An Evening with James Bond and Bruce Wayne

Over the weekend, I had the pleasure of watching the movie Skyfall again, which I had seen previously in theaters over the summer. Afterwards, I made a fairly obvious but for some reason untold observation: Skyfall and The Dark Knight are the same movie.

Before I continue, let me make it clear that I think both movies are fantastic, and they are among my favorite films. I am not attacking either of them, or in any way accusing one of plagiarizing the other. But the fact is, the characters, themes, imagery, and even dialogue, is so similar that it is hard to ignore.

Now, maybe I am just having a false revelation here. Maybe all movies in this genre have the same general structure and I just never noticed. But that can't be, because for one thing, both of these movies are instant classics; they seemingly take what we already know and do something different and awesome with it.

James Bond/007 is obviously Bruce Wayne/Batman. Both are orphans who come from money, but are set on their life course by the tragic events surrounding their parents' deaths. They run off at an early age and are taken in and trained to be deadly weapons (in Skyfall, M hints at this during a conversation with Bond. In The Dark Knight, it is expounded in the prequel, Batman Begins). In a way, both of them develop dual identities from their experiences in order to hide the pain of their childhood. Bruce Wayne turns his inner fears into his outward strength, by creating the Batman. While there is an external struggle of Batman trying to be the hero, Bruce Wayne is in fact, the man bogged down by his demons. He is human, and even though he believes the Batman is a necessity, he yearns to take off the mask, and pursue a life with Rachel.  Likewise, 007 is a role James Bond must play in order to be the hero, but over the course of the movie we see that his status as the poster child for MI6 is taking a significant mental and physical toll on him.

Silva, Skyfall's villain is pretty much the Joker, with less makeup. Both of them are bad guys the likes of which no one has really seen before. Gotham, a city constantly dealing with mobsters and internal corruption, is caught off guard by the lunatic Joker, only interested in chaos and misery. MI6 is unprepared for the high-tech assault by Silva. Both villains represent the antithesis to the hero. Silva was, like Bond, an agent at MI6. He points out that he and Bond are victims of M's mother-like control over them, but that they are survivors—the two remaining rats in the barrel, as he puts it. He also warns that eventually M will turn against Bond, just as she did with him. In The Dark Knight, the Joker gives Batman a similar piece of advice: "To them you're just a freak, like me. They need you right now, but when they don't, they'll cast you out. Like a leper." He insists that Batman's talents are wasted on his commitment to justice and his inability to take a life. The Joker targets Harvey Dent, in the hopes of turning 'Gotham's white knight' in a villain. Silva wants to destroy M's reputation and villainize her before the rest of England's government. Both of them are successful. Even their methods are sort of equal and opposite. The Joker believes in low-tech terrorism; he repeats how much damage one can do with dynamite, gasoline and bullets. He threatens to kill more Gothamites each day until Batman reveals his true identity. Silva, on the other hand, uses technology to terrorize England. He hacks MI6, and then uses YouTube to release the identities of their undercover operatives each week. Furthermore, Silva and Joker both come off as being overly theatrical weirdos with mysterious aliases, and then turn out to be ten steps ahead of the good guys for 90% of the movie. Interestingly, both have somewhat startling facial deformities as a result of their past transgressions, and both give disturbing accounts of how they got those deformities. 

M is equivalent to Harvey Dent. Both of them represent the public face of the hero's questionable methods of justice. M at first makes the mistake of thinking 007 is expendable, and allows him to be shot. This, combined with Silva's actions, call into question the effectiveness of the '00' program, which M has to defend in court. Over the course of the film, she realizes that Bond is necessary for the security of Great Britain (and the world). Harvey Dent wants to have the Batman arrested and is suspicious of his intentions, but then realizes the value of an incorruptible symbol of justice working behind the scenes. Eventually, both become the target of the respective villains, and have to be protected by the hero throughout the movie. And (spoiler alert) both of them eventually meet their demise in the arms of the hero, but only after the villain is apprehended/killed. 

Q and Lucius Fox are identical in that they are technological geniuses with humorous dispositions. They have access to, for all intents and purposes, unlimited resources. They do not work directly for the hero, and they outfit the hero with exciting gadgetry. Lucius Fox even creates a sonar-based map of the entire city, much like the subterranean map of London that Q comes up with while searching through Silva's encrypted software.

One could also argue that Mallory and Commissioner Gordon are analogous. Gordon and Dent have different methods and goals for cleaning up Gotham, and they argue over what the role of the Batman should be. When Dent eventually dies, Gordon becomes Batman's closest ally. Likewise, Mallory at first butts heads with M about the necessity of the '00' program and the usefulness of Bond. But over the course of the film, he comes to respect M and Bond, and when M is killed, he takes over M's job as the director of MI6. There is even the courtroom in which Silva attacks M, but is protected by Mallory until Bond can come to the rescue, which is fairly similar to when the Joker attacked Dent's convoy, and Gordon had to keep him safe until Batman neutralized the threat.

