Under cover of The Dark Knight

'Burr wonders why "we" rally around a movie rather than "the things that actually do matter"'

Simple. World peace, climate change, and critical socio-political issues matter perpetually. They ebb and flow. We have less peace, war ends, we have more peace.

Thus, we rally around anything we feel we can rally around. Sports teams - sports in general - works this way. Ask a football fan who doesn't like basketball what he waits for most every year.

The real concern is why we so arbitrarily seek events to signify our existence; particularly our youth. That is the source of the "where-were-you-when" question AND is the root of all evil (an acute attack of self-importance).

Hi Jim,
I was really hanging out for your assessment of the film and - for no reason in particular except maybe the whole validation of my own opinion - am a little disappointed that you aren’t as enthusiastically lauditory of it as I was (I did pull out ye old best action movie ever/straight into the top 10 call). There are many reasons I think it is really that good from technical aspects to the story itself, and I personally think that while the morality in the film is little muddled perhaps, it is still definitely worthy of analysis and thought – it is this moral element which makes it a cut above other great action films. I’ll leave it to other more motivated people to spell out exactly why it is so good but I do want to contest your claim that Nolan didn’t know how to use Ledger, and particularly that he wasn’t introduced well cinematically.
The opening shots of Ledger, completely masked, often from behind as he is walking are fantastic primarily for making us so acutely aware of his body language, the mastery of which permeates Ledger’s whole portrayal. Add to that the first time we see his face, in close up, from below, and I think it is clear that Nolan’s introduction is fantastic.
Anyway them’s are some thoughts of mine
Dilan

This sounds similiar to A.O. Scott's opinion that "The Dark Knight" repitiously states its themes, but doesn't explore them. And it's certainly worth discussing. So yeah, I liked it. It certainly wasn't life altering in the sense that I left the theater feeling like a new person, that I was going to go ponder things that I never had before, or even that I'd just seen a great movie . When Ebert says he liked that both "The Dark Knight" and "The X-Files" actually asked moral questions, I can't help but think, is that so much? The way I read that, he sounded surprised, sort of like he hadn't encountered that in a while. Maybe it had to do with the progress of the superhero genre of films? I even felt weird after reading it, because I knew I had a qualm with it, something that rarely happens when I read Ebert (my favorite critic). And I can't even say "The Dark Knight" stuck in my mind.

I have a serious problem with the handling of Bruce Wayne/Batman. Does anyone feel like something was a little off with the writing? In a movie called "The Dark Knight", the Dark Knight felt rather absent. Looking back, I don't have much recollection of either identity. Of course, I'm sure that has to do mainly with Ledger, but Batman not standing out just doesn't sit right.

This can be summed up by what I said to my friends and what one of them said back.

"Would you guys hate me if I said I like the first one better?"

"Yes."

I find myself confused. I've seen this movie three times, and it seems to hold up very well. I enjoy it more fully, more completely than I have any other superhero movie. Sure, there are flaws: Bale's Batman voice is over-the-top and distracting in some scenes, several times characters fall long distances with nary a bruise (which sticks out like a sore thumb in a movie that's trying very hard for 'realism') and Harvey Dent's character wasn't fleshed out quite enough to justify what he does toward the end of the film.

However, nearly everything else works. I have no complaints about the script, the acting or the directing. Hence my confusion; lately I have read several articles from critics and other reviewers decrying The Dark Knight and making similar statements to the one that opens this article (Murky plotting, uneven direction, distracting camerawork), statements that frankly mystify me...that's not the movie I saw at all...

Is it merely a case of pop-culture backlash? Richard Roeper seems to think so - http://www.suntimes.com/news/roeper/1065781,CST-NWS-roep21.article -
and the more I think about it the more I tend to agree. Emerson says in this article that he waited two weeks to see the film, is it possible that his opinion was colored by the praise he heard the film garner in those two weeks? Would he have had a different experience had he gone on opening weekend as I did?

For that matter, would my stance be different had I waited? I'd like to think not, but I do wonder...

(spelling correction)

I don't think I'm alone on this one, but I don't really see the themes as something that big or worth discussing outside of the context of the dilemmas that happen to the characters in the film. These characters, their problems, or the crises they encountered don't transcend film and leak into our daily lives. This isn't Ingmar Bergman or Terrence Malick here...but it is a great crime film that deserves comparison to some of Michael Mann's best work.

For me the themes that the Nolan Bros. hammer home (and boy do they ever at the end) never penetrated through the screen, getting under my skin and making me think real hard about the film. The Dark Knight has moments within the movie that make you think there is really something there, but once the credits role and the euphoria has worn off you realize something: the whole shebang is nothing more than surface without depth.

But what a surface! I think it is one of the best movies of the year (but I am like your friend who loves to label in hyperbole), and I really love the maddening glee Ledger brought to The Joker; making him one of the best likable villains since Hannibal Lector or Tony Montana.

The movie works well as an almost flawless exercise of the crime genre, and for the specific genre picture it strives to be, the themes that are presented are pretty deep for the two-and-a-half hours you are sitting there watching it. But, the first thing I wanted to discuss after seeing the movie was Ledger's performance and some of the action scenes, not its so-called "deep themes". In fact, the only time I really thought about those themes and discussed them was when I sat down to write my review of the film -- but what I really wanted to talk about was the look, because that's where the film is so successful.

I just don't think the movie is all that deep. I see this becoming a movie like Reservoir Dogs or The Usual Suspects or (sorry) Fight Club, where there is going to be a rabid fan base lobbying to brainwash people that this is the second coming of filmmaking. The themes aren't big enough to support the film as high art, even though everyone ages 15-25 (I'm 26, so I will gladly remove myself from my made-up demographic) will declare it "the greatest movie ever made!"

Great crime film that will have you talking about its aesthetic qualities, days after you see the film? Yes.

Deep existential drama that will have you in a contemplative mood for days, discussing with your friends about things like global terrorism and the cruel, nihilistic world? Nope.

Bergman it aint, but Mann it is. And that's pretty damn good praise, the fanboys should be happy with that and just leave it be.

Talmun: What I wondered is, if I'd seen it with a cheering crowd, in a packed theater (as Ty Burr describes), would that have swept me up to carry me over the some of the parts I thought were anticlimactic or opportunities I thought were muffed. Or at least drowned them out? Maybe.

I'm not aware of any "backlash" (so soon?), but perhaps that's because I avoided seeing or reading anything about it until now. (The last couple weeks, friends would have discussions among themselves about it over meals while I talked to somebody about something else -- they were very careful and considerate not to spoil anything for me!) Until I read Burr's piece I had no idea people even felt so strongly about the movie. All I knew was that it was really popular, but that was hardly a surprise given the popularity of "Batman Begins." And that a couple critics I knew who didn't like it were viciously attacked for it, but still don't know what was said on either side. (I haven't even read beyond the first few paragraphs of Edelstein's or Keith Uhlich's pieces yet -- but I see that Edelstein has already written a reply to the commenters on his blog.) Now I want to go back and read what other people have been saying -- and that includes Roeper's column.

P.S. I didn't have a problem with repetitious thesis-stating in the movie, though I'm not going to argue the point (I gotta read A.O. Scott's review, too!). I just felt it was all over the place, not so much ambivalent as scattershot.

Dilan: I've been writing a lot about the movie the past couple days, just to sort out my impressions of it. I want to go into more detail at some point, but I'm still processing it. I felt a letdown in the way the Joker was revealed because I thought it happened too soon and too fast. Nolan may have been going for shock, and I felt sustained chills were called for. Yes, we already knew what Ledger's Joker looked like because of the advance posters and stills and ads (couldn't very well avoid those!), but I wanted to savor the moment more than Nolan allowed. Ledger could hold the camera, and I felt it should have lingered on him longer in that moment. He really took off with that early scene with the mobsters, though...

Anytime you dare to criticize a popular film, you can guarantee the pro-crowd (and some of the critics who support the film) are going to accuse you of simply being "too cool for school."

I thought Batman Begins was a truly awful movie. Dark Knight is better by a Heath Ledger and the absence of Batman Begin's useless 45-minute trailer/first act. It's still utterly mediocre.

I know I'm not the first person to say it, but the editing in these films is horrible. I understand that ala David Bordwell we have been rushing headlong into intensified continuity for some time now, but the action scenes in this movie are just a blur and a flash. I thought the battle scenes in Gladiator were muddled beyond all hope, but they look positively classical compared to the way Nolan and crew film action scenes.

As I've said elsewhere, Dark Knight strikes me as an adolescent's idea of a "deep" movie. It's dark. Batman's tortured. Good and evil, they're like the same thing, man. None of this would be a problem if it didn't feel like Nolan thought he was creating a masterpiece that transcends genre, space and time. OK, now that last part I admit may genuinely be backlash - I've never heard Nolan say that and may well be projecting my own frustration at the film's seemingly pre-ordained reception as a masterpiece.

I did, however, absolutely love the Joker as a nurse. That was inspired.

Setting all that aside, I think we've ignored the most controversial point of Jim's original posting.

A room full of young people (or people of any age) became excited upon hearing that there was a film critic in the room? At least if you're going to make up an anecdote, make up one that's remotely plausible! :)

I saw "The Dark Knight" with some friends on its second day of release, hoping to love it and find that it lived up to its pre-release hype. I thought it was realistically a 50/50 shot that I would love it..."Memento" is one of my favourite films, and I really grooved on "The Prestige", which I think is sort-of a modern-day Robert Louis Stevenson story, like "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde". But I had been frustrated with the choppy action sequences and somber pall in "Batman Begins", so I was curious whether or not Nolan would return to that style or display the inventiveness that he had demonstrated in "Following", "Memento" and "The Prestige".

Having seen the film now twice, I believe I have clarified in my own head what works and what doesn't. The opening half is extremely well-executed, despite the odd botched scene (like the one in which Eckhart's Harvey Dent punches a would-be assassin mobster in a courtroom). The film has a relentless momentum that allows the viewer to forgive its sometimes sloppy editing and predictable "surprises" (such as the assassination of the judge and police commissioner orchestrated by the Joker). But (MAJOR SPOILER ALERT) after the Joker escapes from police custody, the film, in my opinion anyway, takes a major nosedive. It becomes a series of forced climaxes that are gripping in only the most thoughtless, facile way (I even joked to my friend that the only thing missing was a woman tied to railroad tracks). Scenes of citywide panic and "chaos" are presented in a glossed-over, rushed manner. Just two examples: the police officer who is willing to kill the accountant who has threatened to reveal Batman's identity...who is this guy? Why do we care? And then there is the ludicrous crisis on the two boats, in which we are presented with a microcosm of humanity that is laughably simplistic and really carries no emotional heft whatsoever...its fake, manufactured tension of the easiest kind, and if this is truly where cinema has evolved to, then I think we can still do better.

There are also nitpicky quibbles that gnawed at me more upon a second viewing...things that I'd be willing to forgive in a movie that I found more enjoyable and one that didn't strive so hard for a tone of realism amidst its subject matter of iconic superheroes (and villains). In no particular order, a few questions/quibbles that I considered:

- When the Joker invades Bruce Wayne's house party, the scene ends with Rachel Dawes being thrown out of a window and Batman saving her. Cut to the next scene involving Lt. Gordon. So what happened to the other party guests? Did the Joker kill them? Did he crash at Wayne's place? Or did he just give them a big "C ya on the flip side" and take off?

- The Joker plants a cell phone bomb in the stomach of a schizophrenic. He knew precisely that that criminal would be rounded up and taken to that police station, and put in that precise cell? (I can hear the potential defense of "the Joker had some cops on the take and had arranged this before hand", but I'm not buying it).

- Speaking of that bomb...the Joker strolls into the main office of the police station with a police officer in hand as a hostage, and he demands a phone call, which he uses to activate the bomb. Obviously the explosion would surprise all of the cops, but what happens to them? Do they just drop to the ground and give up? Are they killed? If so, how come the Joker is just standing there in the office amidst all the debris, unscathed? And the Asian guy in the cell seems to have barely a scratch.

- Going back to the beginning of the movie, the Joker plans a bank heist so that a bus will be crashing through a door, killing one of his co-conspirators, at the precise time he is standing there? I guess he must have alloted for the inevitable shotgun showdown with one of the bank employees. And then the bus is able to emerge from the wreckage, covered in dust, and join its place among a line of other schoolbuses, without anyone on the street (or in the other schoolbuses) questioning what just happened?

- Also, with the city on high alert (I mean we're talking Red Level in today's modern terrorist colour-coding scheme), the Joker (and/or his minions) is somehow able to plant hundreds of explosives on a ferry SPECIFICALLY designed for the safe exodus of people out of Gotham City? Pretty lax security...I think that Gordon is a bit of a half-assed commish.

- Finally, there's an interesting racial undercurrent to the film (and believe me, I am NOT one of those people who sees racism around every corner, especially when watching movies). While it is certainly implied that the Joker kills many people, aside from the opening bank robbery (which becomes almost Monty Python-esque with the bodies piling up) we actually only see four victims on-screen, and they are all black (the disposable "pencil" victim, Gamble, the police officer shot while the Joker is in the gigantic truck, and the police officer shot in the hospital). This could simply be a coincidence, but black or white, their deaths carry little resonance and are meant to merely suggest the chaos being inflicted by the Joker without bringing too much pain to the audience. Also, there's an interesting undercurrent about the American fear of the Chinese economic rise that appears in two separate scenes. First, the Chinese businessman who forms a merger with Wayne Enterprises is shown to be corrupt and untrustworthy (this is the most glaring example of this undercurrent, so much so that it ceases to even be an undercurrent!). But it pops up in the early, awful scene in which Harvey Dent has a gun pointed at him by a mobster. When the gun fails to go off, Dent grabs it and muses "Made in China. Next time, buy American". The message is loud and clear: China is not to be trusted!

I hate to sound like one of those dweebs who nitpicks a movie that is supposed to be entertaining and fun, but the problem with "The Dark Knight" is that it is so relentlessly grim that it doesn't really encourage the normal suspension of disbelief that would go with, say, a "Star Wars" or a "Raiders of the Lost Ark". Instead, its holes stand out as they would if they appeared in a Michael Mann or Martin Scorsese crime picture. However, those quibbles are far from the reason why I was less than enthusiastic about "The Dark Knight", they merely add to my feeling that it is trying to have things both ways: striving for profundity but taking facile shortcuts and settling for the easiest, most thoughtless form of audience manipulation (oh no! A child that has appeared in two scenes has a gun pointed to his head! What a climax!). A film can talk a good game about moral complexities and the thin line between good and evil, chaos and order, but it must also integrate it into the very fibre of the storytelling, and it is in this regard that "The Dark Knight" fails. For while there are some interesting thematic points raised by the "The Dark Knight", they are merely raised, not explored in any meaningful or resonant way, and the film's presentation of good and evil isn't any more shaded just because Harvey Dent happens to transform (implausibly) from a crusader to a villain...he's merely shifting from one caricature to another (to be fair, Eckhart does a tremendous job of fleshing out Dent in the first half of the film, but he's abandoned by the script's rush-job to turn him into Two Face). And while Ledger's (admittedly brilliant) take on the Joker certainly takes the psychosis of the character to new levels, the movie also relies on a few audience-pleasing, Hannibal Lecter-esque moments in which we're not really watching an out-of-control, could-go-nuts-at-any-moment psychopath but rather a fictitious creation who is not above either winking at the audience (his handwashing in the hospital) or articulating far more than a psychopath ever could (the existence of his "dog chasing a car" speech is a prime example of telling and not showing). As for Batman's supposed moral crisis, I must have blinked and missed it, because the only less-than-heroic acts I could see him committing were his rough interrogation tactics with two characters who are presented as laughably loathsome, the Joker and the mobster played by Eric Roberts (who is remarkably calm after having his legs broken by a fall). Oh, I forgot, Bruce Wayne also sets up a sonar device that listens in on cell phone calls, giving the movie an easy bit of topicality when Morgan Freeman proclaims "This is wrong" but then proceeds to use the device JUST THIS ONCE to catch a madman like The Joker (makes for easy civics when you can claim that civil rights should exist, except when you need them not to).

The reaction to the film is a tad surprising, but not completely mindblowing when one considers how the similarly middling "Lord of the Rings" trilogy was elevated to ridiculous heights. There is definitely something in our moviegoing culture, and perhaps the culture as a whole, that thrives on and needs the communal experience of a blockbuster that EVERYONE can agree is a masterpiece. And with the current lack of perspective, mixed with hyperbole, that dominates our discourse, it's not surprising that "greatest ever" gets tossed around (after all, isn't that the trademark of a consumer culture...forget history, newer is better!). Why this film has been chosen as the one to rally around is certainly a fascinating topic, and one that I continue to look into (this is a matter of taste, but if there was a film that was going to make a huge dent on the culture in recent times, I was hoping it would be "Children of Men", but that barely made a ripple). My own theory is that the success of "The Dark Knight" has been a perfect storm of expectations/hype, the iconic nature of Batman and the Joker (two of our most enduring modern mythical creations), the tragedy of Ledger's death mixed with the clear evidence in this film of a wonderfully-imaginative and versatile actor who had tremendous potential, and one more, largely unexplored factor that I believe has contributed: the need for something painful to jolt us awake. For "The Dark Knight" is not an entertaining or enjoyable film by conventional standards, certainly not crowd-pleasing in the mold of films as diverse as "Star Wars", "E.T." and "Titanic"...rather, it is draining (even those who loved it have described it as such) and nerve-wracking. Perhaps the days of communal, feel-good entertainments are over, and in this era of suspicion and cynicism the mass public does want a film that indulges in that cynicism. But the cynicism and "darkness" of "The Dark Knight" is all surface, it doesn't cut to the bone, and in that way it makes the film an ideal teenager's film. Like a teenager, it considers itself above childish frivolities like humour and entertainment (the few children who did show up at both of the screenings of the film I went to were in tears by the midpoint...is this really what we want Batman to have come to?). It demands to be taken seriously, and thinks that by showing a lot of violence and pontificating about the inherently dark side of humanity it can prove its knowledge of the way the world works. But "The Dark Knight" betrays its lack of understanding of the world in its smaller details...nothing feels adult, mature, authentic (which, as I've repeated ad nauseum, would be fine if the darn thing were fun!). Its stuck in a perpetual mope but unwilling to explore the way real life unfolds, instead assuming that the world is unfair, villains sometimes get away with things, so there's not much point in trying to be a hero (you'll either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become a villain). That enduring message of "The Dark Knight" is not wisdom or insight...it's merely an excuse for moral apathy, the kind that someone like the Joker might get a kick out of.

Consider this the overenthusiastic rant you mention, or consider it my appreciation. I believe this is quite a breathtaking and overwhelming film. I was elated when Roger Ebert loved it, but it makes me sad it didn't send you on to the moon.

        In many ways The Dark Knight is a complete re-imagining of the Batman mythos. It doesn’t condescend towards the genre, the comic book genre; as if it was a world only fit to cater to simplistic emotions of love, and spectacular action. Nolan and co. take their source utter seriously and believe Batman and his universe are as relevant as anything out there. Take for instance, how they influence the Bruce Wayne character and his intensity with shades of Teddy Roosevelt. They don’t paint Gotham city in bright colors and CGI. It is a city living and breathing as any we see, and there in lay its profound gravity – we believe the events being transpired.
        E-Square, a local multiplex, just showed us why they are such shrewd businessmen. The Dark Knight released across India with hype not even a fraction what it had managed elsewhere. It was a silent release, and there were pretty big names against it in two new Hindi films. The multiplex has its biggest capacity auditorium in Screen 5 where it usually screens the obviously more in demand Hindi films. And when the schedules were rescheduled on Monday morning, The Dark Knight proved its real might. That good cinema knows no boundaries, it needs no hype. It thundered its way onto Screen 5, and before we know, every show is running to jam-packed houses.
        And since the screen in the auditorium is one of the largest we’ve in Pune, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. I was there on Wednesday, again, paying the film a sixth visit. Among its many box office records, The Dark Knight has scored a tiny one – the fastest film to have been watched 5 times by me. If you think I am crazy, I met plenty of folks down there last night who have been repeat-watching it. And if you haven’t already, you ought to. I mean, experience The Dark Knight, which is simply a staggering film. An achievement if you might call it. It has taken me six viewings to finally come to grips with it, and its myriad levels of pleasures. At once an action epic and a visual splendor of the caliber of Terminator 2: Judgment Day and a crime drama as eloquent as Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, this is an all new level for entertainment. I believe, cinema exists and prospers because of such immense films. There’s a kind of purity in its utter seriousness of belief. Beneath its swift pace and action are carefully written characters brought to life by one of the best set of actors you would ever come across in a single film. And all of them wrapped around by the mind and heart of a genius.
        The genre which has shaped my perception of cinema the most has always been the western. I always imagined Batman to be from a similar world as the man with no name, for he is drenched in some of the same moral complexities. For instance, what it takes to kill a man. And what it takes to let a man die. I was heartened when one of my good friends shared my view, opining that The Dark Knight could as well have been a great western. It is such a fine reading of this film, a testament to the kind of drama and themes it deals with, and the kind of moral questions it raises. It does pay a nod to the current world atmosphere and it just might come across as a right wing apologizer. I believe it would be a greatly simplistic view of the proceedings.
        I have come across some arguments on various forums that have a minor gripe with the film – is it really about Batman? Hasn’t he been overshadowed by The Joker, which to some is a cardinal offense? I’m not sure, for the simple reason this isn’t a film wholly and solely about Batman in the first place. Making a movie about Batman is something they already did in the first film. This time around he is a major player, but this is the story of a world. This is coming from a man who has had Batman living and breathing within him his entire life, and I say I could never have imagined a greater tribute to him. You might want to know, how.

For the simple reason that it places him in this world, and asks of him to save it.

Batman:

        Batman has no limits.
        Yes, he does. And he surpasses them. Behind that cape, there exists a man. A mere mortal. And that is what makes him special. Because he unlike anyone else, can take it. And that is the underlying power of The Dark Knight. With so much darkness around him, with souls vulnerable to the preying hands of the devil, there is only one force holding Gotham city from falling deep into the plunges of destruction and chaos and anarchy.
        Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan and David S. Goyer know their Batman like many others, but where they stand head and shoulders above most is in their unabashed belief for the character. In their grim realistic interpretation of the character, and his Gotham city, there exists a very deep faith in the strength and resilience of the crusader. The character hails from comic books, from fiction, but they look at him with a sense of devotion as if he is relevant in today’s times. Maybe a Batman is relevant for all ages, for of all superheroes, Batman is the closest that comes to a mirror.
        And he has yet to meet his match. Two-bit crime bosses are bread and butter. What The Dark Knight does is engulf him with the combined forces of fate and moral and chaos, all of them up against him, hurled at him with vicious intent. Batman here is the essential underdog about to realize his limits, and hence he feels like us. He has the infallible heart of a lion though to take it all, head-on. And still survive. And to exceed his own limits. That for me is the truest essence of the character.
        In a rather brilliant decision, the haunting of his parents’ death is not mentioned even once. Yet we see a more haunted albeit surefooted crusader. So much so that his fight to clean up Gotham city has encroached his daytime too. The Batman persona is taking more and more possession of him, and the way I looked it, Bruce Wayne just existed in name. And that brought him a strange sense of calmness and inner peace. The Joker makes Batman reveal himself. It is a fascinating revelation on the character, and I believe Rachel Dawes gets it just about perfect. As much as he walks to reveal himself, his true self is protesting. There is less and less of Bruce, there’s only more and more of Batman.
        Does Bruce Wayne feel intimated by Batman, is something that bothers me. Not that the film ever dwells in that notion, but from time to time we’re supplied a shot of Bruce staring at the Bat suit so as to plant a seed of that idea within us. The sequences bear allusions to a type of split personality we all possess, as if something inside is calling upon the man in the suit. The suit feels like a headstrong arrogant man, with his chest held high. Before him, Bruce feels vaguely inferior, and dare I say, human. I believe that is another fascinating angle on the character, when he wears the suit, it is a human heart bearing the mind of a raging unforgiving beast.
        In Arkaham Asylum, as Batman plays a surrealistic hide and seek game within the premises Mad Hatter poses to him one of the strangest questions I have come across, a question with infinite implications – “Is this hospital a head that brings us into existence? Is it your head, Batman?” It is just a wild insane thought, but The Dark Knight in true Nolan style presents a more realistic interpretation of that question. Gotham has been made crazy because of a billionaire taking himself too seriously, donning a cape, and setting the wrong kind of example. Escalation it is. Copy cat escalation is one form of it. Wannabe Batmans raid smugglers, taking justice into their own hands. Yet Batman shuns them. Is he being pretentious and hypocritical? That is the kind of self doubt that is creeping in ever so slowly into his psyche. How far has he actually succeeded in being a symbol, yet helping in building a true form of justice? As they say, practice before you preach. His means are all wrong, and someone is about to show it to the Batman the hard way.

