zaara said:

Oh, yeah, Oh yeah, I wanna bust that body right!

That's just pure-un-tee funky.

ThePowersCreepin said:

I haven't actually seen Batman Begins yet, though the reviews seemed mixed at best and it disappeared from the cinema screens pretty quick. But I do know that it wouldn't even exist if Tim Burton's 'Batman' hadn't rejuvenated the genre. In 20 years time which batman will be best remembered? The camp tv version first, and Burton's 'Batman' second. I doubt 'Batman Begins' will be remembered beyond the end of this year, even if it is well made.

Trueness to the character is an ever-changing thing, since it has developed so much from it's origins as each new comic writer/artist re-invents it. Burton's Batman sought to recreate the atmosphere of the graphic novel 'The Dark Night Returns', which in itself had just rejuvenated the comics industry, though it doesn't actually tell that story.

Burton's Batman was the runaway success it was because the world was ready for a darker cinematic version of the Caped Crusader.

The received wisdom is that the real catalyst for those expectations in the late eighties had been Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns.

However, let's not forget the fact that the comics themselves had been exploring the darker nature of the Batman for decades and had in fact been doing so since the mid seventies. After all, Hollywood has always taken thirty years to catch up with whatever happens in comics.

So perhaps Miller wasn't breaking new ground at all. Like Burton, he just increased the angst and the tension that had already been a staple of the comic for decades.


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ThePowersCreepin said:

I totally agree with this statement.

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Anji said:

Thank you.

I would say it's "moody" in parts.

"The Future" sets the tone of the album in a way that one is led to expect a collection of songs suffused with darkness and tension. Then we get "Electric Chair", and suddenly we begin to realise that the narrative of the album will not necessarily concern itself with the Batman's cinematic character in as much as provide Prince with an opportunity to get a lot out of his system (some sort of self-therapy was in order following his dark night of the soul at the end of the Lovesexy tour) and to toy with the nature of duality, a favourite theme which remains at the heart of much of what drives his creativity.

Still, Batman is surprisingly light and airy. Despite the heavy subject matter, the collection of songs feels more like an invitation to party with Gemini as opposed to an invitation to Dance With The Devil.


.

I loved Batman when it came out. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the album hang in the number one slot for a little bit? Considering the quality of the things he was putting out at the time...I thought it was a breath of fresh air. Maybe a tad recycled, but me and my friends ran that record into the dirt. That's all we listened to that summer.
[Edited 9/23/05 12:10pm]

giotto said:

You could argue that about Prince! He didn't break new ground, he just built on what had already been laid down. I think you need someone to bring it all together and be the pinnacle, and in this case it was Frank Miller.

I think people were just waiting for a 'good' superhero movie - with a bit of depth and character development - previously Superman I & II and arguably III had been the only good entry in the genre I can think of.

I think people get very precious about being 'true to the original' - look at the X-men movies. They are nothing like the original comic versions, taking their cue instead from the '90s versions, but most people would argue they have been great superhero movies.

Is that "The Future" playing during the scene when the Wayans are walking down the street and one of the hookers hit on Bruce?

metalorange said:

First of all "Batman Begins" was a huge box office success so far grossing $204 million and has allready had two sequels green-lighted. Futhermore, not only will Nolans Batman trilogy be remembered as one of the greatest superhero series ever put to film(due to its realistic serious take on the characters source material). It will make the 89-97 versions of Batman look like narcissistic piles of self-indulgent star-vehicle CRAP. ("Batman Begins" really already does this.)

RockstarRetrosexual said:

Yep, that's "The Future."

ThePowersCreepin said:

the only thing Batman Begins did better than Burtons 1989 Batman was make a more emotional retelling of the death of Bruce Waynes parents .Theres nothing else superior about "begins" , the "trueness of the character" is laughable ,
thee was nothing covered in the film that Keaton hadnt already covered in the 1st 2 Burton movies.The handling of Nolan's Batman's training isnt remotely close to any origin of Batman ever told in the comics , he was NEVER trained by R'as al ghul ,Henry Ducard was never some supervillian intent on world destruction , the whole "Henry Ducard was actually a psuedonym of R'as al ghul" mish-mash ending was just horrible and clumsy.The Batmobile looked like a piece of metal the scrapyard couldnt quite crush down to size instead of the sleek sexy effective car Bats normally drives .The Scarecrow was woefully underused and R'as al ghul overused and badly executed .There was no "accomplished film-making" , unless you enjoy watching blurred fight scenes , overlong ninja antics and big sweeping snowy landscapes , gotta love those landscapes . Batman begins was just a dull occasionally ludicrous superbaddie script which the James Bond people rejected so a few people decided to rename the characters and set it in Gotham City .Like a lot of people I wished that there was just one scene in it to excite me , the Burton fims were full of them , Batman Begins had none .The only thing it could do effectively was tell the story of a young boy watching his parents get killed by thugs and being effected , big deal , thats already been covered and recovered in all the other Batman films .
Give me Burtons exciting "big star vehicles " over some discarded bond rewrite any day of the week.

jn2 said:

I regret that there wasn't another Prince / Tim Burton collaboration for Big Fish.

