Ever gone to see a movie that everyone calls the greatest thing ever, only to walk out scratching your head? That’s what happened to me yesterday with The Dark Knight.
Don’t get me wrong — I thought a lot of stuff in it was awesome. Stuff like…
1. The Joker: Not a whole lot to say that hasn’t been said already, but still…the character was written, directed, and played to utter perfection. One of the most amazing things I’ve ever witnessed in a film. Incredible, and incredibly real. Every scene he’s in is pure magic.
2. References to Batman ‘89: I haven’t heard anyone else mention these, but I thought they were just plain rad. Joker’s ‘meeting’ with the mob bosses seemed an obvious nod to Jack Nicholson’s classic ‘hot-under-the-collar’ scene, the Ledger-with-gun vs. Batman-on-bike showdown immediately reminded me of the old Batwing crash, and Joker’s fall/ankle catch at the end brought to mind the climax of Burton’s flick. Very cool stuff.
3. The semi-truck flip: I jumped in my seat out of pure adrenaline. Wow. The whole chase sequence kind of confused me visually, but it was still pretty wicked.
4. The Batbike: I’m absolutely crazy about the Tumbler, and while its early demise bummed me out, the Batbike blew me away.
5. The FX: I think I spotted one or two CG doubles due to their animations, but that’s probably just because I was looking for them. Nolan’s dedication to non-CG solutions — and masking whatever CG is employed — is a true breath of fresh air.
6. The jailbreak sequence: Specifically, the muted shot of Ledger’s Joker hanging his head out of the window of the swerving cop car. Utterly brilliant, and without a doubt my favorite moment in the film. Could very well be one of the most powerful shots I’ve ever seen.
7. The score: I wanted to hear it before watching the movie, so I dialed up my good friend at Warner Records and he hooked me up with a copy. Good thing, too, because I don’t think I’d have appreciated the music nearly as much if I’d first heard it within the context of the film. It’s a fantastic score, but a lot of its subtlety is lost onscreen behind the sound and dialogue.
8. The sense of terror: When it worked, it really worked.
Now for the stuff I didn’t like…
1. The Batman voice: Christian Bale makes a fantastic Bruce Wayne, but I simply cannot take his Batman seriously, and this is the main reason. I felt exactly the same with Batman Begins. So, so, so corny. I know most people have no problem with it, but it drives me up a wall. The constantly-angry face only makes matters worse.
2. Finale: I couldn’t buy the water supply nonsense in the end of Batman Begins, but it was over quickly enough, and I still managed to be entertained. This cellphone sonar + two boatloads of annoying people stuff, however, almost put me to sleep. I understand that they’re trying to tap into the post-9/11 world’s fear of mass terrorism, but the only part of it that I found convincing was the Joker — his character, his actions, and his motives.
In the first film, the Ra’s al-Ghul pseudo-mysticism provided a big enough blanket to cover the slightly over-the-top stuff, but this was supposed to be harsh reality, and I wasn’t sold. If I wanted to see a disaster movie about random people being thrown into a trying situation and having their integrity tested, I’d rent a timeless classic like Daylight.
3. Gotham City: Why? Because it wasn’t Gotham — it was Chicago. In Batman Begins, I felt like I was immersed in Christopher Nolan’s very own Gotham, and while I had certain misgivings about its execution, it was cool overall. This time around, however, it’s like no effort at all was made to mask the fact that the film was shot in Chicago.
As someone who was born and raised in the suburbs of said city, it was more than a little weird to try and block out the fact that I recognized half of the stuff on-screen. It simply didn’t feel like the same city that the first film took place in. On that note, where was the cool train Thomas Wayne created? Maybe I missed it, but all I saw was the Chicago L.
4. Rachel Dawes: Katie Holmes’ part in the first film was badly written, but she did what she could with the role — it wasn’t her fault. And for what it’s worth, she looked nice enough.
Maggie Gyllenhaal’s part in this one was just as dull, but she looked completely, totally wrong — character’s supposed to be a knockout? — and had zero chemistry with the two guys who were supposed to be madly in love with her. Which, by the way, made it really hard for me to buy Aaron Eckhart’s otherwise-convincing pain as Two-Face.
If they’d stuck with the same girl, there may have at least been some small amount of resonance, but as it was, I couldn’t feel a thing. Bad trade-off, and an ill-conceived character that probably never should have existed in the first place, let alone been one of the most vital elements in propelling the story forward.
5. The ‘lessons’: In Batman Begins, it was some line Rachel preached that got repeated toward the end. This time it was Harvey’s line about ‘living long enough to see yourself become the villain.’ I don’t know about you, but I find this stuff really corny.
I enjoyed the film overall, but felt that it didn’t even come close to living up to the brilliant standard set by its villain. Truth be told, I often found myself bored when Ledger wasn’t on-screen. Maybe it was all the comparisons to Michael Mann’s Heat that did me in — I’d heard so many people call it a masterpiece on that film’s level that I was probably expecting too much, but these are two movies that I could never, ever put on the same plane.
Christopher Nolan’s take on Batman may not be my personal favorite — Frank Miller’s Year One/DKR take on the character and world is my thing — but I think it’s awesome that he’s so boldly crafted his own unique take on the property. What I love most about superhero comics is how they’re re-created and re-interpreted whenever a visionary new team comes on to tackle the material, and that’s what he and his collaborators have done.
Because of the fact that individual iterations are so fundamentally different, I tend to shy away from the idea that any one interpretation, or any element of it, is ‘definitive’. A part of me, however, wants to say that Ledger’s Joker is the closest thing there’s ever been to a definitive take on the character in film or on TV, even though the others — Romero, Nicholson, and yes, Mark Hammil — were all perfect for their respective productions.
In any case, I know I’ll be watching The Dark Knight again just to see him.