The Joker:
        And it is possibly his greatest fan.
        A fan who has poured himself all over in his fascination for Batman. He even dreams of sharing a cell with him forever. It is a key to understand the Joker, which is one of the great written characters of our times. It is an absolute in every which way you look at it. Nolan’s Joker is almost an impervious wall of contradictions. But almost. There are three moments, concerning his three reactions that dig somewhat deeper into the character. And all of them concern him being called a freak, or some such derogatory term.
        The first time, in the mob boss gathering, little Gamble calls him a freak straightaway. For a moment there, The Joker seems visibly upset. But he doesn’t react; he tries to finish whatever he was saying while his mind is at work somewhere else, and then in his inimitable style insults them with a scathing verbal assault, exposing their pathetic truth to them. It is a great moment of triumph for the film, for its detailed view on the performance of the actor and the nuances of the character. There is a person there, but how much of him feels anything is open to total interpretation. During the third time, the Chechen again calls him a freak.
        It is the second time though when the Joker truly takes the insult to heart. He is called garbage, and it is Batman. The Joker doesn’t insult him, cannot insult him. He tries to tell Batman who he really is, all the while insulting us, and this shows his true fascination for him. More so than The Killing Joke, we see the underlying relationship between the two faces of the same coin.
        It is one of the greatest constructed sequences of our times, the interrogation scene. A minor masterpiece the way it acts as a hall of mirrors. We can feel the violent rage of Batman in the sequence. As much as the mention of Rachel is driving Bruce Wayne crazy, the Joker laughing despite being beaten mercilessly is frustrating Batman. All the elements – direction, performances and composing – all rise to provide us with a much profound read than a simple lock-up interrogation. And it contains a shattering line – “You complete me.” – and for some odd reason audiences laughed. One an agent of chaos, the other a crusader for order. Lack of chaos is order and lack of order is chaos. They aren’t absolutes, and neither are Batman and the Joker. As long as one exists, the other does inevitably. They both are the causes of each other. The Joker, simply put, is the extreme form of the chaos that made Batman rise against crime.

                I’m like a dog chasing cars. I wouldn’t know what to do if I caught one.
        This statement and many others he utters over the span of the film do not exist just for the sake of entertainment or comic effect. It is, in fact, the only source we’re given to peek inside what’s otherwise an absolute rendition. The Joker in the film tries to be much like the coin that Harvey ‘Two-Face’ Dent tosses, the scarred one I mean. He gives everybody choices and relishes the dilemma that envelopes his subjects. Everything for him feels as an experiment, like the curious kid who just unscrews and opens up stuff to see what’s inside. He doesn’t know what he’ll do once it is all open; he is just fascinated with the ‘opening’ part and performs it meticulously.
        Every sentence he speaks reeks of this innate curiosity of his. That is one of the masterful achievements of the screenplay here. Consider an otherwise insignificant exchange he has with the Chechen, one of the crime bosses. As he burns all the money, he places his knife on the Italian’s neck and says – “Why don't we cut you up into little pieces and feed you to your pooches? Hmm? And then we'll see how loyal a hungry dog really is.” In another film, this would have been just another line; here it gives another insight into this strange force – he is giving the dogs a choice too.
        This sequence contains an action of this that works as a symbolism of sorts. Look how he doesn’t throw the money into a heap. Rather, he carefully builds it giving it a structure. And then he burns it all relishing in the joy of its destruction. He is an agent of destruction and chaos, not destruction and chaos personified.
        One of the most heart-wrenching sequences in this tragedy is when the Joker swaps addresses and misguides Batman regarding where Harvey and Rachel are bound. He does know whom Batman will choose, and he intends to check if he disappoints. To his satisfaction Batman never does. That is all the more reason why Batman and Joker are from the same moral universe. Each can predict the other. Only that Batman takes a little longer to realize because he doesn’t know an equal.
        But the Joker isn’t satisfied merely by irking Batman. As much as he respects him, the battle is for the soul of Gotham. He intends to strike down the White Knight.

Harvey ‘Two-Face’ Dent:
        And The Dark Knight is his story.
        The character that represents the conscience of Gotham riddled in idealism and values. There is a purity, a whiteness about the character and the best part of Eckhart’s performance is we feel that in him. There’s a scene where Bale acknowledges his belief for Dent and we’re shown a close-up of him. It fills the screen, dare I say, with goodness and charm.
        And that is why he is the prized choice for Joker. Does Harvey’s transformation truly represent the most depressing of notions – that evil finally triumphs over good? The film portrays what The Killing Joke didn’t, or couldn’t. That how fragile the good inside of us is and how easily susceptible it is to the forces of evil. Because good is built upon everything that is modest and innocent.
        Dent’s transformation is one of the great tragedies of the film. In a crucial scene, both Dent and Rachel, in separate locations, are bound in a room full of explosives and oil barrels. It is a scene of great performances, as many are in the film. It is powerful and deeply touching not in the least because two characters we have come to care about are in trouble, it is devastating for how it pans out. Rachel believes Batman will come to save her and she is devastated. She talks to Dent consoling him, trying to bring a shred of warmth to his last moments. But the Joker had different plans. The surprise on Rachel’s face when she learns Batman has reached Harvey is immensely tragic. There is something deeply painful where people are separated not knowing the full picture, because it provides a sense of incompleteness. A horrifying sense of it. Rachel dies not knowing that Batman intended to save her, and Batman would never know Rachel didn’t intend to marry him. I’ve never been a huge fan of Rachel, and never really minded who played it as I was fine by both, but that final moment was worth every bit of moment the character spent in the two films.
        Maybe the good amongst us ought to be protected by tough-minded individuals who aren’t necessarily white or pure. As much as Batman is the opposite of Joker, in a strange way, Dent is the opposite of Gordon who is essentially a pragmatist.

Commissioner Gordon:
        He is an honorable man, but he doesn’t mind corruption. Turning a blind eye is as much a sin as committing it.
        Gordon is one of the great characters in the Batman universe. A character criminally ignored in every screen and television outing, reducing him to third grade weakling capable of nothing. Nolan gives the character his due, for the relationship between Gordon and Batman is something deeply profound. It isn’t of a brother, or a friend but one that is based on admiration and trust. Mutual. It is a relationship that transcends normal boundaries – the two guys know each other, understand each other. Outside of Joker and Alfred, there’s probably none who understands Batman better.
        The chemistry between Bale and Oldman is one of the great joys I have experienced at the movies of late. Oldman delivers a restrained albeit forceful portrayal of the cop. Both the films end through Gordon’s eyes, and probably it is the best set of eyes for the simple reason they respect Batman the most.

        Dent sure does represent goodness with respect to an individual. But what of our collective humanity? Are we prone to anarchy and mayhem if left by ourselves, or is a moral order native to us? I have always believed humans as a whole are capable of good. It is essentially an optimistic viewpoint, but I have at various times wondered and arrived at the conclusion we as a whole are naturally noble.

        And the Joker here is the one at fault. He might know and understand the big bat but he doesn’t fully understand the people at large. Whereas Batman comes from the same part of the world and the same part of the mind as him, the citizens of Gotham do not. He puts them through the grind of one of his wicked experiments, and they return Batman’s faith in them. The sequence more than anything is one of faith.

The Ending:
        There have been seldom been times when I have felt shattered when a film ends. My first viewing probably invoked the truest and the most complete reaction from me, and as the credits rolled, I just sat there in my seat. Swelled. Drained. Considering that it was about Batman did it all the more for me. At the end, Batman is placed at an altar higher than ever before. It is a sequence of innumerable emotions, chief of which is redemption. Batman had been responsible earlier for the death of a few individuals. Yet it is important he doesn’t reveal himself to the Joker’s demands. He is the only one who could take tough decisions. Yet at the heart of the superhero is a simple man, and he like us has to atone for it. The final act of taking blame upon himself is an act of redemption, and much more than that an act beyond heroism.
        It is kind of pure cinematic moment us fanboys wait for years but never experience. The choice of every element in that sequence is astoundingly perfect – Gordon’s monologue, the words it consists of, the score from Howard and Zimmer, and the distant light that creates the aura around Batman as he turns from a crusader into a legend before our very eyes. It is a moment of magic only a genius as Nolan could have pulled off.

        I would quote here what one of my friends said, and which I found an immensely beautiful reading of the sequence –
                “That it ends on a darker and gloomier note than any film on its kind, and yet instills a greater hope is what cements the greatness of this film.”

Filmmaking:

        The Dark Knight represents some of the highest order of filmmaking. And the secret again lay buried underneath that golden rule – the film knows, understands and feels its characters. The greatness of the film comes to the fore not in the spectacular actions sequences, which will go down in history as some of the most iconic ever filmed. It is the sequences that deal with the interactions of its characters. Every sequence, every single one of them, brings to the table an emotion that is inherent to the character, resulting in a clash. That is what guides its editing and cinematography.
        I have spoken about the interrogation sequence. Another sequence involves Dent and The Joker in a hospital room. It is a marvel how brilliantly the sequence has been structured. How the lines are spoken, and what is happening between them? Great sequences, just like great films, aren’t about what they are but how they are about it. They exist beyond their narrative service; they make us feel the emotions they are dealing with. You could feel the force of The Joker and how it is pushing the good that is Harvey Dent. It is a towering moment in the film, when Ledger plants the gun on to his forehead and it owes as much to the astounding performances of Heath Ledger and Aaron Eckhart as it does to the cinematography of Wally Pfister. How effective the close-ups are in this film, and how they enhance the performances and the characters. Nolan always likes to fill his screen with his characters, allowing them to emote. We have had much debate how SarkarRaj overdid the close-up part. I believe this is the way to do it. Not impose them on us, but gradually take us in. This is good old fashioned cinema grammar – every sequence gradually closing in on its character until we are inside their minds. Something exploded within me when Two-face lays the coin before the Joker, and Joker has one thing to say – “Now we’re talking.” A supreme moment of writing and filmmaking of the highest order.
        The Dark Knight is one of most intimately shot urban epics I have ever seen, several notches higher than any of Mann’s films, including Heat. Just as the sprawling lands of the western, this city exists as a character as well. Consider the sequence Consider the scene where Harvey is being transferred in the police convoy. Or consider Batman standing on top of the tower preying for information. The most epic of them has Joker stand in the middle of the road enveloped by high rises on all sides as Batman heads on the Batpod to crush him out of existence. We’re driven through the same roads during day as well as night and we tend to grow familiar with the surroundings. The nights in Gotham are lit in golden light and they render a strange sense of melancholy to it. This is something CGI can never manage.
        Consider my contender for one of the best shot non-conversation action moment. As the convoy passes, the truck veers into visibility and into the frame and we read – (S)laughter is the best medicine. And the shutter opens and we see The Joker with a gun in one hand and his left hanging on to the railing inside. Pure cinematic bliss drenched in tons of style.
        Speaking of which, there’re little nuances strewn all over the film. As the convoy drive along their path, they come across a fire truck burning. That is as good a moment of pure Joker humor as you will ever come across. Another such moment, is the Joker walking down the steps of the exploding hospital and it is a beautifully choreographed moment in the film. The scene speaks so much of the character, and his penchant for destruction and the way he basks in its glory with his outstretched hands.
        A heartbreaking moment in the film transpires between Bruce Wayne, heartbroken and devastated sitting there sobbing in his gloom, and his man Friday Alfred. The gloves and everything are on the floor, and it brings back memories of a young Bruce devastated by his parents’ death and his belief that he had caused it. Christian Bale is one of our great actors, and in what would have been merely a good scene is made truly touching by his very presence. The natural hoarseness in his voice brings a depth not many actors have, and with it comes a great level of honesty. Consider the fund raiser at his palace, and see how Bale shows his appreciation for Harvey Dent. It is his eyes, so wide and true, and his voice again that make him such an honest and intense actor. When he says he believes in Harvey Dent, we believe him.
        I have heard a hell of a lot of complaints about his bat growl. I might come across as biased here, and I have no reason to back my opinion, but I love it for no particular reason. It fits so wonderfully in my imagination of the Batman, simply because as a kid I would change my voice too. It feels an element more natural and obvious than logical. Nonetheless, it is that very voice that makes the final scene such a revelation as Batman finally says – “You were the best of us.” Bale delivers a great performance as Bruce Wayne, but as Batman he is in a different zone altogether. No Batman ever made me feel, Bale does that. He elevates Batman to a symbol of fear, but he keeps him essentially human. And that is one of the many glorious achievements of Nolan’s Batman.

Editing:
        I feel like specially mentioning my appreciation for the film’s editing.
        Nolan, in a way, is one of our most demanding directors. He always likes to densely populate every frame and every minute in all his films, and there is not a spare moment here either. And in that congested environment, he lets his characters grow and flourish.
        The manner in which multiple situations are narrated find their closest match in the Academy Award winning The Departed. We’re driven forward on multiple fronts, and more than the Scorsese film, the technique feels more at home here. It feels as in a comic, where the narrative develops in multiple places. It is the Joker’s plans, there’re three in total, and each of them are handled in the same manner. Each place, each of the situations during these scenes has a different emotion in it and their resultant cumulative effect reins the dread inside of us with great force.
        The best of the three occurs in the middle of the film, where Batman and Joker are out to save Rachel and Harvey respectively, Harvey and Rachel talking to each other on a phone, the cops are looking into a prisoner who has just fallen to the floor unconscious due to immense pain, and the Joker toying with a cop. There is great tension such editing pulls and we’re basically juggled between different them. It is chaotic, and it is brilliant. We’re never comfortable during these sequences, and that is an achievement of the film that it pulls us out of the safety net we watch every summer entertainer through. This is serious.

        And yeah, no film that can literally make a scene punch you is done anything short of super in the editing. I’m talking about the moment when the cop comes to the truck and tries to put a leash on the driver and bang – the Joker comes from behind and shoots him. It sure is a shot, every which way you look at it.

Soundtrack:
        I would recommend the soundtrack to everybody. It is worthy enough to be bought.
        Some of the pieces are intensely moody, and some of them have a mad rush of adrenaline to them. For instance, it is tough to stop yourself from poking your head out of the window while listening to Like a Dog Chasing Cars on your car deck as you drive around in the middle of the night. Harvey Two-Face boasts of a crescendo that literally bleeds with the tragedy it speaks of. This is a brilliant creation from Zimmer and Howard, and in my personal favorite A Dark Knight the melancholy tribute they pay to their hero is quite something. Something that could only be felt.
        And of course, there’s the edgy Why So Serious? One of the best tracks I have heard in a long time.

Academy Award Buzz?
        If the Academy wishes relevance, television audience participation and more importantly cinematic art, it ought to nominate this film. There’s no way in the world any actor could be nearly as good as Ledger here, and this would undeniably go as the performance of the year. Just as Bardem’s was of last year. That is not all, it ought to be nominated in quite a lot of categories. This isn’t a film, this is a phenomenon.

A Third Film?
        In a way, the Nolan brothers and David S. Goyer have written themselves into a corner by unleashing this colossal epic. How could they possibly top it, which is if they even attempt to?
        This is brute intensity they have unleashed upon us here. In the opening bank heist one of the robbers warns the hostages in what is one of my favorite lines of the film ¬– “Obviously we don’t want you to be doing anything with your hands other than to holding on to your dear lives.” We do something similar in the film, we just hold on to our dear seats. It is the greatest entertainer I have seen in ages, if not ever. Some of the best lines inhabit this film, and considering that comic books do take pride in their lines, this is the first original comic book film with a quotable potential.
        This film knows its source better than most. At the beginning, the witness points a gun at Dent and it misfires. It is kind of a nod from the folks, winking at us that they know this is how Two-Face was born. But we’re up for something different. They’ve re-imagined the source to cinema, and rather than coloring it all up ala comics, they have understood what those colors represent and portrayed them on the screen.
        Logic is what drives their imagination. For every development the film needs a reason plausible for its world. For instance, consider something as simple as the Batpod shooting out of the Tumbler. None of us was bright enough to put one and one together – why would Batman slide forward in a horizontal position to fire his missiles in Batman Begins. Why did the Batpod have tyres with the same width as the Tumbler? And when we see the ejection, it all so wonderfully makes practical sense – the bulk of the vehicle and its shape.
        The Dark Knight is an honest film which doesn’t try to cater to different audiences. It doesn’t pretend to be romantic when it doesn’t need to, doesn’t try to be comic just for the sake of it, and there in lay its wide appeal. Everyone values their own intelligence and loves someone who respects it. Around 48% of The Dark Knight’s audiences seem to be females, and they have loved it just as much as any fanboy. A great film is always great.
        I would be most pleased if they agree to make a third under Nolan, but I would be perfectly happy with these two films. Still, let us exercise our meager imaginations a little bit, and try to fathom what Nolan could make out of what could possibly be the greatest trilogy of all time.

As is always the case, the villain here is the key.
        Who could be the next guy who would have the audacity to stand upto the Batman? And pity, that’s not all he has to stand upto. The Joker is the greatest villain of all time, and I mean, he beats folks across all mediums. The strength, the resilience, the adaptability of the character speaks for itself. Along with the Batman, he has survived and flourished multiple revisions – from the murdering psychopath to the funny prankster. With The Dark Knight the late Heath Ledger and Nolan have possibly given him his greatest outing of all time, the definitive version of his many personas and that includes Moore’s The Killing Joke. As a chaotic, unstoppable force of nature. A performance that stands up as one of the greatest of all time, as carefully nuanced as any I have ever seen. Right up there, rich with detail, as Pacino’s Michael Corleone.

        There’s not a villain in the universe who could now be the devil himself and let us dance with him under the moonlight. Who could Nolan use to meet the avalanche of expectations that would greet the third, if it does come?
        I have pondered and there’s one name that sounds kind of cool. You want to hear it? Well, for an antagonist, how does Superman sound? The Dark Knight Returns.

A few random thoughts about some comments above:

"Ledger could hold the camera, and I felt it should have lingered on him longer in that moment... "

Well, that's one of things I liked most about the film. It's really really serene and cool-headed all the time, giving little amount to things that could be dilatated to achieve a conventional effect. Because Jim, yeah, I think holding the camera too much to "behold" the Joker would have been conventional, and Nolan surprises (me, at least) being quite quick and cool-headed with his approach, which I believe goes a long way in a movie like this.

Take, for example, the scene with the big prisoner guy throwing the detonator out the window in the ferry. The scene after, where he goes to... pray?... was really quick. But that's the point. No contemplation, no self-pity, no glorification of the moment or the subject. Just what NEEDED to be done. Compare it to the scene in Titanic where the violin players stay aboard the sinking ship...

Ledger was handled in some similar way... yeah, he owns every scene he's in, but he isn't supposed to. Not in absolute terms, at least. He is approached as an idea, no the enhancement of the feeling, so Nolan is quite quick and "septic" with his character, and I'm thankful for that.

And yet, the movie brought me chills, and cheers, and anguish, and after-experience analysis, and to get that with such an approach is something that should be applauded.

Now, this question is really interesting...

"Does the raising of issues in dialog or story beats qualify as artistic ambition or achievement?"

Because, to me, the answer is YES. Plain and simple. You can beat around the bush with the ideas more or less, but in the end, you are taking ideas into the arena, and to do that you need to put it in the story and/or the dialogs. That's it. If some people find it more or less profound has got to be with everybody's own extra-filmic experiences. See, I was thrilled with some ideas presented in the movie (the Joker wanting to pervert everybody out of a selfish attempt to justify himself: "this is a strange world"; the Batman fighting crime being the very main cause of the biggest response yet from the crime world)... but I didn't enjoy FULLY those concepts because I have already seen some of them better elaborated in works like Watchmen or The Killing Joke. But they were there, nonetheless. To people who haven't read those graphic novels, these aren't just outstanding ideas. They are bits of geniusness.

Many of the film's core fans are fans of the character in the comics, and maybe an argument for explaining the hype is that it's a movie that overpasses its stigma of being a comic book movie. Because IT IS the most ambitious and succesful comic-book movie. And it got so far, that makes you cheer just because its getting ahead of bias and general common sense about comic book movies. Like people who say (maybe they are right) that part of Obama's success is because he is black and he has got so far.

But those factors OUTSIDE the movie shouldn't take credit out of it. Sometimes I think it is a better movie than No Country For Old Men, and I AM SURE it's better than The Departed. Although it didn't leave me brooding for days, it¡s just because I didn't identify personally with many things in the movie... things I have found in lesser films. Yes, a lot of people are overhyping the movie... (fanboys who rejoice and feel better with cheering)... as a lot of people are underrating the movie (elitists who feel better surrounding themselves with cinicism).

Because, yes, Reservoir Dogs (for me, Tarantino's best) and Fight Club ARE incredibly great movies, whether or not the audience noticed it or not (the did), and they are some of the best depictions of the nature of modern men that I recall.

Nolan is a filmmaker who drives by with a straight out matter-of-fact approach. When you say the camera might have lingered a bit longer, one could also claim the action sequences could have had some slow-mo effects.
Beautiful and spectacular as they may be, they are essentially tricks that call attention to themselves. They end up highlighting what has already been stated.
And that is why Nolan just shows us, and moves ahead. He doesn't dwell, he just packs the story, narrates it with the strongest impact there could be possibly, and leaves us with the after-effects. He doesn't have moments, and he doesn't go for style that betray the overall tone of the subject matter. And still he manages to create iconic imagery.

For a long time now, the film noir genre has been reduced to a bunch of cliches and technical exercises. The "darkness", the "grimness" is all on the screen. What Nolan is doing, through his earlier films - Memento, The Prestige - and now with a great degree of success with The Dark Knight, is making us audiences feel the grim tone.
Much like Lynch, Nolan makes us realize when the noir genre begins to make us feel, things get tragic and scary.

Jim, I'm a long time lurker of your blog. Love your Fight Club articles and particularly your insightful analysis of Donnie Darko and endless praising for No Country of Old Men. You're 102 list has been my bible for about the last year of me full-heartedly discover film.

I think this a very complicated debate you've started here. It always is whenever you get into the whole 'what movies are classic' and 'what is(or are) the greatest movie(s) of all time'. People's definitions of classic and greatness vary. And then there's mainstream audiences who hype films a lot more than they deserve and that only complicates things more.

All any of us can do is give our opinion according to our way of reviewing a film. So here is mine. There are good movies worth seeing once. Very good movies worth a few watches. Then the great ones that can be seen again and again without losing your interest or rather doing the opposite and sparking it more; No Country for Old Men is such a film.

I think TDK is a great film - not a perfect one but so few are - because it can be watched again and again. Now, there's lots to get into in terms of why I feel that way but I'll just start with countering a point of yours.

You call the movie 'scattershot' and seem to wish Nolan slowed down a bit to let us take in the moments/ milk every scene for all it's worth. Fair enough but consider what we do get from his approach and pacing: chaos. And what is Gotham in thanks to The Joker? (Chaos.) And when we go to see TDK, where are are for two and a half hours? (Our theatre but in our minds we're in Gotham.) The movie feels like being hit by a hurricane of emotions and ideas, and so it should because that's what Gotham is going through. When the disaster is over - the credits roll and audiences walk out talking amongst themselves - that's when he start sorting out exactly what happened. Contemplation begins and repeat viewings soon occur.

What's to contemplate? ...Where do we... begin? How about Batman Begins. And maybe this isn't fair but, well, I think it is. TDK is enhanced by having seen Begins and the two are really companion pieces. Here's an example: At the end of Begins, Batman leaves Ra's to die. At the end of TDK, he doesn't let Joker die. Why? What was the difference between those two scenarios? A thought I had was maybe Joker is deemed innocent - at least, innocent enough to not deserve death - due to insanity versus Ra's who Bruce knew well enough to deem fully aware of his actions and the consequences he brought upon himself. But that gets messy because The Joker wins. His philosophy proves true. So what does that mean? Do gooders are really the crazy ones and that people have to believe in something as nuts as hope to keep living? That's one heavy way to look at it anyway.

The final shot of The Joker alone is almost enough for me to call the movie great. Batman has seemingly defeated him and has him hanging from his feet. Then he starts speaking and the camera turns to show us the world from his view. 'Madness, as you know, is like gravity. All it takes is a little push.' Haunting final words considering our last look at the upside down clown. To him it's right side up.

And the Joker reveal? Dude. We all knew he was gonna be in it from the moment Begins ended. You're not surprising anybody by holding off the reveal. You are surprising them by making the reveal so quick. It's a tease before his second reveal, the real reveal, with the mob which my theatre applauded after he walked out.

(By the way, there's a little tiny moment in there I love. 'You see a guy like me-' 'A freak.' Laughter. 'A guy like me...' Ledger lets the Joker let his guard down for a second, he even seems a tiny bit wounded, as if he's thinking to himself 'You came this far. Don't screw it up now.' And then he puts his Joker facade back on. 'Look, listen. I know why you have your *ahem* group therapy sessions!')

But it's that bank reveal thats sets the Joker's tone for the rest of the movie. He's lightning, suddenly and horrifyingly there and then suddenly and hauntingly gone. Vanished. Hidden. Unfindable but definitely lurking - scheming away - somewhere in the background until the next strike... happens.

We don't need Nolan to milk The Joker for all he's worth. He's quickly and unforgettably etched into our memory, existing in our imagination as much as on screen and Nolan is keeping it that way by not overexposing him to us.

Well that's my flip side of the coin for now. Maybe I'll post more thoughts later but I wanna give somebody else a turn and see what they say.

The movie is really good, not great. At it's best it's better than Batman Begins, but Batman begins is more consistent, not to mention that it has ninjas. I think you analogy to a brilliant but flawed record hits the nail on the head. I think seeing it opening weekend did put people in a time and place that made it seem bigger and more important than it was.

As a counter point, I'd like to point out the vastly inferior Iron Man. I didn't get around to seeing it for a couple of weeks. I liked it, but I just though it was okay, maybe even a little generic. For example, (*spoiler*) watch the scene where Gweneth Paltrow has to steal info on a memory stick. It's got some really bad and inappropriate second unit insets in case the audience is too stupid to realize she tucked the memory stick in the newspaper. And the first bad guy, the main terrorist, was so generic I thought about the good old days of Golan-Globus. Not to mention the Arab sacrificing his life for rich American Tony Stark in the cave escape. (*end spoiler*) I knew the movie was a crowd pleaser, but I was surprised to see how many critics were extremely enthusiastic in their reviews. Was everyone just caught up in the experience aspect? Will they revise their opinions when the movie hits DVD and cable? Would I have liked it more if I saw it opening weekend? I think so on all three counts. And I think to a lesser extent people will do the same with The Dark Knight.

