items tagged with Batman

Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham Asylum was a pleasant surprise when it was released in 2009: a video game that, in contrast to the lackluster history of superhero games, was actually good. Arkham Asylum wasn’t unique – clearly drawing its combination of rooftop navigation, stealth, and combat from games such as Assassin’s Creed – but it deftly applied that formula to the experience of being Batman and inhabiting his world of Gotham City. Batman: Arkham City expands and refines the first game, crafting a new experience that, while never particularly innovative, remains consistently entertaining and a person’s best opportunity to feel like the Dark Knight.

In the early '90s, Batman video games based on Tim Burton's movies were bright spots for Nintendo and Super Nintendo, with easy controls and simple combat. But the games based on Batman Forever and Batman & Robin suffered from the same deficiencies as their filmed sources: They lacked the elements that made their predecessors good. Sadly, the handful of games since then haven't improved much. But the new Batman: Arkham Asylum shatters any generalizations about the games with an all-new story based on the comic mythos, a fantastic presentation, and an amazing combat system that leaves you coming back for more.

BATMAN RETURNS

Many Hollywood blockbusters feel so generic as to have been formed by committee, and in Batman Begins, that committee appears to be comprised entirely of comic-book bloggers. Just how afraid of Internet fanboys have movie studios become? It has been widely reported that this new installment in the superhero franchise is a deliberate rebuke to director Joel Schumacher’s beyond-campy Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, and I couldn’t be more on board with that; Schumacher managed to turn Warner Brothers’ moody franchise into a half-assed Mardi Gras spectacle, minus the debaucherous fun. (Only in Schumacher’s hands could Uma Thurman come off as a depressed drag queen.)

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL

Throw a rock at the annual slate of summer movies and you’ll hit one with state-of-the-art CGI effects, but finding one with imaginative effects can be an exercise in futility.

HULK

There are scenes of sublime directorial craftsmanship and exquisite beauty in the latest Ang Lee film, which should surprise no one familiar with Lee’s oeuvre but might shock the masses lining up to see a Summer Blockbuster entitled Hulk.