Bat-lash
Let’s be clear: The Dark Knight is in many ways a very good movie, but it’s no masterpiece, and it’s certainly not worth seeing five times in a weekend, or maybe even five times ever. It’s not Godfather II, or Aliens, or even Terminator 2. It isn’t a flawless movie — not by a long shot — and pretty much all of the complaints about its plot holes are reasonable and accurate. It’s only Shakespearean in the sense that the entirety of the last few centuries of popular drama have been influenced by the Bard. What it is, though, is a compelling, comparatively thoughtful summer movie with tremendous scope, real moral complexity, beautifully moody cinematography, a handful of breathtaking action scenes, and one genuinely brilliant and powerful performance from Heath Ledger. Do the film’s most slobbering boosters deserve ridicule? Probably. Does the film (or those who enjoyed it) deserve epic griping sessions from those who didn’t care for it and are peeved that it made enough money to buy functional Bat-suits for everyone on the production? I think not. It’s understandable that the film’s combination of critical and financial success might create the impression of overkill. But just as the exuberance of the film’s loudest supporters needs to be tempered, so does the grousing of the embittered minority who disliked it. It’s not solid gold encrusted with perfectly cut diamonds, but it ain’t peanut-ridden crap either.
After giving it more thought, I do enjoy the movie a lot— there’s lots of great moments. I persist in thinking that they could have made a truly great movie if they had written a 2 hour Batman/Joker movie, given the performances by Bale and Ledger and the brutal interplay between the two characters. I loved Eckhardt in the movie. But keep him as Harvey Dent, turn him into Two Face at the very end, and set up a great Two Face movie for the next one. Instead they stuck with the “two villains at a time” thing that they’ve done since Batman Returns and the Joker plot got obscured.
As people have pointed out to me, the Joker’s role as an agent of chaos does cover a lot of sins— you basically can rationalize any of his changing motivations that way. The two plot holes that are basically unforgivable to me are the single, middle aged cop in a suit left to guard the Joker— the Joker— by himself; and the idea that there wasn’t anyone else to pin the Two Face crimes on but Batman. I understand that Batman has integrity and doesn’t want to frame someone. But surely there is some dead mobster (from all the dead mobsters out there) to frame the murders on. Framing the Joker, while perhaps morally queasy, would be pretty close to perfect comeuppance to the Joker too. Batman couldn’t object on the grounds that it’s dishonest cause, you know, they’re gonna lie anyway. And I don’t really buy that these murders (of crooked cops and mobsters) would arouse such demand for resolution from the citizenry, considering the Joker had just murdered dozens, blew up a hospital, etc. Seems like perfect cover to let the Two Face murders slip through the cracks.
— Freddie · Jul 30, 02:18 AM · #
I was disappointed with it, and ended up agreeing with the New Yorker review. Batman ended up being a supporting character in his own movie once again. Ledger’s performance as a morose, homeless bum doesn’t compare to the best takes on the Joker, Killing Joke and the Timm animated series.
The action was incoherent, the plot had no structure, the score was all over the place and it lacked the blend of realism and comic-book action that made Batman Begins a winner.
— Ali Choudhury · Jul 30, 10:31 AM · #
I liked it, but not for the usual reasons. I like the fact that Nolan has looked as much to the seventies version of the character for inspiration, and is turning the Batman into more of a James Bond than a Dirty Harry. I like Frank Miller as much as the next comic book geek, but I think it’s time to try a fresh approach to the character.
— mark · Jul 30, 02:09 PM · #
I sympathize with a lot in this piece, titled “Build-up and Let-down: Faust at the Movies.” Excerpt:
For me, The Dark Knight was a sublime experience, right up until I was packed in watching it. Well, actually, that’s not quite true. To be more precise, I loved every bit of my 2008 Batman Summer until that moment, in the theater, when the barely-pubescent shit-talkers behind me giggled at Bale’s ridiculous take on Batman’s voice — and I realized they were right. It was retarded; it was gay; it did blow.
Why the hell does Nolan have Batman talk like that? Did nobody bring this up during shooting? Did Bale not speak up and say, Christopher, if I continue talking like this, I’m going to ruin somebody’s summer? Couldn’t they just digitally lower the voice, rather than have Bale lisp out such a painfully silly growl? Or couldn’t Morgan Freeman invent some kind of overthroat larynxiator that would scramble Batman’s voice and preserve some of his dignity?
Having hit the inflection point of my month-long high, infatuation decayed into post-nuptial resignation, and I found myself merely only liking it. The spell was broken, the dream was gone, and, having plodded toward the end, I reached the finish line very much not out of breath.
This all-too-common, don’t-leave-me-hangin’ anti-climax made me start thinking about not just Batman, but about the more general phenomenon of in-cinema, post-coital ennui that, maddeningly, has turned the sweet wine of yesteryear’s multiple orgasms into the wearying waters of today’s (brutally overhyped and undercooked) lessons in divestment and unsubstantiation. After chewing on this a few days, the conclusion I reached was, disappointingly, yet a further disappointment.
I’m afraid that, for the most part, the fault lies not in the stars. To employ a tired-as-Rip cliche . . . it’s not you, Hollywood, it’s me.
— JA · Jul 30, 04:10 PM · #
See, to me, the reviews like JA quotes are infinitely more insufferable than the little Batman fanboys. “This all-too-common, don’t-leave-me-hangin’ anti-climax made me start thinking about not just Batman, but about the more general phenomenon of in-cinema, post-coital ennui that, maddeningly, has turned the sweet wine of yesteryear’s multiple orgasms into the wearying waters of today’s (brutally overhyped and undercooked) lessons in divestment and unsubstantiation.”
I want to hurt this person after reading that.
— Philip Marlowe · Jul 30, 06:01 PM · #
Philip Marlowe: I want to hurt this person after reading that.
Ha. Before your blood cools too much, I’ve got another one for you:
Now you see it, now you don’t. That about encapsulates the depths of feeling and artistry in The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan and company’s sordid exercise in avert-your-eyes sadism, a work at best inelegant and at worst inept. The film would have us believe it’s about dualities and polarities, the so-called Dark Knight of Gotham (Christian Bale as billionaire Bruce Wayne and vigilante alter-ego Batman) compared and contrasted with White Knight—soon-to-be literally two-faced—Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), both of them joined in messily chaotic battle with the facially-scarred villain known as The Joker, whose mid-film “You complete me” declaration to Batman is less Jerry Maguire-jest than Matrix-like pseudo-philosophy.
Yes, we’re back in the realm of “awesome!” anagrams and pothead palindromes that the Wachowski Brothers popularized nearly a decade ago, only now they’re spoken with a solemnity and verbosity borne of a beat-down Western warrior spirit, and lent gravitas by a cast only stellar in theory. But then it hardly matters if The Dark Knight’s dispiriting view of a city at war with itself doesn’t hold together, not when you have Morgan Freeman (as Wayne Enterprises liaison Lucius Fox) and Michael Caine (as stalwart manservant Alfred) spouting gloomy old man platitudes about the culture of surveillance, and everyone else monologuing ad nauseum about various and sundry long, dark teatimes of the soul.
I find this kind of arch-pretension entertaining, but to each his own.
— JA · Jul 30, 08:49 PM · #