I read that Prince recorded the entire album in 11 days. And something about Jack Nicholson not letting up until he got Prince to do the Soundtrack. He is a Huge Fan of Prince. And not to mention Lemon Crush (Kim Bassinger) that whole affair. She split off from Prince and Prince was bitter ( I read ) You remember... the same year she blasted the Oscars for shutting out Spike Lee's "Do The Right Thing"

The whole Kim Bassinger and the hollywood affair album. What was that?

AdoreDaBang1 said:

Arms of Orion could put a diabetic in a coma.

ThePowersCreepin said:

Well, if you want to talk figures, Batman grossed $251 million in the US, and that was back 15 years ago when ticket prices were lower. Also Batman also only cost $35 million to make whereas Batman Begins had a budget of $150 million. Factor that in, Begins only made $54 whereas Batman made $216, FOUR TIMES as much!

I don't know how you can say the next sequels will be fantastic until you have actually seen them. Batman had a great beginning, but look what happened when Burton left, it turned into mush, you never can tell what influence bad direction and studio interference can have. We'll have to wait and see.

Batman may have had stars in it camping it up, but at least their performances are memorable.

Heiress said:

This is by far the most perceptive post yet regarding the Batman album's less discussed spiritual undertones.

There is a school of thought that maintains that the material on Batman feels detached from Prince's so-called spiritual evolution, while others go even further and declare that the music feels rushed, disposable and definitely not up to the lofty standards of, say, SOTT.

But that would be missing the point entirely.

After all, Prince himself has indicated that the project did no deviate at all from the same "spirituality" that informed much of Lovesexy. A case in point being the mischievous, evil Gemini effectively mirroring Camille's darker alter-ego, Spooky Electric.

Undoubtedly, one of Prince's main motivations for tackling the project, besides the obvious financial imperative, was the fact that the movie's characters would allow Prince free rein to indulge in perennially constant themes of his, namely the tension between good and evil, the sacred and the profane and the duality of his personality.

Which is why the Batman album proved such an irresistible proposition for someone like Prince who himself labours under a great deal of personal conflict and contradictions.


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[Edited 9/24/05 7:55am]

scififilmnerd said:

Again, a valid observation.

In truth, Prince looked at the bunch of demos he had recorded and puzzled over the effectiveness of those songs as compositions that would hold up as a unified theme. One salient aspect of the compositions was a strong spiriual content pervading much of that material, which was exactly as Prince had intended in the first place. However, he remained unsure that they merited being in an album at all.

One of the reasons being he simply didn't believe the studio material was strong enough but nonetheless decided to test some of it on the road since he wanted to remain true to the spirit in which those songs were created.

An interesting thing then happened. Live versions of "God Is Alive" and the titular "Rave" proved to pack a huge emotional punch and audiences' response to those renditions was nothing short of phenomenal whenever Prince played them. All of which forced Prince to further scrutinise his decision to release Rave as he had originally intended. Prince felt he needed to work a great deal more on those demos, perhaps even re-record the vast majority of them as entirely new compositions. But there was no time for him to devote further energy on the Rave project at that stage.

Result: the Rave project was shelved indefinitely and Prince moved on by immersing himself in Batman, culling bits and pieces from the Rave project plus the unreleased Madhouse 24, to use as collage for several of the songs on the soundtrack, "Batdance" being just one example of said "collages".


.

Totally agree.
Rave was only in it's early stages of development as an album when it was
dropped in favor of Batman. It was far from being a cohesive album worthy
of release. Batman, on the other hand, gave Prince just the framework he
needed at the time to explore the themes of duality that interested him
at the time. It was very much a continuation of the Lovesexy journey, only
with a new set of characters to represent his various facets. Of course
the album was also intentionally kept musically accessable (commercial)
as it had to work as a tie in with a major motion picture as well, and
Prince was well aware of the 'hit' potential. Even so, he still managed
to retain enough character and quirkiness at the same time.

