The alternate film universe must be an incredible place -- a land where George Lucas directed Apocalypse Now, Frank Darabont's Indiana Jones 4 script was made, and Joss Whedon directed Batman Begins. Actually, in that other dimension, Whedon has probably written and directed everything, including enough Firefly to sate our hungry souls.

Whedon told MTV that once upon a time, he pitched a Batman reboot to Warner Bros when Batman Begins was in early development. "It wasn't what they did but the vibe was very similar. Mine was a bit less epic. It was more about the progression of him and it was more in Gotham City. He didn't go to Tibet and meet cool people, but it was very similar in vibe." But most interesting of all was the idea that he didn't plan on using any villains from the comic book canon. "In my version, there was actually a new [villain], it wasn't one of the classics - which is probably why they didn't use it. It was more of a 'Hannibal Lector' type - he was somebody already in Arkham Asylum that Bruce went and sort of studied with. It was a whole thing - I get very emotional about it, I still love the story. Maybe I'll get to do it as a comic one day."

It's cool to see small replicas, funky cakes, or maybe something knit, but there's just something even cooler when your fan creation needs its own room for storage.

This latest bit of Fan Made comes courtesy of /film's Cool Stuff -- it's a working replica of The Tumbler from both Batman movies. The guy responsible, Bob Dullam, made this thing without blueprints. It was all done with photos found online, piece by piece. I'm beyond impressed. He says, "All parts are scratch built, 'cept tires, rims, brakes, engine, etc.. meaning all body parts brackets, just about everything external on the car." This isn't just a bunch of cardboard tacked onto a car he already had. And now he wants to make the inside look as close as possible to The Tumbler's real inside.

Man, imagine hopping in that thing and driving to the store? It'd be a madhouse. It's sure to make a number of fans go wild, and I bet make a few people teetering on the edge of sanity begin to believe that Batman is real. And do you even need a car alarm for that?

Check out a few more pics of the fan made Tumbler in the gallery below ...

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Back in May, our Eric D. Snider made clear a common complaint regarding the latest Narnia offering, in that it was far too violent -- with or without blood -- for its given PG rating. The film went on to under-perform at the box office, for a litany of other reasons, but it was hard to ignore the potentially dominating influence of family-friendly Disney and their little Christian parable/looming blockbuster sequel on the decision.

Now, after stateside concerns along the same lines, come reports from the UK that box office behemoth The Dark Knight has merited a record number of seventy complaints in its first week of opening regarding the 12A equivalent from the British Board of Film Classification, which itself admitted to facing a modicum of pressure from studios who want lower ratings that in turn draw younger and wider audiences.

As someone who has seen that film more than once, in audiences that more than once had a parent shielding their child's eyes from the very badly burnt likes of Two-Face (um, spoiler?), it's obvious that the caution of a PG-13 (and the relative intensity of predecessor Batman Begins) failed to steer them away from the draw of the Caped Crusader.

So let's play the old-fashioned game of Point the Finger:

• Are we to blame the MPAA and BBFC for their lenient judgments?
• How about the parents who so willingly dismiss the ratings that actually are appropriate?
• For our more responsible readers, what measures do you take before allowing your children to see certain films? Do you see a film before they do and determine what's A-OK? Do you rely on reviews or websites tailored to providing custom criteria regarding a film's content?
• Sex, violence, or language: which of these factors will most likely send your child and the world at large on a moral decline from which we may never recover?

Look, I thought The Dark Knight had a lot of strong selling points: Combine a deft pace with thoughtful characterizations and a whopping IMAX design that turns the entire experience into a plot-driven theme park ride, and you've got one hefty dose of Batman adrenaline.

Still, comparisons to The Godfather Part II notwithstanding, The Dark Knight isn't foolproof -- in fact, no single movie in history is foolproof. The subjective experience of movie watching ensures that nothing can be universally liked by everyone, and rules of civility insist that humanity respect that truism. It's acceptable to feel passionately about a great work of art, and defend that perspective with rigorous argumentation, but much of the outrage over the minority perspective that The Dark Knight isn't any good has made such practical thinking impossible.

Deemed the first critic to pan the movie, New York's David Edelstein went out of his way to list the allegations against him sent along by various Batman fans. The House Next Door editor Keith Uhlich, meanwhile, fielded over a hundred rants in the comments section following his astute critique of director Christopher Nolan's questionable portrayals of violence. What's particularly shocking about this frightful deluge of negative responses is that many of these people began posting their disapproval before they even saw the movie.

