I didn't like itWhy THE DARK KNIGHT is not half as dark as it thinks it is
December 10th 2008 01:56
Is it just me or was The Dark Knight just another big dumb blockbuster disguised as an intelligent arthouse film?
I hear a lot about the dumbing down of American cinema, but I think things are worse than is generally recognized when even the movies that claim to be smart and arty and made by one-time indie directors (Sam Raimi, Christopher Nolan, John Favreau) turn out to be just as insultingly stupid as the rest of the teen fodder churned out by Hollywood.
I saw The Dark Knight in all its full 70mm IMAX glory and left the cinema intensely disappointed. Sure, some of the production values were great, and kudos to Christopher Nolan for doing as much as he could in-camera and not overly relying on special effects, but no amount of marketing buzz and hype before coming into this thing could prevent me from quickly coming to the conclusion that what I was watching at was just another typical comic book movie: Two and a bit hours of silly lines and plot obfuscation intercut with big, overblown stunts defying every law of physics and relying on impossibly precisely timed choreography and coincidence. Boring! Seen it a million times before!
I mean, it's great that a lot of the stunts were done live, that Christian Bale was really standing on the precipice of that building, that the truck gag was done completely for real, but a bunch of technically kosher stunts in beautiful large format photography does not in itself a classic movie make. And anyway, what's the point of applying realistic methods to totally unbelievable stunts? And what happened to Christopher Nolan's doing it for real ethic when it came to the helicopter crash scene? When you've got a budget that big, why not actually drop a helicopter into a studio backlot? Instead, we get thrust suddenly into what looks like a video game, so jarringly unrealistic it shows us that despite all the advancements and all the pronouncements about how we are in a new era of filmmaking where SFX can keep pace with the limitless imagination of Hollywood artists, the truth is that even the world's best effects whizzes are still a long way off realistically replicating basic real world physics.
But for the most part, the film delivers in terms of rollercoaster stunt thrills, and deserves a medal for not resorting to the usual Hollywood CGI overkill. What's really a shame is that the filmmakers didn't attempt to apply an equal dose of realism to the script. It''s a common ruse, when your story is built on totally implausible situations and motivations, to make the narrative as bombastic and convoluted as possible so the audience doesn't realize how shaky the foundations are. For example: I still don't understand how we got to the point in the story where it made sense to have a ferry full of civilians and a ferry full of prisoners as the only way of evacuating the city. Practically nothing in this turgid plot makes sense. When Harvey turns bad, it doesn't ring true. Why is he so pissed? He should be angry with the Joker, not Batman, or the police department, or the rest of the world for that matter. And I'm sick of hearing about what a stroke of genius it was for the writers to put in all that stuff about duality and obsession that link the hero and villain. The truth is this film brings nothing new or interesting to a horse has been flogged to death in countless movies before and since Michael Mann's Heat.
Maybe I should calm down and realize I was expecting way too much from this. After all, it's a comic book movie based on the most unbelievable of all the superheroes (I mean, he doesn't even have any superpowers! If he really existed, someone would just shoot him. End of story), so what else was one to expect? A movie for adults? A challenging and subversive story? It's impossible not to feel ripped off and frustrated at everything, right down to that ridiculous gravelly voice Batman puts on when in costume. I mean what the hell is going on here? Why doesn't someone stop him and say, er, why are you doing that, do you know you sound like an idiot?!
The film's saving grace is, of course, Heath Ledger's twisted performance as the Joker, even though the character itself is only marginally more interesting than the cardboard cutouts populating the rest of the story, and even though the Joker's philosophy doesn't really amount to much more than 'I'm going to run around blowing shit up so batman can keep chasing me in the next scene'. But there's no denying Heath Ledger is a thrill to watch, and one could almost have excused the filmmakers for paying scant attention to the rest of the characters to focus on this marvelous villain. But it's not like they gave the Joker all the good lines. You listen to the lines, or better still read them on a page and you realize the character himself is not actually that menacing or disturbing. Nearly everything that's good about the Joker is what Christopher Nolan pilfered from Alan Moore's The Killing Joke, and what Heath Ledger brought to it.
As for the films politics, there is no shortage of criticis vaunting the film's intelligent plot reflecting the political climate of the day, but all I saw was more standard Hollywood conformism disguised as a hard-nosed cerebral action movie. Cutting past all the BS said and written about this film, this is what the film's political message amounts to: the Joker is an anarcho-terrorist who kills for no reason apart from the fact that he is pure evil. The only way to stop him is for a brutal vigilante, free from the restrictions of morality, law and public accountability, to be allowed free reign in using unconventional and dirty methods to bring the villain to heel before he single-handedly brings the entire city to its knees. Then, when things go wrong, it is ok, indeed it is heavily stressed in the final melodramatic scene that it is the right and virtuous thing to do, to keep the truth of the whole matter from the public (lest they, um, lose morale) so the Dark Knight can continue his never-ending fight against evil without any meddling from either the government or the civilian population.
