The Dark Knight

Alright, so, last night I went to see "The Dark Knight". I don't usually brave the theaters when they're mobbed, but stupidly I assumed that a Tuesday night wouldn't be that bad. It was. It was packed full, every screening of the movie sold out, and even though I got there an hour early, it was only to wait in line. Apparently, every human being in the country has been federally mandated to see this movie, and see it in theaters. Madhouse doesn't even begin to describe it. So, understandably, I was expecting to be blown out of the water.

Now, I'm not a huge fan of superhero movies. I find that generally speaking, the origin story takes so long to tell that by the time we're actually finding out who/what the bad guy is, we're well into the second act and the main conflict invariably feels tacked on. And while the origin stories are kind of cool, I already know what's going to happen, so I'm not so excited when it does, more relieved. It's probably not a coincidence that X-Men 2, where everything was already established, is my favorite of the genre.

Still, I have a lot of respect for Chris Nolan, despite my feelings on Batman Begins [which I'll link when I repost it here]. I also really like Aaron Eckhardt, and was excited for Ledger's performance, which has received unprecedented levels of oscar buzz. So while my expectations were slightly tempered by the fact that it is a superhero movie starring Christian Bale (more on that in a minute), I still went in thinking that this would be an excellent movie.

But, frankly: Meh.

--a least a little bit of spoiling below--

It's good, don't get me wrong. I'd call it one of the better superhero movies in recent memory, and in a lot of ways it really succeeds. For example, the shining star of the movie, Ledger as The Joker, really shines brightly. Ledger brings a touch-- but only a touch-- of insanity and chaos to the role, which is exactly how it was written. He's creepy and funny, definitely a more interesting Joker than Nicholson's way back in the day (I like that movie a lot, by the way.) Aaron Eckhardt is really good for about 120 minutes (again, more in a minute.) Maggie Gyllenhall is just OK but that's a massive improvement over Katie Holmes. And the "batcycle" or whatever it's called was fun.

But, ultimately, what makes or breaks the movie is it's little "thesis" or "moral" or "message" or whatever you'd like to call it. The movie is, essentially, a contrast between the duality of man (and of super-men)-- the instincts that make the same species both take joy in violence and destruction and also the instincts that would make you push a stranger out of the way of an oncoming bus. Selfishness and indulgence versus morality and selflessness. And the Joker and Batman are a really great pair of characters to play this between. Particularly Batman, who, in Rachel, has a reason to be selfish. Think Darth Vader in Episodes 2 and 3 (terrible movies, but a similarly interesting premise). At this point, when Nolan and his brother sat down to write the movie, with this trope in mind, they had gold, jerry. Gold!

Unfortunately, this is where things started to go wrong.

First of all, my biggest complaint with the whole movie-- Batman. I know everybody loves Christian Bale, but this performance (much like his last batman) was clunky at best. Batman is this wonderful archetypal character with this amazing personal struggle... and I just didn't see it in Bale. I thought his performance as Bruce Wayne, specifically, was very lacking in depth. The only scene where he seemed even moderately emotive was after Rachel died, and even then, he it only seemed to truly bother him for about 5 minutes. I understand that he's playing Wayne as a public asshole, so I'll cut him some slack on those scenes (personally I thought he just seemed like a real life asshole, you know, the kind that would beat up his own mother, but I'll give him a pass there since he's effectively playing 3 personas: public bruce, private bruce, and batman.) But the "private bruce" character was totally flat and not at all interesting, and that's where the real drama should have been coming from. As The Batman, I thought Bale was OK, the voice seemed like it had been ratcheted up a couple notches, and I couldn't help but think of TV cartoon cop "Assy Mcgee". In general I thought the voice was a little silly (contrasted by ledger's joker who-- and this is key-- backed off the voice in key emotional moments). I just can't take a hero who sounds like he smokes 10 packs a day seriously.

Admittedly, part of the reason we are denied a quality private struggle for Wayne is because it isn't really in the script. Hard to blame Bale for that. But, why isn't it in there? The hero's struggle is really what drives most films. And, while we're on the subject, where is my personal moment, alone with the Joker? I want to see what happens when he wipes off that make-up. What lives under there? Does he believe his own rehetoric? Even if the answer is simply "yes", or if no answer is given, I wanted to see the question explored in the same way I wanted to see Wayne's struggle explored. This is where the movie fails.

Nolan wants so badly to make us see his trope or theme or whatever of the duality of man that he uses a great character and a great performance from Eckhardt as Harvey Dent to hammer the point home. In the battle for Dent, the Joker wins, and in the battle for Gotham, Batman wins, man is dual and Nolan's made his point. But here's the problem-- it makes the movie far too fucking long!

Now, I'm not one to complain about the length of a movie-- when it's justified . But to me, it felt like we were seeing two movies, which Nolan refused to split because without the second movie, it might not be immediately clear to stupider audiences what the first one was about. The Dent/Two-Face story hammered home Nolan's point, but it wasn't necessary. The Joker and Batman as two similar men with one crucial difference was enough of a story as is, and, as I stated earlier, could have used more exploration and explanation. The film could have ended when Rachel dies and Dent is disfigured, been the exact same length, and spent that extra 40 minutes exploring the characters more in-depth. Another unfortunate byproduct of this was that Harvey Dent, a dynamic and interesting character, all of a sudden became a shallow, predictable cliche, easily manipulated by the Joker. It hurt me to see such an independent character (and "the best of them") be so easily used, abused, and outthought by both the Joker and Batman. They could have spent a whole movie exploring the pain and anger that burned in two-face, but instead they just turned him into a rampaging madman, which sort of short-changed the role. I understand exactly why it was done, and I think that it served the film's thesis, but it wasn't necessary . I'm quite sure they'll make another one of these movies if they want to-- they should have given the Joker more screen time in this one and saved two-face for the next one. As it was, too much happens too quickly and we don't get to see some potentially excellent character work.

The film purports itself as a dark, gritty, character piece. One of my friends described it as "almost a character study on the Joker". Unfortunately, it's also a summer blockbuster, which means several big set pieces and explosions weather we need them or not (side note: while I respect Nolan and his guys for shooting so many of the stunts live, frankly, at this point, it's not worth it. The stunts didn't look any more real or fake than CGI, and compared to a movie like Wanted or Iron Man, the set pieces were pretty pedestrian. For a movie with so many explosions, I sure wasn't too excited about them.)

If the film had spent more of that 150 minutes on character, or split the character work over two movies, this could have been a really tremendous movie(s). As it is, it's simply a better-than-average blockbuster.

And also; how could they not explain the thing with Gordon's "death" a little better? What happened there? Not a crucial detail but I just wanted one line explaining it.

Numerical scores:

Directing: 7/10
Writing: 6/10 (5/5 for the idea, 1/5 for execution)
Christian Bale: 6/10
Heath Ledger: 9/10
Aaron Eckhardt: 7/10
Michael Caine: 11/10 (he's so cute, isn't he?)
Effects: 4/10

OVERALL (not an average): 7.5/10