There are many ways to anticipate The Dark Knight. You can assemble a fake plot out of the numerous clips circulating the web, you can stitch together adorable bat-toys, or just rewatch Christopher Nolan's first entry in the Batman franchise. However, there's a lot more to this sprawling, nearly three hour rush of furious confrontations and haunting corruption. The greatest Batman stories emphasize the character's shadowy nature, and Nolan pulls from many of them to create the intensely moody aura of the latest film. You don't need to know anything about the character to enjoy the movie, but it certainly expands the experience to do some research -- and allows for a greater appreciation of the filmmaker's efforts to honor the nature of the character.

Here's a look at some antecedents to the current interpretation from the last two decades.

We've already asked who your favorite Batman is (and Christian Bale is still winning that sucker by a mile), so now it's only right that we take a look back at all the Batman trailers to decide which one we like best. Watching some of these brought back good (ah, Keaton ...) and bad (Batman & Robin trailer = yikes!) memories, but I believe they are all required viewing before taking in a screening of The Dark Knight. Below, we've compiled all the live-action, big-screen Batman trailers (and Catwoman!) for you to sift through in one window. Check them out, then head after the jump to participate in our poll. Sound off Bat-geeks!

I was recently enjoying a fast-food lunch with my old friend Josh, and we were discussing the film we'd just seen. (A little something called The Dark Knight.) And in the middle of my ramblings I accidentally said something slightly insightful. It went a little something like this: "The thing about superheroes is that, on the outside, what with the costumes and the nifty gizmos and all the punching, they're kids stuff, which is great. But once you scratch the surface just a little bit, you're dealing with acres of subtext that kids can barely comprehend."

And then Josh asked me what my point was. It's this: We finally have some filmmakers who aren't afraid to handle superhero movies for grown-ups. I'd hardly call Hancock a family-type flick, both of the recent Marvel movies (Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk) managed to treat their "older" audiences with respect, last weekend's Hellboy 2 is chock-full of dazzling ideas, and now this: The Dark Knight. Dang. My review will arrive later this week, but I won't be the only one calling it the Godfather 2 of superhero movies. (In a lot of ways it's also a bit like The Empire Strikes Back! Tonally, anyway.) Best of all, the movie is a big meaty DRAMA, and I don't mean "drama" as in "masterpiece theater."

The pop-culture appetite for Batman seems inexhaustible; thousands of comic books, several movies, endless animated iterations, some of which are quite good and some of which are rather bad. Is there any real need to return to the character beyond the profit motive, though? After the financial and critical success of Batman Begins, the powers-that-be behind The Dark Knight could have made a safe bet of a sequel; a little more action, a few more actors, more of the same and a few extra explosions.

What's telling about The Dark Knight, though, is how risky it is -- how it's bold and brave and truly exciting, full of rich and strong performances and some real ideas along the way. Why return to Batman? It turns out that for Christopher Nolan, the reason to come back is that there's something to say about, and with, the character even after decades of stories and multiple reinventions. I was hoping The Dark Knight would be good; I had no idea that director and co-writer Christopher Nolan was going to make a film that not only addressed the philosophical and political conflict between the rule of force and the rule of law but also takes on the timeless clash between order and chaos ... and, along the way, evokes everything from Michael Mann's Heat to John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. ...

This summer may be confusing to some less blog-literate moviegoers thanks to two recast roles. In both The Dark Knight and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, a prominent character is played by a new actress. In the former sequel, "Rachel Dawes" will be played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, replacing Katie Holmes, who had the role in Batman Begins. In the latter, "Eveyln Carnahan O'Connell" will be played by Maria Bello, subbing for Rachel Weisz, who appeared in both The Mummy and The Mummy Returns.

This certainly isn't the first time characters have been recast with different actors, and over at The Onion, the A.V. Club has listed 20 such memorably jarring switcheroos, which they're calling The Darrin Effect (after the famous character replacement on TV's Bewitched), in television and film. Surely everyone recalls when Sarah Chalke took over the part of "Becky" on Roseanne; the writers even occasionally even slipped in some reflexive jokes about it. And let's not forget the glaring problem of recasting Jodie Foster's Oscar-winning role of "Clarice Starling" -- Julianne Moore played the part in Hannibal. Or the tragic yet surprisingly respectable replacement of Michael Gambon for a deceased Richard Harris in the Harry Potter movies.

