I swear I'll be finished taking the piss out of THE DARK KNIGHT some day...

The following is in response to Josh Tyler's Editorial Note To Awards Givers: Ignore The Dark Knight At Your Own Peril.  I posted this as a comment on the editorial, but since it hasn't gone live yet, I can only assume that they denied my democratic right to call their editor-in-chief an idiot on his own website.  Who knows, maybe it takes them a day or two to post something... In the meantime, though.

Tyler, your infantile little diatribe demonstrates the worst (and best) thing about the democratizing effect of the internet: everybody gets a say.  There's nothing you wrote here that isn't inherently flawed on even the most basic logical level, but I’m going to try to limit my response only to the most egregiously stupid things you’ve written. 

First of all, someone needs to set you straight on a concept you’ve clearly misunderstood, the function of the critic.  A critic has three jobs: be an expert in film (or at least more expert than their audience), watch movies, and report their opinions.  That expertise is why we seek their recommendation, NOT to get our opinions validated, our tastes reflected, or our (your) obsessive praise of a so-called "cultural phenomenon" justified.  Film critics (the real ones) tell us what’s good, mass appeal be damned.  

Sometimes the difference between “good” and popular creates a disparity between the critic and the public, but that’s not the indicator of irrelevance that people like you make it out to be.  The big difference between a critic’s top pick and the average movie-goer’s is that a critic sees hundreds of movies over the course of a year, while the average person sees maybe ten.  When these two groups make such sweeping statements as “best of the year,” whose is going to hold more weight?  My point is that when we seek a recommendation from a critic, someone who has seen so many more movies than we could possibly have the time to, we should expect the highest-achieving movie and not the highest-grossing. 

Does that mean that critics are out of touch?  Maybe, but sometimes that's part of their job description.  People don't need critics to tell them what they'll like - they already know what they like!  The most important function of the critic is to help advance cultural tastes by making us aware of better movies.  What you call championing pet films, I call the betterment of our national intelligence. 

As for awards, I’d think that someone who writes about movies for a living would’ve learned by now to completely disregard the Golden Globes.  You’re doing your readership a disservice by making the Globes out to be something that actually matters.  Even the Oscars, which are Nobels by comparison, don’t mean a damn thing.  Awards and nominations are political, signifying only how hard-fought a PR campaign was, not how good the movie was.  And if they award the “wrong” movie (as they always do), so what?  CITIZEN KANE was all but shut out at the Oscars and it’s still considered one of the greatest movies ever made.  So relax, man; if your movie finds an audience (and I think THE DARK KNIGHT has a fair chance of doing so), it’ll be remembered regardless of how many statues it takes home. 

Speaking of THE DARK KNIGHT… I get that you love it a lot, in probably a gawkish, fanboy sort of way that might be endearing if you weren't trying to cover it up with posturing indignation, but here’s the thing: when you make a grand statement defending a movie’s position in history, and that movie just happened to make a billion dollars worldwide, you look foolish.  If you were rallying support for a tragically under-seen and critically overlooked gem, I might understand.  But instead you appoint yourself the champion of not only the highest-grossing movie of the year, but also one of the best reviewed?!  What makes you think this movie needs defending? 

And that’s another thing: you admit that THE DARK KNIGHT is one of the best reviewed movies of the year, but then slam critics for failing to recognize it.  Did I properly illustrate the gaping incongruity in your statements here?  Critics DID review the movie very favorably, yet you’re still whining.  Just because it hasn’t made all of the critic’s ten-best lists** doesn’t mean it’s getting unfairly shut out; they just disagree with you.  That’s why we have more than one film critic in America – hell, that’s why most newspapers and movie sites employ more than one critic – because ultimately film criticism is a matter of taste. 

