You're Wrong About - Bonus: "The Dark Knight"

Episode Date: March 1, 2021

Sarah's other show has a special guest! Maintenance Phase co-host Aubrey Gordon visits Why Are Dads to talk about Christopher Nolan, trash masculinity and the dwindling number of non-problematic superheroes. Support us:Subscribe on PatreonDonate on PaypalBuy cute merchWhere else to find us: Sarah's other show, Why Are Dads Mike's other show, Maintenance PhaseSupport the show

Oh, that's true. Yeah, very good. Now, that might make you think that we're doing something a little bit different from that quote today, but now we're just going straight in. I am Michael Hobbs, but there's no point in introducing myself. I'm Sun Lady. I'm the woman. According to some reviewers. And today we are releasing a bonus episode of Sarah's Delightful Podcast. Oh, thank you, Mike. With a delightful special guest. Yes, with your delightful maintenance phase co-host, Aubrey Gordon.

Yeah, it's like a little family reunion. We did this episode on my other podcast, Why Are Dads, a couple of weeks ago, and we had Aubrey on as a guest and it was, I don't know, I guess it was really special to me to like further knit our podcast family together. Maybe it's because this has been such an intense year for loneliness, but I feel like I'm still going on some of the gas in my tank from the Aubrey conversation. It was just so nice. We're going to jump in and you're going to hear me and Aubrey and Alex Teed talk about The Dark Knight in a Minute and all of our misgivings with its logic and so on. But I'm curious about, do you remember when you first saw this movie and

your response to it then and how your thoughts on it have changed, if at all, or maybe even at the time? Because when I first saw this movie, I was like dazzled by it, but I can imagine you being like, I don't know about that ending, you guys. Yeah, I mean, I've said this to you before and I think you disagree. But I think it has the same thing as a lot of Martin Scorsese movies where nobody ever talks about the final third. All of the cultural impact of it are in the parts that make gangsters look cool and then at the end where the gangsters die and get arrested, we just edit those parts out. And it's the same thing here where The Dark Knight has this great setup and all these great sequences and then the final third

is just a mess and nobody remembers it or talks about it. Yeah, I would dispute that only to say that I talk about the final third of Scorsese movies because I like them, but that probably has something to do with the fact that I'm a girl. And so I'm not invested in joining the mob, being in the end maybe a good idea. And that's where the good Sharon Stone stuff is too. Yes, exactly. That's where Sharon Stone gets to act her whole ass off. The sequence where Sharon Stone is on a boat and she can detonate the boat at any time and then it doesn't make any sense.

I wish Sharon Stone was given that kind of power and then Sharon Stone gets half of her face burned off. Were you living in the US when this movie came out or were you abroad? I was in Denmark. Okay, what was that like? I think I actually saw it in the US though because I think I came home for Christmas and I remember seeing it on an IMAX screen and I was sitting too close to the point where I had to sort of turn my head like I was watching a tennis match to watch different parts of the screen. So the whole time I was whipping my head around to try to figure out what was going on

and then I finally saw it elsewhere like under normal circumstances and I was like, oh yeah, some of the visuals are still pretty muddled. I still don't really know what's going on. It might not have been the big screen. Yeah, no, I feel like some of it is just cuts. Like you're not supposed to know what you're seeing exactly, but the cuts are exciting. I mean, we could do a whole episode on sort of the social construction of Christopher Nolan because all of his movies have been super duper critically acclaimed and like paradigm shifting when they come out and then they age badly extremely quickly.

Yeah, like McDonald's. Everyone like lost their fucking minds when Inception came out and then like two years later people were like, it doesn't make any sense. It's all exposition. I almost feel like we clamor for experiences to like overhype something and then talk about how we overhyped it. Like Tiger King was like this and this has to have something to do with theatrical release because it's such, to me Inception was such an amazing theatrical experience and I was like, I must see this movie as many times as I can in this exciting, expensive, immersive way because once it's out on video, it'll just, I don't know if it'll work and I have not even

tried to watch it since it left theaters. Honestly, I haven't seen it in 11 years. I mean, this is one thing I love about this episode too is that you guys get into the ways in which the dark night, like it's kind of storytelling mechanics just make no sense at all. Like there's no way that the Joker can be this good at planning every single thing. For a guy who sort of fetishizes chaos, like he's got to be sitting there with a spreadsheet for hours to make any of this happen. He has to be one of the most organized people in the world and just has a love-hate relationship with himself about that, I guess. But yeah, and it reminds me of the moment in one of the DC Snipers episodes where they're trying to call in to the police to be like,

hello, we're the DC Snipers and they don't have enough change for it. I was like, is there ever a moment where the Joker is midway through his medicine plan, but he's out of change, he needs to use a payphone, he's standing outside McCormick and Schmicks or whatever, panhandling to try and get changed, to call the cops. I am super capable of enjoying movies with bad guys who are never challenged by the world they're in, but like they, I don't know, they're just not scary to me because that's not, you know, everyone runs out of change, everyone looks like an idiot sometimes, even if they're terrifying. It's also interesting how many of these movies really are product of their time

in ways that we don't realize when we're watching them. Yeah, or I feel like some people realized, but we're kind of ignored, like I know there were a couple of reviews that were like, this movie is bad, like I think Sasha Fried Jones wrote a review that was just like on a blog or a website and it was just like, this movie feels bad to watch and everyone was like, no, it doesn't. And parts of it hold together. I mean, this is, this is the thing with Inception too, that if you just kind of like let a Christopher Nolan movie wash over you and don't ask questions, it can be a very enjoyable viewing experience.

I feel like Christopher Nolan is great at sound design and I know that he's good at a lot of other stuff, but like, I guess Mike, I would ask you like, what is the significance of this movie? Like, why does this movie matter? Why would now four people, you know, spend time out of their lives discussing a movie that it sounds like they want to make fun of, but still deem important for some reason? Like, where is that coming from? Because there's dad issues that resonate with two women from Portland who I co-host shows with. Many PhD dissertations will be written about our weird fascination with superheroes over the last two decades. And what Dark Knight is doing is it's the peak of this,

this very 2000s thing of kind of taking superheroes seriously. The James Bond movies kind of did this too. Like, what if, what if this took place in the real world? What if we tried to really ground this in the world we live in? What if both of the girls he has sex with die? Yeah, and like, as we've gotten so many more of them, and as we've thought more about sort of like, the structural elements, all of the stuff that's been illustrated by the events of the past year, I feel like one of the things that has aged really badly about all of these movies is like, wait, why is this guy beating up criminals? Like, what does this have to do with anything? And like, isn't this guy a billionaire? Can't he just like fund schools or like do something politically

that would actually solve the problems in this city? It's such conservative 1980s Reagan ass thinking to be like, well, the way to fix the city is to go out every single night and beat up random bank robbers and like purse snatchers and stuff. Like, it's just an absolutely appalling way to think about the problems of urban life. I think that's what's interesting about Batman really is like how we approach him over time and how sincerely a movie can approach, you know, his whole thing. Because in Burton Batman, which we also talked about and why our dads, the second movie that Burton does, he's like, I don't really care anymore. Let's talk about workplace sexual harassment in Catwoman and Danny DeVito eating fish and waving his arms around.