How hot is The Dark Knight? So hot that we've done eight (8) posts about it in the last nine days. So hot, moreover, that in some markets, a frenzy of sales for July 18th midnight shows have prompted theaters to add 3am shows and -- I kid you not -- 6am shows.

Why would anyone go at six in the morning instead of just waiting for a freakin' 10am show? I can think of two reasons: 1) they can't get into the earlier shows, have to go to work on July 18th, and refuse to wait until the weekend, and/or 2) the rest of Friday's shows have already sold out. The latter is certainly true if you want to see the film in IMAX -- the New York Times reports that tickets for all of the first week's showings in Manhattan's Lincoln Square are gone, with the exception of some 6 am shows. Chris Nolan, what hast thou donst?

Though I'm usually itching to participate in fan frenzies, the funny thing is that I have no desire to see The Dark Knight in IMAX. What's more, I'm surprised that people who are familiar with Batman Begins are this eager to do so. Does no one remember the quick-cut visual assaults that were that film's action scenes? Are people dying for a ride on the Vomit Comet? No thank you. Anyone with me?

UPDATED: Okay, okay! I admit I hadn't read (or maybe read and forgot) about Nolan making IMAX-specific adjustments for The Dark Knight. I stand by my comments to the extent that I think seeing any movie for the first time in IMAX is often a nauseating and confusing experience. But by all means have fun.

Batman: Gotham Knight
Like the Animatrix, Batman: Gotham Knight is a collection of filler stories. Created by the hands of different writers and animators, Gotham Knight was made to bridge the gap between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. But it's not just a collection of adventure stories -- these blips into Gotham take the story from all sides -- the villains that wreak havoc, the police whose work is interfered with, the kids who spot him in action, and even Bruce Wayne working with Lucius Fox on gadgetry. Be prepared for the look to be different -- this isn't your ordinary looking Batman -- but there are also nods to the past. Kevin Conroy voices Batman in this collection, just like he has for many years now on the animated series.

Of course, no true special release can be free of features, and Gotham Knight is no exception for this 2-disc release. On the first, you get a disc-wide commentary with Kevin Conroy, Dennis O'Neil, and Gregory Noveck (it pours through each episode) and a good preview of the upcoming animated Wonder Woman. On the second, you also get a long documentary called "A Mirror for the Bat" that discusses the character and the villains he fights, another called "Batman and Me, a Devotion to Destiny: The Bob Kane Story," and some final extras that focus on Batman: The Animated Series.

Further information on this release can be found, in-depth, at DVDTalk.

Buy the DVD

As Scott pointed out in his review, you need not fear that this week's Superhero Movie is another brainchild of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, whose satanic perversions of the parody genre -- Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans -- have been terrorizing unsuspecting audiences every year since 2006. Superhero Movie was actually directed by Craig Mazin, a protégé of the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker dream team responsible for Airplane! and The Naked Gun, and produced by David Zucker himself. But it, too, is plagued -- albeit to a much lesser degree -- by what's turning out to be the problem with the entire modern generation of spoofs going back to Scary Movie: relentless pop culture specificity.

The basest incarnations of this, of course, are the Friedberg-Seltzer monstrosities, which may be worthless as comedies but which could prove valuable to historians because they indicate precisely what dominated the American zeitgeist in the few months before their release. It's too generous to call these films' vulgar spasms "jokes," but to the extent that's what they are, they depend entirely on either audience members' awareness of US Weekly-type factoids such as Britney Spears' shaving her head or their recall of particular scenes and characters in recent box-office hits. That's not to say that these kinds of jokes can't be funny -- the problem with Friedberg and Seltzer, as others have pointed out, is that they think throwing something current on the screen ("Look, Paris Hilton!") constitutes humor. But they do limit comedies' universal appeal and staying power.

Christian Bale was on hand at ShoWest to promote some footage from The Dark Knight, and gave a revealing interview to Entertainment Weekly. The magazine immediately pumped him for Batman information, and Bale was forthcoming -- but noncommittal.

