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The Dark Knight = A Negative Batman Review? WTF?!
Ok, so, the new Batman Sequel is probably the most publicized movie of all time between the tragic death of Heath Ledger and the most amazing guerrilla/alternate reality marketing campaign of all time. But, does the movie itself actually stand up to real, honest to goodness scrutiny? As an old school comic book and Batman fan, this is the question that I set out to answer last night over at the Silver City in Sudbury, please read on to find out the answer, however, I will issue the now mandatory "***SPOILER ALERT***", as I'm going to talk about some plot points in the paragraphs to come, which I am sure will upset all of the two people left in the world who haven't already seen "The Dark Knight"!
There, now that the introduction is over, let's get the real inflammatory part of my review over with: The Dark Knight sucks royal ass, the plot makes no sense, the acting is mostly either wooden or just par, the action isn't particularly notable, the underlying concept of writing a story about the balance of order and chaos as expressed through the actions of extraordinary individuals (i.e. men in purple suits and/or capes) is philosophical pabulum and the only conclusion that I can come to about the droves of "fans" that are going apeshit over this movie is that they have fallen for the guerrilla marketing hype and some sort of cult of sympathy that has been born over the second com…. Er… death of an ok actor named Je…. Er… Heath.
Now that everyone out there is plotting ways to stab me in the face with batshaped throwing stars, let's get on to an examination of my points from above:
#1 - Abysmal Plot - I have to admit right here, that this is the point which really got to me the most, as in all honesty, I consider the storyline to be the single most important factor of just about any entertainment experience that I engage in, whether it be cinema, literature or even video games.
And oddly enough, speaking of video games, I'm pretty sure that the Nolans (writers and director of TDK) were actually rather influenced by the sort of plots that you find in the average console (PS2, Xbox, etc…) video game. You know the type, the outrageous city adventure where the so-called "protagonist" is dragged kicking and screaming through a series events which are only sketchily related, but which he is forced to endure in order to make it to the final boss battle and is helped along the way by a series of health potions and power-ups.
The story starts out with a pretty cool bank robbery, which was actually the extended trailer that played before the IMAX version of "I am Legend". Good start, we find out that the Joker is stealing money from mob owned banks, who, apparently unaware of the digital age, prefer to store their ill-gotten gains in treasure chests instead of off-shore bank accounts.
Next Batman has to deal with some ruffians, Scarecrow and some vigilantes pretending to be Batman. There's a bit of a toss up, Batman gets chewed on by some Rottweilers and then ties up Scarecrow with the vigilantes, apparently for the police to find. Brilliant move there Bats, I'm sure copycat Batmen have loads to discuss with the psychopathic drug-fiend co-villain from your first reboot movie!
From there we learn that Bats is now living in a penthouse in glorious downtown Gotham City, while "Stately Wayne Manor" is being "rebuilt" and instead of the bat-cave, he now has the, ummmm… boxlike (must have been inspired by a game from the old 8-bit cartridge days) "bat-bunker". While in the bat-bunker, Bruce receives a health potion from Alfred and decides that it's time to commission a power-up for his bat armour, 'cause you know, it's too heavy and he'd really like to be able to turn his head in a fight. Anyhow, here's a tip from the "foreshadowing department", both for this movie and for the inevitable sequel: Alfred's cattiness and feline comment tends to suggest that a certain female antagonist is in the running for the next bat-sequel (coming to a bat-screen near you, same bat-time, same bat-channel) and Bruce, seriously, next time, just commission R&D to invent Rottweiler-repellant bat-spray (it's called pepper spray BTW), you're going to need it in about 2 hours and 20 minutes!
Dragging right along, Jim Gordon is investigating the robbery from the start of the movie, which isn't too hard, as the Joker's face appears clearly on security footage, when he's visited by Bats, who is working with Jim to bring down the mob by distributing specially marked gold coins to identify which banks are mobbed owned. So, in a brilliant and legally baffling decision, the Gotham police are persuaded to raid the mob banks to steal… er…. "cripple" their operations by usurping control of their gold coin filled coffers.
This leads to Jim Gordon having a conversation with Harvey Dent, new district attorney, who we learned has a pretty major crush on Bat's old squeeze and childhood friend, Rachael. Dent is one righteous mofo when it comes to trying to put mobsters behind bars using what is obviously a crumbling judicial system in Gotham, which is demonstrated earlier when he brings new meaning to "beating down" a witness on the stand.
Anyhow, Gordon and Dent have a chat and Dent somehow promises warrants for Gordon's officers to raid all the mob controlled banks in Gotham. I guess Dent is really good at persuading judges to issue search and seizure warrants without legally obtained evidence or something (shrug).
Of course the raids go poorly, as we discover the the mob's Chinese accountant took the liberty of moving all their chests to a secure location, while moving himself to Hong Kong, where he would be secure from the reach of Gotham's police force and protected by Chinese law, who doesn't like to hand over their citizens to sociopathic city governments.