And you're like, yes, that sounds like a good time. Yeah, and kind of Guantanamo era Batman, like we were going through something in America where like even more than usual, we needed to believe we needed to see heroic figures beating up criminals and, you know, giving the Joker the third degree because he deserves it. And then also, I mean, in the dark night rises the end game of all this is that Batman ends up, you know, in what seems like a prison in an unnamed Middle Eastern country and has to escape through sheer gumption. The individual can overcome anything in this world. And also for that reason, the individual is allowed to do anything. And like, which is great because no matter who you are,

or how vast a system of power you're enmeshed in, you can always still see yourself as an individual. It's the easiest thing to see yourself as. I mean, you might break your back, but all you have to do is some push-ups on the floor and then you'll be fine. Yeah, it's like the Empire Strikes Back. It's like, how long was Luke training with Yoda? How many push-ups do you have to do to cure your back pink snap in half? Like 70. It's fine. So enjoy this bonus episode. We will also be releasing another bonus episode later this week from Maintenance Phase, my other Aubrey featuring Family Podcast. Yeah. And we can't wait to see you next week with a more analytical hat on. But for now, let's turn our brains off and enjoy the dark night.

We're not the podcast you need. We're the podcast you deserve. Hello, Sarah Marshall. Hello, Alex Teed. So hello, dear listener. You are listening to Why Are Deds. And we are about to talk about the movie. What movie, Sarah? Based on our voices. I mean, my Batman voice is the same as my Demon voice, but we're going to talk about the dark night and I'm really excited about it. I don't think there's a difference between the Batman voice and a demon voice. That's a good point. Yeah, I've been doing this voice for a baby I know who likes the like sound. And I do like, I'm your demon baby. I can have as many popsicles as I want. And the baby likes it, so. Of course the baby

likes it. Babies love everything. If you do something love, they're just like, this is great. I love it. No, babies love talented impressions and they do not like bad impressions. They have very good taste and impression. We are joined today by a lovely, lovely guest by Aubrey Gordon, who is the co-host of Maintenance Fizz. Yeah, I'm really happy about that. Yeah, this is the absolute funnest. It was some of the various pieces configured in an interesting new way. Yeah, it was a really lovely kind of slumber party experience. And I feel like our giddiness at just getting to talk about this movie with each other is present in this episode. And I hope that you got some of the glow from that. What are some things that the listener of this upcoming

episode, what should they be looking for? Okay, I think that if you like love this movie a lot, and if hearing people make fun of it is going to be hard for you, then you should skip this one. If you don't mind hearing people make fun of it, then this is for you because it's about, you know, just talking about like, what is Batman's plan? Is he really going to get a girlfriend by making someone else be Batman? Who is the daddy? Obviously, what kind of worldview does this represent? This episode is very special to me because I think this is the most mean that I've been about a movie that we've talked about on the show. And it's hard for me to express how I both relentlessly need to mock and also am genuinely delighted by this movie. And I do hope that we

captured that. I feel like we did. I think so too. I'm actually interested in the fact that you're warning people a little bit because I listened to this episode and was surprised based on our conversation how warmly we all received this movie that we're still very critical of. Like, we are critical of this movie, but we're critical of it from the perspective of people who still watch it and light up a bit while watching it. Oh, yeah. I kind of want to watch it tonight. And I've obviously seen it quite a few times in preparation for this episode. But, and I think that is why it was important to me anyway, to kind of try and situate this in its political moment. Because it was like, when this movie came out, like, this is one of those movies that just everybody liked

and had something for everyone. And it felt like it just was for, you know, I'm sure the world in many ways, but definitely for the United States in that moment. And now I feel like it matters to look back and be like, we need to talk about who we were when we loved this. And when this felt like it was making sense of the world that we were in. And now you look back and you're like, Batman has to be framed. Why? Yeah, we were living in a world where this pitch probably made sense. And in retrospect, it's very hard to understand why. Yeah, it's just weird. Like, I was watching the White House Correspondence Dinner from 2011, which is the one where, you know, Obama famously made a, he went pretty easy in making some jokes on Trump. And that does

appear to be one of the crucial moments and Trump's need to become president out of spite and racism. That's such a weird moment in time now to watch, because like, the jokes don't make sense anymore. And they're in reference to things that were like these really odious manufactured scandals, but none of them are about we have a Congress person who says there's a Jewish space laser. It was like, the Tea Party wants Obama's birth certificate. And it was like, that was really bad. And just a blatant attempt to gin up a fake story about a president who people wanted to dislike or wanted to hate, because he was black. And like, that was the beginning of where we are now. But it's, it's like feeling, it's like being those kids in cabin fever and

feeling nostalgic for when just little bits of your body were falling off. Like, oh, we were so cute then. Yeah, that's like very much the very much the beginning of the time that we're in now in the end of the time that the dark night happened in. Can we talk for a second about the Snyder cut, which is something that happened between us recording this episode and now doing this intro? This is something that I just vaguely know. And I had to ask you to explain it to me the other day. And so I just want to talk about it a little apparently when the Snyder cut came out, which everyone really wanted to happen, or a lot of people did. And they were like, release the Snyder cut of Justice League, because I think people thought there was a good movie in there.

And I haven't watched it. So I don't know if it's true, but outlook doubtful in my opinion. And people were delighted by the fact that in that cut, the Joker literally says, we live in a society, which I learned is like a Joker meme. And I find it funny and kind of unfortunate that throughout this episode we're about to hear, I characteristically have several rants about like, you know, if you live in a society, who do you hold to a higher standard, the crazy guy, or the society? And I was like, wait, am I the Joker? All right, let's go talk with Aubrey. What gives you the right? What's the difference between you and me?

I'm not wearing hockey pants. You think that you're a client. One of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the world is secretly a vigilante who spends his night speeding criminals to a pulp with his bare hands. And your plan is to blackmail this person. This city just showed you that it's full of people ready to believe in God. It comes at me with the knife. Why so serious? Sticks the blade in my mouth. Let's put a smile on that face.

I don't want to kill you. What would I do without you? No, no, no, you, you are completely me. Oh, hey, one more thing before we begin. Why are dads is made possible with support from Knack Factory, which is a commercial and creative content and video production company based in Portland, Maine that does work throughout these here United States and elsewhere and also via Patreon. Thank you so much to everyone who is able to support us via Patreon. And we have pretty frequent bonus episodes this week. We are going to have a bonus conversation with Aubrey. Aubrey was good enough to join us for some extra chat time, and we really appreciate it. And that's patreon.com slash why our dads. If you are able to support

financially, we appreciate that so much. And if you're not able, we absolutely understand it. We are just glad that you're along for the why our dads journey. All right, let's go talk about the dark night. Hello, Sarah Marshall. She's drinking the G Fuel under the blanket. We know that it's happening. How are you doing? I'm so great. I know that I'm super excited before every movie we talk about, but I just really feel like today we're going to kill the Batman. And I'm going to be licking my lips the whole time. And who are we going to talk about this with, Sarah? Okay, I just realized this, we're going to talk about this with one of the internet's own Batmans. Aubrey Gordon, formerly known as your fat friend. It's like postmaster's general.

