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What Should "What Should Bale Do" Do?

It should move.  To a new site:

http://whatshouldbaledo.com/

Why?   Because the current spot didn't quite offer everything necessary.

And if you're interested in being involved in the new one, it is still under construction - I would like to get a custom design for it soon.

So please - go follow the new What Should Bale Do now. 

Bale vs. Smith

Apparently, Will Smith hasn't been in movies in a couple years.  If you hadn't noticed, it's probably because you aren't counting down the days to Men in Black 3: Aliens Still Exist.  So yeah, you're like everyone else in the world.  I guess that Smith apparently has been focusing on making music or whatever you want to call that stuff.  Yep, he still makes music (you know that song you hate?  It's by his daughter).      

Did you miss me?

Smith is apparently going to come out of retirement, or whatever he has been doing, and be in a movie written by the same guys who wrote The Fighter, described in an interview with the writers as being "about a man [who is living] the American dream.  He’s got the nice house, white picket fence, great kids, great wife, nice cars.  God and the devil get together every thousand years to bet on a man’s life, and the fate of the world is at stake."

Now, the main problem with this idea is that the Coen Brothers made that exact idea into a movie called A Serious Man.  Very recently.  (As in, it's the last film they made before True Grit.)  A Serious Man is the Book of Job updated to Minnesota in the 1960s, about a guy living in the suburbs with what would be a great life if it weren't completely falling apart around him. 

I guess I really like this movie, because it's the second time I've written about it in two weeks.



Apparently, the problem with that film was that no one was clearly telling the audience: "This is the book of Job.  Seriously.  Get it?  It's exactly like it."  So because the Coen Brothers were a little too subtle there (you know, with the tornadoes and temptresses and bribes, it just wasn't clear enough), Will Smith is going to play Joe in a modern re-telling of Job.  Yep, Joe.  Probably because they don't want audiences confusing Job from the Bible with Gob Bluth.  

However, there are rumors that David O. Russell will be involved (I'll save you a trip to IMDB; he directed The Fighter).  That, and this whole idea is coming from the writers of The Fighter.  Which means that this should be a really intense masterpiece, if done right.  

The good news is that Bale, while not being connected to this project yet, is an obvious shoo-in for a major role in the film because a) he has worked with the writers and director before, for which he earned an Academy Award, and b) he is no stranger to Biblical films.  Unfortunately, his only experience with Bible stories so far is playing Jesus in a made-for-TV movie that no one has ever seen (although it is on my to-do list).

This is not a photoshop masterpiece.  It's from something Bale actually did. 

Bale is also the right man for the job when making a film that does not need to be made, especially when said film has a very similar theme and concept to another film that came out shortly before it.  If you need proof, consider this: he starred in The Prestige, which involves magic, murder, rivalries, and is set in the late 1800s.  The film was released two months after The Illusionist, which also involved magic, murder, rivalries, and the late 1800s.  And The Prestige is undoubtedly the better film.

The question is: what should Bale do in Joe?

There are few characters in the original story of Job.  They are: Job (who is already cast as Will Smith,) Job's kids, Job's servants, Job's wife, and Job's friends.  Also, God and Satan.  The story is basically that God lets Satan kill everyone except for Job and his friends, and then Job argues with his friends about whether or not he should start hating God.  At the end, God says "good job" to Job and yells at Job's friends.  Then Job has a new family and dies at the age of 140.

Obviously, Joe will be different.  What The Fighter team need to do is get Bale involved, and cast him as Satan.  The reasons are obvious.  For starters, the book of Job is the only book of the Bible in which Satan actually kills people.  This is a commonly-stated internet statistic, but it's straight out of the Bible: Satan's Biblical death count is entirely due to God giving him permission to destroy Job's life, after which Satan killed all of Job's servants and his ten children.  It's unclear how many servants he killed, but there were a few.

Who better to commit Satan's only murders other than the actor who chased women with a chainsaw (in only his underwear and tennis shoes), tied the Langsford-Double that caused a woman to drown in front of a full theater, committed a racially-motivated murder in Shaft, and killed 118 people in Equilibrium?  (The Equilibrium statistic is especially significant, as, according to the internet, that's the third highest body count ever racked up by one character.)

Equilibrium.  If you haven't seen it, then you really don't know what Bale is capable of.

 It would be quite fitting for Bale to play Satan when Satan kills his only documented victims.  It would also be a true powerhouse performance, as The Fighter team just got Bale a best supporting actor trophy, and Satan is playing second fiddle to Job throughout the entire story.        