Suddenly, up pops the Joker, who offers out his hitman services on Bats to the mobsters in exchange for half of their treasure chests. The mobsters are less than impressed by this offer, even through this is actually one of the few really cool scenes in the movie, I mean, who can resist the "disappearing pencil trick" when it's performed with such panache?
At this point Dent and Gordon are pretty much screwed, unless they can somehow get the Chinese accountant back into the jurisdiction of Gotham's "frontier justice" system. Then they get the brilliant idea to give M at MI6 a call and bring in Daniel Craig as 007, so that he can utilize sticky explosives, a body glider and the entire contestant line-up of Miss Former Soviet Union 2008 to retrieve the errant accountant… (ring) (ring) Oh, wait… What's that? Uh-huh, oh, ok, I get it…. It's not James Bond, it's just good old Bats with a new power-up, identity crisis and boat full of models turned into professional ballet dancers. Ok, that makes much more sense!
Once Bats returns the Chinese accountant to Gotham, which somehow doesn't trigger an international incident with the Chinese government and which somehow was made possible by a gap in the Hong Kong air defence system, the accountant (of course) decides to turn against the mobsters by implicating them in a grand conspiracy that allows the Gotham City police force to arrest the entire mob in one fell swoop, but which doesn't reveal the location of the hidden treasure chests that hold all the mob's gold coins.
Well, oddly enough, the mob doesn't take too kindly to this, as they're rather fond of their gold coin collection or something like that don't actually like being in jail, so they decide that they might be better off taking the Joker up on his offer to kill Batman.
The Joker is actually rather up to the task, as he's been spending his spare time killing off certain members of the mob which were poopooing his plan, watching the Saw movies on DVD, moving around an incredible amount of explosive barrels unnoticed and amassing a small army of canonfodde… er…. henchmen!
With fresh inspiration from the Jigsaw killer, the Joker now sets in motion a horribly contrived plot that involves more explosive barrels than you can throw a stick of dynamite at, telephones, explosions, homemade remote controls, rottweilers (I tried to warn ya Bats), hanged vigilantes, surgery on mentally unstable goons, video tapes, goofy and nonsensical romantic triangle subplots, dirty cops, new villains who are killed-off before they're actually born and about 10 tonnes of steaming horsecrap.
And what's the final tally after all this nonsense? Let's see:
Jim Gordon: Dead, then alive, then appointed new police commissioner.
The Joker: Hanging upside down with about 30 SWAT team members aiming to blow his nuts off.
Harvey Dent: Transformed physically into Two Face, but never allowed to truly descend into the schizophrenic madness before being unceremoniously dumped off a building.
Rachael: Blown to ratshit.
Alfred: Cruising the south pacific with all the forgotten Russian models.
Bruce Wayne's Friends: Sick of going to his fucked up parties that always end with villains showing up just in time to ruin the evening.
Bruce Wayne: Running from the cops because he decided that it would be a good idea to take the blame for all the trouble Two Face caused. I think this is called a martyr-complex, but I'm not positive, perhaps we should ask our old friend and former psychologist Scarecrow what he thinks… "For Bruce Wayne I prescribe 3 doses of blue poppy dust per day, taken on an empty stomach and a tin of Sucrets for the sore throat that get's from doing the dumb gruff bat-voice all the time".
#2 - The Howdy-Doody School of Acting - Beside the fact that the characters in TDK are trapped in a world where they have little control over where the plot is dragging them next, it seems that somewhere along the line, the director decided that it would be easier to actually replace the actors with wooden marionettes, as opposed to human beings.
The only exception to this rule is Heath Ledger, who does (and I'm really, really sorry for this) a fair job at being the Joker. Yes he's maniacal, yes he's crazy, yes he's funny, but please remember, the lines came from the writers, not the actor. The actor is professional who is paid to be "believable under imaginary circumstances" (which is the definition of acting), if he's being believable, then he's just doing his job, he's not the second coming of some comic book villain that has attained sainthood just because he died of an accidental drug overdose. And that's all that Heath Ledger's legacy really is, he's an actor that was paid to do and did his job well and then who unfortunately died in a manner (prescription drug overdose), which surprising, many, many other people (in fact, more people die from prescription drugs than a lot of other causes) die from every day. Yes, it's horrific, yes it's tragic, but no, a tragic death does not instantly elevate you to the position of some sort of godlike actor.
Everyone else in the movie is forgettable; Michael Caine is Michael Caine, saying things in that jaunty English accent the way Michael Caine does. Morgan Freeman projects wisdom with the voice that Morgan Freeman always uses to project wisdom. Gary Oldman, is Gary Oldman taking on another role where you don't recognize him as Gary Oldman, because Gary Oldman's thing is not being Gary Oldman. Eric Roberts is being, wait a second! Who the fuck let Julia Roberts' no-talent-b-movie-hack-actor of a brother on the set!? The Katy Clone is a Katy Clone, doing her best to reproduce the Katy's wooden role in the first movie and so on.