Hi, guys. Hello, Aubrey. Can you just tell us a couple of things about yourself? Sure. I am a writer. I'm a columnist. Just released my first book called What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat. And I co-host a podcast with Sarah Marshall's other co-host, Michael Hobbs, called Maintenance Phase, where we sort of debunk diet and wellness industry nonsense. It's the best. I love it so much. We have had people be like, I don't want to, I feel reluctant to listen to all these shows because I feel like I'm facilitating these people cheating on each other. We all just have have a thing for each other and it's great. And we're going to have a thing about Batman today. Yeah. Michael's on a business trip and we're all just

hanging out. It's fine. He's busy. I'm Alex and I are a couple of homewreckers. Don't worry about that. Can we start this episode by you as concisely as possible? Explain what the dark night is, what dark night, I don't know the dark night is, and what the plot is. I will explain it for three hours. Thank you. Okay. Yeah. I was watching it again right before we recorded and I was like, I don't know. I know I'm going to get asked to describe the plot of this. And I've watched it several times in the past couple of weeks and I honestly barely know and I don't care that much. Like I feels that this movie could be called Law and Order Batman. So okay, the plot is that Batman is Batman-ing around. This is the only movie in the Nolan

trilogy in which we see him just be Batman. This is our only chance to do that. And so he's successful enough that he now has imitators. In the opening scene, he is attacked by dogs, which is great. We really open though by watching this bank robbery between this crew of I think five or six guys, all of whom take each other out and then get taken out by the guy who reveals himself to be the Heath Ledger Joker. And it's fantastic. And he takes off his clown mask and he has clown face paint on underneath. And it's great. It's like when Renee Zellweger and that other lady took off their coats and down with love. And then they both had the color of each other's coats on their dresses. You're like, yay. And whenever Heath Ledger's

there, you're having a great time. And then we go to Batman dealing with the new threat of the Joker, Batman surveilling Harvey Dent, who's Gotham's new district attorney who everybody loves, and who is dating Batman's long term love interest. I don't think they were ever in a relationship, but this lady Rachel, I think it's very rude of him to never talk about the weird disease or accident that she was in that led her to transform from Katie Holmes to Maggie Gyllenhaal. But that also has happened in this movie. They just did a lot of plastic surgery and they're like, you know, you look great, but you look completely different. And she's like, ah, Bruce won't even notice. What if you looked more indie? What if you looked like your character had substance

and then we didn't have to write interesting dialogue for you because you're known for your roles playing well rounded characters and people will think that you're playing one now. So basically it's the movie is Batman. I was trying to put this together. Batman meets Harvey Dent. They seem to hate each other. There's a real frenemies vibe. And then Batman's like, I know Harvey Dent will take over my Batman duties. And then I will retire as Batman. And then I can take his girlfriend. And that's kind of his plan. That's actually kind of the plot. There's some real incel logic happening in Batman's brain. It doesn't matter where she wants to go. No, there's another man. He's in the way. When I remove the other man, then the woman is mine.

No, it is a lot like Ocean's Eleven, I think, where like as an audience member, you're like, well, this woman is torn between two jerks. And one of them I know better. And I'm on the side of the jerk who's the main character in this movie. So sure, I like I find Harvey Dent very I can't imagine wanting to date him. Like what do you think of pre transformation Harvey? Oh, God. No, that's a hard no. The vibe that I got from Harvey Dent in his sort of like pre two face scenes in this was that he would be the kind of guy that you would get drinks with. And he would talk about how like nobody at his job knows what they're doing. That's the one who does. Do you know what I mean? We're like, that's not a vibe that I'm into. He's the loudest and most consistent

in self assured person in a 200 level philosophy class. He like constantly has some platitude to say. Erin Eckhart is very charismatic and other roles. So I know that this is not just him being an uncharismatic person, but lending his abilities to play someone unpleasant. But I don't know, I just was watching him in the early scenes and I was like, yeah, I can see you going completely crazy and just going on a killing spree after suffering facial burns. And I also love how Harvey Dent in Gotham where the ratio of supervillains to citizens is quite high is going around like my girlfriend died. So I get to kill people and it's like you're a district attorney. Like you

of all people should understand that that's not convincing mitigation in a world where most people have lost a girlfriend to a supervillain, I bet. Obviously we talk about like masculinity and where it's broken and this movie has so many overlapping portraits of it at once. It's almost like a taxonomy of like bad masculinity. You know what I mean? Where you're like, oh, you could have the Commissioner Gordon kind of bad masculinity, or you could have the Lucius Fox kind of like dysfunctional masculinity, where you can have the Batman cut. Like there's like so many options for like how to be bad at being a dude. Yeah. Right. So Batman has a plan he's a Batman with a bat plan. He is going to give his Batman duties to the district attorney,

which doesn't make sense. Who outwardly believes in fascism, by the way, and talks about it a lot. Yes, I know. And then they have his girlfriend be like, Harvey, fascism is bad. And he's like whatever. And then they just move on. So Batman has a plan to steal the DA's girlfriend by outsourcing his vigilante duties to more effective prosecution, which I really didn't know was an option for him. So that's his plan. And then there emerges a new supervillain called the Joker. And there is a famous speech given by Michael Cain, who plays Alfred, and who is talking about how a long time ago he was in Burma, which is probably why he doesn't call it Myanmar. And presumably the Brits were attempting to use jewels to bribe local heads of local populations, something like that, like

some kind of colonialist, something, something. But that's not the point. The point is that Alfred was helping to figure out who were these bandits that were stealing these jewels that were going to be used to pay off the locals so that the Brits could do whatever they were trying to do. And he says, you know, Batman, like, I really think you don't understand this criminal that you're reckoning with because some men can't be bullied or bribed or whatever. Some men just want to watch the world burn. That was a bad impression, but I really wanted to try it. And you're like, no, like maybe the bandit was stealing the jewels because he didn't want British colonialists invading his country. And he did have a plan. And you just didn't understand where he was coming from.

And you just assumed that he just wanted to watch the world burn, which is also interesting about the Joker, because he's like, I don't have a plan. I'm an agent of chaos, which people seem to believe. But like, he's very good at planning Heist. He's on the level of Robert De Niro and Heat. It's like ballet. You know what I mean? Like it's like he's like doing Swan Lake, but as Heists or as whatever. Like it's really incredible. It's beautiful. When this movie first came out, I was not enamored in the way I am now of the part where he gets that school bus perfectly out with the other school buses. It's so beautiful. As an adult, you're like, yeah. So basically the Joker claims to have no plan, but basically embarks on this crusade of terrorism.

And he says, for every day, the Batman, which is what we all agree to call him in Nolan's world, for every day the Batman doesn't unveil himself, I will kill another Gothamite. And so he goes after the fake Batman and he kills a judge and he kills the police commissioner, which is how Gordon gets a promotion. Basically, this culminates in a night of events where Harvey Dent has taken the fall for being Batman. Maggie Gyllenhaal, shockingly, doesn't want to be with Bruce Wayne now that he's given up his Batman duties, because she actually gets to decide who she wants to be with. And the Joker kidnaps both Harvey and Maggie, and Batman has to decide who he's going to save. And so he decides to go save Maggie, the Joker apparently knowing that he was going to do this

or just deciding to be, because he's mean, the Joker's mean, he has switched them. So in trying to save Maggie Gyllenhaal, he accidentally saves Harvey Dent. And Maggie just gets blown up, which was the only thing that ultimately was going to be able to happen for her, because she just, I don't know, that movie did not, they were like, we need a woman, but then what? I don't know. And then there's this whole other set piece, which I find really boring, where the Joker has two boats, and he has put a bomb and a button you press to detonate the bomb on each boat, and one has civilians and one has criminals. Ooh, if the people on each boat press the button, they can detonate the other boat. And if they get to midnight without either boat pressing a

button, they're all going to die. And so his plan, I think, is to prove that people are evil, and to psychologically destroy Batman. I hope that it's not lost on our dear listener right now, that the part that you find the most boring is the closest to a sawplot. That's very true. And there are some things I like about how that is executed, but I just, if this movie knew it were a saw kind of movie, it would be a very different movie. And I would have had a very different kind of a time. That is what it's missing is a level of self-awareness. Just like taking joy in the thing that it is, because yeah, and what happens is that in the end, Harvey Dent wakes up, half of his face is spectacularly burnt off. It really is