I disagree about the opening scene. To me, it's a masterpiece of directing. It was released online, and I've watched and disected it shot by shot dozens of times in the past weeks. The performances and camerawork in it are near-perfect. It gets us ready for the feel of the movie, which will present surprises every step of the way. It gets the story started, by introducing the mob. It introduced the Joker perfectly by his cold-heartedness and by describing what he does best, which is putting things off-balance by always preparing one step ahead. You already get a taste of the Joker's personality through the body language and the one close-up, without letting Ledger take over the movie right from the start. If something like the (in my opinion, brilliant) mob scene had happened before we saw Batman take on scarecrow and the others, the introduction of Batman would have fallen completely flat.

I wholeheartedly agree with Kevin J. Olson here. I loved this movie, and count it as my favorite this year, for the same reason that I loved Heat. Or Casablanca. Whatever "deep" themes (what is "deep" anyway?) that are presented are presented as character obstacles, not as things we should learn from, or think about in terms of how they matter in our own lives. I'm not looking for deep themes that matter when I'm watching a movie. I'm looking to be shaken up in one way or another. I want to be emotionally played with, sort of speak. It's the same reason I absolutely loved There Will Be Blood last year, and didn't really like No Country For Old Men. I didn't like TWBB for whatever themes it was talking about, I liked it as a character study, and in the scene Daniel Plainview got baptised I was so rattled that I didn't know whether to laugh, cry, be afraid or be shocked. The same happened to me again in the bowling alley scene. No Country For Old Men made sense to me in an intellectual way, but it never engaged me more than any other chase thriller, so I went out of the theatre thinking it was a smart, technically great movie I sort of liked.

The Dark Knight rattled me. Though Two-Face's arc was perhaps passed over a bit too quickly, he worked fine as a mirror image of Batman, and everything else worked great as a character study around Batman as well. The Joker was perfect, and played with me both by how he acted (hilarious and gruesome at the same time, you fear him but can't take your eyes off him) and by what he did (switching the addresses and the results of that really made me feel for Batman more. For the first time I really felt *bad* for him.)

There were a few glitches. I did notice the plotpoints mentioned above by someone else, but I quickly forgot about them. I didn't like the swooping of the camera when Batman has his sonar-glasses on. I also didn't like the editing in the chase in the tunnel, where I didn't really know what was happening or what car was being shot at. But the rest of the editing was top-notch.

And I'm glad you chose that particular image to accompany this post. That was thé shot of the movie, and probably in my mind one of the greatest shots in the history of cinema. It is sad, joyful, scary, funny, nostalgic and absolutely beautiful all at the same time.

If you haven't seen any backlash, I recommend reading Michael Atkinson's post on the film.

I did enjoy several aspects of the film, but there were some major overarching flaws that bothered me.

Every single dialogue scene is loaded with unnecessary tracking shots and editing that does nothing to enhance the scene. Moreover, the characters rush through the dialogue at an unbelievable pace (there's a fine line between overlapping dialogue and rushing through dialogue, and this film always ends up well on the wrong side of the line). It's as if Nolan is afraid that if he slows the action down, the audience will be bored and lost. The unfortunate result is that dialogue scenes become nothing more than the report of dialogue; anything resembling emotion is absent in these scenes (and, I would argue, most of the movie). It also means that the action sequences don't come off as effectively as they would if there were some slower sequences to contrast them.

The film was for the most part emotionally dead. Batman/Bruce Wayne is not on the screen long enough for any emotional or meaningful inner conflict for the character to exist. The whole idea behind the Joker seemed to be that he enjoyed giving normal people impossible choices that implicate them in inconceivable crimes no matter which course is taken, and he does this several times with Batman, but every time the conflict is over as soon as it's been set up, having been solved by one of those aforesaid quick dialogue scenes. The one time where there seemed to be any meaningful moral decision made was on the two boats, and it is also the emotional climax of the film. (Considering how much Nolan can do with characters we haven't seen and don't see again, you'd really think he could do better with the main characters). And in regards to emotion, I didn't think there was really a whole lot of chemistry between Harvey and Rachel; I guess they were pretty nice to each other, but when do they have a romantic moment in the entire film? You can't just put emotion into the script by a marriage proposal and expect it to fly. Because of this, I don't think the Two-Face transformation came off so well, and found Eckhart's Two-Face to be a rather whiny and annoying character.

I would also agree that the film doesn't introduce the Joker effectively (He just walks into a room and sits down! What on earth is that?), but found Nolan's overall use of him to be much better than his use of Cillian Murphy's Scarecrow from the last film, which may have been an even better performance.

Alex Murillo nailed it. Well said. Couldn't agree more.

I don't know what it is about The Dark Knight. Sometimes movies get a sort of momentum, and then everyone ignores the flaws.

I just can't understand how anyone can objectively watch this movie and call it great. It had *way* too many flaws. It failed as a thriller, because there was no real tension. The action scenes weren't exciting. The moral dilemmas were too manufactured. And yes, there was way too much cheating in the script (not internally consistent).

I guess if you like a lot of explosions and a good villain, it was a good film. Best movie of all time? Only someone who hasn't seen many good movies would say that

Is there any counterpart to superheros in reality? Most great accomplishments are intellectual and I hardly think Einstein can be compared to batman, can he?

"Well, does it? Is that enough? Does the raising of issues in dialog or story beats qualify as artistic ambition or achievement? At the risk of sounding like that study guide: How much does "The Dark Knight" examine moral ambivalence, and how much of it is simply a muddle of fragmentary ideas?"

(spoilers...)

Well, I think that's sort of the point. By the end so much has happened in support of and against the Joker's "ideals" that by the time Batman and Gordon have made their final decision, we really don't know how to feel about it. Unlike a movie like "Iron Man" (still good) where there's a good guy who is "right" and a bad guy who is "wrong," The Dark Knight never really levels with you on whether it thinks Batman's the saner one, or whether the world really is as awful as the Joker believes.

It's like life, where things don't have artistic meaning and don't add up to a proper theme you can put into a sentence or a couple paragraphs. Things just happen, sometimes good, sometimes bad. I think that's maybe one of the points of the movie, and that's how it sort of turns the superhero genre on its head: things don't go the protagonist's way just because his is the right one. But it's also saying that we can change the outcome, not just by having faith but by putting it into action.

So at the end, when Batman and Gordon decide to lie to the public, change the facts, etc, we really have no reason to believe it's a good idea other than the faith that they know what they're doing. And that's sometimes all we have in life, when everything else is wrong.

Yeah, it's not as complex as, I dunno, Cries and Whispers. But it does have a lot to it I think, and some cool car chases too.

As a life-long Batman fan, I must say that THE DARK KNIGHT will probably end up on my all-time favorites list, though I put it there with the knowledge that everyone will not think so. The debate over whether a movie (or an album - your friend's comment about "Blood On The Tracks" is a good one) is or is not "great" is a deeply personal one, as it should be.

My fear is that critics in particular have a hard time accepting that films speak to certain people in different ways. I, for one, loathe every time I hear someone go on and on about how great certain movies are, but I know I also do the same thing. For example, I love RUSHMORE. It may even be my favorite film ever, but maybe not...still, every time I meet someone who doesn't acknowledge its greatness, I'm a bit flabbergasted. The same with FIGHT CLUB (for the reasons you mentioned, and not the reasons thousands of college guys do), RAGING BULL, FARGO, etc...But, these people do exist, and it's weird to me.

Back to THE DARK KNIGHT, a movie that spoke to me in so many ways it's a bit ridiculous. My affinity for the characters of Batman and the Joker no doubt led me to love this film absolutely, since it was exactly like the comics I knew and loved, complete with the "moments" people looking at the film purely as a film seem to nitpick (the school bus not being noticed is completely comic-strippy, and I think it was meant to be). The fact is that Batman is a pop culture phenomenon in his own right, and that alone makes the movie a bit more than just a film in my eyes. There may be pacing problems, or coverage problems, but not within the context of the funny books it all started out as. And for those who complain that Batman/Bruce Wayne aren't fleshed-out enough, THE DARK KNIGHT is not so much a film about Batman as it is a film about "Batman", the idea of him, the way he affects people in Gotham, and the world that his existence unwittingly creates. For people to complain about Batman not being a character focus is insane to me, since the entire film deals explicitly with him in his entirety - all of the scenes "about" the Joker, the ones "about" Harvey Dent, and certainly all the ones "about" Jim Gordon and the MCU.

Which brings me to my last point. Jim Gordon is given a huge focus by the story of THE DARK KNIGHT, and his relationship with Batman is, I think, the central one everyone should be watching. It's an evolution of character on such a grand scale that it's hard to notice it in just this single film, even though it's there. Gordon is learning with the Batman how to run things, and what the ethics of fighting crime really do entail. At the end, when Batman runs off as a murderer and a fugitive, it is the perfect ending, because he is a "myth", and the film openly acknowledges this at the same time. If there is a third film (and I hope there is), Jim Gordon's role should be the focus.

Dear lord there are some long comments here. Satish deserves some kind of award for having the patience to so fully flesh out his feelings on the film (Satish, if you don't have a blog, get one. That could be your first post, seriously).

Anyway, I haven't seen it yet but I didn't want to feel left out. All I want to ask is to anyone who thinks this is the greatest movie of all time, what did you previously think was the greatest movie of all time? It's an important question for me because I strongly believe time is the ultimate critic. Thus, if the previous "best film" in a TDK fan's opinion was something from two years ago and before that film it was something from a year before that then I'd say you're not giving yourself or the movie enough time. I have a hard time elevating anything to "great" status until 10 or more years have gone by. There have been movies and music I thought were extraordinary only to be nonplussed by them just five years later. Therefore, no matter how wonderful any given film may be, to declare it the greatest of all time or even the greatest of its kind while the film is still in its initial run seems utterly silly to me, and charmingly naive.

"the police officer who is willing to kill the accountant who has threatened to reveal Batman's identity...who is this guy? Why do we care?"

You've seen the movie twice and you still miss the mark on this? The police officer didn't want to kill the guy because he was going to reveal Batman. He wanted to kill the accountant because the Joker was going to blow up a hospital unless the guy was killed, and the police officer had family in the hospital.

It's the best Batman 2 ever! Compare this to the camp horror of Batman Returns. I read some parental concerns over the new film, but they seemed to completely forget Danny Devito's nose biting and nauseating performance as the Penguin or Christopher Walken's cold callous violence against the insane Catwoman. It was very gratuitous and the movie wasn't even very good. The Dark Knight holds back and cuts away and has themes and ideas. They aren't handled perfectly, but they are actually present, something most comic books movie don't bother with at all. Batman and Robin is the other Batman 2. I don't think this one was as bad as other make it out to be. For a ten year old, it was campy fun - almost a John Waters Batman. There's a reason there has been no Batman 3 before, and there's a reason why people think there will be one now. This Batman 2 was not only a decent film, but above average. Any movie that is above average can be built up in anyone's mind as the best thing ever. That's where the expression "cult film" comes from. I just watched The Adventures of Ford Fairlane the other night for the first time. Now THAT is the best film ever made.

All right, I’m going to attempt to explain why I feel that The Dark Knight is a genuinely great movie. I won’t claim it’s the “best ever”, because having seen only 1,000-2,000 films in my time I’ve barely dented the surface of film. But I will say I think it stands up with greats like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Rear Window, and A Clockwork Orange in how well it examines certain aspects of the human condition. The fact that those aspects are examined through action and adventure does not, in my mind, make much difference to the quality of the examination.

Please be advised that there are major spoilers throughout, and I am writing assuming all readers have seen the film. Also, all quotes are paraphrased, as I don’t have a shooting script in front of me or anything. And my apologies for the length.

Many critics seem to reduce this movie (and any given superhero film) to a conflict between good and evil. Others, more in tune with the film, reduce it to a conflict between order and chaos. Both of these notions are, as I say, reductions, because the film is also about the conflict between good and order, and between evil and chaos. The film does not present the simplistic notion that chaos-evil and order=good, in fact its clearest “moral”, if it has one, is that sometimes to be “good” one must fight against order.

Initially, Gotham City is the scene of a conflict between two forces: the government and organized crime. The government, of course, is the institution people create to bring order to our society. Their function is to determine the rules and enforce them. Note that the conflict here is not between order and chaos—organized crime is, by nature, organized. It has rules, but it has a conflicting set of rules to the government. It has “evil” rules that allow one group of people to hold power over others, while the government of Gotham has “good”, “legitimate” rules which attempt to ensure everyone’s safety. As the Joker says at one point, they have a stable status quo—the cops try to enforce the law, the mob tries to subvert it in a predictable, even routine, way. We understand that these people all, to one degree or another, respect order. As the bank manager in the beginning says, criminals in this town believe in something. They have a certain honor among thieves. They have plans and goals and desires that depend, every bit as much as those of the cops, on the continuity of established order.

And, as the Joker says, Batman changes everything.

Batman is, of course, a vigilante. People who think that Batman represents “order” are badly misunderstanding the character—Batman fights for order by being apart from it. He’s a conflicted character, not only because Bruce Wayne would like to stop being Batman one day, but because what he does is antithetical in some ways to what he does it for. He is the embodiment of the conflict between goodness and order—Order is about rules, and, as he says, Batman “only has one rule.” That rule, of course, is that he won’t kill. But, in a way, he states the real rule that governs his actions later in the film: “I’m whatever Gotham needs me to be.” Unlike the cops and politicians, who are limited by the rules they’re trying to enforce, Batman can do anything. He “has no limits”. The Joker understands this: as he says, “The Batman doesn’t have a jurisdiction.” The stalemate between good and evil has been tipped because of a chaotic element, a man who does the right thing, whatever it is, without rules holding him back. As it stands, there is no way for the mafia to fight that kind of battle.

This is, of course, how human beings actually work. Humans strive for order, because order is control, order is safety. My favorite speech in the film is the Joker’s statement on plans: “Y’know what I’ve noticed? I’ve noticed nobody panics if everything’s going according to plan—even if the plan is horrifying! If I said I was gonna kill a gang-banger, or blow up a bus full of soldiers, no one would panic, because that’s all part of the plan. But I say I’m gonna kill one little mayor, and everyone loses their minds!” People can accept evil if it’s planned for, accepted, a controllable element of life. Chaos, on the other hand, scares them. Think of it this way: After 9/11, many people were terrified of flying. Nevermind that, while hundreds of people died on planes on 9/11, about 40,000 people die in car accidents every year. Car accidents don’t scare many people—they’re part of the plan.

This is the secret of terrorism. This is why a bomb blowing up in a shopping mall scares people more than lung cancer. This is why The Joker, using a she says “a little gunpowder and a few gallons of gasoline”, does more to destroy Batman, the cops, and the soul of Gotham City than a small army of drug-pushers and hired guns.

The effect of the Joker on Gotham City is, of course, nowhere more apparent than in his effect on Harvey Dent. Dent, like Batman, is a good man, and, unlike Batman, a man who plays by the rules. This means he can accomplish something Batman can’t—he can be pure and untarnished. Batman fights for the “good” order of cops and government by living in chaos. Dent fights for order by living order, and thus he isn’t subject to the same conflict, either internally or in public perception, that Batman is. But we see quickly that Dent is not invulnerable. When Rachel is threatened, he is willing to break the rules by kidnapping and threatening a criminal for information. The resolution to this scene is interesting, particularly in the current political climate—the film that Batman, and so presumably the film, takes is not that the kidnapping and psychological torture were wrong, but that it was wrong for Dent, the champion of order, to do it. Dent represents the law, and if he breaks it he devalues it. Batman, in contrast, has absolute freedom to do the right thing as he sees it. (This same conflict can be seen again, more starkly, in the scene where Fox objects to Batman’s mass-surveillance of the city. As Fox says, that power is too much for one man to have—yes it can be used for good, but it can also be abused. Batman apparently agrees—he needs that power to accomplish good, but he gives it to Fox, who has no desire to use it, to prevent its abuse.)

Returning to Dent, we see his willingness to break the rules, but we also see his adamant faith in Batman. Dent knows that he’s hampered by his position, and he knows that Gotham needs a Batman to survive. He can play by the book because he knows there’s someone there to make the right choice—even if it is against the rules. The Joker destroys Dent because Batman fails. Because Rachel is killed—the woman that Dent loved more than he loved his plans and his ideals—Dent loses his faith in both goodness and order. He realizes that when he told Rachel everything would be all right, he was lying. The Joker strips him of his belief in order—or, as Anton Chigurh might say, “if the rule you followed brought you to this place, of what use was the rule?” Having always respected chaos, Dent now embraces it. Critics have argued that Dent’s transition was too quick, but I never thought so—his wasn’t a transition to evil based on repeated trauma or building necessity. He was shattered by a single event that proved to him everything that he believed was wrong. He saw that the order that we create for ourselves is just a rickety bridge over a sea of chaos, and so he turned to chaos for justice.

Again, this strikes me as a genuinely human scenario. People go through their lives in our ordered societies, believing in God, or government, or the basic decency of human nature, but when it comes down to it, people, as the Joker says, “are only as good as society allows them to be.” Or, to quote Marx, “first comes the food, then comes the morality.” The fact is, our only evidence that “everything will turn out all right” is that is has so far—for us, the living. The fact is, things turn out horribly for people all the time, and there’s no knowing when our own good-luck streaks will end. But if we think about that—if we think about the chaos around every corner, the blind chance that keeps us all alive—we’d be too terrified out of our minds to live, let alone have a functioning, orderly society. When Harvey has the veil stripped from his eyes, when things go as wrong for him as they could possibly go, he only has two choices: lash out at the evil that caused his pain, or lash out at the false promises that let the chaos in. With the flip of a coin, he decides.

Dent’s fall, of course, is part of the Joker’s wish to prove that, as he says, “he isn’t a monster, he’s just ahead of the curve.” People have talked about the Joker explaining too much, or “telling” instead of “showing” in relation to him. I have two responses to this. First, there are many cases of showing rather than telling in relation to the Joker—letting you slowly discover that he lies about his scars to obfuscate his past, for instance (a brilliant piece of characterization, showing you the pleasure he takes in coming up with new tales of insanity to terrorize his victims), or how his voice, usually relatively meek, turns into a demonic roar when he screams “look at me”. This latter one actually leads into my second point—The Joker is a terrorist. Sure, he’s a terrorist who, unlike most real-world terrorists, has no cause beyond the terror itself, but he is still a man with a message. He craves attention (he loves to send media messages, he “always makes sure you see his face”, he wears that makeup…). Of course he can’t resist explaining himself to anyone who’ll listen. Particularly he loves explaining himself to Batman—another person who lives a life of chaos, a life with virtually no rules, someone who’ll understand him. Batman is the most appreciative audience he’ll ever have. The Joker’s speeches to Dent and Batman are the equivalent of the Unabomber’s manifesto, or John Doe’s diaries in Seven. He isn’t just killing, he’s preaching, and his gospel is chaos.

Chaos is also one of the reasons this movie is so successful. In any genre movie, especially in some cases a comic book film, you have expectations going in that are rarely defied. Comic book movies, the rules go, involve a hero and a villain, and they come together with a climactic clash, and the hero is triumphant. And, at first glance, The Dark Knight appears to follow this mold. However, examining the film makes it clear that the central part of this set-up—that the hero defeats the villain in a climactic clash—isn’t really true in this case. The essential conflict of this movie isn’t The Batman vs. The Joker, it’s The Joker vs. Gotham City. And, rightfully, it’s Gotham City that defeats the Joker more than it’s Batman.

First, let me discuss one of the best moment’s in the movie—the magic trick. Now, I know many people will scoff at the notion that this is one of the movie’s best moments and immediately write me off as loving it because it’s so “badass”. Well, I’ll admit it—it is badass. Crowds love it. But it isn’t just a hilarious and excruciating piece of mayhem, it serves to set a tone for the entire film. I’ll compare it to the old theory that, if you’re going to prison, you should immediately punch the biggest guy there so everyone knows not to mess with you. I don’t know how true that is, but I know that that is the effect of the Joker’s magic trick—upon entering the scene, he immediately does something insane, barbaric, and totally unexpected, and establishes that when he is on screen, virtually anything can happen. And by virtue of establishing this for himself, he lends that weight to the film—this is a Batman movie where anything can happen, and it does. The most glaring example, obviously, is Rachel’s death—the heroine in a comic book movie is supposed to be saved. That’s one of the rules. And the movie’s obvious willingness to defy the rules, to one degree or another, is what gives weight to much of the latter part of the film.

Maybe other people were more cynical than I was, but I’ll admit: I didn’t know how the question of the two ferries was going to resolve itself. This is a film that demonstrated how individual citizens—even police officers—would break the law and take lives when fear for themselves and their families took hold of them. We see citizens calling for Batman’s blood, or taking potshots at an innocent accountant, and we think: “This is a film that believes people are capable of anything.” I know some have complained that the ferry scene was a cheap way to involve the audience—a lazy way of evoking tension by endangering innocent people. Those people, in my opinion, entirely miss the point, even thought the Joker stated it himself. Batman can save their lives, but the stakes are higher than that. This movie was about the battle for Gotham City’s soul, and it is absolutely essential that the citizens of Gotham themselves make the decision between salvation and damnation. This is far more than the “save the children or save Mary Jane” choice at the end of Spider-Man. Any self-respecting superhero will attempt to save both, given such a choice. But this film isn’t only interested in a superhero, it’s interested in the fallible, corruptible people who surround us every day. And, given the darkness in the rest of the film, it’s astonishingly hopeful in that regard. The excellent work done by Tiny Lister in a small, but essential role as the inmate who throws the detonator away is really the climax of the film—showing us that even amid chaos people can surprise us with their nobility. Even people who, on the surface, we might not think are worthy of ours.

If Batman saves Gotham, it’s not by beating up the Joker on a rooftop. Yes, he saves lives there, but a few thousand out of millions in the city. He saves the city itself in the final moments, where he accepts responsibility for crimes that weren’t his. This is where we see what the filmmakers are really getting at with their talk that Batman is “being something more” than a hero. I’ll be the first to admit that Gordon’s final speech is a tad melodramatic, but it’s also the thesis of the movie, and of Batman as a character. People need order, it is a requirement for society. But order has its limits. Batman can’t afford to have any limits, which also means he can’t afford to be part of the society he protects. The constant conflict between what society needs and what society can allow is at the heart of the concept of Batman as a vigilante, and also at the heart of the question of how society should be governed. The solution of the film seems to be this: Society needs leaders who play by society’s rules, but it also needs individuals who, like Batman, are incorruptible—individuals who will do the right thing, even when it means suffering society’s wrath. It needs people who’ll use the power no one else should have when it’s needed, and relinquish it when it’s not. Not a government, not a leader, not a hero, but someone whose only rule is: “I am whatever society needs me to be.”

I don’t know if we really have those people, or what we’d do to them if we did, but I think the film shows us what one might look like.

JE: Thank you for taking the time and making the effort, Stephen! I really appreciate seeing the movie through someone else's eyes -- which I think is the whole idea of these exchanges.

All I can say is, I'm glad I'm not alone in thinking TDK is one of the most ridiculously over-hyped movies of all time. Actually, make that the MOST ridiculously over-hyped movie of all time. I've actually suspected the filmmakers might have surreptitiously enhanced the movie's soundtrack with some kind of subliminal message meant for mass hypnosis that would lead many people watching the movie that they were watching something *important*.
To me the movie failed on so many levels that it would take too long to mention each and every one. Some of you have already mentioned the most important ones - the lack of narrative cohesiveness, the weak screenplay, the horrible way action scenes have been shot and edited, the very superficial moral message. On top of that it is horribly overlong. (Which raises the interesting question of why so many moviegoers seem to embrace movies that would arguably have worked better if they'd been about half-an-hour shorter: the 3rd Pirates movie, the 3rd Spider-Man, etc.)
Perhaps the worst weakness of TDK from my point of view is that it was tedious and exceedingly uninspiring. While many people seem to enjoy the relative "realism" in its setting, it had the opposite effect for me: it made me wish they could at least have given Batman back his Bat-cave and Wayne Mansion. Much of the big appeal of comic-book movies for me has been that the ones I enjoy most take place in exceedingly stylized settings, like "Dick Tracy" and Tim Burton's two "Batman"films. Even the first "Superman", while looking largely like set in NYC, still gave us an awe-inspiring Fortress of Solitude as well as Lex Luthor's grandiose underground hideout.
Suffice it to say that of all the superhero movies of 2008, TDK is the one I have enjoyed the least, by a long shot. It wouldn't be such a big problem that it was "dark" thematically, if only it hadn't become so darn tedious after about an hour and a half.
As for the supposed "moral undertones" I agree with those who say they are exceedingly superficial and largely meaningless. It is not impossible for an American filmmaker to instill his movies with real, meaningful moral themes, even while revisiting and perhaps subverting a well-known genre: Clint Eastwood did it with "Unforgiven" and to a lesser extent "Flags of our Fathers"/"Letters from Iwo Jima".
One last thing is, I think TDK actually makes Batman/Bruce Wayne come across as a bit of a dolt. And that's usually the last thing that you'd ever get from the actual comic books.

One can only hope that time will allow for a more objective and even-handed appraisal of the movie by those who are breathlessly extolling it for far more than it really is. After all, they seem to feel the same way about TDK than I did about the 1989 "Batman" shortly after it came out -- and 19 years later, I am almost embarrassed to have been so over-enthusiastic about it (although I still have not gone to the lengths of totally trying to deny I ever enjoyed it!).

Patrick wrote: In a movie called "The Dark Knight", the Dark Knight felt rather absent. Looking back, I don't have much recollection of either identity."

Some people have commented on the shallowness of the plot, or the raising of issues but the lack of exploration. I saw the film once, opening day, and I've been waiting to go see it again. But my first impression was that it was too short.

The story follows 3 characters - Batman, Gordon, and Dent. Each of them follows an arc in the movie, and Dent's is probably the biggest. But there are still significant things happening to Batman and Gordon, and I felt that the film, despite being "too long" according to some, was rushing past these events.