As for the role of God, it would be good to cast Morgan Freeman, but then everyone might think this is another Bruce Almighty spin-off.  God is a tough character to cast.  Many good actors have attempted to do God justice and failed or succeeded to various degrees, including Whoopi Goldberg, Billy Dee Williams, Charleton Heston, Graham Chapman's voice, Trey Parker's voice, and Ross's dad from Friends. 

You probably shouldn't make movies with God in them, so you're not competing with this guy.

The best option is probably for Bale to play both Satan and God.  He's already excellent at portraying characters with a dual nature, from Bruce Wayne to Alfred and Freddy Borden. 

Or they could just say "whatever" and cast Morgan Freeman as God, Samuel L. Jackson as Satan, call it Job Almighty and make it the conclusion to a trilogy you don't care about. 

NOTE: I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the body count for Equilibrium.  The movie body-counting site lists Bruce Wayne as killing six people in The Dark Knight, when in fact he took the heat for six deaths but didn't actually kill anyone.  This might mean that John Preston and his crazy killing skills did not eliminate 118 people, but it doesn’t change the fact that tons of people were slain by Bale in Equilibrium. 

The One Defense of The Lesser Gatsby

There is one great aspect of The Great Gatsby in 3D (which yes, is a real movie, not something I made up for this blog.  See?) that I forgot to mention in the last Tuesday's post.  It's the same reason I thought DiCaprio should play Gatsby's con artist illegitimate child in The Greater Gatsby.  Quite simply, Leonardo DiCaprio is really, really good at dying (Warning: I'm going to mention several of his deaths in this.  They're pretty much all ones that you saw coming, but just thought I'd give you the heads-up). 

Which death is this?  Does it matter?

DiCaprio is an expert at dying, whether it's because he was a) a poor person on the Titanic, b) shot by Gene Hackman, c) shot by a guy you didn't even notice was a character, much less a bad guy, d) Romeo, or e) whatever happened in Blood Diamond.  And any time he doesn't die, he comes really close, because he's doing something like flying an airplane he shouldn't be flying or climbing a water tower he shouldn't be climbing, or whatever happened in Shutter Island.

There is no doubt that watching him get shot in his swimming pool after Daisy runs over Myrtle would be really, really intense and sad.  But does that justify an entire film?  Couldn't they just film that scene, put it on YouTube, and call it quits?  Or it could just be a fun short film they show after the credits of Jay, which is what I've decided the Andre 3000 version of Gatsby should be called.  (The Great Gatsby's first name was Jay, if you weren't sure.)

Furthermore, based on some comments made on the previous post on this subject, I believe that Bale probably isn't the best choice for the mechanic who kills Gatsby in Jay.  Perhaps Bale can play the owl-eyed man, but we give it a twist: he's an undercover cop who has been trying to track down the heroin-dealing Gatsby for years, and is finally closing in (he wasn't just admiring Gatsby's books in the library; he was looking for clues).  The final showdown can result in the mechanic killing Gatsby and then himself, with the cop getting there too late to do anything.  But as he watches Gatsby die, Bale realizes that maybe this guy wasn't that bad after all, causing him to go to his funeral the next day with Nick Canon.  Either that, or Bale gets shot by Nick Canon, if we want it to be an ending with lots of people getting killed.  Or, Tom Buchanan shows up and kills Bale, then Carraway and Buchanan have to hide the body together. 

Does it really make sense to have Bale play this guy's role, even if he does kill Gatsby?  No, probably not. 

  

Finally, Daisy would have to have a lamp that emits a green light in her bedroom, and Gatsby stands outside in the street, doing that arms-outstretched thing that no one is sick of.   

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Chateau of Bluebeard

If Bale and Depp are really to have a show-down (see previous post), and for it to be more satisfying than Public Enemies (in which Bale did not get enough screen time), the plot will have to be pared down into a psychological thriller centered around the old French folk tale Bluebeard.  The film will be entitled Pirates of the Caribbean: The Chateau of Bluebeard, and will follow the tale of Kiera Knightley's character leaving Orlando Bloom (because he is too boring), and marrying instead the charming, unpredictable, mystery-enshrouded Bluebeard, a French aristocrat with an unclear past.  

