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.