fantastic looking. I remember just being delighted by how, how all in they went like you can see a whole eyeball. It's great. And then he goes around killing people. And then the Joker kills Maggie Gyllenhaal. And then the people on the boats, none of them press the button because people are good sometimes, which is my personal belief. And then the Joker is just left hanging upside down off of a building for the SWAT team to collect, basically. And he just tells Batman, like, you complete me, and I don't want to kill you. And we balance each other. And Batman's like, I don't care if you're intimacy. Bye. And then there's like this final standoff where, and I didn't realize this until this year where Harvey Dent dies, he gets pushed off a building and dies in a very shadowy and

anticlimactic way. Because I always thought for some reason that they just didn't explain where he ended up because they wanted to keep it open to like do Harvey Dent for the final movie. That was what I assumed for some reason at the time. But he's dead. Batman and Commissioner Gordon are left. And Commissioner Gordon, played by Gary Oldman, who is just fine in this, is like, well, I'm going to give this final speech that really doesn't make sense about how we have to let Batman take the fall for all the murders Harvey Dent committed, because it would demoralize them to know that the district attorney, who citizens of every major American city know what his name is and care about him. If they knew he went on a killing spree, it would demoralize the whole city

forever. And also all of his cases would be thrown out because that's how the law works. And we have to let Batman, who was a folk hero, take the fall for everything and be chased into the night because he can take it. Okay, that was beautiful. That was phenomenal. Thank you. That was hard to do. It also feels like foreshadowing of a bunch of the weird plot nonsense that would show up in later Christopher Nolan movies, most recently, Tenet, right? Where like people are going to see Tenet and they're like, what is it about? I don't know. And Inception is about Joseph Gordon Levitt and Tom Hardy running around an upside down hallways. And it's a lovely action movie that thinks it's about stuff. And I'm like, I don't care about the stuff. Sure. Interstellar, similar,

sort of like, what is, huh? What? When a dude who doesn't like to talk about feelings wants to make a movie about love, he's like, no, it's about space. Like, okay, okay. Yeah. That's what the ideology feels like it comes from. The collection of things you described described in the media that I know about in the movies, the movies of his that I've seen, which is all of them minus Tenet feels like a person who is very much under the belief that they are saying a series of layered interesting things in a highly entertaining way. And that is the origin of their ideology, not an ideology. And they get rewarded for it again and again. And like his movies really are, I think they're all like that, the sort of joy in and being hard to follow. And like, I know I'm just an

American roux, but like, I think speed is the perfect action movie, because it's three movies and one, there are real world stakes. And you basically always know why people are doing what they're doing. Like mostly during this movie, during the dark night, I'm like, why are we doing this? I don't really know, but it's fun to watch. So I've watched this movie a lot of times, I really enjoy this movie. This was the first time that I noticed how much sort of ridiculous, like fast and the furious level. Like there's this point at which they're in a fight in a parking garage. It's within the first like 20 or 30 minutes. They're clearly on the like, I don't know, fifth or 10th floor of this parking structure. And the Batmobile just like drives in through

the wall, like their street outside, like what? And that seems also amazing, because the fake Batman is there. And he's like, why are you different from me? And Batman's like, because I'm not wearing hockey bats. And then he drives the Batmobile away. And you're like, I appreciate that he knows that the only reason he's Batman is because he's rich. It also feels like it's a person who had 150% of the great ideas that could possibly rest in a movie and have breathing room. And like it's been commented on a thousand times about how the two face plot just feels like it's literally just like a 45 minutes that they attached at the end of another movie and didn't flesh it out totally. But yeah, one of my favorite comic book movies is Logan. And I think the reason

for that is someone was like, there's so many cool things that happen in superhero movies. What if we gave the theme some space to breathe over the course of two hours and gave you, you know, places to approach these things? I was like, because so there are maybe five cool things that happen every five minutes in this movie to the point where it's so disoriented. And sounds great, though. It sounds, the sound is, just guess, the sound is amazing. I was really appreciating it this time. Like I think the music is great. Everyone always talks about that. I do give Hans Zimmer a hard time because I think repetitive growling is like easy to use to stress out if you were, but like, whatever. But like the sound design, I think is really amazing in this.

It's phenomenal. Everything sounds like clicking and clanking and crunching of the stuff that he uses, right? Like all of his little like gadgetry stuff. They do a great job of mic'ing up like when the like, however they did the sound on the transformation of the Batmobile, I was like, I want that sound as like my text tone. Like it's just so great. It feels very embodied. I was thinking about the difference in place between the different Batman directors and how Tim Burton's thing is kind of, I want to say like WPA Detroit look where they have these huge like statues of workers and just very gothic and kind of out of time, even though they're using 90s technology, but I feel like like this Batman takes place. And what I can only describe is

like a very clean Chicago. Yeah, I think that that's right. And like without color, like without pretty graffiti or anything, it's just all beige and steel. Yeah, clean Chicago where it's always nighttime. It's never the day. I hope you don't like the sun. They're like, we mean it literally. It's a dark night. It is throughout start to finish in case you didn't get the two layers of meaning happen. Okay, so we said at the beginning that there are just an amazing amount of layers of the things that we typically talk about in the show, but even more on the nose. I didn't realize how much the just literal dad theme was throughout this movie. Like Albert is Batman's dad, Batman's the city's dad, Gordon's also the city's dad. We have Dent trying to be the city's dad,

and it not really working out. There's a series of very Bush era conversations around what you have to do about liberty and personal freedom as a means of keeping people safe and what people's expectations are and like what the trades are. What does this movie have to say about paternalistic responsibility? You're totally right. Harvey Dent is like damaged dad, damaged wannabe dad who never quite makes it happen. Lucius Fox, who is Morgan Freeman's character is sort of like company man, principal, no frills dad, dad who's not mad at you, but he is disappointed, competent dad. And it's kind of the dad of the corporation too. You're like, he's taking care of it. It's fine. Totally. The Joker, I think is like when an abused child grows up, maladaptive. The thing that I

walked away from that movie feeling like this time around was, oh, all of those are failed. None of those actually function. Even the one that provides the movie's resolution doesn't feel especially functional, right? Like, it doesn't resolve all of these tensions around, as you were saying, like sort of Bush era anxieties around like the Patriot Act and all that sort of stuff, feels like it looms very large in this movie. And no one really solves it. It does feel sort of like an oops, all dads. Just like, oh, everybody's a dad. Also, because there are no women, there's one, there's one lady. I hope you like that one lady. And then there she goes. She's basically there exclusively to be a grief vehicle so that we can then see

messy grief dad. Right. She's a plot device more than like a person. Yeah. The only other place we see women is on Bruce's arm and there's always several at one time. Oh, right. Prima ballerinas. This is a weird scene where they're on the yacht with the ballerinas to get the alibi because like, first of all, I feel like ballerinas are supposed to avoid getting tan lines. Bruce seems uninterested in them. Like maybe he was at some other point, but this man doesn't have sex. No, he does not. Yeah. That's the thing. Like his love interest is a woman who rejected him three years ago or something like that. Yeah. And I do appreciate that, that Batman is like overtly wounded in that way and that we see that. But then Alfred also doesn't want to put

suntan lotion on the ballerinas. And you're like, does this whole movie not want to put suntan lotion on a ballerina? And can we talk about why the ballerinas are there? The ballerinas are there because Harvey was going to take his new girlfriend, who's Batman's love interest, to the ballet and Batman's power move as Bruce Wayne was to invite the entire ballet on his yacht so they could hang out and then Harvey and girlfriend could not see the ballet. Because then maybe that'll stop them from having sex for, for just that one night. This movie does end with a bit of a thesis. It ends just with a big hug around Bush era politics. Like this movie loves all of the dads, acknowledge that some shenanigans need to happen under the

radar as a means of upholding liberty and freedom, which is the whole Bush thing. And we hear of Batman who is inexplicably taking the fall. Because everyone's going to feel good about that, about Batman being a murderer. Because everyone will feel let down. It's nuts. But Gordon the dad explains to his son why Batman the dad had to do this for the city. And he says, Batman is the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one they need right now because he can take it. He's not a hero. He's a silent guardian, a watchful protector, a dark knight, which is a dad explaining why he's a martyr. I don't know if Christopher Nolan is a dad. Yeah, he is. Okay, his thought about being a dad is like, you are a martyr, people are going to

shit on you. You have to break the rules in order to keep everything going. Like if there are enemies at the gate, he says this in the movie, if there are enemies at the gates, you have to suspend democracy, even though it's pointed out that what happens after democracy is suspended is suspended forever. Well, the lady who said that got blown up. So who cares? Sounds like a loser. At the end of the movie, it says, yeah, well, you know, sometimes you just get a torture a couple of people and kill about 300, 400,000. I could talk for an hour about what does it mean when Commissioner Gordon says he's the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now? Like, what does that mean? I don't know what that means. It's movie dialogue is what it is.

