Don't agree that those points about the Joker are a negative though. It makes him almost seem like a force of nature, in the same way as Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men for example. I quite like it.
Correct me if wrong, that's not what makes Batman villains so interesting. The status quo is they have some redeeming traits and motivation. Here he's nothing but, like you said, a mindless force of nature to serve another round of reckoning for Gotham (again). This is where TDKR Bane did a whole lot better.
The thing that Joker and every other DK villian has had is that you feel like the Joker one upped the Batman a few times before being caught whereas Loki is treated like a joke. A mere annoyance. MCU just doesn't treat their villians with the same level of respect as DC does.
Loki was treated with far more respect than TDK Joker imho. He was given a solid backstory, given sympathizable motivations, sex-ed up for the female fans, had his machinations fleshed out, even had family and character development, faced the entire Avengers where each member could feasibly take him out solo. You won't see Joker solo-ing the Justice League
Joker:
- Appears out of nowhere, barely any backstory or relation.
- No redeeming factor.
- No logical explanation to how he can motivate untrained thugs into completing logistically impossible tasks in parallel. When audience goes into each set piece, the elaborate trap has already been magically set up, all behind the scenes
Loki:
- Carefully established, has fleshed out backstory.
- Sympathetic flawed character, motivations are understandable.
- You can see him trying to execute his plans, including recruiting ex-SHIELD people, bargaining with Thanos, failing and regrouping.
I think you really misunderstood what they tried to do with the Joker in The Dark Knight. He's basicly the opposite of Batman. He's supposed to be a devil figure. I think it works better if he's a supernatural creature. The magically set up elaborate plans are tricks he plays. He's not supposed to be human. He could easily be an external projection of the conflicts within Bruce Wayne. The fact that he is the three items you bring up makes him more fleshed out, not the opposite.
???
In Thor 1, Loki manages to get Thor exiled, manipulates the frost giants into being pawns for him, and is nearly successful in his play for the throne of Asgard. Even when he is thwarted, he chooses to flee than be imprisoned.
I don't believe Loki wanted the throne in Thor 1, he just wanted Thor out of the way so he wouldn't fuck up his play to exterminate his fathers(Odin's) old enemy. imo he legit tried to commit suicide at the end.
Well, he is going after the throne in Thor1. It starts out with him scheming to take Thor's place as heir to Odin's throne. He sabotages the naming of Thor as heir by leading the frost giants into the vault. Then he manipulates Thor into going against their father's orders and attacking Jotunheim (while making it seem as if it's Thor's idea and he's the one trying to stop them). Even when the battle begins, he makes it seem as if it's all Thor's doing and that he was trying to prevent it. This leads to the culmination of Loki's initial plans, with Thor being exiled.
Everything he does from then on is just to cement his place as heir to the throne, from crushing Thor's spirit to keep him in exile, to having the Frost Giants attack just so he can be the one to save Odin, to trying to destroy Jotenheim so that noone can reveal his double cross.
At the end, he claims not to have ever wanted the throne, but, considering his goals in the later movies, I'm not sure if that's true.
Correct me if wrong, that's not what makes Batman villains so interesting. The status quo is they have some redeeming traits and motivation. Here he's nothing but, like you said, a mindless force of nature to serve another round of reckoning for Gotham (again). This is where TDKR Bane did a whole lot better.
Just about every villain in every medium is given motivations and backstories, that's not exclusive to Batman's rogues gallery. I think it can be just as or more interesting -- if done right, in TDK's case -- to create a villain without any of those elements but is still nuanced and compelling to watch.
Loki's the only decent MCU villain. The MCU movies have done so much right, but they keep floundering on the villains or they just squander good villains.
I'll give you all Ledger's Joker. Greatest villain performance in CBM's hands down. I've always said Ledger carried that trilogy on his back and Nolan should be kissing his grave once a week for the rest of his life.
But the rest? No way. I put both Alexander Pierce and Obadiah above Ra's Al Ghul, they made Ra's less interesting taking away the lazarus pit angle.
Winter Soldier and Red Skull above run of the mill bomber turned simp Bane (seriously why do that to the character?).