I think that those who consider "Dark Knight" to be the best ever are those who have, for a long time, been marginalized - reasonably intelligent, bullied in school, looked down upon for reading "comics" (and yes, this is stereotypical, and there are exceptions). But now...now, it seems mainstream culture is taking comics seriously. Now, everyone is understanding what they've been understanding for years. So they want everyone to not only take it seriously, but embrace it as wholeheartedly as they have.

As for why people tend to cohere around and discuss pop-culture events...I'm Canadian, so I have a viewpoint on Americans that is in some ways both more true and laughably incorrect (and there are many Canadians who are "Americanized"). I think that those who focus their attention on pop-culture events...simply have limited attention spans.

Put simply, we (as a culture, both Canadians and Americans) have got to the point where if something is longer than a baseball game, a football game, a hockey game or a blockbuster movie, it's just too much effort. If a movie sends you away and you find yourself thinking about its issues, it's just too much effort (put this way, Dark Knight's raising of the issues but not exploring them may be the shape of things to come - faux thought inducement - hopefully that may provoke real thought in a few).

Better to avoid all those troublesome movies, and the real life issues that require hours if not days/weeks/months of reading & research to reach a basic level of understanding so that you can intelligently evaluate the positions of your electoral candidates (and thereby find out that the Emperors have no clothes).

As for Batman, I always find it more interesting to read negative comments if I've liked a movie, and I liked Dark Knight. I certainly don't dispute the negative comments - appreciation is always subjective. And I can agree with some of them. But I think the bigger issue of Batman is one that is highly relevant to today's world. Batman uses the tools of evil - violence, intimidation, darkness, breaking the law - to effect good. As he says in "Batman Begins", "I want to bring fear to those who prey on the fearful." Is this really where we want to go? Patriot Act and Military Commissions Act could be considered the government giving itself permission to behave like Batman. In the comic book world, we can always trust Batman to "use his powers for good." Can we always trust our governments to do the same? If I have an issue with Nolan's Batman movies, this would be it, because I feel they come too facilely on the side of "yes, we can."

Basically, I loved this movie because it was like Heat or the Departed. But with Batman and the Joker. Is it the greatest thing since sliced bread? I don't know and I don't care. But I can't wait to buy the dvd.

Clint - No, I absolutely understand that...I even (think) I remember his name was Berg, and he was one of only two police officers with relatives in a hospital (the other, in a nice bit of continuity, was the corrupt cop Ramirez, who later mentions that the mob got to her because she had to pay for her "mother's hospital bills"). I was simply referring to the scene in shorthand (i.e the police officer wants to kill the accountant who is about to reveal Batman's identity; as opposed to the police officer wants to kill the accountant who is about to reveal Batman's identity because he has a wife in the hospital), assuming everyone who had seen the film would know what the police officer's motivation is. But my question still stands: why introduce a character, give him a motivation for murder straight out of a penny-dreadful, ratchet up the tension, and then boom, scene over?

Well here are my two cents:
I've been a huge Batman fan since I was a really young kid. I havent read thousands of comic books, not even hundreds, probably it'll be around 100+ issues worth of Batman. I love the character.
Recently (January) I hospitalized myself due to a severe depression and heavy drug use in a mental hospital.
It was a public mental hospital. I live in Venezuela. And public institutions usually don't work well at all.
Thankfully it wasnt a bleak place (as i originally fear), doctors and nurses were all really caring and competent. I really wanted to make a change in my life. I kept thinking about how stupid I was for having in my mind only scenarios like the one from Arkahm Asylum (the Gotham Mental hospital) or One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest kinda institutions. Far from that, it was all full of optimism.
However as you might suspect, mental hospital are not playgrounds. So yeah there were many patients without any anchorage to reality and dangerous in the way that they couldn't make sense out of the world that was presented for them.
I befriended some man who was going through a similar stage as I was, he tried to kill himself several times (just like I did) and was utterly depressed. We shared the same room, a huge room with 6 beds in it. But it was only the two of us. He was this humble 53 year old man from the outskirts of Caracas. I am 25 years old, from a quasi-bourgeois background. We started sharing many living stories, and we found out that we had similar views on many things, but the thing that kept us talking during almost hours was about The Batman.
It turns out that he really loved the character even more that I do. He loved all the incarnations even the campy ones of the Schumacher debacles. He just was elated to see this figure brought to "real life" with his gadgets and challenges. I normally wouldn't be talking about a comic book character for that many hours, just because I'm not used to it. There's not sucha thing as "geeks" in the underdeveloped world, we don't have time to waste on labeling people according to what they like or not like. It is usually like that. So there's no stigma attached to anyone who enjoys any particular thing. What's more, in real humble places any sort of depth of knowledge (comic books included) is seen with reverence in my country. And the joy that my partner at the hospital felt as he talked about The Batman it was just infusing with energy.
So there we were, a 53 y/o man with a rural background and me, forging a great friendship.
One day, AFTER we had been given breakfast (the nurses looking after the 15+ patients) i sat on this rather worn out sofa that was just in the room where you could watch the tv (something i rarely did cuz i was more busy reading film books about Music and Editing - which is my profession- and i was highly regarded w/o real merit by the patients all of the of humble origins because they admired that i knew so much about film). So as I sat on the tv, i looked at this piece of newspaper that had been used to squat flies and mosquitoes, this brief note about Heath Ledger. It said they had found it dead, I was totally taken aback.
I couldn't believe it. I didn't even know I felt so much for him, I wanted to tell someone about it, but then I'd realize that probably no one else in there would be able to share how unpredictable and saddening that day was. I decided to write a poem for him.
I really felt sad. I hadnt felt that void since I had decided to enter the hospital. But I was stronger then (after 2 weeks in there), so I knew how to deal with sadness in a healthier way.
When I was allowed to have my first visit. It was my parents, one of the first things I talked about with them (after having shared more personal things) was about the death of Heath. They were shocked as well and we kept thinking for a while about the future of the new batman film. (I've always talked a lot with my parents about cinema in general so it's not as if this was something extraneous for us).
The next day I told my friend in the hospital about Heath's death, He didnt knwo who he was. but he knew who The Joker was. He didn't know there was a new batman film coming out this year, but he did know who Batman was.
He was saddened by the news even though he hadnt heard of the actor before.
We made a deal: when we were both discharged from the hospital we would go watch the new batman film together.
I was discharged rather quickly, only a month after being there. I have been strong and determined not to do drugs ever again. And I hadn't felt any better in my life since sobriety became the rule.
The months passed. I'd visit my friend. He got worse, and worse. One of my visitations brought me the awful news that he couldn't be allowed to see me because he had managed to cut his wrists with a shaving razor he managed to hide from the nurses.
Sometimes I brought him as a gift some Batman comic books. But as I kept visiting him I realized that I needed to stop doing, because it was becomingly increasingly depressing for me. It saddened me a lot, and I had to carry on rebuilding my life after all the horrors that my drug addiction had brought to my life. So I decided, with sorrow, that I should stop visiting him. I gave him my phone number and didnt tell him I wasn't going to come back.

I didnt go to watch The Dark Knight the day, not even the week that I premiered. I was still busy rebuilding my life, and getting my university grade moving forward. After I presented my thesis (I adapted a song into a screenplay- if anyone's curious by this point) and I had everything set in motion to my new stage in life. I decided to go see the movie with some friends. I kept thinking about my hospital friends, thinking he didn't make it out of the hospital.

As I was watching the film I felt I was dreaming or something.It's just as if all my childhood playtime with Batman adventures in my head had been brought to life, i was living in that film. I was ecstatic. It's not my favourite movie of all times by any means, let alone I'm thinking it's the best one in history, and yeah the hyping is something amusing to see from above. But I will tell you this, to me it's really a realization, like feeling a whole area of my life fulfilled. Batman had been brought to life, I could feel it living there in front of me. Religious experience? Nah, I'm an atheist but it was pure personal bliss to me. I loved it, i had seen it twice by now, and wouldn't mind watching more times. It's hard to care about a perfect film (which I do believe it's pretty close to it) when all your childhood fantasies become realized in a 2+hour film - that being said that also erases painful memories from the 90's batman.

A week later my dad told me he had gotten a call. It was my friend from the hospital, but he didnt leave a number to call back. But he calling means that he is out of the hospital. And then I know that somewhere in Caracas, he's there happy as I am because Batman is now alive forever in that movie. The perfect Batman.

I went into this movie wanting to love it. The genre is normally not my cup of tea, but between the (deserved) praise for Ledger, and the breathless reviews of people I respect, I figured that this would transcend the genre (like Spider-Man) and be really great - with a great "deep" complex theme that made you think.

Well .... it was .... pretty good. But Jim said it right - some great, some parts a mess. Not consistently good - more uneven. The problems, however, were many, and it made it frustrating.

First of all, it was unnecessarily too long. It felt by the end that the episodes were repeating themselves, and not adding anything new - other than straight plot. The more complex themes that were explored -- the allegory to the modern fight against terrorism, for example, that so many reviewers praised -- seemed glossed over and lost in the mix. The parts with Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman that explored these ideas, came and went and seemed disjointed from the rest of the movie. The fact that Batman was a "vigilante" who was starting to be resented by the populace, was never really set up convincingly.

There was so much talk about the complex nature of the two characters - how they needed each other - how the means to an end had to be questioned. The reviews that I read made it seems like there was a correlation between that and the War on Terror - in the sense that Batman was going through questionable tactics in order to achieve a positive result.

The problem with this should be obvious .... In the movie, the impression is clearly made that Batman is in the right. That his actions are noble, even if they are being misunderstood by the populace ( let's put aside what I said earlier about how this isn't really believable, and just go with it ). But in the real "War on Terror" - at least in my opinion - the actions of the Bush administration are not noble at all. Their methodology was an unnecessary departure from this country's standards, and have not achieved anything remotely close to success. Batman, however, despite using some 'vigilante-esque' tactics, is correct in his tactics, because they are the only way to achieve the results all of society *needs*.

As a result, the analogy is completely lost. I felt none of the sense of conflict I was supposed to feel about the dual nature of the joker and batman - which is is *really* "good" and which one is really "evil".

Likewise, the Joker's continuing commentaries about the nature of society were indeed provocative, but wound up getting lost because there was just ... too much ... of everything swirling around.

Many movies like this need to be seen twice. First time around, you're too focused on plot to absorb everything. I've defended movies on those grounds in the past - that you really need to see it twice to make sure the themes in there weren't missed. So maybe I just missed them. But I think, in this case, I didn't miss them all. I saw them, and they didn't wash.

Satish really went above and beyond with the above posts. In regards to a third installment -- I think Superman is pushing it a little too much; I'd prefer to see a return of Two-Face (since I don't feel his character was killed), Rupert Thorne (as the corrupt politician trying to destroy Cmm. Gordon's career) and (as the supervillain) the Riddler, a narcissistic obsessive-compulsive who's inspired by the Joker and essentially attempts a copycat crime-spree but more for the bent of personal gratification (Riddler has always been a poor-man's Joker anyway, so I think it'd work). This would all be set against Batman and Gordon trying to clean Gotham's public house (cops, courts, city hall, etc.) of mob influence, while Wayne courts a pre-Catwoman Selina Kyle.

But back to Jim's main point, or rather, Ty Burrs's, which is likening "The Dark Knight" to the JFK assassination for the current young generation/this decade. Coming from this modern generation (I'm 22), I think Burr is partially on to something there. Thinking of important cultural moments that my generation collectively remembers, the easiest is 9/11, though that's often been ignored by many (as means to forget it), or exploited (a few try to bring it up all the time to make themselves seem relevant), but I suppose those two categories can fit with other generations, too. There's the elections, there's certain moments from Iraq (I'll always remember the day they caught Saddam, but more because of incidents that were going on in my home at the time), but these always come to being backdrops. The other two would be Hurricane Katrina, and the tsunami in Asia, and even those aren't widespread as talking points between kids in this generation.

But then there's film. More than any other cultural, non-political moment, save for "Harry Potter" in books and "High School Musical" for television, are the movies that have come out particularly in the past 2-3 years. Just look at the sheer amount of midnight premieres around the country just about any suspected box office champ (just this last week they had two for both "Pineapple Express" and "Sisterhood of Traveling Pants 2"). Everyone remembers seeing the Matrices in theaters, the last segments of the "Star Wars" trilogy, "300" last year, the "Kill Bill"s, hell, even "No Country For Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood" from last year. And this isn't even from the more "fringe" elements of a generation, this is the mainstream. I remember seeing "The Departed" on the night it opened back in 06, and people cheered for Scorsese's name. Back in 2004, people cheered for Woody Allen's name in the credits for "Match Point." It doesn't mean that everyone seeing all the films fawn over them relentlessly afterwards, but there's many who think these things are important, and they must participate, and there's some who are looking for the "cool" fix. When I talk to other people my age, conversations eventually dive into "did you see this/did you see that" topics.

That's why Heath Ledger's death was taken rather seriously by a lot of people my age. Nearly everyone saw "Brokeback Mountain," or at least had something to say about it. A lot of our generation saw "10 Things I Hate About You" and all the girls fell in love with Ledger. He was a linking force for many and his loss severed a connection. He hasn't been glorified in the same manner as James Dean and the sort, mainly because he was likened to Dean so much upon his death that Dean and Ledger became symbols for each other in the eyes of the generation. It's not really a fair comparison, but it appears that that was done.

Maybe I've overtly naive or clouded with my assessment of people my age (or maybe I'm making no sense at all), but film among the masses of youth really becomes the big "where-were-you" of the times. Everything else becomes hit or miss, but exposure to certain films grows to be a mandatory experience. I remember my first few days of college in 2004 when there was the band of strong-armed women forcing "Garden State" on the uninitiated, proclaiming it to be the Greatest Move Ever Made. Two years later that spot was usurped by "Little Miss Sunshine." Last year, "Juno" took the throne. I've heard the phrase "Important Film" a lot over the course of this decade, and mainly from my own generation. "The Dark Knight" might be the peak of that term for everyone in this generation, and it's likely the most reflective of the youthful mentality towards how film is regarded in this decade -- and this goes for elitist college crowds and young working joes alike.

Jay, there's something called "objectivity" that does indeed exist. It might do you some good to learn about it. People may very well just really like the movie, as opposed to actively ignoring its flaws. Lord, I wish people wouldn't be so adamant about being "right" in their opinions.

No, I don't think "The Dark Knight" is the best movie ever made. It's probably going to rate among my top ten for the year, though I'll have to wait and see. However, I think it's easily the best superhero I've seen, and it also works brilliantly as a crime epic. I do think that, for the most part, it's an exercise in surface style, and there's nothing wrong with that. Upon multiple viewings, its last act (involving the ferries) falls flat. However, as a crime thriller it works wonderfully. I think the editing is fine and perfectly paced. It balances just enough thematic heft with its action elements to be both involving and exciting. And then there's Heath Ledger. Sorry, but I think he's absolutely brilliant. I know there's been a bit of backlash against him, people calling his performance "one-note". I disagree. I find his performance to be unhinged and a pure distillation of manic violence. He's not "hamming it up". He's genuinely scary, and yes, he does elevate an already excellent film into one of the year's best.

So. I've got to admit that I had to breeze through some of the above comments, because they got a bit long, and a bit repetitive.
But there must be a way to agree that any movie that will conjure up such debate is, in some manner, a successful piece of film. In that, TDK is like Fight Club. If you are willing to argue over a film for 9 years (like Fight Club has been) you essentially cement its place in film history.
What I don't understand about the TDK criticism is that it largely focuses on such notions as "weak screenplay" or "uneven direction", which to me are buzzwords for "I don't want to like it because everyone else does." I've got too many friends hanging around who pull that tripe all the time. It's okay to like something popular, and you don't have to feel bad. You can fun at the movies, even if you don't love the film.
When my wife and I were driving home from the theater after seeing The Dark Knight, after about 15 minutes of quietness in the car, digesting, my wife looked over and said: "That was pretty badass." This caused me to have two reactions. 1) My wife is awesome, and 2) That's about all there is too it. TDK is a badass action film with some psychological darkness and weirdiness. It isn't the best movie of the year, or even the summer. But it sure was a whole lot of fun.

I do think that TDK is a great film. Have I seen better? Well, yeah. Of course! I could name a few dozen better films off the top of my head and a lot more if given the time. But, I don't think I really should be judging it against the rest of the "great films" pool. That isn't really fair. I mean, is Amarcord a bad film just because 8 1/2 is so great? No, Amarcord is a great film, warts and all. Those warts just become more apparent when you consider a better film within the same discussion.

I saw TDK on opening (k)night so I'm reluctant to get into specifics - I'm sure I'd mis-remember things and I don't even know if I've really processed it yet (I typically need several viewing of any good film to get my head around what really makes it work for me). I think the best response I can give is that any film that can elevate the masses to discuss film at a higher level than normal is probably a pretty damn good film. I don't mean that it's just so popular that lots of people are talking about it. The discussions I've heard about TDK are simply much deeper than I expect from a typical audience member. People are talking about character, themes, symbolism - this is not normal. If you're a serious film lover, you've probably grown accustomed to having heady conversations with other film buffs. A lover of serious art film could say that the themes of TDK are hammered home, but that is the viewpoint of somebody who is adept at discovering meaning within a film, even when that meaning wasn't conveyed through dialog. I'm having a hard time summoning the words here without coming off as a snob but... I am a film snob, so what the hell - your typical, run of the mill person who likes movies (i.e., 99% of the population) does not appreciate them on the level that a critic or huge film fan will. They wouldn't be able to make it through a Bergman film, let alone discuss one. It's for the same reason that I can enjoy Mozart even though I can't discuss all the ins and outs of classical music with a classical nut. It's virtually impossible to not appreciate Mozart but a true classical nut will look deeper, and judge more harshly. Mozart elevates my ability to appreciate music just like TDK has elevated the level of film appreciation in the masses. However, I've certainly had some music scholar friends trash Mozart.

Sam said it best. That's it, close the comments section. (Also, I liked what Andrew said.)

Christopher Long:
"Anytime you dare to criticize a popular film, you can guarantee the pro-crowd (and some of the critics who support the film) are going to accuse you of simply being "too cool for school." "

Conversely, any time you dare to support or say you love a popular film, you can guarantee the anti-crowd is going to accuse you of falling for the hype, being woefully adolescent, etc.

Just a thought.

Jonathan: I feel there is something to be taken from the fact that most people, and for once I would like to exclude fanboys here, who have loved The Dark Knight have actually hailed it as one of their favorite films. They aren't placing it in the greatest list, and I'm out on a limp here when I say that The Dark Knight is something that sparks the awe we all had when we first fell in love with films. I can safely say, and that is because I have been raking my brains and often playing the devil's advocate, that The Dark Knight is quite easily the best of its kind that has arrived in a long time. But that is kind of an insult to a film that is striving to break the conventions of its kind. What I would say is, and I feel the initial reaction does amount to a lot before the overbearing and analytical mind starts to take over and beat around the bush, we can't deny The Dark Knight is a pretty special film.
I believe the true test of a film is how much of an experience it is. When it comes to the question of greatest, The Dark Knight is pretty far from it. No film could ever come close to the experience of 2001.
But The Dark Knight is the kind of film that fills you - with characters, with story, and with emotions. Very few, very few films fill you. Again I limp, but I would like to compare The Dark Knight with Stagecoach, a film that I happen to love immensely. For the simple reason that I can watch it a thousand times, like Terminator 2, like Lawrence of Arabia, like The Good the Bad and The Ugly, like Casablanca. Were these films ever, in the history of any list, called the greatest? I am not sure, but I don't think so. But they have always have been there, very close because people always love them.
No one here must have met anyone who thinks any of these films are anything short of good. I believe The Dark Knight might just be one such film.

I should clarify that last comment. Sometimes, a film strikes home for a lot of people, and they genuinely love it and see some value in it. That this has happened doesn't necessarily mean that those people have fallen for the hype, are adolescent, know nothing about the cinema, etc. (At the same time, some of the more virulent sniping, from both the pro- and the anti-crowds, has been kind of unnecessary.)

Personally, I really dug the movie. Saw it twice with no hesitation, something I rarely do during an initial theatrical run. Part of the reason why I liked the film so much was because it was a great, well-executed crime movie... with Batman in it. It's probably the closest we'll ever get to seeing Brubaker, Rucka and Lark's "Gotham Central" up on the big screen. Part of the reason i dug the film was that I loved the score. And the cinematography. Part of it was seeing Oldman (and Gordon) get a bigger role this time around. Part of it was delighting in watching Eric Roberts have fun with his role. Part of it was the fact that I loved the mid-film chase scene, which I thought was superbly shot and edited.

Part of the reason was, obviously, Ledger's performance. If the film's not one for the ages, his performance certainly is, and not just because it's posthumous. Though that does lend a poignancy to his last scene. I'd tentatively put this up with Hopkins' Lecter and Bardem's Chigurh for great modern movie villains. (That's my gut reaction, but it's too soon to say.)

And part of the reason was that it wasn't just about the Batman, but about several people in Gotham trying to make things work, some succeeding, some failing.

Was this a great movie? Again, too soon to say. Some films fade as they recede in the distance. Others still burn brightly. For a rare few films, it's love at first sight. (Miller's Crossing, The Night of the Hunter, The Assassination of Jesse James, Fellowship, Ikiru, a few others.) This wasn't one of those films for me, but I know people who fell pretty strongly for The Dark Knight, and I can see where they're coming from.

(That doesn't exactly the questions you raised in your post, Jim. More my reactions to some of the comments.)

A great deal has been said pro and con about The Dark Knight, so I wil keep this short. (Well, I tried).

I follow Doris Lessing's maxim that if a work of art moves you then critics be damned. Her take on critics was that they were bearers of convention, grouping everything they saw or read into already established narratives or groups. The question of whether a comic book movie can be a great movie kind of illustrates her point. Comic books are unconventional move material with a juvenile reputation, so most critics would scoff at the question in derision.

I want to argue that, when done right, comic book films such as The Dark Knight can be superior works. And I also want to bring in No Country for Old Men into the discussion because it may have been praised to the skies a little too quickly like Dark Knight but this time by movie critics.

I liked, even loved, No Country but felt that I was supposed to love it. The direction is technically brilliant: The Coens minutely control all aspects of the production, camera work, sound, editing, etc. They give us a thrilling chase picture that is faithful to the source novel that has a hint of philosophical meditation: the problem of decency in an indecent, evil world; how violence can overwhelm virtue, all of that. The movie includes this but it is primarily a hunting movie with a high body count.

Hey, this is a Dark Knight post! I'm getting to that. The Dark Knight has been criticized for not exploring its themes, merely stating them. Well, I believe, and let the arguments begin, that No Country did that same thing. Yes virtue and vice were in the story but nothing groundbreaking or intellectually rich came from the movie. It was a chase, like the Fugitive, like any other film of its kind. It was well done, but there was more bang bang than deep think. And no, I don't think shots of door locks and round holes and blood on the earth constitute thematic richness. (Maybe I have to read your essays again, Jim; I've forgotten them). Dark Knight is the same except critics-some anyway-are disparaging it when they loved NCFOM for doing the same thing: including some intellectual content in an action film.

I think TDK is a very well done action film with a viscerally and intellectually better villain than No Country and I think the opening bank heist and the middle street chase are better set pieces than anything in No Country. I also think Dark Knight, like Micheal Mann's Heat, offers a grand exploration of a city so much so that the city becomes a vital character. You could nitpick about how Joker planned all of his crimes and whether some of the fight scenes were badly staged (they weren't) but that is missing the the crime epic this film turned out to be. (And Departed? How was that better?)

Stephen, I think your review of The Dark Knight's themes is spot on. But at the end of the running time, both No Country and The Dark Knight are well crafted entertainments that, getting back to Lessing, speak to an audience. They're thrilling and that is what makes the philosophy go down smoothly.

This is just a PERHAPS - it does NOT reflect my actual opinion of why "The Dark Knight" (TDK) has been lauded as a movie with a message or with things to say (in fact, before reading Mr. Emerson's opening blog to this thread, I did not even know that TDK had entered into this sphere).

So...perhaps the movie-watching population sees in TDK's story of a hero falling from grace a metaphor for America's current predicament, and - as the Commissioner Gordon's closing speech implies - a ray of hope illuminating the way to a satisfactory resolution to all the current problems (that resolution, incidentally, mirroring what President Bush, et al have been saying all along).

The hero falling from grace is not Harvey Dent, but rather Batman, himself. Perhaps "grace" is too strong a word, but one does get the impression that as TDK opens, the populous of Gotham City moreorless approves of Batman's actions. This, of course, changes during the course of the movie...mainly because Gothamnites are dumb (frightened) and actually think that if Batman reveals his identity, then the Joker will stop his rampage. Eventually, this all culminates in Harvey Dent becoming Two-Face, killing five (bad) people, kidnapping a family, and dying. To protect Mr. Dent's "White" Knight image, Batman takes the blame for his death, i.e. he killed him.

(Question: why would anybody believe this? Are the people of Gotham really that dumb? WHY would Batman kill Gotham's District Attorney? For taking work away from him? I digress.)

As Commissioner Gordon's speech sledgehammers into us (though to be fair, he is not actually speaking to the audience, but rather to his confused son, but...does that mean that we, the audience, are also children?), Batman has to become the hero everybody hates for the benefit of the greater good; Gotham NEEDS to hate him because SOMEbody has to be blamed for all the problems, and because he is different and out-size enough to be a convenient and safe target for it all. In addition, Batman also has the fortitude and strength to endure the negativity. However, his speech is also rife with implications: Batman is engaged in a hero's journey, and all heroes go through a period of darkness and despair before reemerging into the light, better and stronger than before.