Yeah, it's code for we need to wrap this puppy up. Did Nolan write this? Was it like him and his brother or something? He co-wrote it, yeah. That's something written by a man who felt misunderstood as an artist for a long time. That's something that like a literal 90s indie film guy wrote. He's like, I put this movie out and it's what people need, but not right now. Right. And it's like, no, it's what people need right now. It's also sort of Christopher Nolan's whole MO, which is like, if you don't get it, that's on you. If you don't like it, that's because you don't get it is sort of the vibe of all of these movies, right? Of inception and tenant and all of those sorts of like projects and interstellar,

all of it, right? Is sort of this like, hey, man, I made this really complicated thing that's about what's in my soul. If you're not on board with that, then like, that just means you just like haven't ascended to this level yet tends to be sort of like the culture around it, whether or not that's his actual intention. So I think I'm especially confused in this movie by the phrase, he's the hero Gotham deserves. Because maybe this wasn't the intention, but I feel as if this movie kind of hates Gothamites. Yes. Yes. And if it doesn't hate them, it is just utterly indifferent to them. Like I have no idea what these people are like. I was actually wondering, I was like, is there a Gotham accent? Or did a lot of people relocate from

New York, especially if they're gangsters? Oh my God. It feels like it hates Gothamites, but it particularly feels like it hates Gotham government. This is like such a deeply, deeply, anti government movie, right? Yes. Harvey Dent is like the one competent person, and he's like not great. And then he becomes a murderer, but we don't talk about it. The courts are overloaded, cops are sort of hapless, right? Like even on the boats, right? Even when the boats are sort of trying to decide whether or not to blow each other up, they try to vote and it doesn't really work on like whether or not they should blow up the other boat, right? Like it's just like one failure after another of government and it feels like

deeply, deeply libertarian to me. Yeah. And it also makes sense that Batman would be so punished for believing that he could hand off his duties to the DA, which it makes no sense. Like I just have to highlight how little sense this makes that like it is not the district attorney's job to like beat people up in parking lots, but I think we're living in a, I don't know, maybe in America, people do think that that's what their job is metaphorically. And then he's punished for that because the movie is like, you thought an elected official could take care of crime. No, only throwing Eric Roberts off of a fire escape will work. So here's the thing that I'm curious about. They're definitely all of these like very American

Bush era post September 11th kind of anxieties that are getting processed in this movie. Yeah. The other thing that's getting processed in this movie and what I think is a really interesting way is what is the origin story of psychopathy, right? Which is sort of like what we're talking about when we're talking about the Joker and what we're talking about when we're talking about a number of characters in this movie. This shows up in a couple of different ways, right? I think probably the biggest one is the explanations for the Joker scar, the sort of trademark scars that he has that sort of extend his mouth into this big creepy grin that he gives different answers two times. And then the third time Batman just like pushes him off a roof or whatever.

Remember what he does, but Batman's just like, I don't care. I really appreciate that this movie does not actually give you answers to that. And when it does, they are unsatisfying. I think that the origin story of Harvey Dent is an unsatisfying origin story. Because that's us watching an Oregon story happen and you're just like, okay. I just appreciate that this movie deals with sort of the idea of this menacing character and it's just like, yeah, we don't actually know where this guy comes from. We don't know his background. We just know that he's here and we got to figure out what to do. That feels like a more honest answer than we get from a lot of movies that sort of tangle with the same idea of sort of like where does quote unquote evil come from,

where does quote unquote psychopaths come from? It feels more honest to me to be like, we don't actually know. And that's the unsettling thing. So I appreciate that part, but I'm curious about how that bit about the scars, the sort of explanation of the scars landed for you to even watching it after many times and knowing that the first time you hear the story, it's going to be contradicted by the next one. There's still very powerful stories. And I think they really work. It also reminds me of Henry Portrait of a serial killer, another great Chicago film where we have, you know, our Henry serial killer who also tells multiple mutually exclusive accounts of, you know, just how did he kill his mama and why is he

the way that he is? And I don't think we actually want to know why people do awful things because the answer is often like, well, we didn't have any funding for seeing if children are being abused in the home or it wasn't a crime at the time. I was actually reading about mommy dearest. And there's a story about like Christina Crawford trying to basically escape when, you know, Joan Crawford would like try to strangle her and stuff and a cop saying to her like, well, you just got to stick it out until you're 18, sweetie, because if you get in trouble again, they'll lock you up and your mom's allowed to strangle you if she wants. It's different when you're an adult, but not now. Bye. If we want to talk about improving society and creating

the bigger government in some ways to deal with those problems, we could, but like, we love having a fake answer because like his girlfriend died. I think Harvey's resilience was the problem. Yes, that mommy dearest story feels reminiscent of the Jeffrey Dahmer escape story. Yeah, one of the folks that he picked up two people, two people. Did two people get away? Yeah. And the second guy who escaped the police were actually like, this seems suspicious. But the first victim who escaped, yeah, he found two, two young black women or teenage girls who kind of encountered him and hailed down the police and the police took him back to Dahmer's house. And we're like, well, it's really weird. This is a weird situation, but we don't

know what gays are like. This is probably it. Yeah, totally. And basically that was Dahmer's explanation, right? Was he was like, oh, we're gay. And it's like a gay thing. And they were like, all right, bye. This is what this is what gays do. They chase their, their very young looking, very drugged seeming sexual partners into the street naked while wearing handcuffs. It's a gay thing. Totally. And it's much easier to have a conversation that's just like, I don't know, he's crazy than to go, okay, actually, we had like some really precise and serious, like failures in law enforcement. And this is actually a problem of having straight people in charge of gay people without really being comfortable enough to be around gay people.

Yeah. And then that like one of the cops who, who helped return one of Dahmer's victims to him, who then, you know, obviously the obvious consequences of that then happened immediately. That guy, I think last summer there was a story that he was president of the police union or had been for a long time in Milwaukee. Yeah. He got like a decorated retirement and he was a police officer in Kenosha right after the Kenosha protests. Well, in the words of Stevie Nicks, lightning strikes maybe once, maybe twice. And it all comes down to you. And ultimately, what that I think reveals is that like, these questions of individual evil or individual behavior or whatever are actually less important than like, if we had a society that took care of

people who had problems, then like their problems would be less of a problem. And also I feel as if like in the same way that I love how the saw movies kind of allow you like never attempt overtly to stop you from just coming up with the interpretation that John Kramer had no plan at any time. And it was just a man dying of a frontal lobe tumor, which notably impact your decision making skills. We're allowed to watch this trilogy and be like, so Batman set up shop in a city that was definitely struggling, but was also, you know, doing okay, like hanging on. And he basically in a few short years turned it into a police state. Right. I have a hard time extracting these movies from Bush anything.

