I watched
Chinatown for the first time in many years last night. It's so long since I had seen it that all I remembered about it was Jack Nicholson's nose.
It had me looking at reviews and YouTube videos about it afterwards. Everything in the film serves a purpose and moves you on, deeper into the mire. A mire that Nicholson's Jake Gittes perhaps wishes he had never waded into.
The film is brave enough not to have a happy ending. In fact Robert Towne's original, more upbeat ending was changed by the director to make it darker.
One of the YouTube videos I stumbled on suggested that The Batman (2022) takes some inspiration from this film. And yeah, that could actually be possible. The more you look into things, the worse they actually are. There's a water element to both films too.
Whether that
should be what a superhero movie is about, I guess is open to interpretation.
Under another YT video (by the same reviewer) someone left a comment:
"I don't see how a person could have seen Se7en, Silence Of the Lambs, Zodiac, Saw or The Nolan films and like this movie. This film didn't do anything those films didn't do 10X better because THIS film was a sloppy version of them. I guess the new trend for superhero films will be shamelessly making superhero versions of classic non-superhero films for people too stupid & lazy to see the films that influenced them."
Well despite the slightly agressive/condescending attitude of the commenter, they may have a point.
And it made me wonder: Did I not like the ending of The Batman because it was kind of a damp squib or because it wasn't what I expect from a Superhero film (or both)? I'm old enough to remember the release of the Keaton Batman films - the first of which, funnily enough, had Jack "Chinatown" Nicholson in it. And I remember watching some of the comedic 1960s TV series too, prior to seeing the'89 film.
I loved Se7en. In fact it's one of my favorite films of all time. But maybe my expectations are for something a bit different from The Batman. And maybe I'm starting to ramble and I don't have a neat ending for this post...
Incidentally, the reason I watched Chinatown was because someone said the "water supply" theme of the film had been borrowed by Quantum of Solace. And I had indeed watched Q of S quite recently. Now there's a film that definitely benefits from being watched very quickly after Casino Royale. Some people say "it's a really short film". Well its 1hr46. If it had been ten minutes longer no one would have said it was short.
I have concluded that Quantum would have been really good without the writer's strike. The script was underwritten but there's actually plenty to enjoy there. It was never gonna be as good as Casino Royale, because no Bond film is (well, maybe Skyfall...). But compare it to Octopussy or Licence To Kill and it's a freakin masterpiece.