of his defective Acme gadgets in the classic Warner Bros cartoons.

[The Joker]

But if you want draw a comparison in Affleck's favour, we don't see him taking any pleasure in a crook's demise like Keaton does with the strongman (yes, that scene is meant to be a cheap joke, I'm not one of those wowsers who get upset over that. I'm only playing the devil's advocate).

My perception of that scene has changed somewhat over the years, sure the scene is something of a gag since it clearly shows Batman being outmatched physically speaking, by the strong man, but Keaton's Batman actually taking delight in offing him is something I don't necessarily agree with. If anything, it also can come across as a brief moment of one-upmanship,  "Ah ha, gotcha!", as Keaton's Batman demeanor reverts back to being very stoic as he walks away from the explosion.

Well, Married...With Children did take the piss out of everything, much to the annoyance of the PC brigade, so it was only a matter of time before they found some trouble. Classic show, though!

I remember even the Simpsons was mired with controversy. With teachers forbidding students to wear Bart Simpson shirts to school. I guess those "Underachiever and proud of it" shirts were going to ruin everything. 

Having said all that, do you think that people still hold Superman as the standard for family entertainment? I ask because MOS and BvS were criticised for being too dark for Superman stories. Then again, a hardcore Superman fan might retort that it doesn't get any darker than turning the character into a "stalking deadbeat dad" as we saw in Superman Returns. 

I'd like to point out that the Christopher Reeve Superman films may have been lighter in tone, but that doesn't mean they didn't have dark moments either. Krypton's destruction used to scare the sh*t out of me when I was kid, Lex pushed a cop towards an incoming train, Zod and company murdered the astronauts on the moon and were quite brutal when they raided the White House - hell, Superman crushed Zod's hand and sent him to his icy grave in the original version of Superman II.  And the fight between the evil Superman and Clark Kent in the junkyard during Superman III was quite intense.

Yeah, in alot of ways I do think Superman is held in regard as a property that should be lighter in tone, but also agree with you that the Donner/Reeve films had their moments as well. The difference is that the overarching environment/tone/atmosphere of the Donner/Reeve films was indeed lighter, and as a result made 'darker' scenes/actions come across as not as polarizing as they otherwise might have been. It's kinda like the Joker products commercial from Batman 1989. If Burton really wanted to, he could have shot that whole scene as being morbidly dark. The subject matter certainly could have lent itself towards that, but instead it comes across as more comedic than anything. Which I'm sure was intentional.

With BvS being so polarizing/divisive as it is, I think some of it, maybe not quite all of it, but atleast some of it, stems from the fact that with Marvel/Disney making their films so friendly and accessible for everyone, when a film like BvS comes out that's decidedly more darker, and evidently made for a more adult audience, there's just going to be those plebeians whom just cannot perceive that as being a good thing.

[The Laughing Fish]

This Lex, from everything I've read, strikes me as a totally irredeemable and pathetic little brat.  If they'd made the character either a truly evil yet charismatic, assertive and intimidating villain, or one that was a pathetic nerd with daddy issues but was still remotely sympathetic and redeemable, it might make for a fascinating, compelling character, but everything I'm reading, including Catwoman's above comments, just confirms my fears that this character is no more than a truly hideous, despicable POS, albeit one that looks and acts like a jittery daddy's boy with Asperger's. 

It's funny because that's exactly how I feel about TDK's Joker, particularly on the daddy issues. Not only was he an unsympathetic, irredeemable pile of trash of a human being, he didn't even have the charm that previous screen versions had, and whose motives for committing crimes was to cause chaos for no reason. Yet this is considered to be compelling for some reason.

Still, don't you dare share that opinion elsewhere on the internet, otherwise you'll get attacked for not agreeing with the "majority".

But I'm digressing.

Basically a nerdy hate-figure punch-bag (according to one poster here based on MOS critic Max Landis, which strikes me as extremely petty and mean-spirited on Snyder's part) for the macho alpha-men (Superman and Batman) to beat-up on.

You're seriously going to take that unsubstantiated theory to attack Eisenberg's characterisation? Really? Don't even go there mate. And as for Superman and Batman "beating Lex up", guess what: Superman saved Lex's life from Doomsday (despite every awful thing Lex did to him), and Batman had a change of heart when he was about to brand Lex and decided to take mercy on him instead.

I've had my number of gripes of how Superman was written for the majority of the movie, but every moment in the last twenty minutes, particularly him saving Lex, made me think in my mind "Now that is SO Superman".