Sound familiar, anyone?
Your text goes here
I hear a lot about the dumbing down of American cinema, but I think things are worse than is generally recognized when even the movies that claim to be smart and arty and made by one-time indie directors (Sam Raimi, Christopher Nolan, John Favreau) turn out to be just as insultingly stupid as the rest of the teen fodder churned out by Hollywood.
I saw The Dark Knight in all its full 70mm IMAX glory and left the cinema intensely disappointed. Sure, some of the production values were great, and kudos to Christopher Nolan for doing as much as he could in-camera and not overly relying on special effects, but no amount of marketing buzz and hype before coming into this thing could prevent me from quickly coming to the conclusion that what I was watching at was just another typical comic book movie: Two and a bit hours of silly lines and plot obfuscation intercut with big, overblown stunts defying every law of physics and relying on impossibly precisely timed choreography and coincidence. Boring! Seen it a million times before!
I mean, it's great that a lot of the stunts were done live, that Christian Bale was really standing on the precipice of that building, that the truck gag was done completely for real, but a bunch of technically kosher stunts in beautiful large format photography does not in itself a classic movie make. And anyway, what's the point of applying realistic methods to totally unbelievable stunts? And what happened to Christopher Nolan's doing it for real ethic when it came to the helicopter crash scene? When you've got a budget that big, why not actually drop a helicopter into a studio backlot? Instead, we get thrust suddenly into what looks like a video game, so jarringly unrealistic it shows us that despite all the advancements and all the pronouncements about how we are in a new era of filmmaking where SFX can keep pace with the limitless imagination of Hollywood artists, the truth is that even the world's best effects whizzes are still a long way off realistically replicating basic real world physics.
But for the most part, the film delivers in terms of rollercoaster stunt thrills, and deserves a medal for not resorting to the usual Hollywood CGI overkill. What's really a shame is that the filmmakers didn't attempt to apply an equal dose of realism to the script. It''s a common ruse, when your story is built on totally implausible situations and motivations, to make the narrative as bombastic and convoluted as possible so the audience doesn't realize how shaky the foundations are. For example: I still don't understand how we got to the point in the story where it made sense to have a ferry full of civilians and a ferry full of prisoners as the only way of evacuating the city. Practically nothing in this turgid plot makes sense. When Harvey turns bad, it doesn't ring true. Why is he so pissed? He should be angry with the Joker, not Batman, or the police department, or the rest of the world for that matter. And I'm sick of hearing about what a stroke of genius it was for the writers to put in all that stuff about duality and obsession that link the hero and villain. The truth is this film brings nothing new or interesting to a horse has been flogged to death in countless movies before and since Michael Mann's Heat.
Maybe I should calm down and realize I was expecting way too much from this. After all, it's a comic book movie based on the most unbelievable of all the superheroes (I mean, he doesn't even have any superpowers! If he really existed, someone would just shoot him. End of story), so what else was one to expect? A movie for adults? A challenging and subversive story? It's impossible not to feel ripped off and frustrated at everything, right down to that ridiculous gravelly voice Batman puts on when in costume. I mean what the hell is going on here? Why doesn't someone stop him and say, er, why are you doing that, do you know you sound like an idiot?!
The film's saving grace is, of course, Heath Ledger's twisted performance as the Joker, even though the character itself is only marginally more interesting than the cardboard cutouts populating the rest of the story, and even though the Joker's philosophy doesn't really amount to much more than 'I'm going to run around blowing shit up so batman can keep chasing me in the next scene'. But there's no denying Heath Ledger is a thrill to watch, and one could almost have excused the filmmakers for paying scant attention to the rest of the characters to focus on this marvelous villain. But it's not like they gave the Joker all the good lines. You listen to the lines, or better still read them on a page and you realize the character himself is not actually that menacing or disturbing. Nearly everything that's good about the Joker is what Christopher Nolan pilfered from Alan Moore's The Killing Joke, and what Heath Ledger brought to it.
As for the films politics, there is no shortage of criticis vaunting the film's intelligent plot reflecting the political climate of the day, but all I saw was more standard Hollywood conformism disguised as a hard-nosed cerebral action movie. Cutting past all the BS said and written about this film, this is what the film's political message amounts to: the Joker is an anarcho-terrorist who kills for no reason apart from the fact that he is pure evil. The only way to stop him is for a brutal vigilante, free from the restrictions of morality, law and public accountability, to be allowed free reign in using unconventional and dirty methods to bring the villain to heel before he single-handedly brings the entire city to its knees. Then, when things go wrong, it is ok, indeed it is heavily stressed in the final melodramatic scene that it is the right and virtuous thing to do, to keep the truth of the whole matter from the public (lest they, um, lose morale) so the Dark Knight can continue his never-ending fight against evil without any meddling from either the government or the civilian population.
Sound familiar, anyone?
Your text goes here
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