During the 90s, America was riding high. They had "won" the Cold War, the economy was good, and the President was actually a cool kind of guy. Yes, there was much to criticize them about during that decade, but overall, most people moreorless approved of the United States. Then, came September 11th, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the horrifyingly successful disinformation campaign launched by the Bush Administration that convinced most (American) people that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11, so let's invade his country, too!

Now, pretty much everybody hates the United States.

Things are a mess and even most Americans now realize this. Out of lack of anything else to do, perhaps Americans - irregardless of what side they hunker down on - have subconsciously adopted President Bush's view on all this: that America must bear the burden of being reviled because the rest of the World needs SOMEbody to blame for the mess the international situation has become, and America - prominent, different from the herd, convenient - has become the scapegoat they need. And America has the strength to endure. Eventually, Iraq will sort itself out, the terrorist threat will have diminished, and everybody will come to their senses and realize the errors of their ways. America will emerge from its current period of dark heroism and into the light - validated.

(Just to reiterate: this is just a PERHAPS - not my actual opinion.)

When nothing can be done, the only thing people have left before falling into despair is hope - irregardless of how absurd that hope may be. TDK, then, in a strange sort of way, delivers a positive message to the movie-watching masses: everything will turn out okay, no matter how dire things are now. All will become clear, and we will be vindicated.

(On a related note: Batman voluntarily taking the fall for Mr. Dent's death calls to mind another innocent scapegoat - Jesus Christ. It is perhaps not inconceivable that members of the Bush administration would approve of TDK, with its making of Batman into a Christ-figure, and Batman a not-too-preposterous analogue for the United States (at least in view of my above perhaps).)

As for why TDK has been perceived as such a discussable "EVENT"? Perhaps it is because so many things in culture have become SO polarized that people fear talking about them - even broaching the topics - in fear of the backlash they may receive. Unlike with real issues, such as climate change or terrorism, getting into an argument about movies is just that - an argument; it does not become an all-out war that leaves wounds and casualties. For instance, mention that you are for off-shore drilling, and you are subjected to a shrill tirade of spite and vitriol by those who disagree with you that you are a rapist of Mother Earth and Satan to all the world's animals; assert that you are against off-shore drilling, and you can expect to be subjected to a Spanish Inquisition (the real one, not the Python one) where you will be accused of being anti-community, anti-American, anti-business, anti-freedom, and anti-Christ.

But say that you are for or against, say, TDK? At worst, you will be audience to a long, loooooong verbal/written essay explicating with arcane thoroughness and great patience why you are in error (see several examples of this in the above thread (and maybe this one???:S)).

Talking about a movie is safe.

Oh. Yes, I have seen TDK (twice). Yes, I liked it. Yes, I think it is a very good movie. No, I do not think it is the greatest movie this year or ever, or the best superhero movie ever (though, it is right up there) - at best, it is the best blockbuster summer movie of 2008 - for whatever that is worth.

This film will withstand criticism not due to the public ghoulish natue over an actors suicide but because of its pop culture status as a summer film. Is the film perfect, no, infact I would argue the mistakes become even more apparent on the second viewing. The problem with Nolan directing and shooting every scene is a lack of clear objectivity. One scene in particular that irks me is the Joker's invasion of the Wayne penthouse. After an altercation, the Joker is no longer mentioned; just a simple quick cut to a new scene moving along the film/story. A more disciplined writer/director wouldve at least given some minor sign of where/how the villan left; these gaping holes are a reoccuring problem in all his films during action sequences, ie. INSOMNIA & PRESTIGE.

The American public is slowly becoming dim. I mean that in the most polite way, but INDIANA 4 was so reprihensible that people still went in droves despite word of mouth; even well written critics declared it a masterpiece !? So the fact that a theater audience in the middle of nowhere can fully comprehend the subtext of a comic book film is suprising. However, it cant be discounted that such information was already spoken of on 24/7 news channels; one in particular starts with an "F". But the bigger question still remains as to why we went and saw either film. With a shitcan economy, I guess its simply a matter of escape from reality. Also, figure both the series original films came out 20 years, when America was in relatively good standing as a whole.

I think a better column would question why such films are heavily promoted while a traditional Hollywood fare such as THE VISITOR is just given a stamp sized ad in THE NEW YORK TIMES or other publications. What exactly has happened to Hollywood ? The independent market some how took hold bringing everything to the edge but without merit. A complete reversal in the 1970's when "maverick" filmakers of today revitalized the industry to its untimely dimise. Has the medium itself become so distorted where B-films are A, that we no longer can tell the difference. Perhaps thats why when TDK comes around or THERE WILL BE BLOOD, people take notice. Its not because theyre flawless but its remindful of what Hollywood had to offer before Wall St came to town kicking down the gate.

czf,

Why would "weak screenplay" or "uneven direction" be buzzwords for anything other than just what they suggest? I mean, screenplays and direction are pretty damn central to a film's success or lack thereof.

While this was not the greatest movie ever made, I think it was darn good one. I don't think it is possible to make a completely realistic or very deep movie involving superheros, at least with someone well-established like the Batman because the very concept of a superhero automatically introduces an element of fantasy into a movie from which it is difficult to escape.

If you accept this constraint, then I think Christopher Nolan made (almost) as good a superhero as humanely possible. The themes were subtle and interesting though not fully explored. The Joker was a great villain, his personal philosophy, thinking of himself as an "agent of chaos" puts him I felt on par with Chigurh from NCFOM. These are characters who are portrayed as almost unstoppable forces of nature. (Sidenote: It would be interesting if Heath Ledger wins the supporting Oscar one year after another "supervillain" won it).

There were some weaknesses in the movie. I felt that the first half of the movie was choppy and incoherent; the conclusion of the ferry standoff was weak even though the build-up was brilliant. The Joker seems to have an endless supply of bombs which he manages to plant anywhere he pleases. But these are minor gripes.

The one big problem I had with the movie was the resolution of the eavesdropping subplot. The filmmakers want to have it both ways saying that spying on citizens is ok if there is a terrorist threat involved but is unacceptable in general. It seemed to me that Nolan and co. wanted to make the point that the wiretapping policy of the Bush administration is illegal and unacceptable but I think they ended up endorsing the policy by portraying eavesdropping to be acceptable when there is a ticking time-bomb involved. This is exactly the justification that the Bush administration ahs been using!

Alex Murillo's criticisms are pretty spot-on. I did wonder what the hell happened after Batman jumped off the roof to save Rachel - I mean, what the hell happened!? And the whole smarmy, tiny, "squealing" Asian businessman who's evil superpower is being good with numbers, and who is literally dragged away from impotent China by the impossibly well-timed Batman? What the hell! Also, I might be missing something but why did Gordon faking his own death allow him to get the upper hand over the Joker?

I don't think I liked the film too much, in part because of those reasons - the film was just ungainly. But I was mesmerized by Ledger's performance, I thought some of the action scenes achieved a sense of tension that's extremely impressive and thrilling, and the whole film is, if not logical, thoughtful. I'm not sure of the success of the film but it is one of the most ambitious superhero films ever made (the other being Ang Lee's Hulk), and that alone is admirable.

My biggest problem with it wasn't the problems with dramatic or plot-related logic - I've liked/loved films that were much bigger offenders. It's that the film's most championed quality - it's realism - is it's biggest hindrance. It rigorously explores the source material with realism (realism as a theme, almost) - how would Batman operate logistically, how would the politics play out, how would philosophical dillemmas emerge, how would Batman psychologically develop into and through all of this? And in the end the whole film, just like Batman Begins, becomes too sanitized for my taste.

The film makers also use realism in an attempt to set it apart from and higher than their predecessors. But the conceit of Batman has a limitation on how real it can get. I'm not implying that comics can't explore deep themes or complex human nature. But for characters like Batman, there's a certain veil of fantasy that's required, and is part of the enjoyment - either through the comic book medium, the stylized form of Burton's movies, or best yet the animated world of the cartoon (which better than any incarnation, got to the emotional heart of Bruce Wayne's pain and inspiration derived by his parents' murder). The veil also nicely allows the audience to put aside the fact that Bruce Wayne would have to be certifiable to do all of this, that the Joker could be so crazy and yet so intricately brilliant as to pull off such convoluted strategies such as the assassination attempt on the Mayor (huh?), etc.

I'm gonna second that Andrew's comments get right to the heart of how we feel at the end and why. Nolan isn't siding with Batman so much as presenting various perspectives.

And that makes me think of Roger Ebert's insightful closing comments in his review: 'For Bruce Wayne is a deeply troubled man, let there be no doubt, and if ever in exile from his heroic role, it would not surprise me what he finds himself capable of doing.'

I appreciate that line so much because it focuses in on a thought that disturbed me during The Joker's speech about his father/wife: if Bruce and The Joker had swapped the families (father and lover) they grew up with, The Joker could simply be a likeable 'Knight's Tale' pretty boy and Bruce Wayne would be Patrick Bateman.

And, again, I come back to why Batman didn't just let The Joker fall? Here's another angle: maybe he feels sorry for him? Maybe each of them senses the other's scarred childhood. After all, Bruce was a mere Rachel away from committing a pointless revenge murder. The Joker wasn't so lucky. I find the final scene with him to be so sad; the look on his face when the bombs don't go off. For a second we see him reduced to the scared little boy inside, trying desperately and failing to make sense of his life. Bruce sees it too because it takes one to know one.

It brings greater poignancy to his lines 'I'm not a hero.' He isn't. As miserable as his life may be, he has to be Batman because, well, there's no other way for him to make sense of his life. He isn't only saving Gotham, he's saving his own soul.

I don't know. Maybe it's just me but whenever I stumble across a movie that moves me to write as much as I have here... and I could go on... I call that a great film.

In response to some comments above about the movie being good because of how many times you can re-watch it: I have always felt that there is a distinct difference between something being 'the best' of whatever group you're listing, and being you're 'favorite' of something.

To me this is what Satish says so wonderfully in his comment above: movies we come to revere aren't always the 'best' (whatever that means, this ranking and labeling system is all arbitrary and subjective). I can love a movie like Aliens or Robocop, in fact I would list them as two of my favorite movies of all time, but there is something entirely different we use to support the idea that something is our favorite as opposed to methods we use to justify as the 'best'.

I can appreciate Kubrick and the aesthetic value of his films; I would even venture to say that Barry Lyndon is one of the great achievements in cinema history. This relies on me knowing a little something about the speed that Kubrick filmed the scenes with (because of the natural light) and how difficult that must have been. It would require that I have a sense of what epic film is, a little David Lean and Anthony Mann would come in handy when explicating Barry Lyndon's visual poetry.

The opposite is true of something like Aliens -- which is all about the experience, which I think is what some people are saying about The Dark Knight. I liked the film quite a bit. I had a great experience in the theater. Do I think it has deep themes, innovative film tricks, or the visual poetry of something like Barry Lyndon or a Terrence Malick film? No way. But I felt just as elated leaving the theater as I do when I watch Aliens for the 10,000th time on Encore Action (thank you Dish network).

'Favorites' and 'best': a distinction needs to be made, because I think a lot of the people saying that The Dark Knight is one of the best films, if not THE best, they have seen haven't thought about where it would really rank among the truly great films that stand the test of time.

I think it's funny that in the biggest popularity contest, The Dark Knight ranks number one on IMDB.com's top 250 list. It's amazing what an initial overly positive and gleeful reaction mixed with some major hype can do to booster a films popularity.

I mean seriously if you could only choose one of the top three titles on IMDB's list to take with you on a desert island for a year, would you really choose The Dark Knight over The Godfather?

Lastly (sorry this is so long), what annoys more than anything about the film right now is that this all causing people who actually kind of like the movie sound like they don't like it. I wasn't that aware of critical responses (I was in 5th grade) with the fandom of something like Pulp Fiction when it was released, but from what I've heard about that films explosion of popularity, The Dark Knight is having the same effect.

Alex--

I agree, simply chugging through the themes I mentioned like a dissertation wouldn't make it a great movie by itself. (If it did, then my summary itself would be a great movie and, yknow, it's not). It's the fact that it managed to, in my opinion, explore those themes in the context of a well-done story with some excellent performances, etc. etc. It's hard to debate things like acting--if you didn't like Ledger's performance, well, how am I gonna convince you otherwise? I guess I'm just attempting to make the case that the film was thematically consistent. But you make a good point, that is only one element of what makes it a great flick.

Darth Vader--

I think, unfortunately, you may be right that people will view the eavesdropping scenes as a kind of justification of the Bush administration's programs. However, (as I alluded to above) I don't think that's what the movie actually endorses. I think the film makes clear that what Batman's doing is illegitimate--that is, that someone like Dent or Gordon could not and should not be doing it. Because they're leaders, because they're part of the law enforcement, they can't de-legitimize the law. See the scene where Harvey interrogates his prisoner. If that power needs to be used, it needs to be used by Batman, because he's the outsider--and because he won't abuse it. (And he takes precautions to prevent the possibility of him abusing it. Consider Luscious Fox judicial oversight.)

I remember when I was 5 and I saw Empire Strikes Back for the first time. I remember thinking the Goonies was the greatest movie ever when I was 10 years old. I remember sneaking into Point Break when I was 15, still not quite old enough yet, and being thrilled by the movie. I remember seeing Pulp Fiction when I was 20 and wanting to be an indie filmmaker myself. I saw You Can Count on Me and thinking it was the greatest movie I had ever seen, then went home and watched Best Intentions a few days later (Billie August) on crappy VHS and thinking it the best film I had ever seen. I remember making my first film at age 28 (www.anapologytothedead.com), realizing it would never end up being what I dreamt it could be, still hungry to make more films, yet having moved on to a teaching and coaching career, and having left a lot behind.

I recently re-watched Goonies and Point Break, and the films brought back visceral memories. They're not masterpieces by any stretch, and I have seen so many films since then that have moved me to tears and the heights of emotional recoil, but they still hold a power over me.

I could see how a teenager would see Dark Knight now with no filmic reservoir or Cineast leanings, and desire to share that enthusiastic joie de vivre that comes with experiencing a taste of the majestic and sensorial highs of film. I have felt it too. Nowadays, I deeply appreciate it when a film lifts me into the deepest recesses of my emotions and imagination.

Dark Knight was a fun experience, with a huge crowd, in IMAX. I've seen it twice. I got my money's worth both times. I did not feel the movie was a waste of time. I learned some things about general filmmaking from it, I wondered how they pulled off some shots (real stunts? CGI?, etc.). I found myself loathing some of the staginess of the final act. I thought Ledger was channeling a darker Mel Gibson at certain points (watch it again and tell me you don't see a little of Lethal Weapon Mel in some of his mannerisms, eye and mouth movements, and vocalalizing...) I may get it on Blu-Ray and watch it a couple more times in my life. There were great parts and there were nitpicks. There was sorrow for how the film could have been better, yet it's hard to complain when the movie gives so much more than might have been expected or wished for. I might put it in a top 10 list of films I've seen so far in 2008, but it wouldn't be #1. It certainly wouldn't be my all-time #1 for action, mystery, adventure, nor comic book movies.

It's fascinating to contemplate whether the movie will make north of $600 million, but that has nothing to do with the quality of the movie, and speaks more to product marketing, the success of the movie in terms of crowd-pleasure and buzz, and fascination with statistics and records (did I mention I'm a baseball nut?).

But I could see how someone with a more burgeoning film literacy and vocabulary might see it as some important gestalt in his or her life. And I judge not...

Preface: I admit to skimming over many of the previous posts due their length. I post my comment only to give my opinion.

I think the overwhelming feeling I had going into the film was Excitement. I was weirdly jazzed to see this film. Weirdly because I quite dislike Batman Begins. I think the main factor in my excitement had to do with Ledger and those absolutely brilliant print ads.

As for the film itself: I think I enjoyed it more than I appreciated it, if that makes any sense (it's also the opposite of how I feel about, say, Lou Reed's Berlin). I thought the opening bank heist was brilliant (excepting some especially corny dialogue), and reminded me of the bank sequence in Heat. I thought the Joker was revealed quite beautifully, with that floating shot of his face totally disconnected from all of the other shots.

I could go on about the things that I liked, but I think it would be pretty boring, so I'll just dip a toe. I thought the cast was amazing, as were the set-pieces and Gotham, itself. It was fun, the dialogue was perfectly pitched (half cheese, half noir) and the violence was tastefully done.

As for the things I didn't like. I found the transitions between a lot of scenes to be abrupt and jarring (not in a good way). The scene were the Mayor is looking out the window and the fake Batman that the Joker has killed falls to the window was scary as hell, and I jumped in my seat the first AND second time I saw it. But there is no time to linger on it, as Nolan quickly cuts to a mundane exterior shot. Which is what he does at the end of the following where they watch the Joker's film of the torture of said fake Batman. There is no time alotted to sit and be afraid. It quickly delves into another scene, which I think ruins a great effect.

The action scenes, and especially the chase scene were pretty shite, IMO. You've written about the necessity of portraying the geography of a scene like that, and I think Nolan did a poor job. I was quite confused about who was shooting at who, and where everybody was.

The other big issues I have with the picture are loose-ends and sloppy editing.

1. When Batman has to make a decision to save either Rachel or Dent, he tells Gordon he is going to save Rachel. Then he shows up and saves Dent. With no explanation. I assumed that the Joker had purposely told him the wrong address, it seemed obvious to me, but not to many people I've spoken to about it, who seem to think he saved Dent on purpose. A simple line of dialogue could have cleared the entire thing up. Especially considering that part of the reason that Dent/Two Face is out to get the Batman is because he felt that Batman should have saved Rachel instead. You'd think that would be something that Batman would want to clear up.

2. The Joker is literally left dangling in mid-air. What a lazy end for such a staggeringly great character.

3. Is Two Face dead? Are they being ambiguous or sloppy? I honestly can't say, seeing as many Batman fan-boys are talking about the NEXT Batman villain, completely discounting a Two Face reemergence.

Anyway, those are my hazy two cents. I could go on, but I'm pretty exhausted talking about this movie right now. Maybe after I see it again with my mum, I'll be re-energized.

A question: Does the "greatest movie of all time" have to be the "deepest"? If so, why does something like Citizen Kane (characterized by Pauline Kael as being a "shallow masterpiece", technically brilliant, though not necessarily "deep") top so many "Greatest" lists? Or Casablanca? Is The Seventh Seal Ingmar Bergman's "deepest" film? And how exactly do we quantify the relative level of "depth" a film possesses?

I do believe The Dark Knight is the best written, acted, and produced "superhero" film of all time, and multiple viewings have done nothing to dissuade me from that opinion...heck, if anything, they've strengthened it.

I wouldn't speak in absolutes as to its relative ranking amongst the 50, 100, or 500 "Greatest" films of all time. Those things sort themselves out over many years, and repeat viewings. But I will say that my emotional reaction to the film was every bit as strong as my response to my favourite 2007 film, No Country For Old Men. NCFOM has a formal, mostly quiet elegance, which makes it awfully easy to slap the "masterpiece" label on it. Nolan has created something quite different, though. The Dark Knight has a deliberately (IMO) unhinged quality about it, which plays right into the overarching "city engulfed in chaos" theme rather effectively. That said, the more I watch it, the more I realize how meticulously put together the film really is. I don't think it's any more thematically "scattershot" than the large majority of Jean-Luc Godard films I've seen, most of which I enjoyed greatly. It's an ambivalent "mainstream entertainment" for our conflicted times. And quite possibly the best paced 2 1/2 hour movie I've ever seen.

It mostly worked for me except the raspy pro wrestler voice he uses, especially at the end with Gordon ranting about good like Hacksaw Jim Duggan. Speaking of, good to see Mr. Lister in there, hoping for Nikolai Volkoff to make an appearance.

I put together a fairly effective collage of 20s silent movies Bob Kane and Bill Finger used as influences rejiggered, find "Silent Shadow of the Bat-Man" on youtube. More Murnau! More Veidt! Less Hacksaw!

After this cycle is over it'd be fun to see a 1939 period version shot in b&W super-16mm or 35mm, back when Bats carried a gun, used it, and ranted about killing. Just keep Frankie away!

I feel I'm the only human on Planet Earth that didn't like "The Dark Knight." Don't get me wrong, Heath Ledger was tremendous and Academy Award-worthy in his portrayal of a serial psycho Joker, he's right up there in the Villain's Hall of Fame next to Hannibal Lector.

But otherwise, I found the movie preachy, heavy-handed and melodramatic. I dunno. I suppose I expected that in a "Batman" movie there might be some honest-to-goodness Batman action. Instead, it's car chases and flying through the air, not unlike Mission Impossible III or the latest Die Hard.

The convoluted "true hero versus reckless vigilante" plot left me with both a "what the..?" and "oh, come on..." reaction.

Poor Eckhardt as Two Face looked like a cross between the abominable Dr. Phibes and one of the stages of regeneration from The Mummy.

And why would anyone for a moment think that Batman was dangerous? If a Batman or his ilk actually appeared in real life in any major city, it'd be all over YouTube and there'd be idol worship galore, even if said vigilante were a brutal sadistic SOB... with, maybe, a few conservative nutballs like Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh pooh-poohing him.

The absurd morality "crisis of conscious" suggested by the finale takes the final plunge from sophomoric into moronic.

Fortunately, I saw this film in a double-feature with Hellboy, so two birds killed with one stone.

A list:

1. "The Dark Knight" is not great.
2. Not even close.
3. What I mean: It's no "Chinatown." It isn't even "Die Hard" or "Terminator."
4. Christopher Nolan should concoct stories, but leave the actual writing of films to someone who doesn't have a tin ear.
4a. I say that as someone who writes fiction and has a tin ear for dialogue.
5. The fight scenes are poorly choreographed.
5a. I generally don't notice things like fight choreography.
5b. The choreography is a great improvement however over that of its predecessor.
6. I really like comic books.
7. I still wait for a film that adapts the comic book source material as well as "Wonder Boys" adapted Chabon's novel.
8. Christian Bale is a great actor. This movie underuses his talents.
9. This being said, I liked "The Dark Knight." It's quite good in spite of many flaws.

Why? It's a lot of fun. The story--not the dialogue--is so well conceived and structured, and Nolan, whose work I think is, um, generally tripe, shows actual aesthetic sensibilities here (the scene from which you grabbed the above frame). Or maybe a better eplanation: I spent $10 on the movie, and I don't have a source of income at the moment. I was happy to have parted with that money.

I know people loving the movie shouldn't bother me. To each their own. And yet I get worked up when people rave about "The Dark Knight." Why? Because it's merely good entertainment. It's not great entertainment. I watch it and I think of, oh, "The Man Who Would Be King," "Terminator 1 and 2," "Miami Vice," "ET," or "Point Break." These are action/adventure/thriller movies, that I, someone who generally prefers the Dardennes to the Wachowskis, really gets behind. "The Dark Knight" is not quite in their category. And then there's the matter of praising Heath Ledger's performance. It is the best thing in the movie. It might even deserve recognition. But have you seen him in "I'm Not There"? Watching his Robbie in that movie breaks my heart. His Joker is unsettling, but Robbie is devastating.

Anyway, yeah. Good, not great. And on that note...

Now feel compelled to comment, just as I felt compelled to see this film after all the hype.
I thought it was a great film - not the best film ever, but certainly worth seeing. Heath ledger was amazing, there were some excellent sequences, all the supporting actors were top-notch. What was oddly missing was a compelling Batman. Sure, Bruce Wayne was fascinating but the moment he was in costume, he looked like a guy in a costume. The bat cowl looked downright goofy on Bale's face. There was little screen time for this hero (gadgets aside) who was supposed to be the foil to what was a far superior villain character.
This film also convinced me that fewer American films can adequately stage a proper fight scene. I want to see Batman's body moves - not chopped up into rapidfire close-ups - I want to see what makes this guy an amazing superhero. The superhero that is supposed to inspire fear and awe to match the Joker's almost supernatural level of villainy.
But what's sticking with me is a strange feeling of sadness for the superhero genre. For years I wished that comic books would be portrayed with more maturity and realism, and now I'm thinking "be careful what you wish for." This felt like a true crime film - dark and real - with some Batman elements used like operatic archetypes to create the broad strokes. It's almost a comic book movie and almost an allegorical crime film about the nature of evil, heroism and masks etc. The Joker could exist in a dark thriller film of his own, with Batman replaced to a rich gadget-loving detective-in-disguise. I say that those who call this a comic book movie are only half-right.
I know I'll probably get roasted alive for saying this but for me, "Iron Man" was a more satisfying comic book movie adaptation, and "The Incredibles" will always be my all-time favorite superhero movie. Yeah, I know, they were happy-shiny-fun films and Batman is brooding tragic character - elevated in "The Dark Knight" into something of a new genre.
I'd call it neo-comic-book realism.

I think you very clearly sum up my frustrations with the film, here. There is much to admire but there is also so much to loathe about it. It is, as Christopher Long said, an adolescent's 'great movie'. It spoon feeds you the themes (time and time again) but never actually follows through on its philosophical convictions because it has to be, well, a happy meal. Christopher Nolan seems to think that broodingness and seriousness are the same thing (and that 'realistic' is interesting by necessity).
And the whole Harvey Dent thing (which takes up an embarrassing portion of the film's running length) is just hammy and trite, and Nolan seems to think it's Shakespearean. As though it wasn't obvious enough, Nolan felt the need to personify the struggle between Batman and Joker in the most cliched and boring way, turning the Harvey Dent narrative into a trite revenge story we've seen a hundred times before (and a hundred times better).
Still, I enjoyed myself for Heath Ledger and the action scenes, incomprehensible though they were.