And this came out in 2008. So this is like a valedictory look back at the past eight years. I don't know when it was written in the context of Obama's ascent, but like dent is Obama in a lot of ways. So it's hard to extract those things. But like there are on the reads about what Aubrey just said, where it's like the origin story of the Joker changes. I don't think Christopher Nolan is smart enough to have been making these statements and I'm reverse putting them on, but like the origin story for the reason to go into Iraq changed several times, right? Like the origin story for that evil changed. It changed four times in the course of three months in public and people were just like, all right, I guess we're just doing this.

So to create that monster, like it has that overlap there, which is particularly interesting. And like I was probably like anyone who from the get go was like, this is a bad idea was always confused why that didn't rattle some more cages, but it didn't rattle more cages because of a thing that the Joker says in this movie, like a lot of the things that the Joker says in this movie, you can accidentally become a person who takes it too seriously and thinks that he's saying some good shit like people do about like Thanos in the Marvel movies. He says some correct things and one of the correct things he says is essentially like people will go along with anything as long as it's going to plan, even if the plan is horrible.

The Joker, sorry that I'm making so many Marvel connections, but also I've been really nerdy into Norse mythology. Like the Joker is the Loki character in this too, because like the Joker is not necessarily good or bad. He is just an agent of chaos who goes around and reflects to people what they are in one way or another. And he is maybe like in our, in our co-libertarian in this movie, but he's correct in saying like people will do anything as long as it seems like it's kind of part of the structure. So like let's go along and he's kind of wrong as we see portrayed in this movie. Let's go along and like fuck up the structure a little bit and see how people act. And this is the thing we talked about in this episode is like, you know, as soon as we get into

horror franchises where we're describing the person's backstory, I'm out. I'm just not interested anymore. It is, I don't need to know more about Michael Myers third cousin. I don't need to know it. And so I like that what this does is exactly as I'm pre pointed out is like, it gives you a couple of origin stories that's like, these might be true. They might not be true. It doesn't fucking matter. Isn't this guy wild? And I don't want to, uh, in any of the criticism I've offered overlook the fact that like this Joker is so fun. He's so fun. And he's funny. Like the Joker often because he dresses like a clown. He's like, I don't have to be funny. And it's like, okay, whatever. But like this guy is like, the clown look is muted. So I'm just going

to be a funny guy. Well, just the moment of him like, uh, turning around in the hospital dressed as a candy straper exquisite. And the fact that they managed to do that without making it like a, like super transphobic, like man in a dress moment. I was like, good work. Look at you. You did it. You avoided the landmines. Cheers team. Yeah. And he's like, he's like coordinated in a fun way. Like his, like his outfit is great. Oh yeah. I love the line. Like when they have him at the station, we have a shot of like all the knives he somehow had in his pockets or just on his person getting lined up. And they're like, it's very much like when John Doe gets taken in and seven, they're like all his clothes are custom made and nothing in his pockets, but knives and lint.

I will say while we're talking about delightful bad acting, I mean, not like, not like bad, whatever, acting like a bad guy, delightful bad behavior. I will say that around the release of this movie is when we got that release of the recording of Christian Bale unloading on the sound or the director photography. Oh yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Do you guys remember this moment? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I remember this happening and I remember not even listening to it because I was like, I know, I believe, I appreciate that he's doing bad stuff and he has anger issues and I don't support that, but also like I want to be able to keep emotionally relying on newsies and this is going to make it harder for me. So I guess kind of compartmentalized it, but I would love

to hear about it now. I feel like I'm strong enough. Fair as a person who just does not enjoy shouting out of anger. Always makes me feel real skittish. I don't enjoy it. It is hard to listen to, but also it is very funny to me. So like it's not a funny instance. He's being awful. I just want to be incredibly clear about that. But the way that he's being awful is very funny to me. He is yelling in a way that would be immature for a grade schooler where he just goes, Oh, good, good for you. Like just like this like dripping with sarcasm, weirdness. And he goes, like, Oh, look at you. You're just going on like what is happening? So it's very funny to me to think about this like very well respected actor who's at the top of his field, a grown man,

award winning and all of these ways going to another adult man. Which this movie could have had more of honestly. Like I mean, I think one of Batman's problems is that he's never allowed to be funny and like never in his life will he have an adventure where he has to or gets to be funny. Although I'd love to hear about when that happens or comes close to happening in comic book plots. The funniest thing he says he and Alfred are going up some elevator thing. And Alfred says like something like I'm going to go to jail for being an accomplice and Wayne says accomplice. I'm going to tell them this was all your idea. And it's oddly funny for how weirdly joyless this man is the entire time this man whose entire

existence is defined by being angry that his parents died when he was 10 years old and that his girlfriend from three years ago is now with another person. I also wonder you guys have done a couple more Batman movies in this and it's been a minute since I've seen the ones that precede the Nolan trilogy. Is this the origin of the Batman voice? The like like that voice? They had it in Batman Begins and I'm and Keaton's definitely doing some kind of a voice. But this is this is a hang up I have about the Nolan Batman. I'm incredibly hard on Christian Bale in this role. I think partly because he's publicly ashamed of having been in newsies. And I'm like newsies was better than this and you sounded less silly in it. I have to say

like I would rather he sang everything than do that Batman voice that he does because like it never works for me. It's never not distracting. The whole time I'm just like Bruce like are you going to are you going to get polyps or what? Yeah well and then in the next film they graduate to the Bane voice which is like even more bonkers. I do love the Bane voice. Yeah and I love how it's just like a Sean Connery basically but it's something else. They really should have had a bit where someone hears that man talk for the first time and just laughs at them. Imagine being a cop and there's this man doing all this shit and they're just talking like this and you're like what the fuck did you just say to me? It's such a bonkers voice and especially in lines like

because I'm not wearing hockey pants. Right like where you're like what? That voice doesn't say hockey pants. You seem like a really cool guy who should be doing this like I also think like this movie does really casting that really does a good job of making the script seem stronger than it is like I would watch Morgan Freeman grocery shop for about an hour and I would have a great time and like I don't think that Alfred in this really I could not say what kind of a person he is. He's witty. He's funny and he just is completely and utterly loyal to Bruce and that's really all I know. I guess he seems like he has more of a character in this because Michael Cain is so lovely to watch and just feels just has a dimensional presence I feel like. Yeah totally agreed. There was like

not quite enough Michael Cain for me. There was not quite enough Morgan Freeman's character for me. This is a really fascinating portrait of like a company man. Yes. Right is sort of the Morgan Freeman kind of vibe. He's definitely like the most competent person. Yes. In this movie. Do you know what I mean? Just in terms of like getting things done and knowing how to do things and being a go to like it's very true that he is sort of like straight up knows how to run things and like just handles things. That moment with the guy who wants to blackmail Bruce Wayne is a great moment of Lucius just being like oh sweetie no honey. Yes. There should be a Lucius show because I feel as if he's sort of like the casino manager figure of it all like he's the guy who has to

go between and like get this technology like it has to be harder than what we're seeing. Every one who is in kind of a dad-ish role in this movie and you know taking out taking out the bush context just about responsibility there is a lot of commentary about how there's stuff that has to happen above board and then there's stuff that has to happen below board. Like starting with the bank that gets robbed is a bank yes but it's also a mob bank. Everything has a layer of like what's happening above the surface and what's happening below the surface. What's the movie say about responsibility? It's like you have to do stuff above board and have character but also you have to have like a secret R&D department in your corporation where you can privately