The real tragedy, to me, is the chap who played Harvey Dent with absolutely none of the jeux-de-vive that Harvey or Two Face deserves. The potential was there, for sure, the Joker did learn his lesson well from the Saw school of fucking people over and the scene with the Joker and Harvey in the hospital had such great potential, but then it totally fell flat. What was lacking was the descent into madness, the birth of the villain! Harvey needed, nigh, demands a grand entrance, a scene akin to Gollum from the Two Towers, where the two sides of his face are arguing with each other.
Two Face as presented in TDK was almost benign and confused, the coin is supposed to represent the breakdown and conflict of the halves of his personality, not just a force for chaotic decision making.
It was just so damn sad to see him reduced a shadow of such a great character and then be executed needlessly.
#3 - Comic Book Physics 101 - Ok, ok, I know that we (as the comic loving masses that we are) are not supposed to pick on stupid physics in comic book movies, but TDK was just too big of an offender not to mention just a few points.
Let's see, first of all we have falling off, what was that, about a 15 or 20 story building? With a chick under your arm? I'm sorry dude, but I don't care what kind of armour you're wearing, gravity is going to win, especially when your landing pad is the hood of a car. Ya, 'cause, just in case you didn't know, folks like to store things, like big, solid engine blocks under the hoods of their cars.
Then we have cables from the front of the bat-cycle, which somehow don't get tangled in the front wheel of the bat-cycle during high-speed manoeuvres around a semi. I hate to break it to you Bats, but a young man on Skywalker perfected this technique on long time ago, in a galaxy, far, far away and the really important point is: If you're going to do anything with a tow cable that defies physics, at least have the decency to put it on the rear of your vehicle!
Ah, then there's the part where Bats is adapting his James Bond sonar powered cell phone into a NORAD-esque command centre that not only allows him to play peeping tom with the entire city of Gotham, but also grants him an uber-Sam Fischer Splinter Cell glowing eye 3d night vision view of final level of the game… er… movie… I'm still trying to figure out how and why Bats had the foresight to either fill the Joker's final hiding spot with cell phones or supply them to all the kidnappers and/or kidnap-ees at Gotham General, in order for his cell phone sonar system to even function during the final showdown.
I suppose the really amazing thing about the whole cellphone thing is how in the matter of one drawn out and boring movie, Bruce Wayne managed to convince every single person in Gotham that they had to pay $199 + 2 year service contract to Wayne-Com Inc. in order to own the newest and coolest WaynePhone. Bruce, Bruce, I'm having a vision, it's of your future, you are soon to receive a phone call, it's going to be from another Billionaire named Steve Jobs, he, he, wants to hire your marketing team to sell iPhones!
I'm also confused about how proximity to an explosion managed to light the accelerant on Harvey's face. I mean, yes, ok, it's a pretty major plot point, so it has to happen, but far as I understand it, liquid fuel doesn't really stick to skin all that well and if it's petroleum based, tends to evaporate rather quickly once you're no longer immersed in it.
That aside, people with half their face burned off, generally don't get to argue with the doctors about skin grafts and pain meds, as they're usually in drug induced comas to deal with the overwhelming pain and to keep them still while the doctors attend to skin grafts and the other important things that go into making sure that intense burns don't turn unto septic messes that, oh, I dunno, cause your head to fall off?
I would have been much more satisfied if Bruce Wayne had "helped" Harvey out by offering him some advanced R&D solution that left him scared, but not in immediate danger of dying because, like the Martians in War of the Worlds, he seems to have forgotten that humans have skin to prevent little problems like bacteria from turning our bodies into gangrenous messes!
On a side note, I really had to wonder where Harvey managed to pick up the half burned, but perfectly wearable jacket that he sports at the end of the movie? Was the hospital holding on to his burned clothes for a reason, or did he just do a little dumpster diving for his missing clothes before the Joker levels Gotham General?
It's also nice that the folks from PG-13 land decided to divest the inhabitants of Gotham of their blood, in order to make sure that TDK was appropriate for all viewing ages!
And, ya, well, I'm still trying to figure out how a bullet hole in a brick, plus a Gatling gun and more bricks equals a fingerprint, I just may have to put a call into CSI: Gotham. Or, for that matter, how a fingerprint with four possible matches leads to a bunch of cops wearing nothing but skivvies and duct and a rather convoluted and clumsy assassination attempt?
#4 - My Bullshit is Hollier than your Bullshit - Comics and graphic novels (and speculative fiction in general) have always been a wonder forum for the exploration of interesting ideas and novel concepts. From the birth of so-called "Super Heroes", to the depths of today's neurotic and often questionable vigilantes, these kinds of stories allow us a means by which we can examine ourselves. These are the modern mythologies, by which we can examine ourselves and our cultures and not only is this examination a good thing, it's vital to society's growth. "Know thyself" goes the ancient and invaluable wisdom, however, there is a gap as broad as the Grand Canyon between true allegory and metaphor and steaming piles of bullshit. Unfortunately "The Dark Knight" is the later, failing on any true level to make a real point about anything beyond that fact that a properly executed guerrilla marketing campaign is enough to drive literal herds of humanity into movie theatres!