Thank you, Jim, for encouraging me to take an analytical eye to a movie that I almost instinctively admired when I watched it. I'll try (and probably fail) to keep it concise, and try to give my impression of the movie's themes:

I think it's a little unfair to say that the movie simply states its themes and leaves them at that. To me, it does something more thoughtful, which no film since NCFOM has done for me: it presents ideas and asks questions about them. It asks, like NCFOM, how can good possibly fight evil? Which one is the dominant force in the world? Is the world really a fool's paradise? Are morals artificial?

The Joker does not strike me as insane as much as an embodiment cynicism taken to the extreme...although many sane people - including William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies - would agree with his assessment of human nature. By exploiting human frailty, the Joker forces everyone in the film to ultimately place their own virtue under more scrutiny. No good deed goes unpunished here, and virtue, by the end of the movie, is as inscrutable a force as evil. Forces of both good (Batman, Dent, Gordon) and evil (the Joker) explicitly state their values, but the movie itself does not. At the end, nobody seems to have a better or more objective handle on what is right or wrong, but both sides have been forced to reconsider their own perspectives: the exhausted Batman reaches the conclusion that he will to break more laws, more legs, and more hearts than he had ever bargained for in order to win (and he'll have to lie to the people of Gotham as well); the Joker is forced to admit that the people of Gotham have passed his test, even if only by a thread. Critics don't give the ferry boat scene the credit it is due, simply decrying it, in the case of one cynical review, as a "Kumbaya" moment. I strongly disagree, since it is not clear in the case of the boat full of "good" passengers whether they pass the test because they are innately virtuous or innately too scared to take action.

At the end of the movie, then, good and evil are more inscrutable (sorry, I know I already used that word) than they were at the beginning. Is the movie any weaker for making good and evil its dominant theme (and it IS the dominant theme, more so than order and chaos...chaos in this movie is just a means of inspiring evil)? I don't think so. Steinbeck said in East of Eden that the whole story of mankind has essentially revolved around the conflict of good vs. evil. Like that novel, The Dark Knight is primarily interested in our ability to choose between good and evil. Like that novel, and unlike most films of any era, The Dark Knight chooses to view this conflict through a fresh, almost objective (is that possible?) set of eyes.

Maybe that is key to the movie's seemingly universal appeal, Jim. The conflict of good and evil is one that has always been close to home in all of our hearts, and now more than ever in a post-9/11 world. How can we fight these forces of violence and destruction who justify themselves on ideological grounds? The movie is about the emotional toll the battle takes on those who claim to represent good, and that is the source of the movie's power, capturing the intensity of the battle and never letting up until the final frame.

In conclusion: the movie's themes are epitomized in the scene where the unstoppable force meets an immovable object. The Batman, a self-declared soldier for good, is on his motorcycle careening towards the Joker, a self-declared agent of chaos. Most of the people who have commented on this blog have seen the movie, and know how the scene resolves itself, so I will let you figure out the symbolism of the scene for yourself.

P.S. - Jim, you asked yourself and us the non-rhetorical question of whether or not stating a theme and moving on qualifies as art. To put my two cents in on this, I look at No Country For Old Men. At the beginning of that film, Ed Tom Bell laments that "To say, 'Ok, I'll be a part of this world'...you would have to put your soul at risk." What Bell means by this is never fully explored or even illustrated; how does walking away from the overwhelming Chigurh save Bell's soul? Oddly enough, I think that theme, which is never explicitly stated in TDK, is better illustrated in it! Since you loved No Country For Old Men, though, and vouched for it against all those who criticized its content, you have to admit that there is more to a movie than how its themes are articulated. If you look beyond the themes, you may catch on to whatever chord it is that the movie strikes. Then again, I could be on the wrong track...you indicated that you had some criticism for the execution of this film.

P.S.S. - Mr. Vader: I don't think that Nolan necessarily approved of Batman's tactics at the end of the film, but merely admitted that they were successful in getting the detonator away from the Joker. The climax of the film was when the people of Gotham chose not to kill each other, but like I indicated already, there is no clear answer to what prevents them. Wiretapping is a mean and nasty business, but it did save lives; would Batman have been better off not using it and letting the Joker kill those people? This is another tough, non-rhetorical question the movie asks, and doesn't take the easy way out by simply declaring, "Potential intrusion into our rights is evil and should never be done!!!" the way The Bourne Ultimatum or Rendition did.

(So much for me being concise)

Jim, I agree with your friend every time I listen to "Blood on the Tracks", but as a slightly older person I never quite forget that when next I put on "Blonde on Blonde" I will have exactly the same reaction but moreso. Time is compressed as we age and to me "Children of Men" seems like a week ago while to someone half my age it may seem like 10 years. I don't know, I once had a more specific formula like (newborn's first day=lifetime, second day=1/2 lifetime and, therefore, seems exactly half as long, etc.) In many other ways a younger person's preception of the world is rapidly changing and as someone who has become a completely different person since their previous "greatest ever" movie experience it's a lot easier to have another one. Chances are someone under 25 (to use someone else's arbitrary number) will have a number of greatests in the next few years but--who knows?--might just come back to The Dark Knight as whatever person they are at 40 and say, "Yeah, that other me actually got that right." Me, I'm still pretty much the same guy who loved "Fargo" so "No Country" really had to show me something. (It did.)

[My God! Stick me in a rocking chair and call me Pappy!]

'In response to some comments above about the movie being good because of how many times you can re-watch it: I have always felt that there is a distinct difference between something being 'the best' of whatever group you're listing, and being you're 'favorite' of something.'

I 100% follow you on this and I was the one that made those comments about TDK's rewatchability. You're right. I mean, I watch movies sometimes that aren't great movies just to see a particular actor's performance again (Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski, Johnny Depp in Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Edward Norton in American History X, Gary Oldman in the Fifth Element, True Romance, State of Grace, whatever other movie he steals every scene/ the whole movie in) but that doesn't mean those are great movies. Just personal favorites because of one great performance amongst other good ones. And that's just movies I personally like because of acting. The list is endless for direction, etc.

But what I'm really getting at is the movies we watch many times in our lives because each experience reveals something we didn't notice before, or maybe the movie as a whole leaves us with emotionally charged questions too ambiguous for us to ever totally wrap our heads around, or maybe it's a simple case of, no matter how many times you see those aliens at the end of Close Encounters, the magic is never lost because of the uniqueness of the film. Whatever the case might be, there are those movies we return to for further discovery. I'm arguing TDK is in that vein.

Ledger's performance alone is a thing of film beauty. There isn't much general consensus in the comments here about the greatness of the movie but we generally seem to agree Heath owned his role. Above all else, willingly or not, he'll be what we remember about TDK.

Maybe I don't read enough film criticism but it seems that this movie more than any other movie in recent memory has prompted reviewers to review a movie they wanted rather than what the film is. There have been many comments a long the lines of: "here's what Nolan should have done to make this a great picture" or "the action is filmed and edited incorrectly" or "the camera should have stayed on Heath ledger for 25 seconds when he was introduced instead of only 5."

Maybe. Maybe not. I think that this is not so much a sign of bad film making but a film that has entered into a different territory than some are used to.

This film exists in a strange place and there have been demands that it must fit various molds. It must fit the mold of a comic book movie. It must fit the mold of a Batman movie. It must fit the mold of an action summer blockbuster. And finally it now must fit the mold of the greatest movie ever.

Some may say that it touches on all these categories while others may say that it's not enough of anyone of these things to really amount to anything. Each of these categories has been used to judge the film and each seem to vary on an individual basis.
The one which you have asked presented us may be the vaguest of all. What makes the greatest movie ever? Or at least this year century or whatever.

The name of the greatest film ever has been given to a number of titles. Citizen Kane has been named a great film many times as well as The Searchers, Casablanca, or maybe The Big Sleep or The Wizard of Oz. These movies have many qualities that make them great. It has been said of some of these films that they are hollow, style over substance; the story can not be followed not even by the writers, nothing but entertainment for the masses and just a complete mess that can't make up its mind what it wants to say.

I don't know if these films a great despite there flaws or perhaps because of them. The only thing that I would say makes a great film is either that it fills a mold exceedingly well or it breaks the mold.

In a previous blog it was considered weather or not critics hated comic book movies. Examples were given comic book movies which had a high number of positive reviews. While some of the numbers were high in favor of some of the comic book movies it was not so much the number of reviews as content. It is felt by some that reviewers look down on comic book films and that they are only good despite the fact that there are simply marketable crowd pleasers made only to sell tickets.

If comic book films are made for mass audiences then it is up to them to decide whether or not this messy, off style, hollow, doesn’t properly introduce its screen villain in just the right way, unashamed piece of entertainment really is great or not. The critics can take a break on this one.

At the beginning of this article you said that all this film needs is a script and a director and it could be really great. As a member of the mass audience I feel qualified to tell you that it has those things and they're really great.

I agree with your friend, 'Blood on the Tracks' IS the greatest artistic achievement of all time or at least the 20th century.
I like TDK a fair bit and thought Ledger was great but personally I don't think it was a patch on Spider-Man 2. Many of the problems I had with it were the same - overlong, too many characters, sloppy contrivances, a weak 3rd act - as I had with Spider-Man 3, which the fanboys hated. But then TDK didn't have a goofy dance sequence in the middle, did it? (might've lightened the tone a little).

Carl S: I can't remember where I came across it, but not long ago I discovered some sage advice that I have taken to heart: No song cannot be improved by hand claps. (This may apply to cowbell, too, I guess.) You remind me that no movie cannot be improved by a goofy dance sequence in the middle. Really. Ingmar, Antonio, Bela, Abbas -- step up!

Alex: Disreputable genres really interest me. I'm working on a post about just that. I don't think there's any genre or art form (including the hotly debated video game) that cannot be a great work of art. Stating the obvious: It just depends on the work.

To Stephen: You've seen "1,000-2,000 films"? That has to be the roughest estimate I've ever read. Is it really possible to potentially miss the mark by 1,000? Can you really not tell the difference?

To Sam: I completely agree with your comment about Heat and The Departed. As much as I enjoyed The Dark Knight, it has crossed my mind how much better the film might have been without the comic book costumes. Two things that somewhat took me out of the moment were Batman's costume and Two-Face's half-n-half suit. These sorts of things just never look right when realized as "live action". Does anyone remember how relieving it was that Bryan Singer did away with the iconic costumes of the X-Men for his films? Batman and his cohorts have always been portrayed better in books like Year One, Long Halloween and Arkham's Asylum (all are noted references for the film and great books from a "disreputable" genre).

To Jim: I think the appeal of "disreputable" genres may rest on the fact that if you happen to come across a really good film it seems that much more special. Lower expectations, perhaps? To me, a really good B-movie can equal the greatness of a mainstream film. What would I consider contemporary B-movies? To keep it relevant to The Dark Knight, I would include American Psycho and The Machinist as two examples (both star Bale). But Jim, how far are you going to take your blog on disreputable genres? Pornography has to be the most disreputable of them all...

Late to the party, so I may not have much to add.

To me, The Dark Knight is the definition of a movie that is "flawesome": It's filled with myriad nits to pick, but the overall experience left me deeply satisfied. Seeing the movie again, it wasn't Ledger that stuck with me (although he was fantastic), but the story of Two-Face.

The first time I saw Eckhart scream "RACHELLL!" with that weird Ethel Merman-y cadence as Batman was dragging him from the room, I almost chuckled. The second time I saw it, I wasn't exactly choked with emotion, but it was much more affecting.

To me, the final bit of the movie with Two-Face and the ending were really well-done. I've read that some would have liked to have seen a sequel telling the rest of Two-Face's story, but I don't think it's necessary.

Though this is obviously generalizing (and feel free to chastise me for it if you like), I generally lump film viewers into two groups. Those who tend to view a movie as a series of moments, where the "big moments" (laughs, shocks, and indeed explosions) hold more interest than the quieter, usually dialogue-driven scenes in between. Then there are those who, at some point (age can be an issue, but it really comes down to the number and variety of films you watch), develop more of a taste for a richly unfolding narrative, and the subtle beats of the story hold as much appeal as any "big moments".

I think the overall commercial and critical success of The Dark Knight resides in its ability to cater to both camps almost equally well. It is a rather thoughtfully plotted crime drama, but it also has a number of hallmarks of a blockbuster. Add to that the fact that the villain is a terrorist, who deals in large, provocative demonstrations of his (supposed) ideals, which inevitably creates a number of large-scale story developments that nonetheless rise rather organically out of the unfolding narrative.

There will always be a friction between these two elements, and it will always come down to personal preference at so how well they co-exist, and how much of the final effect was actually intended or not. It feels about right to me, though.

As a side note, where something like Spider-Man 2 really lets me down is in its almost total lack of emotional complexity...and James Franco's wretchedly one-note performance as Harry Osborne. The more I watch that film, the more it feels like an Afterschool Special. Hey, it's fun as spectacle, and I suppose sometimes that's enough. But don't even get me started on sloppy plotting with that, or just about any other superhero movie out there.

As for the number of characters in The Dark Knight, the difference is that they're actually developed, unlike the large majority of characters in Spider-Man 3, which are barely more than one-dimensional. Plus, Nolan creates a hierarchy of villainous characters (as he did in the first film), rather than putting them all on the same "level", essentially cancelling eachother out.

I believed in all of the characters in The Dark Knight as actual people, with minds and wills of their own. Heck, Tony Lester's prisoner on the ferry had more weight and believability as a character than Topher Grace's Eddie Brock.

I've seen TDK with five different groups of people, and every single one of them said it felt like a 2 hour, as opposed to 2 1/2 hour, film. And a few of them don't exactly have what you would call long attention spans, relatively-speaking.

Alex: NCFOM doesn't just talk about ideas. It completely subverts the genre by not allowing its important characters to interact on screen and by including a slow and elegiac epilogue instead of resolution. The ideas change the story.
There's none of this in TDK. It's a typical comic book superhero movie with philosophical references jammed into its mouth. It's not a bad movie, but remove the Joker's references to Nietzche and its plot is fairly standard. In other words, it doesn't subvert the genre and its expectations, it just analyzes itself through onscreen dialogue. NCFOM is art, TDK is very good pop art. Like the Matrix, its deep meaning is only deep for those new to the idea of deep meaning.
And I defy anyone to explain to me what is going on during the multiple car chases, as in who is going where or behind who or what. Jim needs to analyze that the way he did Speed Racer weeks ago. Sam Raimi's action direction in Spiderman 2 crushes Dark Knight.

"As much as I enjoyed The Dark Knight, it has crossed my mind how much better the film might have been without the comic book costumes."

So go watch HEAT or THE DEPARTED and not something based on a highly regarded comic book with the some of the most famous rogue's gallery and iconic character design work in the medium, then.

Also, I HATED the fact that the X-Men's costumes were changed to be as f*cking bland as they were, and that they started this whole trend of B.S. lazy costume design. Like, how the costumes in the upcoming GI Joe movie are all black, or all of those in WATCHMEN were slightly altered (for the same effect), or any number of things, really. "Wow, let's throw some heroes in black and they'll look awesome! AND, they won't look totally fake like they do in those kiddie comic books."

Take a hike. It's Batman, he wears a "silly" costume, and has unrealistic villains. Good for you to point that out to us uneducated folk who don't give two flips.

Yes, Dark Knight is a bit of a muddle. Even now, I couldn't diagram the acts, or outline character development. Every shot isn't controlled like a Coen Brother's film. It shouldn't be.

The movie is about chaos and destruction. These things don't make sense to us, and if the writer or director told us they made sense to _him_, we wouldn't believe him. The Joker sticks out of the movie like he's in 3D, like he's not really a part of it, or he's in on the joke and no one else is. Ideas, emotions, performances, they all float freely in what is otherwise just an action movie based on a comic book. It works.

I had no trouble following any of the car chases. The Tumbler rams one of the large trucks back, turns around and jumps in front of the armoured vehicle to block the bazooka blast. It then explodes/crashes well off to the side, while the Joker truck and the armoured car continue on. The Bad-Pod then emerges from the Tumbler, and then follows a more direct parallel path (through a mall, etc.) at a higher speed, eventually turning out in front of the Joker truck. Not that complicated.

As for Spider-Man 2, more than half of Raimi's "action direction" was created in a computer. It already looks more like a cartoon than an actual live-acting fight (the people that Spidey tosses to the side on the train aren't even fully rendered...just a blur), and will look even worse five or ten years from now. Dark Knight's action is much more grounded in believable physics (yes, the gloriously outlandish truck flipping is a notable exception), and carries much more dramatic weight, for me, anyways. It won't date nearly as badly as 95% of the comic book films out there, Spider-Man 2 included. Plus, its action is driven by the characters and story, and not the other way around.

As much as I'm scared to argue with someone with the initials "JC," I think you've cherry picked all the clearest parts of the scene. I remember all those, but in terms of the chase, especially the part in the tunnel, I had no idea who was where in relation to any other whoms. I had the same problem with Batman's ascent (or descent?) in the final Joker sequence building. I loved the flipping truck, by the way, and thought that was the best short action sequence in the whole movie. The actors most seemed to inhabit their characters through action in that scene, and it was steady and clear and exciting.
As for Spiderman 2, that action calls for CGI, whereas Batman really doesn't. Spiderman is more extraordinary in his powers, and so the style of the film warrants computer graphics. Even for that, Spidey fighting Ock on the building doesn't look cartoonish at all. It's really not fair for faulting a movie for dated special effects anyway. Is King Kong less effective because its effects are clearly dated? Movies can't always wait around for the technology to catch up to their story.
The jibe at Spiderman as being driven by action instead of characters is preposterous. Parker's mentor issues and personal problems dominate everything he does. Simply because TDK is more "realistic" doesn't mean it is more character-driven. Besides, the ridiculous bomb-in-man's-chest action has already been excoriated on this thread.

To be fair, I was speaking more to comic book films in general with the "action driving story" comment.

But, yeah, I just find the emotional concerns of the entire Spider-Man franchise incredibly simplistic. Compelling on only a base, sentimental level, and not generating any truly memorable dramatic conflict. And devoting a large section of the story to a relationship that barely generates any sparks (I'd actually argue that Maguire and Dunst had better chemistry in the third one, though the actual writing was probably worse there) hampers it even more.

So, yeah, though The Dark Knight devotes far less screen time to it, I feel Gyllenhaal clicks with both Eckhart and Bale on a more believable emotional level (though the characters are, naturally, more closed off on account of the nature of their "jobs").

As for "dated" effects, I enjoy the original King Kong, but I'm not going to lie and say that the effects originally intended to be suspenseful don't come across as rather quaint nowadays. But I won't harp on that.

It goes without saying, though, that filmmakers are in a better position to "future-proof" their films if they use cartoonish-looking CGI as little as possible. Or, at the very least, do their best to capture a "photo-real" look, at which, for instance, the third Spider-Man film (particularly in the crane-crashing-through a building scene) failed miserably. That movie dated itself right out of the box.

As for Nolan's action coverage, it simply comes down to personal preference. I like the way it's shot, and it conveys all the information I require to propel the story forward. I've grown weary of drawn-out martial arts sequences, where show-off choreography takes huge precedence over the emotional credibility or intent of the scene. Batman knocks the opposition out quickly, and moves on.

Anyways, I don't hate Spider-Man 2, but when The Dark Knight, IMO, raised the bar for these types of films, S-M 2 slipped at least a notch or so, along with every other comic adaptation out there. To each their own.

Cheers.

Shawne--

What, who keeps track of how many movies they've seen? I know I've seen at least a thousand 'cause I've rated like 600 on IMDB, and I've seen many more than that. Whether it's double or triple that number, hell if I know.

Someone up above nailed it on the head (I'm sorry that I can't find who it was).

The source of the movie's success lies in its simple dramatic appeal. Moreover, it is an exciting action film, but not because of the action itself (spectacular as it is): it is exciting because the actions of these characters feel natural, and we feel all that is at stake. Throughout the entire movie. There are very few films in recent memory that I have felt the same way ab out. No Country For Old Men comes to mind as another film that involved me in the same way, as did In Bruges. The reason TDK has so much more mainstream and box-office appeal may be that the ending is (arguably) much happier than in either of those films. And, thematic depth aside, it has its share of crowd-pleasing moments to counter-balance the uncomfortably tense ones.

One reason I think The Dark Knight was so well recieved is because it lived up to its hype. Batman Begins was so good that many people (myself included) feared the sequel would not live up to it. Yet not only did it live up, it surpassed expectations. Another possible reason for its success is that it's very dark, but not cynical. If it were cynical I don't think it would have been as successful. At the heart of that darkness is what lies essentially in any superhero movie: triumph of good over evil, and more importantly: self-sacrifice. A third reason I think the movie did so well is that, like its predecessor, The Dark Knight is completely stripped and devoid of cheesiness. Rather than be pandering, Nolan wisely decided to play these films straight and earnestly to the audience on a leap of faith. Fortunately the success of Batman Begins didn't blow his ego up enough to make him over-confident and patronize the audience. Dark Knight would have been another story possibly had that happened. We have yet to see how he will handle the third installment. After all is said and done though I still think The Dark Knight was a wonderful movie, and if people want to complain they can find plenty of other films to complain about than this one.

Jim: Yes, I agree with you completely. To me, genre just means type of story, or description of plot. It's what happens within the plot that is interesting, that makes any movie/play/book a work of art. Shakespeare wrote about mutilation and canibalism; Kafka and Mary Shelley wrote creature features; Dickens wrote melodramas. Yet they are all celebrated today as great writers, as some of the best writers of Western civilization. There are thousands of examples of genres turned into art from all narrative mediums.

I once heard Steve Martin say while discussing one of his scripts that you don't set out to write about the subject of your piece. You write about something else and the subject reveals itself through that different framework. I think that's true. Hitchcock made trenchant psychological studies under the guise of suspense pictures. Comic books can be art, as can any genre. In fact, no art can exist that isn't a genre. Because that word is just a facile way of describing something.

What are we talking about when we talk about what really matters? World peace? There's never been world peace and never will be. Politics? Politicians are slime and the rare less-slimey ones can still never please enough people to make a difference. Religion? Maybe but everyone's scared to talk about it or so close minded that it becomes pointless when we do. What does that leave us? Art. Art can open our eyes. Art can make us ask the questions we fear when we encounter them in our everyday lives. It may not provide generalized answers for the entire public but it can provide individual answers for those whom it touches the most. It's the questions though, that matter most. Answers are really only good for moving on to the next question.

For the record I loved The Dark Knight. I don't think it's the best film ever made (for me that's 2001) but definately the best superhero film and the best I've seen this year.

If u ask me I think this guy Jim is scared of The Dark Knight. He's one of those "schemers" thats scared frozen of the idea of no rules.

Also I don't like how the movie going public is turning the Joker into an anti-hero. In fact I hate it. The Joker is supposed to be the black guy rich folk are too scared to walk by because you think he's going to stick a gun in your face.

johnney: No rules? Eeeek! The Joke is a control freak. That's what I've been saying: I wish he didn't have so many clear rules. He doesn't act randomly, he sets up choices: two hostages, two bombs; two ferries with two bombs; kill what's-his-name or he'll blow up a hospital... If he really represented, or believed in, "no rules" he'd just blow things up for no reasong, without telling anybody in advance. That would be really scary (see earlier post about the post-9/11 anthrax scare). Also, I don't think you can liken the Joker to some black guy; the point is that the Joker wears freaky make-up to make himself stand out; he doesn't just look like anybody else. If you saw somebody who looked like him, would you feel threatened because of his race ?

Matthew - I find that some of your observations are both inaccurate, and a little insulting. As Stew said earlier in this discussion - much earlier- to say that anyone who loves TDK is adolescent or ignorant of cinema is entirely unfair. Not only is it unfair to the people you are making generalizations about, but it is unfair to TDK as well. You're obviously very intelligent, and you've expressed your opinions in a very polite manner, but many of your comments dance dangerously close to Armond White territory, and there is no film critic that irks me more than Armond White.

Would it be fair of me to say that those who criticize TDK are snarky, self important contrarians who relish in savaging that which has become wildly popular? Even though I find that you and Christopher Long are both entirely off base in some of your observations, I can see why you would feel that way. I loved TDK, for a multitude of reasons which I won't get into so that I'm not accused of beliveing the hype or parroting Ebert and Roeper. I must admit that I'm a huge fan of Roger Ebert, and I always enjoy his reviews, whether I agree with them or not.

Yes his attacks were premeditated but that's because he had an agenda to make Dent loose his mind(see "The Killing Joke"). I'm not trying to say his acts are random I'm saying he has no problem killing a judge or a boat full of people because it doesn't conflict with his non existent ethic code thus having no rules. Maybe the phrase "no rules" is misinterpreted.

And you can liken the Joker to a black or any guy for that matter. His make up is like a gang members bandanna or choice of attire meant to point him out of the crowd and say "this is who I am this is the lifestyle I chose to lead **** you and society's rules". If you were mugged by a gang member you'd be threatened by his gun not his race. I used the words "black guy" because that's what America thinks of when they picture a gang banger.

Unfortunately, I have neither the time nor the inclination to read every comment posted in response to your article, so please forgive any thoughts I state that are similar to someone else's. It's bound to happen. I also understand if you have neither the time nor inclination to reply to this post. You must certainly have better things to do.

Every time one these movies (or albums, or television series) comes along that rings true with the American population on such a mass scale, there are always people like you, Jim, who come along and say, "Hey now, is this really all that great?" The last instance of this phenomenon that I can recall was James Cameron's Titanic back in '97. In that case, the answer was an emphatic "no," as that film resonated more with teenaged girls more than any other demographic, and the film's flaws were myriad and universally discussed (although this did take a few weeks!).

With the Dark Knight, though, I feel as though you critics are trudging along, poking your critical sticks in the mud and stirring up controversy for controversy's sake, just to watch the reaction. You're attacking a truly remarkable that, while not utterly and absolutely perfect, is about as good a movie as anyone can make. If you're too jaded or think you've seen too many movies to ever, ever agree with public opinion, well, I suggest you ask yourself why you even like going to the movies in the first place.