Maybe you should change jobs, Tyler, since your skills lie not in film criticism (or composing sound arguments) but in film prognostication.  Think of it!  You could corner the market on predicting what movies will become cultural landmarks, and you could do it without the burden of hindsight or taste!  Sarcasm aside, the movie ISN’T a cultural phenomenon; it just made a boatload of money.  Heath Ledger’s Joker, on the other hand, was a brilliant characterization that captured the imaginations of the movie-going public.  That said, I think the popularity of both the character and the movie are riding more on our nation’s fascination with celebrity death than the quality of either.      

THE DARK KNIGHT isn’t going to change the face of cinema as we know it.  In fact, aside from popularizing the use of IMAX cameras in action movies, I can’t see it having much of an impact on movie-making at all.  Any impact it does have, of course, won’t be comparable to the huge influence STAR WARS had on Hollywood - for the record, that influence was a bad one.  (Regarding STAR WARS and ANNIE HALL at the Oscars, by the way: one of them had sharp dialogue, a terrific cast, a memorable screen romance, and a brilliant director with his finger on the pulse of the culture at the time.  The other one was STAR WARS.  That year, the Oscars got it right.)  

As for THE DARK KNIGHT itself, I can’t say that I share your enthusiasm for the movie, or for the prospect of it becoming the “new mold from which all future movies will be poured.”  But to dispute you point for point on the movie’s qualities at the end of a post defending pluralism would be hypocritical of me, though I have to ask: will the future movies forged in the great mold of THE DARK KNIGHT also be structurally retarded with a nonsensical plot and a tin-ear for dialogue?  

Great site, by the way.

 

*In case you were pondering a retort to that remark, NO, that isn't true of you, unless your site's readership is made up of eight-year-olds.  And from the other comments I’ve read, it isn’t.

** Also, I like how you conveniently ignored DARK KNIGHT’S runner-up win for the LA Critics’ Best Picture – a prize Nolan & Co. came in second to yet another pretentious independent movie that nobody saw: WALL-E.  Yup, you sure are right about that critical bias against box office heavies.

WHY SO SERIOUS? or, How I Learned to Stop Complaining and Love THE DARK KNIGHT

Another quick one, though this time lacking the A.D.D. that I'm now convinced I have - actually going to see a doctor for it, too!  Hope they accept my humble admission of mental dysfunction and don't just write me off as a smooth talkin' drug-seeker.  Anyway...

Last night I briefly hit upon a topic that's been bugging me ever since THE DARK KNIGHT came out to absurdly-high critical praise and popular adoration - actually, rewind it back; it's been bugging me since before the movie even came out, when people were handicapping the odds of Heath, based solely on his terrific, scene stealing performance in the movie's trailer, winning a posthumous Oscar: completely irrational love for what is ultimately only a Batman movie.*

Okay, lemme put my thing down.  THE DARK KNIGHT is a good movie.  It's terribly entertaining and endlessly exciting, to the point of being draining.  The movie has some memorable action and is a more realistic and timely treatment of superhero characters than audiences have seen previously.  There are some great (and not so great) performances in the movie, including of course the genuinely brilliant turn by Heath Ledger that would be regarded as an instant screen classic if he were still alive today... and that's all.  Yet apparently here I diverge with much of the rest of America, both the public and the critics.  

The movie's now out on DVD, and if you're under 25 and came into my store to get it, you're probably one of the throngs who've excitedly told me that it's either A. the best movie of the year, B. the best movie you've ever seen, or C. the best movie of all time.**  So there's that.  Then the LA Film Critics Association named THE DARK KNIGHT it's runner-up for best picture of the year, second to WALL-E, a slightly less dubious choice.  While these are only representative of one age bracket and one critics group, they're in line with the overall response to the film: it's rated 98% fresh on RottenTomatoes.com, which means critics all but universally thought it was good, and it made seven and a half gagillion*** dollars at the box office, which means the public ate that shit up.  

Why, you might ask, does a good movie's extraordinary success and popularity bother me so?  Certainly it's not because I'm a cantankerous fucker who likes to hate on what's in.  Most certainly not!  Yeah, so I'm in the minority thinking that THE DARK KNIGHT'S not as hot as e'rebody else does.  Get over it, right?