That's not even including Loki, Killian and Blonsky. While Nolans trilogy has the top of the list with Joker it also has the bottom of the barrel with Talia.
Loki's the only decent MCU villain. The MCU movies have done so much right, but they keep floundering on the villains or they just squander good villains.
They haven't had their epic villain yet, Loki included, but I think they're working towards it. There aren't very many great villain characters accessible to them anyway.
That's not a Joker signature trait, or at least I don't think so. One of the better Batman books, Killing Joke, gives a version of his origins. He normally has a motivation that makes sense in a (sometimes twisted) way, many times tied back to Batman himself or made to juxtapose his nature.
But the Killing Joke made a major plot point to say that this is just the way the Joker remembers how he became the Joker sometimes. Other times he remembers something else. Maybe the backstory given in the book is real, or maybe it's just one of his delusions and what really happened was completely different.
The Dark Knight does a similar thing, with the Joker telling two different completely two completely different explanations for his scarred face, and presumably was about to tell a third one to Batman at the end. In that film it comes off more like deliberate lies rather than him remembering different versions, but it's the same idea.
His backstory is not important, what's important is what he is now.
Did you really miss that Ra's immortality in the movies is in his name? It's not his mind and body that live forever, it's the title and responsibility.
As far as I know, she didn't back out. She had every intention of being Black Widow. Except she had already signed up for Gulliver's Travels or had an existing Fox deal, Fox fast-tracked Gulliver's Travel after she started talks to play Black Widow in Iron Man 2.
If the rumors I heard are true, Fox did it deliberately to hurt Marvel, something about Avi Arad. Though it seems like a stretch to release a full blown movie to hurt the casting of another, especially a business partner.
Did you really miss that Ra's immortality in the movies is in his name? It's not his mind and body that live forever, it's the title and responsibility.
I think it can be just as or more interesting -- if done right, in TDK's case -- to create a villain without any of those elements but is still nuanced and compelling to watch.
I think you really misunderstood what they tried to do with the Joker in The Dark Knight. He's basicly the opposite of Batman. He's supposed to be a devil figure. I think it works better if he's a supernatural creature. The magically set up elaborate plans are tricks he plays. He's not supposed to be human. He could easily be an external projection of the conflicts within Bruce Wayne. The fact that he is the three items you bring up makes him more fleshed out, not the opposite.
That would normally work in a horror or Dan Brown type movie or even Nolan's own Inception, where one major plot thread is to uncover the nature of the antagonist figure. But here, he's just the front put on a series of natural disasters. The audience doesn't need to know more about him, only what he and Batman does next. Yeah I agree this format works neatly for the movie, but it doesn't make him a better character than a well-realized MCU Loki.
But the Killing Joke made a major plot point to say that this is just the way the Joker remembers how he became the Joker sometimes. Other times he remembers something else. Maybe the backstory given in the book is real, or maybe it's just one of his delusions and what really happened was completely different.
The Dark Knight does a similar thing, with the Joker telling two different completely two completely different explanations for his scarred face, and presumably was about to tell a third one to Batman at the end. In that film it comes off more like deliberate lies rather than him remembering different versions, but it's the same idea.
His backstory is not important, what's important is what he is now.
Where KJ differs is that they paint a (slightly) sympathetic portrait of Joker, ties in the events to his twisted viewpoints, culminating in a final quiet exchange where he and Batman can share a common ground. None of that happens to TDK, Joker is a completely unsympathetic not-very-human tsunami designed to test Batman.
No I prefer grim dark batman over campy stupid shit and neon lights. Aside from JLA did Batman ever take on a rogue gallery that weren't criminals in crazy outfits with no world breaking powers?
If there were no past or future Batman movies, or comics, cartoons and video games, then yeah that'd suck. But as it stands, there is literally every other medium available to show Batman in a more fantastical light -- not to mention Snyder's movie and every other film after that.
Nolan's take on Batman only lasts for three movies, which in the grand scheme of things, is a very tiny fraction of Batman stuff.
If there were no past or future Batman movies, or comics, cartoons and video games, then yeah that'd suck. But as it stands, there is literally every other medium available to show Batman in a more fantastical light -- not to mention Snyder's movie and every other film after that.