The so-called protagonist of TDK by any rights should be Batman, but like I've already expressed, Bats goes from protagonist to pointy-eared observer. Jim Gordon, who, hero in his own right, is also just dragged along for the ride. Rachael is dragged to her death by association to other characters, Harvey is crushed for his small effort at proactive and then burned, but instead of being allowed to come forth from the ashes as a broken anti-hero, he is cut short before his wings are even allowed to dry.
An then there's the Joker… I don't know for sure what it was about the Joker in this movie that fell short, but I don't know, he just lacked any sort of depth or attachment to the actual stories and characters. As an audience, all we are given of the Joker is that he's a force of chaos, he lies about his origin (I wonder if this is an in joke based on the criticism that "origin story" movies always seem to garner?), he is never identified by the police or Bats, he just "is". We knew that he was coming, as the Foreshadowing Department was up to snuff at the end of Batman Begins, but we never understand where he came from or why he's doing what he's doing or even for that matter how he accomplishes his goals, besides vague army building and the secret power to transplant vast quantities of explosive liquids wherever they need to be perfectly on cue.
Choas alone is a very sketchy villain, not an impossible villain mind you, just a sketchy one. It's alright if they didn't want to flesh out their sketch, even if a Joker who's birth is intimately tied to the birth of Batman is terribly more interesting, but at some point, with everything that happens during the 2 and a half hours of TDK, we're left with this gnawing hunger (worse than a rottweiler with a craving for bat-burgers!) for a real villain. Two Face could have been this villain, a demented child born from the Joker's force of chaos.
To this end, I propose an alternate ending to The Dark Knight:
Things play out pretty much as they did, except that we are finally given a proper birth for Two Face, a series of scenes where the descent into the depths of madness is completed. Like all things which are born from a force of the universe, this new creature decides that to complete his transformation, he must destroy that which created him.
So, instead of a final showdown with Batman (who has impotent reasons for dealing with the Joker anyhow), the final showdown involves Harvey murdering SWAT teams, Joker goons and hospital patients alike on his way to the inevitable meeting with his maker.
I'm not sure where Bats is at this point, maybe out dealing with the whole ferry debacle or something.
The clash between the Joker and Two Face is epic, but ends with Two Face standing over a finally broken and beaten Joker. We see him flip his coin, which lands on the scarred and dark side, there's a gunshot and the credits role…
Did Two Face kill the Joker or just scare the living shit out of him? We may never know, or we may have to sit through another 2 and half hours of inevitable sequel, but the point is, there was a great story to be told, involving heroes and madness, of gods and of mean, but it spoiled on a droll and hackneyed plot.
Now, to everyone out there that disagrees with me and that's one of those fans that is lining up for their 3rd and 4th showings of The Dark Knight, please take a moment to break free of the marketing and the brainwashing and take a real and true critical look at this movie. Observe the plot for holes and stupidity, observe the actors in their roles, examine the screenplay, think for yourselves and you may just find yourselves wondering how the fairy glamour of Hollywood managed to cloud your judgement and empty your pocketbook at the same time!
P.S. The best thing about The Dark Knight, was finally getting to see The Watchmen trailer on the big screen!
P.P.S. Kevin Smith sucks! Ya, bat-pod, bat-tumbler, big fuckin' whoop, dude!
Posted by Dylon on July 27, 2008 2:11 PM |
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Comments
wow, that was pretty amazing and funny...and sadly true. When you said "take a real and true critical look at this movie." I said to myself, yeah, that's what I did...and the more I thought about it, the more I didn't like it. For someone like Kevin Smith to say he liked this piece of junk, he has to be in full fledged fanboyhood denile in every sense of the word, because I fucking love Batman, but THIS MOVIE was disappointing in every sense of the word. I agree with everything you said, I truly do (I hadn't even thought about the whole tiny motorcycle flipping over a Semi...) except for the part about Heath Ledger reading the lines because that's his job. Really, if you wanted to you could dumb down the great performances from the 16th century till now and say that, but to truly immerse yourself into your character is what great acting is, and that's what Ledger did. He turned the Joker into an actually person, even if his plans were completely ridiculous. THAT is what he had no control over. Words are words no matter the case, but it's how you say them that count. Do you think Marlon Brando could have made you feel for him in "On the Waterfront" if he didn't truly make you think he was that character? Bale said his lines too, because that's his job; did he say them with as much intensity and emphasis? No. Maybe it's because I like the Joker a lot, and because I really like Two Face a lot, and I think about how they destroyed Two Face, almost as much as possible, who to me is one of the most interesting and poignant villains ever to be created and it makes me sick almost to think about that, that I have to believe Ledger did a fantastic job with that very difficult character to play. Nevertheless, with this article, it is very scary to believe people actually like (love) it so much. I think it's funny I had wanted to see this movie so much, and now don't like it, but in the case of WALL-E, I didn't think I'd like it, but really loved it a lot for the characters and ACTUALLY message. In any case, this comment is a lot longer than I thought it would be, but this article was really well written and I'll enjoy reading more.