Whether or not you see it, Jim, The Dark Knight is a great film. This is not a matter of opinion, but a simple fact. It is. It matters not whether one enjoyed the film or didn't, whether one goes to see it five times and preorders the DVD or trolls every forum on the internet condemning anyone who didn't walk out of the theater, the fact remains that The Dark Knight is, inarguably, a great film. And Nolan's first foray into this world, Batman Begins, is also a great film, regardless of public opinion. A film's greatness has nothing to do with how many people enjoyed it or disliked it. Take Fight Club, a film you yourself vigorously defend. Is it any less great because there are so many people who denounce and misunderstand it? Of course not.

I realize this opens up a whole other debate: What, or who, determines a film's greatness? I'll tell you one thing, it's not me, and I'm not saying The Dark Knight is great just because I liked it and you liked it less. As a critic, I feel you have to be able to identify the great films when you see them. My maxim: I will sometimes like a bad film, but I will never dislike a great one.

But that is outside the scope of my response here. Feel free to explore it yourself. Suffice it to say that the wording of your opening paragraph ("All this movie needs is a script and a director and it could be really, really great!") struck me as the most arrogant, pompous, loathsome piece of writing in your vastly arrogant, pompous, loathsome body of work. Christopher Nolan is our very finest, smartest director working today. He also happens to be, along with his brother Jonathan, our finest, smartest writer.

Funny, then, that this still doesn't seem to be enough for some people. People who can't just say, "I didn't like that movie."

Jim: I kind of disagree with your assertion that The Joker is a control freak. Or, maybe, it's more accurate to say that I disagree with the notion that The Joker has to be a completely random force of chaos in order to make his point.

Sure, that's what he tells Dent in the hospital -- that he's "a dog chasing cars," with no plan whatsoever. But who says we're supposed to believe him? Of course he has a plan: to turn Harvey Dent into a killer, and prove to Gotham that even the best of them isn't above being corrupted. This, by the way, is another idea that can be traced back to a graphic novel, "The Killing Joke" -- that anyone can be driven to become a murderous maniac after "one bad day." Besides, we're already lead to know not to take everything The Joker says too seriously, considering the conflicting origin stories he likes to tell. What he said to Dent was simply what he had to in order to convince him he's been betrayed -- which is all part of the plan.

But I don't think the fact that he sets up intricately sadistic choices (yeah, maybe preposterously intricate in some cases) undermines what he says to Batman in the interrogation room, about the only sensible way to live being to "live without rules." The idea is to show Batman (and Dent, and Gordon) that the world puts us into situations where living by a moral code becomes impossible, and therefore our "rules" of right and wrong must be abandoned. And if they can be abandoned so easily, did they really mean anything to begin with?

It's not necessarily just about being a random force of chaos -- The Joker is trying to make a philosophical point (as he essentially says out loud, when burning his share of the mob money), and he's using his enemy's rules against them in, yes, very methodical ways. Whether that point actually makes any sense, of course, is another matter, but it's obviously one of the many War on Terror allusions in the movie.

Jim--

There is a distinct difference between the Joker planning crimes and having a message and him being a "control freak". The Joker very clearly enjoys the moments where he doesn't have control. His most spontaneous and genuine laughter in the film actually comes when he has the least control--when he's in free-fall. He plans and he schemes, but that's only so he can spread his message.

That's the point, though--not for him to be purely chaotic, but for him to spread the chaos. Batman enforces the rules by breaking the rules, and the Joker subverts the rules by forcing people to play by different ones. It may be slightly contradictory, but no more so than Batman, and no more so than, say, armed and trained "peacekeeping" forces. He's fighting fire with fire, and if that isn't entirely logically consistent, well, I'm sure he'd appreciate that.

Jim, the Joker does that because that way he can achieve the maximum possible damage. Remember his lines "look what I did to this city with just some tanks of gas and a couple of bullets". He needs his plans to work out because he's in a quest to bring down status quo... and to bring down morality. If you do taht in a random way, people won't understand what the stakes are, or the consequences. Knowing that chaos is coming onto you, well, you are more scared.

Whether I have to admit that jhonneys first paragraph made no sense at all, his second idea may have some fundament. Joker is someone who obviously suffered some kind of trauma. The scars are there to remember us that, because he is quite conscious of his sacar. He's constantly bringing up stories for them (except the real one) and also constantly licking them up. He's obssesed about them, so they must be some kind of driving force.

Joker being someone who suffered, trying to bring down society, has a lot of allegorical social differences. Where was anarchy fully born? Russia, with Bakunin. And remember Sweeney Todd? That story is filled with social commentary, and is also about a guy with scars that wants to kill enough men so he can get justice (revenge) upon the society that wronged him.

I think that, with the Joker, that's an undeniable subtext, althouth subtler and less evident that other themes in the movie.

All I'm saying is: 1) the Joker is, as he says, "an agent of chaos" but 2) his own actions are meticulously planned to create chaos/unrest. However, I love Stephen's observation that the Joker seems most himself when his plans are thwarted -- when he's in "fee-fall." He seems to get the biggest thrill out of that, even when he thinks it's the end (as when he stands in the street after climbing out of his flipped semi and dares Batman to come at him).

Ken: We definitely didn't see the movie the same way. I'll be interested to see how I perceive it the second time, now that I know where it's going. I thought the ambiguity/ambivalence was talked about, but not explored enough -- although it's long been part of Batman's struggle with himself. Some have said they think Harvey Dent will actually return in a future film, and I would like to see more play (particularly visual) with their similarities and differences... But that's just me.

"All I'm saying is: 1) the Joker is, as he says, "an agent of chaos" but 2) his own actions are meticulously planned to create chaos/unrest."

Jim, that's precisely correct. Joker isn't Chaos embodied; he's an AGENT of chaos. He acts on behalf of it. He works to spread it.

Just like Batman isn't a creature of pure order (in fact, he doesn't plan much at all--mostly he just reacts), even though he works to spread and protect it.

Most of these themes were explored in Casablanca but without the need for superhero hyperbole. On the other hand, if you see it as a projection of the internal psychological landscape of any one of us it is understandable why Bruce Wayne is the least wise of the characters.

Frank: I take back anything you are construing as an insult. My original intention was to combat the idea that NCFOM just talks about its ideas the way TDK does. I think NCFOM is a superior movie, and don't think that a comparison on that grounds is really an accurate analogy. I still liked TDK. I also don't really like Armond White either (unless I agree with him, then I love him).
So here's my intention revised: I don't like how it seems the current zeitgeist is to elect TDK the best superhero movie ever, case closed. If you doubt my summary, read some of the comments earlier on this board, one of which, paraphrased, said that if we don't like TDK then we should just go find some other movie to criticize. I want to put forth the dissenting opinion that TDK has some flaws that make it quite possibly not descended directly from almighty Jove himself. I think there are two superhero comic book movies (Spiderman 2, History of Violence) that are superior. Only two. I'm willing to hear an argument about TDK being the best, I'm just not willing to concede it yet. Either way I enjoy reading intelligent counter-arguments, like JC's post above. And again, sorry if I offend. I often only intend to disagree, and then end up insulting instead.

Jim,

I know this conversation is largely dying down, but I was out of town for the duration and hope you'll consider at least one more comment.

This is a film that lingered with me for a long time, and took me two viewings to come to terms with why. The A.O. Scott article was helpful, but only because Scott narrowly missed the boat.

The Joker may be a meticulous planner for a self-proclaimed agent of chaos, but he has a two-part method that shows why it's effective: 1. His main tool is the dilemma, in the classical Greek sense. He creates situations in which a reasonable person has to choose between two equally bad alternatives (more on this later), and 2. His schemes are designed to dissolve the moral link between actions and consequences.

While these may not create true chaos in the moral universe of Gotham city, they do something much creepier: they create chaos in the film. In fact, I'd argue that the direct victim of the Joker's plans isn't anyone within the film, but is the audience watching the film:

Consider the death of Rachel midway through the film: how often is a romantic lead, and especially a damsel-in-distress, knocked off so quickly and unceremoniously? Her death is perfectly plausible within the film's universe - that is, the Joker is a dangerous person, and she's a target, so it's not unexpected - but it's a highly unexpected event considering the genre's usual expectations. Doubly show the climatic showdown between the superhero and the villain (is the Joker really a villain?), which is anything but a climactic showdown except on the surface. The Joker has already won, but hangs around to mock Batman's attempt to save the day - and our satisfaction at seeing them in a final clash. In these two scenes, we see that the Joker's actions have the effect of unhinging the genre.

More unsettling is what the Joker's plans do to our ability to make sense of the film. If we go back to Scott's article, he referred to the habit of superhero films' distilling their characters into allegories. What's interesting about The Dark Knight is that we're set up for a particular type of allegory, and the Joker effectively prevents the allegory from fulfilling itself. There are three hero "types" who are sharply divided on their approach to do-gooding: the pragmatist (Gordon), the idealist (Dent), and the superman (Wayne). If we remember that allegories are designed to be extended metaphors (usually with a moral bent) - thus, the audience is supposed to derive meaning from the way they develop - then what do we make of the way they develop in The Dark Knight? After a strong first half, where all these heady themes are laid on the table for a typical dialectic clash, they all collapse inwardly: there is no lesson to derive, because the Joker has pulled the rug out from under each of the characters. Idealism may be dead, but things aren't much better for pragmatism and the superman. We began watching a film that promised one type of reading, and that reading fails to materialize - not through a poor script, but because it's intrinsic in the way the Joker does business.

(Things turn out a little worse for Dent, but it's a different problem: he's got a bit of the old hubris on his shoulder. In the ancient Greek dramas, characters trapped in a dilemma have no choice but to fall (as do Gordon and Wayne), but a character with hubris falls quite a lot harder. And there's a constant theme to these dramas: occasionally the universe hits you with an untenable situation, and no amount of planning or organization can save you from it. Life is a constant attempt to keep a sheen of organization over a chaotic system. Christopher Long, in his comment above, might consider that kind of discussion a little too adolescent, but we're on the same ground as Euripides' Bacchae.)

That's what I find so unsettling about this movie, and somewhat brilliant despite minor reservations. It presents itself as a morality play, then laughs at our inability to draw moral conclusions from it. That laughter is the Joker's, and we are his victim.

Apologies for the inarticulate post. I've been wrestling with this for a while and can't seem to pin down my reaction in words. I definitely admire critics who can.

I haven't yet seen TDK. Sunday is the day. I just wanted to stand back from it for a bit before committing.

What I hate are the critics like Armond White who've already prejudged every film before the lights go down(Please don't try and tell me he doesn't), and his overuse of the word "nihilistic", his favorite fallback description. Paul Greengrass,David Fincher, Michael Mann, Quentin Taarantino, et al, they're all "nihilistic". And like Michael Atkinson who could barely be bothered to give it a fair hearing. Some palaver about costumes and bad editing. It's as if even considering the possibility that this might be a good, forget about great, movie might somehow keep someone from loving his precious Godard.

Come Sunday, I may hate it. It's not my thing, usually. I doubt I'll find it a masterpiece. I expect to like it a whole lot more than Indy 4, I will tell you that right now. I'm hoping it works as a good dark fantasy piece. If it's badass and has some meat on its bones, all the better.

I'd like to see more critics live in the moment, rather than perceiving every film through the screen of criticism.

On the contrary, Brad, I think you articulated your thoughts perfectly (that is, if I understood them correctly). Now, if I see the movie again, I will have something else to keep in mind: how the film subverts conventions to create fictional and emotional chaos. I'm still not quite convinced that the morality play doesn't play out, but either way it will give the movie another layer to appreciate. Thanks for the thought-provoking input.

"If we go back to Scott's article, he referred to the habit of superhero films' distilling their characters into allegories. What's interesting about The Dark Knight is that we're set up for a particular type of allegory, and the Joker effectively prevents the allegory from fulfilling itself."

I'll betcha Scott had no problem whatsoever with Tarkovsky's allegorical distillation of the chracters in "Stalker". Oh, wait, "Stalker" is an "art film", and Tarkovsky is a "genius".

How shallow & pedantic can you all get?

Interesting article. I do like how Burr admits it's the best movie of the summer, but not of all time. I agree. I absolutely loved this movie, but I'm level-headed enough to give it time and let it sink in before I compare it to "The Godfather" or "Lawrence of Arabia".

There are notable strengths, for what it's worth. Nolan definitely brushed up on some of the flaws he made in the last film (notably the fight sequences). The score was excellent and emphasized the key moments well. And this is a very impressive effort of an action film that uses no CGI effects or animation (compare this to Iron Man or Spider-Man to see what I mean). Ledger did do an excellent job portraying The Joker because I couldn't see or hear Ledger at all in his role. Not his voice, his eyes, or anything. If I didn't know it was Ledger playing the part, he could have been anyone's guess.

It probably was a little herky-jerky as far as scene transitions go and keeping track of where Dent was last (and what happened to the party guests after Batman saved Rachel from a fateful fall?).

Catch ya later.

Oh yeah, about the whole using-superheroes-and-villains-to-ask-thoughtful-questions thing... Keep in mind this is adapted from a comic book. Comics have long been known to reflect current events to some degree. There are many a Batman comic when a character's ideals are called into question or the hero or villain make some broad statement to justify their protagonism/antagonism. So, to me, it's not that the movie sparks or doesn't spark valid discussion, because these sorts of things have been debated to hell of numerous comics in the past. In fact, if "The Dark Knight" did NOT raise such questions, then it'd fall flat and not be a worthy adaptation of the source material.

Movie goers today seem to want too much from a movie. At one time it was enough for a movie to be entertaining now it seems it must have a deeper meaning that is relevant to the world.
Why can't we just enjoy a movie for what it is? Dark Knight was good. It took from the comics and translated it well. Now people look for the deeper meaning and aren't finding it. The deeper meaning is have a good time. It wasn't meant to be a kids movie. The later comics were in fact meant for a older audience as well. But there's no deeper meaning than watching a movie fantasy where one man does good and makes a stand against the crime others couldn't stop. That's it folks. Just a fantasy.

In regards to Ledger, I would like to point out that he has done other "mature" work before Brokeback. The Four Feathers, Patriot, Monster's Ball, Ned Kelly. I'm sick of people only acknowedging him for being a "serious" actor because he played a character with a life style choice that is a hot topic.

Moving on, The Dark Knight is not the best movie of all time. I would say it is the best movie I have seen this year. While Hellboy 2 comes across as my favorite of the year (just because its so dang fun) Dark Knight is just an amazing movie all round.

I would like this movie as much if Ledger were still alive. As a movie fan, I'm saddened that there won't be another round with the Joker. As a human, I pray and hope for the best for his family.

I don't think this can be compared with the JFK assassination. Yes it is having a large impact on a lot of the US, but JFK shook everyone. Who ever said that is comparing apples to oatmeal. While you can argue that both taste good...they are 2 very different things.

I think Dark Knight will go down as one of the best Comic Book movies. It has secured it's place at the top of that pantheon by being superior to almost every other super hero out there. I'm sorry but there isn't a single version of Superman that even comes close. Nolan has virtually taken the "fantasy" aspect out of Batman, by making it almost real world believeable.

The movie is grounded by soild performances by all the supporting cast, especially Freeman, Caine, and Oldman. Those three bring a sense of realism to everything they are in. Freeman's honesty and morality off set Joker's "ultra-sanity" as I believe Kevin Smith called it. Caine's play as Alfred is constantly the source of optimisim and hope that Alfred never was before. And Oldman's Gordon is amazing as the man who wants to help the people of Gotham, but knows he is limited.

Is The Dark Knight the best movie ever? I would say no. But it is, and I think will remain one many bests.

I will say I can't wait for more.

No, The Dark Knight will not be known as the movie of the decade, or anything beyond. The movie of the year? Most definitely. But even at this point, with its inarguable success, its numerous box office records, and the fans and critics lauding it to the skies, not quite a month after its release, it already starts to feel like it's fading from the public mind - and the next time most (if any) will think about it again will be the end of the year and it comes time to list the best movies of the year.

I think the fanboys and fangirls tend to overhype things as this point, because much of its success is due to the fact that not only do all of them love it, but most of the critics loved it as well. Giving it a dangerous Titanic-victim-of-its-own-success outcome, when everyone (including most of its one-time fans) eventually grow tired of it. And if it does get nominated for (and win) Oscars, as many of its fans are hoping, I think that will be even greater of a risk.

We're not far enough into the century to call this the movie of the century, and I wouldn't even call it the movie of the decade, what with films like all three of the Lord of the Rings having come out in the last ten years. Maybe we'll look back on things differently from how I predict 2o-30 years from now, but I wouldn't be surprised if, in the long-run, Dark Knight is dismissed as one of the more successful blockbusters, while critics set their sites on some of the most successful artsy and introspective films of the decade.

I'll agree with anyone (all one of you) who said the first one was better. I liked Dark Knight (...eventually), but I greatly preferred the first one. And I'm tired of the overhype in regards to Heath Legder's performance, as I would call it great, but certainly not in the league of Johnny Depp in Pirates 1 great; and we only make such a big deal about it because the actor had such an unexpected and highly publicized death months before the movie was even released. Think people will react this big to the third Batman movie? Not unless one of its stars dies before it's released.

three paragraphs into this article I found myself wishing that it had an editor or maybe a thesis statement. Is this just a long-winded way of saying you thought it was a good, but over-rated film? You don't offer any insights at all into the movie, no new perspective on pop-culture, it just seems to be sublte complaining that other people liked the movie more than you.

Personally I liked the movie a lot and thought it was brilliantly crafted. It is a little too dark and intense for me to consider it an all time favorite of mine as I can't imagine wanting to watch it over and over again. I also think Ledger is getting far too much credit for his performance because of his tragic death. Aaron Eckhart was the heart and soul of this movie and his performance carried the film, but the attention is understandably all give to Heath.

What a large amount of top class critical review for a movie taken from a comic book story.!
For goodness sake get a grip you people - its just another
tinsel town grab at gross money making ! It obviuouslly has succeeded !
If it was not so gruesome and gory I would say it was a good kids flick !

Jim, my comment is not about "The Dark Knight" but about your column itself. As an editor, I have a rule of thumb: Whenever a columnist begins to quote liberally (say, more than two grafs) from the same source, I ask the question, "What am I paying YOU for?" I might as well just head to the original source. You piggy-backed a little too heavily on Ty Burr's piece for my tastes. I'm sure you have original thoughts; let your readers read them.

There were no opening credits, hoss. How could an audience applaud opening credits that weren't there? Did you see the movie?

I'm commenting to Jim's original post, and have yet to dive into the many replies, so apologies if I'm just treading other people's water.

I've only seen the film once, and this was a good week and half after it came out. I was in rural Vermont at the time it was released, so far removed from the epic pop center.

I finally did see it at the biggest theater in the DC area - The Uptown - on a Tuesday afternoon, the 29th of July.
About 70 people (800 seat theater) were in the audience and there was scattered cheering and clapping at the end. One guy in particular was trying to rally the troops with seemingly odd bursts of excitement in a generally quiet showing.

My feelings on the film fall somewhere between Jim's and Ty's. It was not the sum of its parts. Like a train traveling at high speed the whole trip but taking forever to get anywhere.
Ledger was the standout though as Jim stated. Nolan really didn't know what to do with him, and that fault lies in the script, which I think is where the real hurt comes from.

I'm not gonna sit and write seven paragraphs why this isn't the "greatest movie of all time", it isn't fair to any film or any piece of art regardless of what the general consensus is to whine or complain, and right now I don't feel I can be more constructive than that in regards to the film as a successful story.

I feel I can constructively talk about why the film has made an impact.

I think the reason why it is this success (And Jim, once again touched upon this) is because of a cultural need to have some cinematic event define a generation. There has been a longing for this. An unspoken need, yes.
That and the fact that WB marketed the hell out of this thing for a year, that by the time it came out, it was already in our collective consciouses.
Indy wasn't going to provide this need. He was a good time relic from another era. Nor was Iron Man going to be our boy. He was too much of an unknown. And while I personally feel that WALL*E is a film that better defines our times and gives us hope, it is not cool to walk into school and declare your love for a little robot who falls ib love.
As much as Batman too was born from another era, he has never been uncool, he has always transcended the changes of the decades, because at the core some things don't change.

It is what I feel is the theme of TDK (and also of Batman Begins) that really propels the film into the position it is in.
That theme is duality. Batman has always been about that in some way or another. Duality leads to those age old questions of good and evil, right and wrong, it is a film that asks "why can't we all get along?"
That seems to work well enough in a fantasy frame work that is relevant to the world today. Batman and the world he lives in is something the youth of today can really latch onto. There is a dark, cynical tug of war in Gotham, equally focused and intense but full of ambivalence, and that is appealing for kids and young adults growing up in a post 9/11, Iraq War era.

As much as I feel that we truly live in "shades of gray", these endless talking points that duality brings up, is thrilling, regardless if the movie works as a whole or only partially or not at all, as one friend of mine stated. And he loved Batman Begins.

As much as I'm rather lackluster on the film as a whole it has been a nice stroking of my ego, as many people I know keep coming up to me asking me what I thought of TDK because of my filmmaking and writing background.
I tend to ask them do they think my opinion matters more because of who I am and my experiences? Some have said yes, and most no, which is good, because I want them to know my opinion doesn't matter more just because I've made a few films and gone to school. I don't want to live in a world like that.
And I'm glad I don't, because even though almost all of my cinephile and industry buddies do not like the film very much, everyone else seems to, which is generally OK with me. At least something is sticking and creating some kind of phenomenon in our world of short attention span youtubing and ipods.
It might be something that I consider to be somewhat convoluted, having a lot of excess... bloated, like an obese man eating himself to death. But then again that kind of defines American society at large right now.

I agree, TDK is not THE BEST MOVIE EVER MADE. But it is one of my favorite movies ever made. I think there are some films that can be huge summer things and still come up when you talk about "great filmmaking," like Raiders of the Lost Ark -- or TDK. I think the issue of "cinematically introducing" the Joker is a matter of personal taste. I thought his entrance was excellent. As for the fragmentary thematic elements, I can almost see what you're saying but I don't think it's a weakness.

And to suggest that it's not the "most complete" superhero film of the summer is a little silly. If you think of superhero films as vapid, sexist trash like Iron Man, then you're right, Iron Man is the most complete piece of vapid, sexist trash that came out this summer. But if you think they can be something better than that, TDK is by far the best and "most complete" superhero of the summer and of all time (and I've seen everything, even Superman and the Mole Men).

As a college student, one of literally hundreds who stayed up for not just the midnight showing at our local theatre, but for the three a.m. showing, I felt that Nolan's "Dark Knight" would have to be a great movie in order to bolster such interest in a film. Even while waiting in line to see the movie, a new line was gathering for six o'clock showing, which only added to my expectations. By the time we had all squeezed into our seats, and the first reel began, I felt as if this was the great cinematic experience we were waiting for. By the time the lights turned back on and the curtains closed, I did not feel disappointed. Some argue that the Joker wasn't "cinematically introduced," or rather, appropriately introduced. This assessment is understandable, but unfounded as we all know who the Joker is. With Batman being the cultural icon he is (and Joker for that matter), we all know his arch-nemesis' backstory and to repeat it would take away from the film's impressive performances and character developments. While the film has flaws (namely Bale's over-the-top growls), the directing and storyline are not among them. What is put forth by Nolan is the greatest dilemma faced by heroes, super or otherwise; the question of whether killing your greatest adversary is the only means of defeating them. In today's cinema, with the likes of heroes such as the Punisher, Iron Man and even Spider-Man, killing your enemy seems to be the only assurance of never seeing them again. Neither of the aforementioned protagonists seem to question the morality of their actions, yet Nolan strays from this and giving pathos to the dilemma of overcoming your demons, both external and internal. Batman would not join Ra's Al Ghul's League of Shadows because he could not, would not, kill. This battle is embodied in Harvey Dent/Two-Face, the supposed White Knight of Gotham. A man, fighting the same fight as Batman, who takes the darker, opposite path when the stress becomes too great to bear. He achieves the same results, yet do we, the humble cinema-watchers, want Two-Face as our hero? I don't believe so. What Nolan, Bale, Ledger and the rest achieve in this film is a moving experience that should question how far we are willing to go to see the results we want. Appropriately cinematic or not, the film makes its point.

A director who didn't know how to cinematically introduce the Joker? Are you serious? I have a few issues with what you bring up in this article, but that has got to be the biggest.

Have you actually thought about the Joker's introduction in the film? It is the moment that sets the tone for the entire character. We start seeing a single man, standing, with his back to the camera, looking up into a sunny (and blank) sky. The music playing is a single, dischordant sound that registers with your consciousness (what you realize is) seconds after it's started playing. The audience is left thinking, just for a second, that something is wrong with the sound system, or the soundtrack isn't working properly. We're in this position of disjointment for a few seconds, before a car pulls up, we realize that the music (like the character) has been pulled from our collective unconscious and placed in the movie. The dischordant sound resolves into the scene.

On top of that, we have a man, dressed ridiculously, wearing clown makeup, standing on a street corner in the middle of the day, and no one seems to realize it. He's not ducking behind cover or hiding in the shadows. He's just standing there, maybe being avoided by people, but an accepted part of the city. No one's questioning him. He just is. The look on his face, I imagine, is akin to the one he gets when riding in the cop car (another brilliant scene without even a line being spoken).

And then the best part. This man, who we later see is wearing a full face painted as the Joker, puts a clown mask on when he gets picked up by his co-conspirators. The entire theme of not just our heroes and ourselves, but our entire society putting on masks is summed up in that one, brilliant moment. That scene, in my opinion (the first 20 seconds or so), is the best opening scene, the best villain introduction, hell, the best character defining moment, of any film I've ever seen.

