Dark Knight Critique

[laura_seabrook]

Ok, this is my take on The Dark Knight. Almost nothing but spoilers are under the below - don't read it if you haven't seen the film yet.

 

 

 

 

Like a lot of films, there's been an awful lot of hype about this film. This has been compounded by Heath Ledger's death. Like <td class="hs">
</td><td class="nm">Brandon Lee</td> in The Crow, it's added a certain mystique about the role. After all, was Ledger so enamoured of the Joker's role that it contributed to his death (and does he deserve a posthumous Oscar)?

It's the nature of Superhero comics that the characters continually get revised - as if their creators can't resist tinkering with success. In truth though, what happens is that both the people reading the comics and the people creating them change over time. What worked in the past becomes either boring, or dated and gets updated. Both DC and Marvel suffer from this malaise (the classic one being "Superboy meets the President" where the President gets updated from FDR to Eisenhower to Kennedy).

Batman was no exception to this. Previous films (the 66 and 89 versions) reflect different ideas about the character but also mimic the comics they're based on. The current movie series is no different and is an effort to set the character in a much more realistic setting. Does Batman need this?

Certainly Batman & Robin seemed a bit ridiculous and killed off the "franchise" until Batman Begins rebooted it. I wasn't overly keen on that film. It was great to see Ra's Al Ghul and it was clever how he was linked to the Batman origin story, but this echoed the Burton film in which the Joker was responsible for shooting Bruce's parents. Once again there are echoes of the Burton film in this one.

In both films, the Joker faces off the Batman while standing in the middle of the street, while the Batman is on a high-tech vehicle. In both films there is a final fight between Batman and Joker in a high tower above Gotham (albeit with different results). And while the plots are different, the driving factor remains the same - the face-off between two extremists - Insane Psychopath vs Obsessive Vigilante. That being the case there's only so much that can be done on that axis. The difference is that while Jack Nicholson's Joker is an "ar-teest", Ledger's is a "game player". Common ground is that both versions of the Joker are fearless.

All the dilemmas and situations that the Joker sets up, revolve around forcing people to do things that they otherwise don't want to do: Batman to give up; pick which person to save; ordinary people to shoot the Wayne Foundation snitch; or boatloads of people to blow up each other. Interestingly there is either no, or conflicting origin stories for the Joker, and we never find out how he got that way. Maybe ultimately, it doesn't matter (after all, they only thought up an origin for the comic character years after he was first introduced).

And I think that the <td class="ddd"></td><td class="char">Harvey Dent / Two-Face was mostly wasted in the film. It was a good attempt, but really it goes nowhere (the facial make-up/special effect was spot on though). I can't help thinking that the character was added so that someone would die, as the Joker didn't - just like Kirk's son and the Enterprise dying in The Search for Spock to balance out Spock's return. In the comics, super villains and heroes often come back from the dead. In the film versions, the super villains tend to be dead by the end of a film, and not revived (as per Green Goblin Doc Octopus). Ra's Al Ghul might indeed return (he does have his Lazarus pits, after all) but Dent seems dead for good.

And the ending, in which Batman deliberately becomes an outlaw, just doesn't ring true. The idea is that:

Bruce Wayne: People are dying. What would you have me do?
Alfred Pennyworth: Endure. You can be the outcast. You can make the choice that no one else will face - the right choice. Gotham needs you.

...huh? Am I missing something here? I thought Batman was already an outlaw. Forcing the issue in the last scene seems unnecessary. Actually, I found the film at 2 hours 32 minutes to be too long by maybe 30-45 minutes. Whatever happened to Intermissions? Lord of the Rings this isn't!

Also this is clearly the second part of the story started in to previous film. The question is whether it's a two-parter (like Superman I & II) or a three-parter (like Spiderman)? If it is a three parter, I think next time I'll see the Narnia flick instead and watch it on video.

My prediction for the next film would be Catwoman (to replace the love interest lost in this film) + a major villain (who exactly is a problem). I've always wanted to see a Batman + Superman film, but I really can't see that working as the style of films is currently so different.

 

 

Yes, I know I'm hard to please, but I've also been reading Batman (off and on) since the early 1960s. Guess it's warped me a bit.

Comments

[stephen-dedman.livejournal.com]

I hadn't expected them to kill off Two-Face (though I agree he hadn't been done particularly well); after Heath Ledger died, I thought they would have good reason to keep Harvey around, even if it meant shooting an extra scene or two.

I think that with a JLA movie on the way, it's unlikely that they'll pit Bats against Supes. Catwoman is a possibility if they think enough people have forgotten the Halle Berry movie. Penguin is difficult to make scary, but if he were the brains with someone like Man-Bat or Killer Croc as muscle, I could see that working. Of course, there's always the Mad Hatter, who was brilliantly handled in the animated series and hasn't been in any of the films...

[laura-seabrook.livejournal.com]

There's any number of foes it could be, though probably not any like Clayface.