develop weaponry. Like what is it what does it have a statement accidentally? I mean I think its statement is but ultimately you gotta crack a few eggs if you want to make an omelette right. Like that seems to be sort of the vibe of this movie is like look nobody likes surveillance but we're gonna do it if it gets our guy. Yes. It definitely feels like very steeped in that kind of like Guantanamo debate. Interestingly came out before the Snowden leaks right like several years before all of the NSA stuff which feels really fascinating to me. Because that was under Obama that we found that out yeah under under Harvey um Harvey whole face. This idea that you were like covering your bases by sort of debating or seeming to debate the topic

and then being like but of course we have to surveil everyone and it's fine because Morgan Freeman is doing it and who would you feel better about surveilling you? No one. The end you know that feels very early law in order to me where they kind of especially in like the early season episodes which are the ones closest to my heart because they're clumsy and weird and they have some kind of transparent like the cops on the street will be debating this concept very openly. If like if someone is abused does that give them the right to kill their abuser? Maybe and then at the end they're like no it's not okay at all. The end and you're like well I guess they entertain the idea and it's like did they entertain it or attempt to sort of trouble your conceptions significantly or

was this sort of like a symbolic offering? It didn't strike me just until just now. Law in order is just unrealistically 90% a bunch of cops talking about the philosophical rationale for the things that they do. Like it's their conversation that they would be having at the office. I'm sure that's what they do yeah. Oh the first like four seasons of law and order SPU are just like Christopher Maloney being like I'm a Catholic. Here's what I think where you're just like what? It's like what if we could combine dragnet with the McLaughlin group? And then I see is just there to ask like exposition questions but not really have opinion. Yeah Marisa Cargatay gets to be like and I'm a woman. As we're talking about this I'm realizing the degree to which Jack McCoy the

Sam Hatterson character is Batman. Yeah. Like he is the Batman of that crew which is just like I don't care I'm gonna do what needs to be done you're not gonna always like it but here we are. He's a bad lawyer man like he's like the prosecutorial version of Perry Mason like he does not have a strategy. I don't think he really plans stuff out he just you know like 20 minutes before court shot a Scotch get in there intimidate some people you know bark about morals point and then you know eventually they take a deal right yeah like just about any cop show or law enforcement show including the sinner which we were talking about earlier off mic it is this like deep willingness to believe that actually people who are in law enforcement in

any capacity are in it to find the real answers and the real people who did the really bad things that it's like well and the system may be corrupt but they are not and like we put our faith in the individual Batman's Oregon story is that he originally you know was a detective that has been I think what he is this entire time like that systems aren't the answer and that the lone man the lone detective the lone vigilante like the point is that he's doing it by himself and there's a line that I find so interesting when he's talking about giving his jobs to Harvey and Alfred's like I think he says something about like what about the fake Batman's like what about that and Batman's like you know that's not what I meant when I said I wanted to inspire

people and I was like well if people are inspired to dress like you and beat up criminals like you and be vigilantes like you like so did you want to inspire them less like and I feel like he's really saying like no but I want to do it what did cosplayers ever do to you man yeah there's something especially dark about kind of superhero movie director who's seeming to dislike fans and it's like I don't know what side you think your budget is buttered on sweetie did either of you see the walking phoenix joker I did not and I'm curious about how it compares because like I yeah I was just like I don't care about the joker as a character that much and I I love Heath Lecture as the joker but I don't know I think and this is another kind of half-life of this movie

thing too I'm very creeped out by the fact that we had a shooting at the premiere of The Dark Knight Rises where the gunman was inspired by some joker iteration was doing a joker kind of a thing and I think the feeling that a lot of people had anticipating the Joaquin Phoenix Joker movie was like it's gonna inspire incels and mass shootings and blah blah blah and then people were like no it's not about that I haven't seen it so I don't know but I'm just like well I do think it's reasonable which it's just to fear like not maybe the content of the movie so much as what happened at the last premiere of a Nolan Batman which really I remember like going to see because my boyfriend at the time was a comic book guy and so we went to a lot of midnight premieres or releases

of things and so we went and then like walked home and I remember I was like reading the news at 3 30 in the morning and reading about just you know this massacre in Colorado that had just happened to people exactly like us who just wanted to watch a movie exactly like us just like Gothamite plebeians just wanted to see some cool stuff happen for three hours it feels like the two sort of biggest sort of rival joker performances there's also the Jared Leto one but that one no one seems to want to defend that's right that's exactly right so I was just curious about how you all felt about those two I mean like the thing that I think is both interesting and profoundly uninteresting about the Joaquin Phoenix Joker movie so I went to see it like opening weekend

at a theater in East County in Portland and there were two kevlared up cops at the entrance to the theater like so to your point about sort of this crime right so to your point about this mass shooting that fear was alive and well enough in Portland Oregon which in a Portland Oregon movie theater which feels like maybe one of the sleepiest places to be yeah they had deployed like again not security like cops like cops were at the movie theater which is just real wild I mean the thing about the Joaquin Phoenix Joker movie that stayed with me was I was like this is the origin story that we don't get in the dark night us not getting that origin story is I think part of why I find this movie so satisfying you don't get to know where this guy comes from

and also the Joaquin Phoenix one it's like he's got a real frigid mother and people are mean to women but wherever you're just like okay yeah let's blame a series of women I felt like with that movie like I would have a responsibility to feel a certain way and weigh in on the movie when I watched America's dialogue about it which I think was you know important or whatever but like sometimes you're like is this actually important like is this conversation that's happening about this like is anything happening as a result there's like people are just like angry and yelling and freaking out and like do I have to feel responsible with an opinion of a movie by the guy who made road trip about the Joker like I can't deal with it

people don't kill people Alex Todd Phillips movies kill people I was like I can't have this I guess what's spooky about that initial crime and what held me back from going to see the Joker aside from the fact that it seemed kind of serious and I really am somewhat allergic to serious superhero movies because we're talking about that today yeah there's also this thing of just like it happened in Colorado but it also happened in a movie theater and there's something about being in a movie theater where it's like you're not where you are you're in a movie theater and like your senses are blocked out and we're now in a moment where we're kind of realizing that like literally everything we used to do was like brave and

slutty and amazing I grew up watching the cellulite closet over and over again because IFC was playing it a lot when I was in eighth grade and Susan Sarandon has an amazing moment in that where she's talking about like well movies you know they're this incredibly vulnerable experience because you go into a room and they turn the lights out and then you know you are watching something that transports you to you know your dreams and your fears and just I can't believe it's something that we just used to do all the time and not even think about but it's like you're surrendering yourself to a collective dream with a group of strangers that you're agreeing to implicitly trust and we had to have that conversation and people had to be like I'm

afraid to see a Todd Phillips movie the problem is that we're living in a country without sufficient gun control that like people don't feel safe going to see a movie like this is the kind of thing I feel like I would grow up being taught about like you know some other small country that we're supposed to pity like that's how they live and it's like hey it's us we're doing it that must have looked from the outside nuts that like we were having a heated conversation about a Todd Phillips movie because we feel so powerless about doing anything surrounding Todd Phillips movies and like the text of the movie and like does it support violence or does it not and it's like in a just society Todd Phillips could make whatever stupid movie he wants to and we wouldn't

have to worry about it inspiring criminals who then were able to just go out and get whatever tools they wanted without any pushback people should be allowed to make weird art without people being able to do it themselves at home quite so easily like I would another thing about this movie about the dark night out of the many movies we've discussed here today is that like speaking of the sound design in it like the sound of guns in this movie is like there's a lot of gun sound and it's very effective I feel like and that's just I don't know if we would do that today I don't think we should do that today in a movie that is for entertaining people it does feel like there are not many movies particularly blockbusters and particularly blockbusters that remain people