Hey, thank you very much! I didn't actually imagine that any one would have the fortitude to make it through my 7 page Dark Knight diatribe, let alone find it amusing!
In retrospect, I will concede your point; Heath did do an amazing job of immersing himself in the character of the Joker. It's almost a shame for this version of the Joker to have been lost in such a muddle of a movie. In fact, I find it highly ironic that the now infamous "Why so serious?" tagline can aptly be applied to TDK as a whole. Why did this movie take itself so seriously? Honestly, the only light moments of the film (and by light, I mean light from a very black humour perspective), were provided by the Joker's black and twisted humour, such as "the disappearing pencil trick". Well, ok, Alfred does make one comment about Lamborghinis, but I sort of read that as an uber-product placement and with that exception, everything else was damn heavy.
I had actually watched Batman Begins again last month in order to introduce my partner to the new continuity (she's a devotee of Tim Burton's Batman) and there seemed to be a much better balance of seriousness and humour in BB, which to me is essential to the process of presenting a story. Otherwise good stories can easily be crushed under the weight of their own seriousness when there's no contrast. Remember, as humans, we tend to judge all things by their opposite. This doesn't mean that movies like TDK can't present an entire spectrum of grey, it's just that the grey shouldn't be so murky that everything becomes mired and obscured.
Yes, I was deeply saddened by Kevin Smith's fanboyism! From his scripts, to his "Evening with…" movies, I had always took him to be more introspective about the art of film craft and storytelling.
The Dark Knight is actually one of the oddest examples of the fan boy culture that I have ever come across. I can't say that I'm either a huge fan, or anti-fan of the Batman mythos. I have surely read my share of Batman comics and graphic novels, as well being exposed to the campy TV series, the excellent animated series and all the media in between. I have been both apathetic and excited about different aspects of the character and supporting cast, mostly taking each tale or adventure on its own worth and gaining at least a passing appreciation for the major players in the Batman universe.
Riding off the "reboot", I too was excited about the sequel and it was precisely that excitement that allowed me to be crushed by the The Dark Knight, where great parts of the canon are burned for naught. The Joker, great and alternate performance as it was, was lost in a fog of confusion and ludicrous plot developments… Two Face is silenced before he can even express himself… Batman himself is dragged along for the sheer sport of it, etc…
As a person with a casual interest in Batman, this was a tragic turn of events, how the hardcore Batman fans would ever accept such a travesty, I have no idea and how a culture of fanboys could be born around a single cinematic effort, leaves me completely confused and bewildered!
In other news, I was reading an article this morning that points out that the Katie-clone, who I didn't even realize was played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, was signed to play in both The Dark Knight and the unnamed 3rd Batman reboot. This has left the 'net ripe with the suggestion that she will return in the form of Catwoman, which, despite many denials, falls in perfect line with my previous note about Alfred's infamous cat comment. Of course Bats is ripe with other interesting female characters, maybe Rachel will return as Harley Quinn, as a nice nod to the Joker (who the makers of III would be insane to attempt to recast, despite one of the Joker's final comments about he and Bats being destined to always be at each other's throats). Or perhaps (and ludicrously) as an uber-mysterious Batgirl!
However, the revelation that Rachel will be returning, did leave me with another, larger thought… Perhaps there is actually an unseen force at work behind the scenes in the reboot story arc, perhaps after the 3rd movie, I will be able to look back and admire The Dark Knight as the modern day equivalent of The Empire Strikes Back. As a movie which stands out as the centre of a trilogy, where the brilliance of the story is only revealed through the 3rd instalment, where Rachel is reborn as a deep and fascinating foil for Bruce and Batman, where Two Face somehow lives again to reclaim his throne, where the influence of the Joker's chaos finally falls into place and so on….
Hmmmmmm, you know, on second thought, probably not, when something looks like shit, smells like shit, tastes like shit, then it's probably always going to be shit and to me, The Dark Knight is one of the biggest steaming turds that Hollywood has ever laid!
I guess I am one of the two persons, that hasn't downloaded it yet from somewhere ... (as some countries still waiting for it to reach the cinemas.)
But it was beautyfully written, I just can hope that the movie is not actually that bad. But I especially hate it when the villains just seems to get everything right and the others never even try to think and take proper precautions. I can understand why it makes the villain seem cool to some, but for me it just diminishes the character.
