The Dark Knight: Not awed.
OK, I’m not sure if this is really worth writing about, but hey, I feel like doing it anyway.
A lot of people are lauding The Dark Knight as an amazing film, something that’s transcendent. I don’t see it that way, so turn away now if you’re uninterested in a bit of rain on your parade. (Also turn away if you want to avoid spoilers.)
I feel about The Dark Knight the way Katt told me she felt about Brokeback Mountain: I was expecting to be overwhelmed, but I was merely whelmed. To me, it was another entertaining Batman movie, and certainly one that was more flawed that the preceding one.
On the radio, I heard Christopher Nolan say that what he wanted in this movie was something very gritty and realistic. This might be part of the problem: Batman is gritty, but by design, he can’t be all that realistic.
And there is a difference between gritty and realistic. For example, Lone Wolf and Cub is comic that’s extremely gritty, yet not realistic at all. Sure, people bleed a lot and live in hard times in that comic, but no matter how skilled and determined he is, Ogami Itto singlehandedly fighting and killing a hundred samurai is just not realistic. (And that’s fine - it’s still great!) Sin City is extremely unrealistic, yet very gritty as well.
When I get cues about that a work of fiction is going to be realistic, I apply a higher level of scrutiny and suspend my disbelief less easily. I imagine a lot of other people do this, too. It also goes the other way - if something is a fun adventure fantasy, I let a lot of things go. I recently rewatched Raiders of the Lost Ark and was disappointed by its ridiculousness because I was watching it with the wrong mindset. However, it did set me up to enjoy Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull the next day. It was stupid, but also fantastic, and I knew that was how it was supposed to be.
The Dark Knight had a lot of The Wire-like scenes with police and politicians, and to me, it seemed like it wanted me to watch it like a crime drama, rather than a superhero movie, so I did.
Instead of being just about a bad guy that needed to be stopped, this movie was also about a broken city’s need for heroes and hope. It did a great job establishing that the bad guy was really, really bad and needed to be stopped. However, it didn’t try at all to establish the other thing, which bothered me.
We don’t really see that people of Gotham love their attorney general (kind of a bizarre and unlikely thing to idolize) and pin their hopes for the city’s future on him. Rather, we’re told that by Gordon and Batman during hacky expository dialogue. Unfortunately, the movie really counts on you to buy that for the ending to work. I was thinking, eh, the cynical citizens of Gotham (or any other city) would have gone on with their lives whether or not Harvey Dent went crazy and killed people or not. You’re not going to get much more hope out of them by telling them he just died.
Having failed to sell that, it makes Batman’s noble sacrifice just seem unnecessary. In fact, even if you think it’s crucial for the people of Gotham to believe that Harvey Dent didn’t go crazy, it still seems unnecessary for Batman to take the blame for the murders that Dent committed. If they were going to lie about who did it, why not just say the Joker did it? What’s the Joker going to do, sue you for libel?
Another thing that didn’t work for me was the instant sonar technology magic. “Yeah, I’ll just hook up the sonar visualization cellphone mic software up to the cellphone spy network then route it to my Batgoggles. It’s easy and quick!” Technology as deus ex machina always annoys me, but here, it’s just too much.
There were several other aspects of the movie that didn’t hold up when viewed as a Serious Crime Film with a Point About Hope and Shit, but I’ll spare you.
While a Batman movie may not be a great platform for all of the aforementioned junk, it is a great one for psychological drama, however. And man, it used it well. The best scene in the movie is the one between the Joker and Two-Face in the hospital. That was a good talk. I don’t remember it perfectly, but I’m pretty sure the Joker’s gun was loaded. That he’d put his life up to chance in order to turn Two-Face and execute his plan floored me.
Speaking of which, I’m glad the film not only drove home how psychotic the Joker is, but how ingenious and audacious he is. A guy willing to kill on a whim is threatening, but he’s not nearly as terrifying as psychotic that’s a meticulous planner that’s willing to gamble everything to execute that plan. The Joker would be a good poker player, come to think of it.
Anyway, that is what I thought. Good, but not great.
Oh, and here’s another perspective on the movie.
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