Besides, Max Landis is far from an angel. For someone who is quite opinionated on other people's work, he seems to be quite thin-skinned when the roles are reversed, as you can his tweet dismissing Red Letter Media's critique on his movies because they liked the Hobbit movies:

https://twitter.com/uptomyknees/status/638493083043262464

He also called someone "a revisionist ironic dickhead" because they said Limp Bizkit never made a good song (though he never tagged the name of the person. Still, I can't decide which is worse, calling someone names for having a different opinion or defending Limp Bizkit ):

https://twitter.com/uptomyknees/status/602547165748039680

Another example of his lack of humility is him having a Twitter rant after his movie flopped at the box office and complained "nobody appreciates originality anymore":

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/american-ultra-writer-goes-on-twitter-rant-after-m/1100-6430036/

I've only seen one of his movies he wrote, and it was called Chronicle. I really liked it, but I get the impression his ego is growing because of one successful movie, a little bit like that movie's director - Josh Trank. I don't think it's professional of him to talk smack of other people's work when he still hasn't proved himself as a screenwriter, and one who can cop criticism of his own stuff as well. At the moment, he comes across as a spoiled-rotten rich kid who got to be where he is thanks to his well known father.

Please someone tell me I'm wrong...and if I'm not, can we all please dispense with the 'you have no right to say anything until you've seen it' BS? I am not disposed to shelling out the equivalent of fifteen dollars for the 'pleasure' of watching a two-hour-plus film I know I'm going to hate...and that's simply going by the comments of the (apparently few) people who actually like the film. 

Well...I can't believe what I just read, and I personally find it rather insulting since that was an otherwise reasonable suggestion I made to you recently.

Mate, if you really have no inclination to give the film the time of day then how about you just stop talking about it? I stopped talking about the X-Men films altogether as soon as I heard DOFP cherry-picked certain continuity for its own convenience while creating more inconsistencies at the same time, AND trying to have it's cake and eat it further by rebooting the whole timeline. I haven't bothered to talk about X-Men: Apocalypse because I have no interest seeing it.

And this once again gets to the nub of why I refuse to see this film, and why I am so frustrated when some posters here seem to attack anyone who criticises it.

What are you even talking about? Nobody here has attacked anyone who criticises the film if they've actually seen it, and simply didn't like it. And to be honest mate, I think it's a narrow-minded and totally unreasonable stance you're taking by refusing to see the film and condemning Eisenberg's performance without judging it under context, and still say it sucks. If I had your attitude, I'd be missing out on a lot of movies I would've liked, or appreciate more than I would've expected. That would be the equivalent of me saying "The Dredd 2012 movie totally sucked because Lena Headey underwhelmed as the main villain"...without actually seeing the whole damn thing.

There is a faux-naivety to the world Burton presents that extends all the way to the credits where the would-be rapist you refer to is credited as a 'Mugger'.

I thought it was clearly implied that a rape was possible, not only because the creep was gesturing as if he was about to unzip himself, but Catwoman's dialogue "I like a strong man who is not afraid to show it with someone half his size, be gentle it's my first time" made it too on-the-nose for it not to imply some sort of sexual assault was about to happen.

I'm not the only one who has perceived this. There are lots of analyses on the internet and in textbooks that share this description, particularly this excerpt from a book analysing feminist protagonists in rape and revenge-theme storytelling:

Catwoman's acts of violence in Batman Returns (1992) are acts of revenge against rapist and woman-bashing men, representing a recycling of the second-wave feminist rape-revenge theme found in earlier films.

Source: https://books.google.com/books?id=b2QXAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA297&lpg=PA297&dq=catwoman+rapist+batman+returns

My guess if the actor was credited as a mugger, it's because WB tried to make it ambiguous as possible to avoid further backlash.

I like Batman Returns as much as anyone else on this forum, but even though I do agree that it's set in a fantasy world where you can suspend your disbelief over the bizarre and unrealistic, that still doesn't make it less darker.

As for the possibilities that Batman may not have killed the strongman and the fire breather? I'd be open to strongman (the fire breather is possible), but Daniel Waters was quoted justifying Batman's lethal attitude awhile ago (can't find the original link though):

We live in dark times. You can't just drop bad guys off in a spider web in front of city hall.

http://gothamalleys.blogspot.com/2010/11/killer-batman.html

I'm not really convinced that the bomb was harmless. If Burton wanted to, he could've shown Batman tampering with the bomb to turn it into a dud, and show the strongman had survived but hurt. He didn't. I don't quite care though, it's not like Batman had a moral code or anything.

[Dagenspear]

It's funny because that's exactly how I feel about TDK's Joker, particularly on the daddy issues. Not only was he an unsympathetic, irredeemable pile of trash of a human being, he didn't even have the charm that previous screen versions had, and whose motives for committing crimes was to cause chaos for no reason. Yet this is considered to be compelling for some reason.

Still, don't you dare share that opinion elsewhere on the internet, otherwise you'll get attacked for not agreeing with the "majority".

I don't think that the Joker was necessarily supposed to be those things. Charm isn't really something I've seen in many versions of the character. I don't think being unsympathetic, irredeemable or a pile of trash of a human being is completely against the character. I don't see how him being those things makes him not compelling as a character. Have a very great day!

God bless you! God bless everyone!