When asked if there would be a third installment, Bale wouldn't confirm or deny. "Um, look, let's wait and see." When the magazine "mistakenly" referred to it as a sixth installment, Bale was quick to correct them, and elaborate on the possibilities of a trilogy. "No, no, no, no, no. Part 3 is what I'd consider it, yeah, I don't say part 6. Batman Begins - that was the beginning there, with all due respect to the others. We are re-creating this. You know, obviously the decision is out of my hands. I would, knowing the Dark Knight story, I would like very much to complete a trilogy. And I think that knowing the story of The Dark Knight, it leaves you anticipating something that really can get very, very interesting for a third. Now, the question would be: Is Chris going to be doing it? Because to me I find it tricky to imagine working on it without it being a collaboration with Chris."

So, can we safely assume that Heath Ledger's premature death does not affect the trilogy's storyline? That has been the biggest question on everyone's mind. If you combine this interview with Aaron Eckhart's latest, I am still of the belief that Joker ends up in Arkham, and Two-Face could be the main villain in a third film. I can't imagine they didn't leave Joker's fate open ended, considering the villain's place in Batman's world, but no one from the film seems to feel the storyline cannot continue. Perhaps a bigger question is why Nolan isn't confirmed to continue the series.

And away we go ...

Three new stills from the upcoming direct-to-DVD prequel Batman: Gotham Knights have been released online (via Kung Fu Rodeo), and they once again show a ripped Batman looking all pissed off at something or someone. The new stills don't look much different from the three that were released earlier in the week, so I'm not sure if they are all from the same mini-story or different. I do notice subtle changes, but does it matter? I just want to watch this thing now. Set for release on July 8, the disc will feature six interlocking stories that will serve as a bridge between the two live-action films, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Villains rumored to be appearing include Scarecrow, Killer Croc and Deadshot. (Additionally, a Deadshot toy is floating around somewhere, so either it's a tie-in to the DVD, or we could be looking at another possible villain for Dark Knight and beyond.) Check out more pics from Batman: Gotham Knights after the jump.

Now, to Star Wars! So we already know George Lucas is planning a 100-episode live-action TV show set between Episodes III and IV. Last we heard, the scripts were being written and most of the talk surrounded the Star Wars animated series debuting this fall. Well, The Force.net tells us (via Liverpool Daily Post) that Jim Marquand has been asked by Lucas to direct episodes of the live-action show. Who is Jim Marquand, you ask? Well, he just happens to be the son of Richard Marquand, director of Return of the Jedi. Pretty cool stuff -- we'll have to see how he does. I wonder if Lucas will direct an episode or two himself?

Note: Thanks to the commenter for pointing out the real toy name, Deathstroke and not Deadshot. I got them confused.

I was on a shuttle bus at Sundance when my wife text messaged me the news about Heath Ledger. By the time I made it off the bus, everyone was buzzing -- his death had hit the fest like a virus. It didn't take much time, and only a few hours later I started seeing stories from people wondering whether Ledger's death had anything to do with the amount of work he put into the role of Joker in this summer's The Dark Knight. When the New York Times interviewed him last month, Ledger admitted to locking himself in a hotel room for a month to get into character, then downing sleeping pills afterward to catch up on some much-needed rest. Though we're not entirely sure yet, it was most likely a combination of sleeping pills and other medication that did him in.

Warner Bros. has already toned down their aggressive Dark Knight marketing plan, turning the movie's official website into a make-shift shrine dedicated to the actor. So if it was this role that ultimately sent Ledger off in an unhealthy direction, why did he take it on in the first place. ComicMix currently has up an exclusive audio interview with Ledger, conducted last month, in which the actor explains why, exactly, he decided to take on the part. According to the actor, he had no interest in re-creating what Nicholson had so expertly displayed earlier, and that if Burton was directing this film he probably wouldn't have done it. But when Christopher Nolan asked Ledger to play Joker, he watched Batman Begins, saw a different angle he could take and jumped right in. You can check out the interview over here.

Personally, I think it's a cop out to blame a role in a movie for a person's death. Obviously actors and actresses take on all kinds of roles in any given year -- some of which are a lot more demanding than the Joker -- and they come away just fine. What it boils down to is the kind of person you are; how much pressure you put on yourself and what you do to alleviate that pressure. Our thoughts and prayers are with his friends and family this weekend as they say goodbye to a man so many people loved dearly.