Call me crazy, but I enjoyed Clooney as Batman.

Neither does Batman Forever but that one is treated a lot better.

I don't think any of the Bonds were bad in the role. They all bought their own thing to it.

Some of them got some dogshit plots and scripts though, and frankly Brosnan's may have been even worse than Dalton's. Goldeneye is at least goofy and fun, a return to the Moore era. The rest were irredeemably bad.

Poison Ivy is like Magneto. It becomes harder and harder every year to say they're wrong.

I assume Calendar Man had a mental illness like OCD that manifested around dates due to the fact that his parents named him Julian Gregory Day.

And if someone has a mental illness in Gotham, you can bet a billionaire in S&M gear is there to beat the shit out of them.

Legitimate reason? Really?

That was the one thing that removed my ability to even try to suspend any disbelief in the fantasy. Like I couldn't even think of him as more than a one-dimensional caricature, let alone empathize with him. I was okay with Thanos just being some powerful guy seeking powerful objects to become more powerful. I might even sympathize, not empathize, with that. It was evil to be sure, but understandable. But, as soon as they revealed what he actually wanted to do with that power the whole thing just fell apart completely and became a total farce.

It was just bad logic that doesn't hold up to any scrutiny. Like why didn't he just double the resources? Why did he think the universe wouldn't just eventually return to pre-snap populations, because it's not like he also slowed population growth?

The thing about Thanos though is that he is also a good example of what happens when a powerful figure is only surrounded by “yes” folks. Because his idea is, ultimately, stupid. Killing half of all life in the universe doesnʻt really change anything substantial because you wind up with the same problems: If you have 100 people and 50 cows or fruit trees or whatever, and you snap half of those, you still wind up with the same ratio. Now itʻs 50 people fighting for 25 cows or fruit trees or whatever.

The Infinity Stones basically make Thanos close to God. He could do anything. He could have doubled the resources of the universe, he could have created an entirely new form of resource.

In some ways this is in keeping with his characterization in the comics, where he has a habit of getting in his own way. But I kinda wish that Endgame, like in the Infinity Gauntlet series, would have revealed that he was actually trying to woo Death (which could have been represented by Hela) and so his supposed altruism is actually self-serving. Regardless, he does stand as a good representative of charismatic villains that garner sympathy while also being singularly focused on a really bad idea rooted in the villainʻs own self-assurance and ability to gather acolytes through a kind of “reality distortion field” effect.

I think my big issue with the MCU, is that they don't even try to make the flaws logical. Before the snap, thanos has all of the infinity stones and can bend reality. He could have done any other kind of random macguffin BS other than remove half of all people. If the avengers could look into the future and envision the one reality where they defeated Thanos, Thanos could've done the same but for whatever heuristic he was attempting to optimize. I know the villain in Black Panther gets a lot of hate for having an unsympathetic side just tacked on, but unfortunately it's quite historically accurate to have people pushing for some kind of enlightened revolution that haven't quite done all of the work to unlearn things themselves. I do think that the fact that he was written that way and isn't a real person is a valid argument as to why it's a poor defense, but it's suggested that MLK cheated on his wife and prominent figures in the Black Panther party did abuse women. So, I'm a bit torn on that, but between Thanos and whatever the hell was happening in falcon in the winter soldier, I still think the villains and the heroes could use some work.

Just to be clear, I don't think it takes away from the movies being great. I also really like infinity war, I just don't that I was on board with everyone's motivations all the time.

Edit: I responded to this comment from my inbox, and now I'm seeing that you already have replies saying that Thanos really isn't understandable. I wasn't trying to pile on, I just also believe that.

i mean, the films perfectly captures the camp of the batman characters, which i'd say makes the films good.

i hold that the best modern version of batman is The Brave and The Bold.

I saw Batman Forever when I was 6 years old and I loved it. It was made for kids.

Christian Bale

I hold to Affleck being the best all around portrayal of the character, just saddled in relatively mediocre films. That said, I really liked Pattinsonʻs take and the film overall (and I do sympathize with your take on the second half; it feels a bit bloated for the kind of “street-level” Batman they had going).

This is the first time I've read someone dislike the second half of the Batman. Kinda shocked to hear it reduced to "Hollywood spectacle" given the clear ties to the movies main themes and character arcs. It also was a nearly-perfect final act for a Batman movie imho with it not revolving around one villain Batman needs to physically beat up like most of the previous films.