While Captain Jack is off fighting Blackbeard, the Squid Man, and Geoffrey Rush, Knightley is grappling with her new husband's secrets: the most shocking of which is that he has a room in his castle full of his dead wives (because this is loyal to its source matter, and that's what happens in the fairy tale which is told to French children every day.) She resorts to her only option, which is calling upon her ex-husband, Orlando, who is immediately murdered by Bluebeard.  Leaving Jack Sparrow as her last resort, and resulting in a competition between Bale and Depp to see which one of them is really capable of going completely overboard.

Now, Bale is no stranger to playing characters who kill off the minor female characters, whether it's because he insisted on tying a Langsford Double, or because he recited Whitney Houston to them before chasing them down a hallway with a chainsaw, in his underwear. 

So not only is Bale completely cut out to play this character, but he could start immediately, as he already has the beard.  Check out this illustration of La Barbe Bleu, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Now compare it to Bale's current beard:

This would also be his first chance to do an over-the-top French accent.  Someone better make this happen quick, before he shaves.  Also, because it's another one of these damned Pirates movies, they could kill Bale off at the end, then bring him back as the hero in the next one. 

Bale vs. Depp

In a recent comment, reader and Bale-Fan Seth Rogers wrote "anything Johny Depp can do, Bale can do better. All that zany out there persona stuff (capt. Jack for example), Bale could do, and in doing so really make it a lot more prickish and menacing and not so "aw that zany harmless guy," but more "that mother fucker is crazy.""

Seth makes an excellent point.  While Depp cuts lose with an unpredictable, wild character (such as Captain Jack Sparrow, Hunter S. Thompson, Sweeney Todd, or Willy Wonka), it feels as if he is not pushing things far enough. It always seems as if he is holding something in, in order to keep things family friendly.  The beauty of watching Bale bottle up his emotions is that, unlike Depp, you know that Bale will eventually unleash himself.  Depp's antics are cheeky and sort of annoying, while Bale's are dangerous and unsettling. In an endearing way.

Yeah, he plays whacky characters.  But what if they were less quirky, and more sociopathic?

Well, it just so happens that there is no end in sight to the Pirates of the Caribbean films.  And lucky for us, Bale is no stranger to pirates movies, as he played pirate John Rolfe in The New World, and fought them in Treasure Island (the one without Muppets). As of now, Pirates of the Caribbean: Another Movie with Boats and Bearded Guys is coming out this summer or something. While the fifth film is tentatively titled Pirates of the Caribbean: Whipping a Dead Horse, the franchise could get a breath of fresh air if Bale is brought in for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Chateau of Bluebeard.

The Lesser Gatsby

It does not matter how much we hate the idea, how much we deny it or try to wish it away: Baz Luhrmann is making a 3D version of The Great Gatsby.  This idea is easily the worst thing to happen to literature on the big screen since Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland.  The absolutely worst thing to ever happen to books is definitely The Overton Window, but this does come close.   

The reason I had not written about this before was that I hadn't realized it was relevant, and I was trying to deny the whole thing.  Then I realized that a year ago, on this blog, I suggested that Bale should make The Greater Gatsby.  Of course, I have suggested lots of things on here.  What makes this significant is that I suggested DiCaprio play Gatsby's bastard son, while Luhrmann is going for the less original approach, and just having DiCaprio play Gatsby.

 The problem is that you're competing with this guy when you make a Gatsby remake.

The fact is, there is no good reason to make another Great Gatsby movie.  You are doomed if you try to adapt the original novel to the big screen (recall that I suggested a sequel, not a remake).  It will either be a) boring, because it is faithful to the original and everyone already knows that story, or b) terrible, because it won't be faithful to the original, and everyone loves that story and why would you try to improve it?  Regardless of what you do, people will be mad.

However, I do think I have a solution.  Luhrmann needs to forget about DiCaprio and replace him with Andre 3000, changing the setting to the Harlem Renaissance, and making it a musical.  Nick Canon can portray the narrator Nick Carraway, with Rihanna as Jordan Baker, Beyonce as Daisy, and either Michael Clarke Duncan or Idris Elba (Stringer Bell) as Tom Buchanan.

 Sort of like this, but with the Great Gatsby's plot.  Come on, you know that's a better idea than a loyal remake.

Of course, all this leaves one question: where is Bale in all of this?  He can be the mechanic.  His wife is Amy Adams, with whom Tom Buchanan is having an affair.  The only consolation for Andre 3000 getting gunned down at the end is that it's Bale who is doing the killing.