From time to time I read Paul Byrnes reviews just to see how much I disagree with them. Sometimes I read them even before seeing a film, just to see what pisses him off. With the new Batman movie, it seems quite a lot.
I was going to wait until I saw the actual movie before I took a shot at this this execrable review, but the last bit reads thus:
I agree that Nolan's Batman is the best yet: more dramatic, more soulful, more realistic. Nolan is a much better director than the character has had before, and the trilogy fits together as a whole, but this final instalment is flabby, and some might wonder at the sensitivity of its metaphors. Comic book superheroes and baddies do not explain the attacks of September 11, nor the Wall Street crisis. The Batman did not save those people, and conflating his fictional power with real-world tragedies is a dangerous game.
Even in literary terms, Batman is not Lear, nor even Sydney Carton heading to the guillotine, no matter how seriously Nolan treats him. He's a 1930s-era response to the Depression, with a cape and a nice car. His retirement was overdue.
I find that thoroughly idiotic, myopic and willfully obtuse. The notion that Batman the character is not as important as Lear belies the fact that in the Big Now, people are more interested in the latest Batman movie than some production of King Lear somewhere on the planet. I don't say that arguing '5,000,000 Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong', but rather, in light of the Big Now that has unfolded since 1970, where the sum total life experience of humanity is more with the living than the dead, surely a character like Batman is easily the equal of King Lear; and that this is the marvel of our contemporary world.
Yes, there have been countless productions of 'King Lear' through history seen by many eyes, and read in schools by even more; but it is likely that an even great number of eyes have been graced with Batman in its multitudes of incarnations. Going forwards, it may be the case that the fictional legacy of comic book characters will far outweigh the legacy of even Hamlet, the most important of Shakespeare's characters.
So, no Mr Byrnes, Batman is not merely the 1930s-era response to the Depression with a cape and a nice car. Batman is so much more than that. Just his 'nice car' is more than that.
The problem is that Paul Byrnes wants to leap to his conclusion so he's willing to totally ignore what's actually going on in the world, just so he can write that utterly incorrect last paragraph. I can only surmise from the manner in which he reaches his pre-designated conclusion, that he does so out of a desire to re-assert the hierarchical value system of entertainment and themes that stem from earlier prejudices. And the problem is that they are just that - prejudices on Paul Byrnes' part. Paul Byrnes still wants to believe in a hierarchy that asserts that literature is better than comic books and therefore movies sourced from Shakespeare are better movies than movies sourced from comic books. I'm sorry, but that's an antiquated view on what culture is, and where it now lives.
It's like post-modernism just flew right by him and he didn't notice. Or he only saw the blur of pastel blue and pink and thought it was a fad.
If Paul Byrnes thinks for a moment that the Batman movies don't offer any insight into the post 9/11 world and the various discussions about power and justice, wealth and the un-egalitarian economy, then he is clearly not watching properly. If it were any other person, I wouldn't be bothered in the least bit that they saw 3 movies and didn't get what was being discussed; but Paul Byrnes is the reviewer for the Sydney Morning Herald! He gets paid to watch, and yet he does not see. If I had Gina Rinehart's money, the first person I'd sack at the SMH would not be the political editor but Paul Byrnes.
UPDATE: The tragic events in Colorado since the publication of the Paul Byrnes review and this rebuke of Paul Byrnes' review have rendered all this a bit moot. I think it is manifestly clear that the character Batman has cultural significance even today, when somebody like James Holmes carries out his elaborate massacre and then claims to be The Joker. The fact that a deranged mind out there is living the fantasy of The Joker and by extension Batman - and the fact that this is the prism through which we must understand his actions - leads us to conclude that the cultural relevance of Batman is far from over. I don't think it's surprising then that the Paul Byrnes review has been buried and hidden away deep in the SMH site.
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