I'm still longing to hear a studio version of that extended version of Vicki Waiting that is played briefly in Batman.
[Edited 9/24/05 16:24pm]

moonshine said:

I agree. Burton's movie had character and a humorous charm that made them stand out, whereas the new flick is fairly standard, instantly forgettable Hollywood fare.
[Edited 9/24/05 16:28pm]

And I still think Prince should have kept working on Rave rather than rushing Batman out.
[Edited 9/24/05 16:30pm]

scififilmnerd said:

Or gone back to it after he'd done Batman, instead of doing Graffiti Bridge.

He did continue to work on some Rave tracks while doing Batman. There's an
unreleased version of the title track "Rave Unto The Joy Fantastic" that was
done around this time (A more uptempo version, like Rave In2). It was one of
the tracks given to Mark Moore and William Orbit to remix, along with
Batdance, The Future & Electric Chair. You can hear some of the vocals from
this unreleased version in the remix of Batdance. Even though they're speeded
up a lot, you can still hear that they're from a completely different take to
the vocals on the original version of the track (which finally surfaced on the
released album in 1999).

RockstarRetrosexual said:

Which Wayans were in the movie? Were all of the brothers in there? I don't remember them, but maybe they were in the deleted scenes on the DVD. It's amazing the shit you miss when you haven't seen something for umpteen years!

moonshine said:

Couldn't disagree more. Sure, the whole training by Ra's Al Ghul thing was a new twist, but it was far more in line with the Batman comic mythos than crap like the Joker killing Bruce Wayne's parents (and besides, Batman DID later learn that some of his mentors had ties to Al Ghul).

Burton's films were Batman in name only. Keaton and Burton obviously didn't understand the whole concept of Bruce Wayne being the mask, while Batman is his true nature. Nolan and Bale got that, and made it a major point of it in this film. Burton's films are so full of plot wholes. logic leaps and out-of-character moments it isn't even funny. Nicholson's Joker is entertaining, but it isn't the Joker. Its Jack doing his usual "insane" act that he's been rehashing since his early films (slap a smile on his character from The Shining and it's pretty much the same deal). The whole dichotomy of the Joker being the opposite side of the same coin to Batman is completely lost with this film, since he is already a murdering psychopath before he is dropped in the acid. Both Batman and The Joker had tragedies in their lives, but chose to deal with them in completely different ways. Burton didn't get that in any shape, way or form. I won't even bother with all the things wrong with Gordon, Catwoman or the Penguin in these flicks.

As for the Bond comparison, that is something that fans have been making ever since the Bond films first hit. Batman has always had lots of gadgets and doo-dads, and fought villians bent on world domination. In the sixties, when Dr. No first hit theaters, many Batman fans noted how similar Bond's formula was to the Batman comic. So, Batman did it first, and there isn't anything wrong with him reclaiming this aspect on film.

Burton's films make little sense. Batman Returns is even worse, as it has plot-holes you could drive a mack truck through. So, Max Schreck is building a power plant that will actually steal energy from the city? Ummm, why? What purpose does that serve, and how would no one notice that? Selina is brought back from the dead by cats? WHAT? The Penguin lands the blueprints to the Batmobile how exactly? What, did Alfred just sell them on E-bay or something? Batman tells Catwoman that they are "the same. Split right down the center", yet never once does Bruce Wayne show any of the conflict that Catwoman is demonstrating in the film. In fact, in both of Burton's films, Bruce Wayne seems like he is Batman in and out of the suit.

You say that there is nothing that Nolan's film touched on that wasn't already covered in Burton's movies, but to me Nolan covered all the IMPORTANT aspects that Burton ignored. The Burton version never explored why he adopted the Bat motif, why he doesn't kill (although, Burton's films show him doing just that, but oh well), how he adopts the "billionaire playboy" persona, his relationship with Jim Gordon, where he gets his "wonderful toys" or how he trained himself to become the hero of Gotham. Batman Begins was a far superior film, in every way.

metalorange said:

If that is the case, then he failed misearably. About the only thing I see that he took from TDKR is the look of Gotham. Nothing about the characters, plot, storyline or point of the film is in line with Miller.

Anji said:

Actually, it IS a collection of outtakes, on the whole. Most of those songs had been recorded prior to him being approached by Burton.

As for "Lemon Crush" Horrid track.
[Edited 10/10/05 6:38am]

JediMaster said:

N that case, & by ur logic, u could argue that most Prince albums R n some ways simply collections of outtakes, on the whole.
The point b ing, he usually always draws upon past nspiration, yet he does so with Batman n a way that eye feel makes the songs CONnect.

love

Anji said:

I wouldn't say that most Prince albums are outtake collections, but a few definitely qualify. In the case of Batman, it certainly fits. Personally, I think the album sounds like rather weak cast-offs from other projects, but that is just me.