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.
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