Oh well another 17 days till I can see this "masterpiece" for myself ...
i loved your 'negative' review. I saw dark knight last week and was so furious with it that i still can't get over it. i found some refuge on thedarkknightsucks.com/, but your arguments gave me the real deal and I am a bit further at peace in my tormented soul. as I realise my english is so rusted that I won't be able to reply correctly to your review (just know that i completly agree with everything) I just want to say what I read smowhere on the imdb commets that dark knight is a superhero movie with zero heart. the people are crazy. for me this is just an 'end of the world' sign - might be even this movies fault.
Thanks again! Loved the The Dark Knight Sucks/ website, very glad to know that I'm not the only person with a less than positive outlook!
....I think someone(some people) wern't paying full attention to the movie...
Here is an email I sent to some friends about this film. Hope you enjoy.
Why so serious? This is a question the makers of this film should have asked themselves. The Spiderman movies were kind of goofy and dumb, but they are at least self aware in this regard. An unlikely hero faces off against a preposterous villain; hijinks ensue. Someone close to the hero is killed a lesson about morality is learned and then the hero triumphs over evil in the end, while leaving enough questions unanswered to justify a sequel. Its simple, it works and no one groans when a billionaire industrialist played by William Dafoe injects himself with some crazy military drug that will either kill him or make his company millions but instead does neither and turns him crazy evil with superpowers.
The Dark Knight on the other hand is dumb without being self aware. at its heart it follows the same tried and true intellectually stagnant " An unlikely hero faces off against a preposterous villain; hijinks ensue. Someone close to the hero is killed a lesson about morality is learned and then the hero triumphs over evil in the end, while leaving enough questions unanswered to justify a sequel." But it pretentiously claims to deliver so much more. Its like garden state with explosives. A serviceable plot like "endearing good natured loser revisits home town filled with even bigger losers meets quirky girl and falls in love" is ruined by the pretense that it is a story about something bigger. But what, like Garden State, The Dark Knight is a masturbatory form of cinematic cliff notes. It gives the impression of insight into the human condition but ultimately provides nothing more then the sense of " Duhur I liked when da building blew up". At least Spiderman was honest about what it gave to audiences.
What about the love triangle between Dent, Wayne and Rachel? This scenario was already played out by the time Shakespeare wrote A Midsummer Night's Dream. At least "The Bard" knew to write it as farce and play it up for bawdy laughs. Rachel likes Batman and disapproves of Wayne, but actually loves Wayne and disapproves of and resents his need to be Batman. Wayne loves Rachel, but Batman can't love anyone. Rachel decides she loves dent because he combines the heroic aspects of Batman and Wayne. Dent turns out be inferior to Wayne/Batman and only looks superior because he has not had to deal with the same crisis of conscience. Rachel dies loving a fictional Dent that turns out not to exist, and Batman lives to try and avenge a love he never really had. It makes me want to make a pencil disappear. The "idk my bff Jill" girl from the cell phone commercial could have written a less nauseating subplot.
Finally fuck Dent's fire proof eye. AAGH half of my face is destroyed except for the most fragile piece of anatomy on the upper half of my torso its fine. This is just one of many things that underscore the dishonest relationship this movie has with reality. It would be fine for something like this if The Dark Knight were just another comic book movie, but its not its pretentious garbage, and its supposed to be deep or have a lesson or whatever. FUCK THAT NOISE
Amen, Brother! Concision rules the day!
Thank you for this fantastic review! I loved Batman Begins, and i had very high expectations on TDK, but i got really dissapointed. Batman Begins had made an strong impression on me, but TDK just felt like 2+ hours of pure rubbish. When i got home and saw the Imdb ranking i couldnt belive my eyes! I actually downloaded TDK just to see if there was something ive missed, but no. Then i desperately searched after negative reviews on the internet just to prove to myself that i hadnt turned mad or something, and then i accidentaly found this review and i was so reliefed..:P
My english is not so good but i think you get the point :)
Thank you! It's nice to see some sanity left in the world. I actually walked out and demanded my money back the first time I went, and then unfortunately my boyfriend wanted to see it, and I ended up sitting through the whole thing, and unlike Titanic I couldn't sleep peacefully through it, because it made a loud noise every once and a while to make sure I was awake to endure the torture.
Eventually most people will wake up from the Hype, and hopefully be able to see this film for what it is, a waste of their time, and hard earned cash.
joan - i love you for sleeping through titanic! beautiful!!! and what a piece of shit that one was, but, as you say, at least it wasn't so noisy. if you look at the list of all time top grossing films you'll find them both there along with a litany of other shitty soulless hype. popular certainly doesn't mean good, just look at who was elected twice leader of the free world?!
"The actor is professional who is paid to be "believable under imaginary circumstances" (which is the definition of acting), if he's being believable, then he's just doing his job, he's not the second coming of some comic book villain that has attained sainthood just because he died of an accidental drug overdose."
All right dude you owe me a new keyboard and speakers cuz my current ones are full of Coke now....