The supporting cast also seems to fill the same the roles in either film. For example, Severine and Rachel are love interests who represent a way out for the hero. But in both cases, the villain gives the hero an ultimatum that results in the woman's death, reinforcing the hero's rage and desire for revenge. Kincade (the man at the Skyfall estate) and Alfred, are both caretakers that have known the hero since they were children and understand the events that created the hero's inner struggles.

The settings in both movies are like characters as well. Batman's mansion and access to his bat-cave were destroyed in Batman Begins. So in The Dark Knight he is using an underground facility somewhere in Gotham. In Skyfall, MI6 is compromised, so Bond has to report to the new headquarters in a WWII bunker. In both cases, the setting represents how the hero has been stripped of what he is used to, and must retool with what is available to him. (Interesting sidebar about settings: both heroes fight and capture a minor villain in a poorly-lit -- but also kind of blue-tinted -- skyscraper in China.)

Even the themes in each movie are the same. Much like Dent's two-headed coin, Dent and Batman are opposite faces of justice in Gotham, but both of them are essential. A great line from The Dark Knight, by Dent is: "You either die the hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." In a way, he is talking about himself and Bruce Wayne alike. If he had died in the explosion that the Joker orchestrated, he would have died the white knight of Gotham. Instead, he lived, and the Joker warped him into Two-Face. Batman survived to take down the Joker and-Two Face, but was then accused of murdering Dent and became public enemy number one. The same quote applies to Skyfall. Silva is like an earlier version of Bond; he was favored by M and a hero to his country. But he became too ambitious and rebellious, and M turned him over to the enemies of MI6. After being tortured and attempting suicide, and surviving, he turned his anger and frustration against his former masters.

There are a number of more specific plot and dialogue connections that I just don't see the point of going into. But the fact is, these movies match up astonishingly well. In a way, one could argue that they deserve to be the same. Both have similar histories. Batman has been around on the big screen since the sixties, and has undergone a number of renovations and reinterpretations. He started out as a goofy hero with absurd gadgets, and peculiar villains. But has since been reborn into a much more vivid and believable world. All of this describes the history of James Bond as well. And for both franchises, these two movies in particular represent benchmarks in the story. They take the classic ideas of the franchise and reinterpret it for a modern, more realistic world.

Monsieur Incroyable! (The Incredibles)

I don't consider myself to be an expert on superhero movies. Especially all of the stuff that came out before Marvel really got going with X-Men. But lately I have been thinking about The Incredibles, and how, despite being one of the less popular Pixar titles, and not being live action, it sort of transformed the standard of the superhero movie. People seem to think that Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins was the first time a superhero was put into a very dark but believable reality. I would agree that the three-dimensionality of Nolan's interpretation of the classic characters made for a much richer and compelling narrative. But I would argue that The Incredibles gives us an equally macabre and believable story, more so when one considers that it is a kids movie.

In the universe of The Incredibles, you have a world full of supers (superheroes) and villains. But when Mr. Incredible saves someone who was attempting to commit suicide, a lawsuit makes it illegal to be a vigilante, and forces all supers to assimilate to normal society. Before this happens, Mr. Incredible is confronted by a boy who asks to be his sidekick. He claims that he prefers to work alone, and the kid grows up to become the villain Syndrome. Syndrome kills a bunch of the other supers until Mr. Incredible, his wife, and their two kids, who also have super powers, defeat Syndrome.

Doesn't that sound pretty dark? The world decides they don't want heroes anymore because they cause too much damage and interfere with people's lives. It is believed that the only reason supervillains show up and hurt people is to antagonize the supers; and in the case of Syndrome, this is pretty much true. In fact, in The Dark Knight, the Joker explains that Batman is the reason people like him even exist.

And then you have all of witty observations The Incredibles makes about the typical superhero story, my favorite two being monologuing and capes. It is pointed out that the downfall of most villains is the need to hear themselves talk; rather than outright kill the super while hes down, they go on and on until the super has a chance to retaliate. And capes are a terrible costume idea because they are always getting caught in things like jet engines and propellers. Every superhero movie after this had to give good reasons why the heroes wear their silly outfits (Captain America's suit is transformed to look like WWII armor; Batman loses the tights and has to meet with Lucius Fox every time he has a problem with mobility or defense; and it is finally questioned how Bruce Banner's pants stay on when he transforms into the Hulk).