It wouldn't bug me as much (though certainly it would still bug me) if I didn't think that people are gonna wake up in five years and go, "eww, what was I thinking?"  Critics especially, but real people, too.  And that's just with the hype-praise level at it's current; I can only imagine the kind of cultural morning after we'll have if the movie wins a fucking Oscar.   

Assuming that you follow and agree with me thus far... that's a pretty huge assumption to make at this point, isn't it?  Okay fine, here are my top reasons (briefly posited) for why the movie isn't nearly as good as most folks think it is:

• It's bloated.  You can easily cut two subplots and about 20 minutes of the movie without losing anything but length.  
• Like its predecessor, the movie features dialogue consisting mostly of characters explaining the themes and their symbolic roles.
• The central love story fails miserably due to lack of screen-and-script chemistry, while the rival love story flourishes due the presence of both.  
• Chris Nolan still can't shoot a fight, which is kind of important in a movie about a dude who beats the piss out of people in most of his scenes.
•  The script aims for a five-act structure, instead feels like a typical three-act with a fat ass that should've been a sequel.
• The big action finale (which is kind of a requirement in these kinds of movies) is a complete fizzle.****
• Any kind of scrutiny over the plot reveals gaping holes in both logic and motivation.
• Christian Bale sucks the life out of almost every scene he's in.

And still, despite all of these flaws, the combination of which should be fatal, the movie still works.  More so, I like it an awful lot, certainly more than I think it deserves, and it's among my favorite movies of the year.  Yet other people love it, a lot, and that shit rubs me raw.   So once again, assuming that you follow and agree with me thus far, why are people nutting over such a flawed film?  

Oh right.  'Cause of the dead guy.

As I wrote last night, there's a "bizarrely morbid loyalty" to Heath Ledger that not only prevents people from seeing, or wanting to see, the movie's flaws, but further enables and inspires them to say such absurd things as "it's the best movie ever made."  I say that the loyalty is bizarre because I honestly don't know where it came from.  What the hell movies of Heath Ledger's has a 15-year old making such bold proclamations seen?  I like A Knight's Tale and hear that 10 Things I Hate About You is pretty good, but I don't think those two performances are enough to endear Ledger to the young public so, and I feel like it's safe to assume that they haven't seen him deny Jake Gyllenhaal a reach-around, or that they'd have liked the movie if they had.  

But let's not limit this to the young.  I've had several adults tell me that Ledger gives his best performance as the Joker, but when asked admit to not having seen BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, NED KELLY, TWO HANDS, CANDY or I'M NOT THERE.  Shit, aside from the first and last, I haven't seen any of the movies on that list, but I'm not about to go and proclaim one of the guys performances his "best" without seeing his whole body of work.   

Why was there a period of national mourning after Ledger died?  Were people really upset to have to say goodbye to that good-looking dude from THE ORDER?  Were they upset that they'd no longer see his smiling face in (new) photos on the cover of US WEEKLY under some scandalous and humiliating headline?  I'm not saying that there weren't people who were genuinely upset that the guy died - he had a family after all  (though they were mostly forgotten while America grieved its fallen star) and genuine fans and admirers, among them a ton of gay people who valued the symbolism of his performance and nomination for BROKEBACK.  But these weren't the teeming masses who cried over their collector's editions of Entertainment Weekly while gossiping about the possible Olsen twin connection.     

And then THE DARK KNIGHT came out, and through the magic of the movies (and an 8-month post-production period), Heath was somehow back on screens, delighting us once more with another maladjusted hunk with a quirky voice.  And that tore the proverbial band-aid off the wound of our tragic loss, and the mourning began again, this time fused with that performance and that movie and that moment.  It was significant.  Like 9/11 for another generation, only sadder.  The movie helped America grieve, accept and let go, only further cementing its status as a titan of populist cinema and the greatest film moment of 2008.