*high five* I gotta BLOG that quote! bwahahaha
Good job nitpicking the film. But was the movie really that horrendous? Worse than say, 2Fast 2Furious? Jumper? The Rundown? The Scorpion King? 10000 B.C.?
I knew that as soon as Ledger died, people would say, "Oh people just say he was good because he died, he's not really that talented, anyone could do that, you just say he's good because of his untimely death etc." Really, i could care less if he died. I thought he did an excellent job.
And you whine about the plots many twists and turns? I guess you prefer th average action films plot: "They killed my family/friend, now I'm going to kill them". Or just the plain old, "I'm gonna save the world, stop the bad guy, get the girl" stuff.
Seriously, while the movie has some faults, it is far better than the majority of movies released today. I enjoyed it, beginning to end.
No, I am sorry, I refuse to accept a deflection of my points regarding TDK as being simple nitpicking. The Dark Knight is an awful wreck of a movie. With the exception of the opening 7 minutes and the Joker’s “disappearing pencil trick” TDK is like watching the cinematic equivalent of fingernails scraping on a chalkboard. This movie assaults not only ones senses, but ones sensibility as well. Yes, this is not all that different than the movies that you have listed (perhaps TDK is just another symptom of modern Hollywood’s utter laziness), however, to me, TDK is the worst cinematic offender of modern times. As TDK has the audacity to pretend to be something more than the pure dreck that it is, proclaimed a million times over by hordes of brainwashed fanboys as the best movie of all time, so I am calling it out and all the fanboys out.
I challenge you (or anybody) to identify a true plot twist in TDK, writing a mess of a screenplay that doesn’t carry from A to B doesn’t qualify (Jim Gordon’s hackneyed “resurrection” doesn’t count and neither does Morgan Freeman’s literal and Matrix inspired Deus Ex Machina) . I also challenge you (or anybody) to identify the true morality play of TDK, who’s good, who’s evil, just what was the Joker trying to accomplish with the ferries and building of “hostages”?
Write a synopsis, write an essay, write something, explain your reasoning, your points, I want to hear one good explanation of why you thought The Dark Knight was a good movie. Tell me the story as you understand it; tell me why it impressed you, what you loved about it. Show me why you cared about the characters or were moved to think about their actions. Give me something other than “This is the greatest movie ever, man”. Think about, somebody please, think about what you’ve watched, if you love it, then that’s great, but there must be a reason why! Maybe TDK’s alternate reality marketing really did go overboard. I’ve never personally come across so many people defending a pile of shit that they swore was gold. It must be hypnotic, mesmerizing, subliminal Scarecrow level psychotropic flower juice, it’s the only explanation!
Take, for example, movies that truly present twisted storylines, like “Pulp Fiction”, “The Usual Suspects”, “Sin City” or “The Sixth Sense”. These are carefully crafted works that take the viewer through an actual plot, with actual questions of morality. I could easily write an essay on whether or not I was happy or sad for Vincent Vega at the “end” of Pulp Fiction or if Hartigan in Sin City deserved the fate that he chose. I didn’t know who “Keyser Soze” was until about 60 seconds before the end of The Usual Suspects, and when the final twist was revealed, I found myself cheering not for the characters that I had followed through the story, but for the villain! Talk about moral ambiguity! Talk about works of fantasy and fiction that make you think!
Honestly, watch TDK again, make notes if it helps. The Dark Knight does and will not ever have a coherent storyline, nor will it ever present real questions about good vs. evil, law vs. order, cops vs. vigilantes. It’s bubble gum for the mind, but the kind that loses its flavour after about seven minutes of hard chewing, you may still be able to get some bang for your buck, but ultimately, the experience is utterly vapid and devoid of the characteristics that make up a truly fulfilling experience.
The Dark Knight is just another in a line of Hollywood garbage that as far as I have been able to trace started with “Independence Day”, which was the first massively hyped action/sci-fi/fantasy movie that turned out to be nothing but hot air. A little while after that Star Wars fans were subjected to George Lucas foisting off the steaming horse turd that was the new trilogy. I guess it’s easier to forgive George, he only had 16 years between “Return of the Jedi” and “Phantom Menace” to envision a crappy nonsense plot about trade federations and Jar Jar (I swear, why that man didn’t use any of the material Timothy Zahn came up with for his “Heir to the Empire” trilogy, I’ll never know. To this day, I prefer to believe that the newer movie exist in an alternate timeline that has nothing to do with the original trilogy or Zahn’s excellent books!)
On the other hand, the Nolans had what, nearly 70 years of comics and graphic novels to draw upon for their movie? And all they could come up with was Motorcycles with Machine Guns? Exploding Ferries? Botched Assassinations? Impossibly retarded technology? Nope, sorry, I’m not buying it, maybe if it was a post-apocalyptic world and Batman was battling Mad Max in the Thunderdome, maybe…
This doesn’t mean that a movie needs a twisted plot to be good, I mean, how many of us that watched Frodo slog across middle earth for 3 movies over 3 years didn’t know that Gollum was going to bite the ring off his finger and fall into Mount Doom? And yet, some how The Lord of the Rings trilogy continues to captivate! That’s because the story makes sense, the characters are deep, true and motivated to their goals, which in turn is good movie making and good storytelling, which are two qualities that TDK completely lacks!