And when a villain is monologuing, it removes all the tension from a scene, because it becomes painfully obvious. Talia's exposition at the end of Dark Knight Rises gave Commissioner Gordon just enough time to break the signal between the bomb and the detonator. In Thor and The Avengers, Loki is caught monologuing on numerous occasions, often resulting in him getting his ass handed to him.

My point is that for a children's movie, The Incredibles explores some of the more serious aspects of the superhero genre that have since then become mainstream. I think it is definitely one of the best superhero movies of all time, and it is unfortunate that it doesn't seem to be recognized as such.

Death Blow! (Bane)

This is a silly thought, but I feel like writing about it. I really like Bane as a villain, the way he was portrayed in The Dark Knight Rises. Let me rephrase that. While I think Bane deserved more screen time and more back story (and less love story), I found Tom Hardy's performance just the right mixture of menacing, disturbing, brutal, and smart. And since that movie, I can only ever picture Tom Hardy as Bane.

Lawless is Bane kicking the shit out of people in the Prohibition-era South. Warrior is Bane kicking the shit out of people as an MMA fighter. And Bronson is Bane kicking the shit out of people... because he enjoys the attention. I'm not saying Hardy is a typecast actor; on the contrary, he is very talented. But something about the character Bane left such an impression on me.

Lately my obsession over the Bane character has overflowed into other movies. I now envision Bane as the ultimate villain, finding his way into other movie franchises. For example, I am right now watching a Lord of the Rings marathon. The fell beast just grabbed Theodin and his horse and threw them across the battlefield. And as the Witch King of Angmar instructs the beast to "feast on his flesh", I, for some reason, picture Bane dismounting, cracking his knuckles and saying, in his raspy, slightly mechanical voice "now I will break you".

And then my imagination just gets out of control. Thus my envisioning Bane as every villain in Lord of the Rings. Or Bane as a Bond villain. Bane working for Gustavo Fring. Bane in the zombie apocalypse. Bane tasting half-and-half and getting some on his mask. Bane waiting on a bench at a bus stop in Alabama. Bane going through airport security. Bane on a blind date....

I think I have a problem.

Bizarro World (Superhero Movies)

Marvel vs. DC. I love comic books movies and I love the tug-of-war between Marvel and DC comics that has been going on since live-action comic book movies have gone mainstream. Marvel has a number of successful franchises, including the X-Men, Spider-Man, and the Avengers (wherein each Avengers has a franchise of his own). DC, thanks to the brilliant Christopher Nolan, is being held up pretty much by the Dark Knight Trilogy alone.

Marvel knew five or six years ago that they were going to attempt an Avengers movie. Franchise crossovers don't happen very often, but when they do, we get things like Freddy vs. Jason and AvP: Alien vs. Predator. But a staple of comic books is character/storyline intersections, and it was only a matter of time before the film adaptations attempted this. DC, on the other hand, only recently decided that in order to compete they would have to do something similar; this idea has led to the Justice League movie slated for 2015. However, instead of having standalone movies for each member of team - as Marvel did preceding the Avengers - they intend to make up time by going straight for the Justice League.

At least that was the plan. The latest news is that Joseph Gordon Levitt from the Dark Knight Trilogy and Henry Cavill's superman from next year's Man of Steel will fill the Batman and Superman roles in the JL movie. My first reaction was that this seems like a complete cop-out by DC. The Dark Knight Trilogy is a unique Batman story and was not intended to tie in with the rest of the DC universe. So it seems that they are going to try to ride the success of Nolan's Batman right into a Justice League movie.

However, having given it some thought, I think this is a pretty good idea. Marvel had to repeat to us again and again that the four Avenger characters all live in the same universe (mainly by having them acknowledge each other and occasionally sit down with Phil Coulson). If the film stage of the DC universe is going to be in any way unique, I think it would be wise to have each member of the Justice League stay in his own universe. This has two benefits: 1) we will never expect to see the Justice League in any individual movie. The challenge facing every Avengers movie from here on out is giving us reasons why the Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D. don't face the problems of each individual hero. This problem would be even greater in the DC universe, where there is virtually no challenge Batman could spend a whole movie dealing with that Superman couldn't handle in a few minutes. By keeping all of the characters blatantly, almost ignorantly separate, in their individual franchises, there is much more freedom for the writers. 2) This makes more sense as far as how DC comics are. Most Marvel heroes are assumed to exist in the same world, with some exceptions. But in the DC universe, there are plenty of worlds, dimensions, alternate realities; all things that would make it more sensible to avoid overlap outside of the Justice League movies.

Hopefully this is their plan. In addition, the villain in JL will be Darkseid, who is the Marvel counterpart to Thanos, the villain in the Avengers 2. And since both movies are set for the summer of 2015, it will be very interesting to see what each studio comes up with.