...until a few years later, when everybody realizes that Batman's 3D-sonar-vision was really fucking lame, and that he sounded like a chain-smoking retard with difficulty enunciating.   

*Yes, that was only one sentence.  Yes, it is grammatically and puntuationally correct.  Yes, it took multiple drafts.      

**I'm guessing that "D. all of the above" is kind of assumed when one says something as all-encompassing as C, but then again the people who said "B" tend to think it's synonymous with "A."  Logic and reasoning are not their strong suits.

***Y'know, for as much as I like hyperbolically inflating the gross like that, it's somehow more shocking to cite the real number: $500+ million.  Or, the scarier way: half a fucking bil.  

****I can abide a fizzle-ending in IRON MAN for a lot of reasons, not least of which being that that movie didn't make me wait seven fucking hours to get to the end.  

CINEMATIC QUICKIES

Because I've got two long-ass pontificatory posts in the works, I'm going to err on the side of brevity for the forseeable future and crank out some knuckle children of bullet pointery.

• TERMINATOR SALVATION teaser trailer is up, and I'm a little ashamed to be excited by it.  With the mediocrity/franchise blasphemy that was T3 almost gone from memory, it's a lot easier to get jazzed about a movie chronicling the robot war to end all robot wars - yeah that's right Watchowskis, Terminators kick Matrix-sentinel ass any day of the week.
• Yes, I know the preceeding bullet point was incessently nerdy without any redeeming value.  Suck it up.
• THE DARK KNIGHT on Blu-Ray (since I passed on seeing it in IMAX) is a revelation of picture clarity.  The fidelity of image is really staggering, and I found myself more involved in the proceeding simply because everything filmed in IMAX just seemed to be happening before my eyes.
• THE DARK KNIGHT upon multiple viewings, on the other hand, completely fucking implodes.  Wanna test me?  Work your way backwards through any of The Joker's plans in the film and see if you can find anything resembling logic.  The movie's narrative demonstrates the kind of deductive reasoning seen regularly (and sublimely) on CSI: MIAMI, except here it's supposed to be taken seriously.  
• AUSTRALIA.  Not a great movie.  Maybe not even a very good one, I'm not sure yet, but I loved every second of it.  There's plenty to nitpick (and regular-pick) at, but overall I loved the movie for its exuberant movieness and urge to please.  The thing is entertaining on just about every level, even if it's only satisfying visually and viscerally.  Certainly worth seeing, and definitely worth your admission price to see on the big screen.  GO!  Baz needs your help.
• RED is a really trite concept for a movie that at every turn avoids triteness, sometimes at the last minute.  The movie leads the audience (perhaps intentionally) to expect the contrived, and again defies expectations by delivering a really terrific, nuanced character in the form of Brian Cox's Avrey Ludlow.  Every time I felt the movie careening towards a disastrous cliff of shallow sentimentality and cartoonish motivations, it surprised me by resisting the temptation that might've derailed a lesser film.  RED is a really terrific little indie thriller, which I've intentionally avoided describing so that you'll watch it cold.  Check it out (Netflixers, it's available to stream for free).
• Oscar hype continues to build around THE DARK KNIGHT.  Shudder.  Shit bums me out that Heath's going to get nominated for being dead and not for being good.  
• On that topic, I've come to the conclusion, after realizing that THE DARK KNIGHT is a terribly exciting movie that uses tension and speed to convince (at least for a while) its viewer to oversee or ignore its vast array of fatal flaws, that the people that do think that the movie's genuinely great* only say so out of some bizarrely morbid loyalty to Heath.  Lousy starfuckers.  More thoughts on that later (but probably not).

*Great in the David Lean**, Stanley Kubrick sense, not the (more enjoyable) Sylvester Stallone sense.

**Right there?  I just name-dropped a filmmaker who's movies I've never seen, in a footnote no less.  Whatta twat I am.