really continue to like this movie right like this continues to be like a mainstay of USA network on a sunday and there are just not many movies that have this kind of like real world violence attached to them and for it to continue to sort of make its way through without necessarily being hampered by that in people's minds is really wild to me I'm curious about we're sort of talking about sort of broadly the feelings about this movie I'm curious about how you two feel about it what's your relationship to this movie I definitely like it like I definitely if this were on tv I would be like I will watch this you know and when I saw it in the theater I was 19 or 20 and I was like that was great I loved it it seemed to have themes I like it when an action

movie seems to have themes I feel smart great and then coming back to it you know in the past few years I've sort of just been delighted to return to the Nolan Batman movies and put them in conversation with the other Batman movies and be like these movies are like they think they have this perspective which I think is really silly like I think if you break down the alleged philosophies of all of these they don't make any sense but also they perfectly document like the America in which I was a young adult and like that didn't make sense either like I just feel like they're these in a way that nothing else has been because there were so many movies like you know like Siriana we talked about on the show recently or like movies about the Iraq war that like

people just don't remember anymore this one I do think just sort of distills that time and what we believed or felt we had to believe so I remember seeing in the theater and being like stoked about a lot of things in it like just seeing the first clown mask in the movie yeah I think it treated I mean obviously like Heath Ledger treated the Joker so beautifully in this movie but I think the movie is the best tribute to the Joker in film form for sure I haven't seen the Joker movie that you just talked about but like it honors the spirit in a really interesting way while speaking to a lot of stuff that was happening in in that particular moment and it is a lot of fun like outside of the convoluted elements to it I think it's like a lot of fun for such a dower

movie like there's so many things I do like about this movie and I love what is beautifully parodied in Lego Batman which we're going to do at some point in the show is showing the codependent relationship between the Joker and Batman yes that happens so quickly that illustrates two fucked up men who just need each other in order to have any reason or rationale like it's beautiful and I remember being in the theater thinking this part this is so fun to the point where I was so fucking disappointed when we had to spend another 45 minutes on a sequel that they tried to cram into Aubrey you said you watched this movie a lot what is your take on it so I have a real penchant for action movies regardless of their quality yeah the best

action movie is a 6.1 on IMDB that's the sweet spot the greatest so I will say I went through a long phase in my 20s in particular of going to see every new Liam Neeson movie that came out every new Nick Cage movie that came out just like one a year for about 10 years there right oh yeah so this has like all of the payoff I would say that this has all of the payoff of like that I'm looking for in an action movie which is like chases and punching and one-liners and Morgan Freeman for some reason do you know what I mean I'm just like it's all there I'm getting everything I need out of this it scratches similar itches for me as like a Bond movie does yeah which is just like oh you just made this thing that has a bunch of sort of like doodly kind of Christopher Nolany

like it's really complicated kind of stuff to it but also hits all the high notes of like all of the payoffs of the beating up of the crime fighting of the blah blah blah all of those sorts of things are there I will also say this was a movie like I am a person who is off and on at different points of my life profoundly anxious or profoundly depressed and constantly trying to convince people around me that the world is darker than they think it is so this was a movie where I was like guys see I was right all along. Aubrey do you know the question we typically ask at the end of the show and if you do would you ask it of the group yes who's the daddy everybody who's the daddy of the dark night I mean again I feel like this is like oops all daddies yeah

oh yeah let's let's look at our candidates here okay so we have Commissioner Gordon about whom very little can be said by me we have Batman himself we have Alfred we have Lucius Fox we have a lot of like also random side guys we have Eric Roberts as a gangster which I always appreciate we have Anthony Michael Hall as the news we have the mayor who's just a random hottie whose name I forget oh Nestor Carbonell the man born wearing eyeliner and then we have the Joker okay for me personally the Joker is the daddy because something I feel like we all need to talk about more as a society is that the Joker literally says to Batman you complete me that's beautiful like he knows what his deal is nobody else knows what their deal is I'll also love when

you know he proposes to kill the Batman and the various gangsters who he has assembled is like why didn't you do it already why are you telling us about it he's like if you're good at something never do it for free yeah totally that is a fantastic lesson yeah and guess and the Joker is like I don't care what his backstory is he doesn't need a backstory because he has a coherent presence now he's he wants to kill the Batman and he got some scars somehow and he feels it necessary to wear a lot of makeup and they're like war paint and it's like no I think we can just call it makeup makeup is fine and it's really like this is a story about Batman having a chance at intimacy and pushing it away Batman wants Maggie Gyllenhaal to come you know live

with Bruce Wayne and be his love and who even knows what their relationship would involve because it's not like either of them have hobbies but really like he isn't Bruce Wayne he's Batman and the Joker wants Batman and he wants them to just torment each other until the end of time and they shouldn't be stunned that Aubrey what's your take so like on the movie's terms right like if I'm thinking about sort of the movie itself I think this movie doesn't exist without the Joker like it just doesn't if it's Batman versus this sort of like crime syndicate who cares I don't know who cares truly who cares I think in my heart of hearts I kind of feel like it's Lucius Fox I'm so fascinated by that character and I need like I think Sarah you mentioned earlier like

they should have a Lucius Fox spinoff move like yeah I would watch the shit out of a Lucius Fox spinoff movie yeah yeah I agree with Aubrey's take I mean I agree with yours that you can take too Sarah but my daddy would be Lucius for all these reasons I just want to know how he was approached initially like I want to know that conversation was like did he show promise and he was promoted in this arena like did he have a special relationship with Bruce's dad like what I don't really want to know I'm glad that I don't know but if I had to learn more about anybody I'd want to know about this guy in particular he's the only person also who has any charisma Alfred's charming Alfred is charming but like is just Alfred he's toning it down yeah my impression of Alfred

is the impression of Alfred from the trip over time it's just become the caricature of itself so I'll take I'll take Lucius I agree so to maybe connect this I feel like superhero movies like are often an excuse for like men to have relationships with each other which is also why I love Heist movies like A you get to watch people do teamwork which is amazing and also I think war like these movies where typically men there's a large group of them they have to do something together and have a shared goal and it's often like you know war or killing or can we take a leaf from like the British comedy playbook and just have like a movie about Bruce Wayne and Alfred like on a long road trip together like what if they had to go to Arizona to get that plane

I would love that so much can you just tell us how you would like people to find you when they're done listening sure you can find me at on Twitter and Instagram at your fat friend that's why our fat friend you can find me at yourfatfriend.com why oh you are a fat friend just to make it confusing you can read my book what we don't talk about when we talk about fat which is out now and you can listen to maintenance phase if you want to hear about dr Oz being a real story of some squandered talent a real wicked witch if you will of the west that's right well when he actually came and when the the wicked witch of the east got crushed under that house he came and he gave her some green coffee extract and she perked right up so that's it for this episode

of wire dads thank you so much to Aubrey Gordon of course of maintenance phase and the author of what we don't talk about when we talk about fat it was truly truly a delight to talk about this movie with Aubrey we had the very very best time thank you so much for listening thank you to Carolyn Kendrick who produces the show it makes the show sound great and produces music for the show is also our music director you can hear Carolyn's EP tear things apart by looking up Carolyn Kendrick she's at Carolyn Kendrick dot com and on you know twitter and instagram and the places that people who make music typically are we are on twitter and instagram as well also at patreon in the coming weeks we have clueless we have the lord of the rings movies we

have the shining what else is coming up here we have maryl's wedding so you're in for some treats and we look forward to sharing them with you soon all right that's it for now thank you you