Thank god other are realizing the suckiness of this movie. I was starting to think I was the only one not replaced by pod people.
I have to say. i am surprised and revealed that i am not the only one who thinks TDK is lacking...
One plot twist is the turning to evil of Harvy Dent. Another is when batman was shot, then coming back to push Harvey off the building.
You obvisouly don't know who the Joker is. He doesn't a clear thing. He just wants the "world to burn." But that's the point. He isn't trying to accomplish anything.
The Dark Knight is supposed to be realistic. And in the real world, there aren't that many 'good' people or 'bad' people. Most are inbetween. And if you don't realize that, you aren't right in the mind.
I can understand it was overrated, but it is still good.
I'm quite thankful for your review. I had a hard time googling "the dark knight sucks" just a few months ago but now finally I see some in-depth negative reviews that get at many of the ways that this film is nothing but an exploitative piece of turd dressed in what must have been the greatest marketing ever. When I went with my friends, I let myself have a pleasant level of low excitement for the movie since I had actually enjoyed batman begins on dvd (I hadn't really expected to). After the movie, I asked them what they thought of it so that I wouldn't prejudice them and they were like..."this was such a good movie" and "very decent". I did this because I felt like I had watched an utter piece of crap and not just in a normal theater but in the goddamn Imax which didn't really seem very awesome except for looking down skyscrapers.
I agree with most of your points if not all of them but I feel that there are few things that you have not considered. For one, the cellphone trick that batman used was not only ridiculous for what it was but when he discusses it with his tech guy, there is a kind of remove from the movie. Batman says that he'll use this cellphone trick "just this once" because the tech guy had morals or something. What it really showed to me was that Batman would not use this trick again. It's like an announcement in the viewers: "Hey guys, I'm sure you think this is cool and all but don't worry, Batman won't use this trick again in new movies" I was stunned by this apparent misstep and lack of understanding in terms of not jerking the viewer out of the movie. Maybe most people didn't really appreciate this detail, but the director should have understood that he shouldn't do that.
I agree fully with you in terms of the moral and philosophical tripe that they offer in the movie. It's like "hey, let's put in moments about the dubiousness of vigilantism and some chaos stuff but leave it at that. Let's not really do any exploration or try to understand these issues." Two-face, who should have gotten his own movie and perhaps may still had no business making all that noise and trouble in this movie. He was out of place, lacked proper characterization, and the transformation was utter shite. This is the same transformation or lack thereof that I hated in a movie I had much higher expectations of:Revenge of the Sith, the third Star Wars movie. I was so looking forward to seeing exactly how it is that the troubled Anaking could turn to the dark side. A movie about a transformation of a character. Well, at least for a person going into a movie for that reason, that was utter and utterer shite. In this movie, it was hardly necessary to have this hurried transformation but the director did anyway. It's not only bad directing by a long way but also bad in terms of the commercial sense since they could have used Two-face and his transformation in the next movie while introducing his character here.
The action scenes were mediocre but even if they had been done perfectly with the right angles so that we can actually see what's going on, this movie would still be dung. And why is that? Because Bruce Wayne is so dull, you might forget most of his scenes after the movie. The Joker is much more the center of the movie and yet he is like a mad psycho with no real depth. Agent of chaos or whatever, he could have taken some fleshing. People don't just turn out like the Joker without a backstory. I honestly think that if this movie had been just about the Joker and they gave him the actual central role and fleshed him out a bit as the main character, this might have turned out to be a better movie. And yet, the Joker in this movie is the center but not the protagonist. This dissonance and lack of development of the center character is just wrong and I believe, bad film-making. All of the other characters are hardly mentionable and as far as I can tell, barely make an impression. They're so forgettable that I've forgotten them. Another sign of a bad movie because in most of the movies that I've liked at least some of the side characters have some little compelling things to them. This is best exemplified by Seven Samurai which I only mention for this one point because there is no point in even trying to compare the two movies as they reside in different genres.
Batman is quite a complete under-achiever. It is not the worst movie I've ever seen but I would be hard put to say anything good about it. It is a bad and even terrible movie and only against Shit with a capital 'S' like that cg-dominated and infested wreck of a movie, Star Wars:Attack of the Clones and such ilk are worse.
Let's see...is there anything to say? I haven't mentioned the joker's stupid plots and the bad arrangement of scenes and all, but I'll discuss the only thing I enjoyed about the movie: the initial view looking down a skyscraper done in Imax style. I still preferred the flying sequence in Iron Man with its panaromic sweeps as the guy tries his armor for the first time....Even that mediocre movie had a better moment than this one.
-Sarukar
March 2010