Nolan's take on Batman only lasts for three movies, which in the grand scheme of things, is a very tiny fraction of Batman stuff.
It wasn't a comic book. It's a filmic adaption of the source material. In Nolan's universe, and consequently the real world, Batman becoming a recluse when organized crime is pretty much dead, his kidney's are pulverised and his leg is fucked wasn't the worst thing they could do with the character.
I don't believe Loki wanted the throne in Thor 1, he just wanted Thor out of the way so he wouldn't fuck up his play to exterminate his fathers(Odin's) old enemy. imo he legit tried to commit suicide at the end.
Loki wanted Thor exiled from Asgard so that Loki would become the next in line to inherit the throne from Odin. Loki gets extra pissed when he learns the true reason why Thor is the heir and not Loki
On topic: has anyone read Ultron Unlimited? It was a 4 issue arc from The Avengers in the late 90s.
Ultron is almost absurdly overpowered, and it's completely badass. Some great lines, like "Ultron! We would have words with thee!"
And then
Ultron single-handedly wrecks the whole team, and smacks down Thor harder than any but a handful of Marvel beings have ever done. Thor is hardly more than an annoyance to him in the fight.
If we get that version of Ultron, the movie will be pretty interesting.
On topic: has anyone read Ultron Unlimited? It was a 4 issue arc from The Avengers in the late 90s.
Ultron is almost absurdly overpowered, and it's completely badass. Some great lines, like "Ultron! We would have words with thee!"
And then
Ultron single-handedly wrecks the whole team, and smacks down Thor harder than any but a handful of Marvel beings have ever done. Thor is hardly more than an annoyance to him in the fight.
If we get that version of Ultron, the movie will be pretty interesting.
I quite like most of them, as comic book movies go I really like Man of Steel and we all know how polarising that film can be.
DKR however has a shit and amazingly lazy script which introduces Talia al Ghul and never bothers to develop her character other than to have her sex up Bruce Wane for no reason what so ever.
When I first watched DKR at the cinema I left feeling unsatisfied and on a single repeated viewing and me picking the story to bits (I only do this when i'm not being entertained) I rank it as one of the worst comic book films I have ever seen.
They haven't had their epic villain yet, Loki included, but I think they're working towards it. There aren't very many great villain characters accessible to them anyway.
That would be my biggest complaint about MCU. Red Skull was probably their coolest and most formidable villian.
Loki, for all the work he put in Thor 1, was undone and embarrassed so thoroughly in Avengers that I don't see him as a legit threat. Even Thanos, powerful as he is in the comics, hasn't even gotten off his throne of his yet...
Iron Monger to me just screamed of "hero costume knock off" even if he is from the comics. Come to think of it, most of my favorite MC villians are from the ones that Marvel Disney doesn't have the rights to.
I quite like most of them, as comic book movies go I really like Man of Steel and we all know how polarising that film can be.
DKR however has a shit and amazingly lazy script which introduces Talia al Ghul and never bothers to develop her character other than to have her sex up Bruce Wane for no reason what so ever.
When I first watched DKR at the cinema I left feeling unsatisfied and on a single repeated viewing and me picking the story to bits (I only do this when i'm not being entertained) I rank it as one of the worst comic book films I have ever seen.
"Meaty" women in Hollywood...wait, that doesn't sound right...muscular women in Hollywood is not a look that's in really high demand. As has been mentioned before, Emily Blunt in edge of tomorrow is pretty much exactly the kind of build I'd want for Carol.
I actually like ScarJo, but Emily Blunt would have slain as Black Widow. She looks beautiful, yet crazy fit (as much as I love her ladybumps, ScarJo is way more plushier than comic-book Nat) and cold as ice.
Can I just say that I just blew my own mind when I realized that Emily Blunt was not Fiona from Burn Notice...
All this time... everytime someone mentioned Emily Blunt, I would think "I'm so glad Fiona got some movie work after Burn Notice"
Everytime someone showed a pic... I just never noticed that it wasn't the same person.
It wasn't till a random google search today when I saw her birthday was 1983, and I thought,"there is no fucking way Fiona is younger than me...." did I decide to look at IMDB and double check.
But in my defense, these 2 were separated by birth*