Jim, first off I have come to respect your opinion just as much as Roger Ebert's during his absence. Having said that, you make some good points although I have to say I disagree with a number of them. The fact that Nolan raises more questions than he answers and the fact that, as evidenced in the comment section of this blog, people are intelligently discussing different aspects of this movie is exactly what makes this film great. Sure, the movie does not tie up all the loose ends in a neat happy little bow, but what great film does? Great films leave the audience to discuss the questions the film brought up and how it dealt with them, much like No Old Country for Old Men did a year ago. Was The Dark Knight overhyped by the media? Yes. Did it live up to the hype? In my opinion it did, but there are others who will say it didn't. When a movie becomes this big, there will always be a backlash. Look at what happened with Titanic, the highest-grossing and one of the biggest Oscar winning films of all-time. Today, because of the phenomenon it became, is criticised not only for being overhyped but now many people see it as being a lousy film. I sincerely hope that does not happen with The Dark Knight, although all the elements are there for that to happen. When we stop judging a film by its own merits and instead by how other people percieve it, that's when things get out of hand.

Puhleeeeeze! Dweebs, nitpickers and analyzers....cease and decist! Let those of us yearning for pure escapism relish The Dark Knight for what it is - the fastest, funnest, finest 2 hrs, 35 mins of big screen artistic achievement we've seen in a while! I say to Chris Nolan and Christian Bale (both superb artists) - keep 'em coming! To the rest of you I say - lighten up!

I actually gave up reading the article because I decided that I don't care enough to know the rest of the story.

I enjoyed the Dark Knight. It's a great movie. And not because of the hype. It's a fabulous thriller that had me on edge most of the time.

Is it the greatest movie of all time? No. There isn't one, in my opinion. At least not yet.

This is a fascinating discussion unfolding here on this page. Love it or hate it, like it or simply possessing indifference to it, The Dark Knight is a movie that is getting people talking. And I love that dearly.

Perhaps almost as much as I love this movie. I am entirely in the "love it" camp. I wouldn't venture so far as to call it the best movie ever or anything like that, but it remains my favourite movie of the year so far. I have little doubt that it will end up on my Top Ten Best list of the year and it will be a long time before a movie challenges it for the crown of Best Superhero Movie Ever. But that's just my opinion.

As far back as I can remember, I have always been obsessed with superhero mythology. And I have felt for a long time that superhero stories possessed the strength to carry genuine dramatic weight. So far, we've been treated to a couple good Spider-Man flicks and a couple good X-Men flicks and some other good Batman flicks as well, all of which have brought a personal, moral, and emotional perspective to their respective heroes. But if you ask me, we have never been treated to something like The Dark Knight.

One thing I love about this movie is that Christopher and Jonathon Nolan truly achieve an epic scope with their story. But unlike past attempts to incorporate multiple subplots into a superhero tale (often resulting in a bloated mess), they point every storyline in the same direction and use the well-developed (and perfectly cast) characters to drive the narrative to a very specific conclusion. There is nothing in The Dark Knight that feels arbitrary and superfluous. Rather, each scene, each idea, is employed to achieve a grand and bold purpose.

For me, The Dark Knight is really a story about the toll that heroism takes on someone of flesh and blood. Just when Batman is beginning to make a difference in Gotham city, his very existence attracts a villain unlike this particular world has ever seen. In his attempts to save the city, he has unwittingly damned it.

The entire movie then shows the lengths to which Batman must go to fix this horrible mistake and save Gotham from falling into the clutches of an unhinged whose sole desire is to "watch the world burn." Batman is constantly force to make difficult decisions and then, despite his best efforts, he still screws everything up and has to face real consequences for his actions (such as Rachel's death). He even has to break his own morals and resort to spying on Gotham citizens.

Every step of the way, Batman is bested by The Joker and yet he refuses to give up and give in. But finally, after trying to do the right thing again and again, only to be met with failure, he realizes that to truly save Gotham, to actually achieve his ultimate goal that was set up back in Batman Begins, he has to take a step forward that he never imagined. He has to fall on the sword, Christ-like, and take the blame for murders he did not directly commit.

For me, the ending is truly brilliant, because it proposes the idea that a true hero is one who is willing to sacrifice himself. And not just physically, but emotionally and psychologically. When he tells Gordon to put the blame on him, he hasn't had the time to really think through what this decision means for himself. He only knows that a decision has to be made right then and there. Give up or endure. And he chooses the latter.

With any movie (summer blockbuster or intimate indie), there will be people on either side of the argument. Good or bad. That's always the way it is. I just love that Nolan made a movie that I have reacted to with such love and that it is encouraging such heated and passionate debate.

referring to one of the comments, the reason this movie isn't as much about batman/bruce wayne is because they explained his whole back story in the first film. it would be terribly annoying to have this movie surround batman once again, we know enough to move on and discover his reactions and motives to outside influences. my personal opinion is maybe it should have ended a third of the way through and saved the rest for the next film, but if they had done that they would have had an unfinished story on there hands or they would have had to recast joker.

I do believe that, this summer, I have seen the movie of the decade. Its name is "WALL-E", and I honestly want it to win Best Picture due to its endearing characters and love story (such emotional value from a movie about robots is amazing); it could be that some cinematic, live-action masterpiece may come out later this year, but I honestly don't believe anything as lovable, entertaining and touching as "WALL-E" will be seen for a while at least.

Anything as hotly-anticipated as "The Dark Knight" already has me cautious in approaching it, even though I, like everyone else, couldn't wait for it to come out.

For the first hour of the movie, I was somewhat bored. Despite all the scenes that were read off in a hurry [the scene with Dent, Batman and Gordon on the rooftop or any elaborate Steadicam shot], it was a very slow opening. Zimmer/Howard's collaborative score only gave the illusion of time going faster.

At around the next action sequence, the film finally picked up, and through all its twists and turns I was thoroughly engrossed. Even with the implications of the title and the inherently nihilistic nature of The Joker, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't shocked by how dark "The Dark Knight" truly was. Enough to disturb my sleep that night, and the next couple days, I couldn't stop talking about the film's *tone* to other people (the discussion on the other side was usually about who would be the villain in the third movie).

Like anything with hype, though, it's bound to die down. A few weeks after the film hits DVD, views like the ones expressed in your article will be prominent in message boards from any fan with a home computer.

Honestly, I think it's a sad commentary on our culture that such a sadistic, violent and morally rotten movie as the Dark Knight is hailed as some sort of masterpiece. It's all in the youth's trends and fads - in another year this movie will be forgotten (thankfully!) and another song or video game will have taken its place.

Mike--

Are you serious? Morally rotten? What's a better moral message than "The world can be chaotic and cruel, but in the face of that the best of us endure and do the right thing"?

The Joker knew exactly what he was doing. The "dog chasing cars" line was just part of his initial lie: "I didn't rig those charges" and "Do I really look like a guy with a plan?"
He's manipulating. Blatantly lying, to get Dent to soften; to listen.
HE'S THE JOKER! There is always going to be "something supernatural about that one." to quote Frank Miller.
That's not to completely explain away the various "holes" that have been pointed out. It's completely concievable that the Joker planted the Bomb Man(though, yes, the aftermath of the blast irks me). But it's made clear that he has every Mob contact and lackey at his disposal. It may be chaos, but it's very well orchestrated by Joker. From the bank job onwards. And as for the party scene: A scene where Batman goes upstairs and looks for the Joker - Why would he NOT just take off? For the audience?? - would be pointless.
I saw the film as a Bat-Fan, and a crime buff, and I'll admit I barracked for the film rather than closely following it the first time. But I've seen it several times now, and the quibbles are just that - It's a 9, as an action/thriller, now the dust has cleared.
But it's easy to go over the top, because it taps a traditionally real-world, human condition-related genre with a very straight face; but the elemant of out-and-out fantasy will always be there - IT'S BATMAN!
The movie can be considered a triumph because it straddles those elements (somewhat) believably, and very entertainingly. Where 'Begins was a Bruce Wayne movie, and Crime was his hated enemy, this is a Striking Back, from what has always been portrayed as a palpable entity in Gotham City.
Yep, the editing is annoying - like an attemt to make it look more "street" or independent. Even the choices of takes seem to have that aesthetic in mind, judging from the trailers, which are very different to what's on screen. But as Mr. E mentioned, it doesn't take much to get used to.
Also, friendship and heroism are at the forefront just as much as the darkness and tension. Trust and courage are the key elements.
Dent takes his crusade too far; his passion for his lady and his job were all-consuming - nothing subtle, a two-note guy. in the end, he becomes an agent of the Joker, because there's nothing left to fight for but himself.
Contrary to Jim Gordon, who has crime, a vigilante ally and all that comes with it, family, and the integrity of his men to worry about. I found that Gary Oldman hit the perfect notes in his turn - if you focus on Gordon's story, it's as devastating as Dent's, his pain and strength the real heart of the whole thing.
I think that's it; I only got through about twenty posts...

This "Dark Knight" stuff is just crazy to me. The movie itself was alright, but the insanity that it has generated is beyond me.

I wonder if any of this is linked to the advertising, and to Heath Ledgers death. I hate to be cynical here, but does Ledger's death enhance his performance in our minds? He was a wonderful actor, and I'm sad so lose him, but have we been too eager about his performance and this movie? Has the advertising done it's job? Have we all been reassured that the product we are buying is a good choice? How can we come to a movie without these type of expectations and assumptions?

Again, I think "The Dark Knight" is a pretty good movie. But is it as good as "Watchmen"? A movie already being hailed as the event movie of next year. Have we already crowned "Watchmen"? Can we wait to actually see more than a 60 second trailer? I feel like all this hype just puts my guard up more than anything.

I'm not a huge comic book fan, and so I didn't have any wild hopes for "The Dark Knight". But I am a huge fan of certain directors. For instance, when Martin Scorsese comes out with a new movie, it's hard for me not to let my expectations get out of control. I know he's made some amazing movies before, and there's no good reason to believe he can't again. But I try to keep cool. The best solution seems to be to walk into the theater the exact moment your movie starts so you can miss the trailers, and never watch tv so you can miss the trailers.

I hope when the dust finally settles on The Dark Knight, people will finally be able to deal with this movie more or less honestly. Much more than the insane hype this movie has generated though, what really irks me is the oppressive attitude against those who dissent. I share many of your complaints Jim. Why the apologetic tone?

I mean seriously, the movie IS JUST OKAY. It's good but far from the masterpiece it's touted to be. If I'm really going to have to accept it as the greatest movie ever made (or even just a great movie in its own right), I don't think it stands up to much scrutiny. The writing is particularly mediocre in my opinion. The movie pretends to be dark and morally ambiguous, but at key points fails to live up to its ambitions with meaningful dialogue. The vigilantism theme isn't really explored, it's just restated over and over. The Joker's quest for chaos makes less sense the more he speechifies about it, while characters like Harvey Dent or Rachel Dawes are arbitrarily maneuvred as pawns of the plot. Why recast Rachel in the first place? The part is reduced to a thankless "damsel-in-distress" role, much more so than it already was in Batman Begins? To me, her death seemed like a curiously emotionless and arbitrary plot development.

For the movie to be a truly dark and gritty treatment of the Batman (and Joker) character, it shouldn't be constrained by a PG-13 rating in the first place. It holds The Dark Knight back from exploring the full consequences of its themes and characters. Otherwise I see little adult sensibilities here. If this is what passes as a masterpiece then, it just goes to show how far mainstream American cinema has retreated into adolescence.

I also find it odd that Roger Ebert could write such a glowing, four-star review of The Dark Knight, when the movie is hampered by a lot of the same issues he criticized Batman Returns for.

Yes, because clearly the most negative opinion of a film is the most "honest" one. In that case, not a single film in existence gets off the hook, because every movie has its dissenters.

There's no reason for Jim to be apologetic, but by that same token there's no reason for anyone who loved the film, and found little substantial fault with it, to concede negative points they don't believe in, in a disingenuous effort to be more "honest".

Ben:

Did you just say the joker makes no sense?
Yeah I think they got it right.

Ben--

I feel the same way about the Godfather. I don't know why everyone goes so nuts for it--sure, it's got some great performances, but the way people talk you'd think it was a life-changing experience. The technique is proficient, but hardly mind-blowing, and the story is a decent book adaptation, but it didn't exactly grant new insights into the human condition. It's a juvenile, two-dimensional glamorization of a criminal organization, pretending at seriousness with a predictable, almost cliche, character arc of corruption. If that film's considered a cinema masterpiece, it just shows how far films have to go to match the artistic achievement of novels and music. I don't see how anyone being intellectually honest with themselves, rather than just basking in the glow of popular opinion, could disagree.

Right?

Stephen said:
"I don't see how anyone being intellectually honest with themselves, rather than just basking in the glow of popular opinion, could disagree."

Because you are too narrow minded to see that an opinion other than your own also can have value? What century do you live in?

Ben said:
"For the movie to be a truly dark and gritty treatment of the Batman (and Joker) character, it shouldn't be constrained by a PG-13 rating in the first place. It holds The Dark Knight back from exploring the full consequences of its themes and characters."

Interesting point. Could you please provide some examples/ideas on what these "full consequences" could be? (I'm not trying to pick a fight, I'm genuinely interested.)

P.S. Disregarding a few moronic/embarassingly revealing pretentious posts, the responses on this talkback are uniformly brilliant, from both sides of the camp! Kudos!

Chris--

Read the comment I was responding to. That was irony.

Chris (not Nolan): I think Stephen was offering up a healthy dose of irony in his comments about The Godfather. I mean, he may very well feel that it's overrated and whatnot, but ending his comments with "Right?" underlines what you were saying about other people's opinions having value. I don't think he's in disagreement with you on that.

Personally, I've always felt that Goodfellas was a much more believable, compelling and entertaining portrait of the mafia than The Godfather, but that's me. I'm not going to bedgrudge anyone thinking Godfather 1 or 2 (I prefer 2) is tops, any more than I'm going to criticize someone for thinking The Dark Knight is the finest film ever derived from a "superhero" comic, or comics in general.

However, calling people out (minus the irony) for being "dishonest" about something they really found enjoyable or compelling smacks of big-time condescension. You didn't do this, but Ben most certainly did.

Cheers.

All: You're the best. I got a piece of fan mail that I appreciate as much as any I have received in my life, and it's for YOU. A man wrote from the Netherlands to say he'd read all 90+ comments on this "Dark Knight" post and was most impressed with the intelligence and eloquence you all have displayed. Well, me too, and I've been telling my friends and colleagues about it because I'm knocked out by the thought and effort that has gone into these, and all the responses on this blog.

That's been my dream since starting Scanners comments about two years ago: To get real conversations going here. And I couldn't be more gratified at the quality of reader discussions. We've had almost 10,000 comments logged here, and only a handful that I've not approved because they were just too stupid or insulting.

So, let me take another opportunity to thank you guys and gals for all you contribute.

Sorry about that one. My bad. Not always easy to distinguish ironic pretentiousness from the real thing when I'm reading in a (to me) foreign language. :)

Ben, still waiting for your insights on exploring the full consequences of TDK's themes and characters. Preferably before this TB disappears. (A lot of you dissenters are good at pointing out what is wrong with the movie, but provide little or no reasons why you think it is wrong, or how it could be bettered.)

Chris--

No problem, these things happen.

JC--

Thanks. As it happens, while in reality I'm not as harsh on The Godfather as my sarcastic post made me out to be, I prefer Goodfellas, too.

Jim--

Wow, that's pretty cool to hear--both the nice e-mail from the Dutchman, but also that you've had to do so little policing of the forum. Good job on creating such a pleasant little corner of the internet, and thanks for it.

It seems my comments generated some controversy.

"However, calling people out (minus the irony) for being "dishonest" about something they really found enjoyable or compelling smacks of big-time condescension. You didn't do this, but Ben most certainly did."

I find Stephen's attempt at irony/sarcasm much more condescending than me sincerely stating my opinion. It's true, I think The Dark Knight has been overhyped to an extent. And I also believe this has led some (both critics and audiences) to inflate the movie's importance. Would anyone actually disagree that at least some hype is at work here? I don't want to be pigeonholed into the "side of the haters" either. In fact I thought TDK was a fairly good movie. But I also thought it was nowhere near the masterpiece it's made out to be. I talked a little about issues of writing that bothered me, but this is largely post-hoc rationalization of my dislike. Generally (but I don't enforce these rules) I employ two criteria to judge movies on their merit:

1) Emotional value: did the movie entertain me? Was I enthralled by the action scenes? Was I moved by the drama, scared by the horror? Did I laugh at the comedy?

2) Artistical value: do I admire this movie on a intellectual level? Details of the plot, content, visual artistry etc.

The first criterium is more important to me than the second, but my favourite movies usually score high on both of these factors; some score higher on one or the other. For instance, I admire Lost Highway on an intellectual level, but the film means little to me emotionally. Likewise, I find Terminator 2 a superb entertainment (perhaps the finest action movie ever made) but not as intricate a work of art as Lost Highway. In the case of The Dark Knight I wasn't moved by the story emotionally, nor did the movie's technical or artistical merits impress me that much. On the scale of "superhero" movies, I enjoyed the original Spider-Man more as entertainment, while I find RoboCop to be a stronger movie thematically/intellectually. That's just my opinion. I'm sure a lot of people sincerely enjoyed TDK, and who am I to argue against their emotions?

"Ben, still waiting for your insights on exploring the full consequences of TDK's themes and characters."

Well, the question is, does/can the movie really address vigilantism if Batman doesn't ever kill any of his victims? Like Spider-Man, he just neatly packs them into a web and hands them over to the police. That right there eludes a lot of interesting moral dilemma's. Batman's vigilantism is hardly comparable to that of Paul Kersey or The Punisher. This is one aspect that I feel is dumbed down a little by the film's PG-13 rating. Batman is such an interesting "superhero" primarily because he lacks real superpowers and is ultimately just as human as anyone else. But TDK no longer explores the Bruce Wayne/Batman character, sidelining him in favour of The Joker and Dent.

Whatever the faults of Burton's movies btw, I thought he better emphasised the idea that Batman is actually as psychotic as some of the villains he's fighting. He just so happens to be on the "right" side of justice (or so he believes).

The idea of a city being torn apart by crime was handled better in RoboCop, where the escalating violence between criminals and the police (taken to its absurd extreme with machines like RoboCop and ED-209) is much more palpable. The outrageous violence creates a sense of uncertainty; at any moment, everything could dramatically (and violently) go wrong. In the TDK, The Joker exudes a similar aura (his introduction is very good), but the PG-13 sort of assures you that nothing too bloody will ever take place on screen...

And lastly, what I mentioned before, I lacked a sense of real adult relationships in TDK. Why does Rachel love Bruce Wayne, or Harvey Dent? What do they talk about? What do they have in common? There is just too little development in this area to make the relationship 1) believable 2) have any impact on her death later in the movie. I also just get tired of seeing "the girl" dangling from skycrapers or tied to exploding barrells.

I hope this clarifies some of my earlier comments. Again, I liked TDK (Ledger, Eckhardt and Oldman were all very good) but only up and to a certain point. For me, the movie easily falls apart under close scrutiny. You're free to argue otherwise of course.

That's very cool to hear, Jim.

Back to TDK: I notice some folks take issue with the bomb-in-the-chest scenario...here's how I interpreted the situation...

Basically, the large fellow was instructed (by the mob, likely via The Joker) to make a nuisance of himself outside the police station that The Joker was taken to. He, based on what the officer said, assaulted one (or more) of them. He was then put in the holding cell, which is where most folks that appear drunk and/or on drugs and/or off their meds are typically left, to cool down/dry out. On account of his assaulting the officer(s), the cops were in no way sympathetic towards him, and weren't likely to deal with his "pains" (which, for all they knew, could simply be in his head) any time soon. Typical night in a Gotham police station: "crazy" guy stumbling about in a cell, demanding attention, rather easily ignored by stressed-out cops with more important things on their minds.

Re: the Joker in the cell, most of the cops had just seen The Batman kick the living daylights out of Joker, suggesting, to them, that he wasn't necessarily much of a threat in hand-to-hand combat, without his knives, anyways. Gordon took the cuffs off before Batman went to work on him, because he knew that with the cuffs on, were Batman to beat him up, there was a much greater likelihood of him being more severely injured, and the mob lawyers having more leverage to spring him from police custody. So, when Gordon and numerous cops left to get Harvey, chances are that some of the cops left behind were more of the pencil pusher variety, not terribly adept at handling difficult situations. However, he had a lot of trust in one of his 20-year men, who he placed in the cell with Joker to keep an eye on him. Naturally, Joker goaded him into getting closer, providing an opportunity for him to grab a sharp piece of glass (that's right, folks, it wasn't a knife) from the sill where Batman smashed his head. Irregardless of whether or not someone was watching outside the interrogation cell (and chances are these guys put a little too much faith in their 20-year men, and were being careless), when a criminal who has no hesitation about slitting a person's throat puts a sharp object to a man's throat, it's highly unlikely he won't open the cell to let him out. I mean, The Joker still has to make it out of the police station, with a good number of officers still present, right? Once he's out, with the glass to the cop's neck, he, in a rather silly voice, asks for his phone call. Well, to the casual observer, this guy's just off his rocker (maybe he wants to call his imaginary friend?), and given the stressful nature of the situation, one of the cops (a few of them, I imagine, pencil-pushers) were bound to just crack, and instinctively toss him the phone. Which naturally results in the bomb being detonated. Joker knew where the bomb was situated (where many of the cops had congregated, and moved to a place where he figured he had a chance of escaping the blast. And even if he didn't, it's not like he wasn't prepared to die, and was almost sickly drawn to it. So, the blast goes off, killing or injuring most in its wake, and (we can safely assume) Joker finished off the 20-year-man. He grabs Lau, and gets out of there, using a police car.

Now, above and beyond all this, the film establishes early on that it's not set in 100% reality, with Batman crushing a car by landing on it, and not injuring his legs, them pulling a print off a shattered bullet, the 18-wheeler flipping, etc. We should be able to allow this film some "flights of fancy". The police station escape was intended as an operatic, somewhat larger-than-life moment, but I think enough of the details are more than plausible to make it dramatically effective.

Ben--

Pardon, but your original writing didn't exactly brim with humility in the face of others' opinions. Perhaps it was unintentional, but you spoke as if the Dark Knight's mediocrity was a matter of fact, and implied that those who disagreed were either, A: being dishonest, or B: fascist.

As to your complaints regarding the movie:

Why is it a necessity for Batman to kill people? Killing people makes him no more or less a vigilante--and his rule against killing seems to be in keeping with the tightly-reined control he has on his behavior to keep him from going all-out nuts. They address this in Batman Begins--If he becomes a killer, then his quest devolves into displaced vengeance rather than justice. He wants to inspire people to do the right thing, not to solve their problems with murder.

This strikes me as another example of a common problem I'm seeing with this film--people are criticizing it for not being what *they want it to be*, as opposed to criticizing it for doing what it does attempt poorly. This movie may make passing mention of the fact that both The Joker and Batman are insane--but that isn't the point of the comparison between them. The point is that they both know that "the rules" are only as strong as the people enforcing them, and that you can accomplish nearly anything if you're willing to do away with the rules.

Similarly, you mention the comparison to Robocop's escalating violence between the mob and the law--but escalating violence between mafia and cops isn't really the issue in The Dark Knight. As the Joker says, the corruption of Gotham before Batman had reached a pretty boring status quo. The city was corrupt, but in control. When Batman came along, the mafia were forced into retreat. It's then that they turn to the Joker--and his plans for the city aren't exactly for a street war between cops and criminals.

Sure, the movie doesn't have what you're accusing it of not having--but there's no reason it should. The whole point of the thing is that the cops and the mafia aren't escalating the situation themselves, it's Batman and the Joker that do that.

As for a sense of the adult relationships--well, I understand that to a degree, but, again, I don't see it as hugely problematic. The fact is, Bruce and Rachel *don't* have an adult relationship. They have a childhood friendship that grew into an adolescent romance and then became something more to Bruce as Rachel became his only link to the idea of a normal life. As for Rachel and Harvey, their relationship is based on having a common cause, and its importance is inflated by the dangers of fighting for law and order in Gotham. Are these deep, complex relationships? No, but I don't think they need to be deep and complex as long as they're powerful. Harvey's attachment to Rachel needs to be obvious--the "why" is less important than the "what", because this is Harvey's story, not Rachel's--and Eckhart does an admirable job of making it so.

When I read a lot of the criticism of this film, I really do get the impression that the critic in question is projecting what they wanted out of the film onto it and picking out where it failed to live up to their model, rather than looking at what the film presents and judging it. (Another variation on this phenomenon: The "it wasn't entertaining enough!" complaint.) That seems, to me, rather like complaining about 2001 because it wasn't as exciting as Star Wars.

"Would anyone actually disagree that at least some hype is at work here?"

By that same token, given the enormous hype, wouldn't that set a large number of people (critics, moviegoers) up for an enormous disappointment if it, to them, didn't deliver? The fact of the matter is that the large majority of people who saw this film felt it met, or exceeded, the tremendous hype. That doesn't happen very often.

"while I find RoboCop to be a stronger movie thematically/intellectually"

I watched that movie again recently, and while I think it holds up reasonably well as an action entertainment with some ideas, to me, it paints in too cartoonish, borderline cheesy (much of the dialogue, in particular) colours to bear that much intellectual weight.

"I enjoyed the original Spider-Man more as entertainment"

Whereas I, and many others, felt it contained an utterly pathetic, one-note villain, and was only an adequate origin story. And the action carried no physical weight (something which was rectified in the superior, though still lightweight, sequel).

"Whatever the faults of Burton's movies btw, I thought he better emphasised the idea that Batman is actually as psychotic as some of the villains he's fighting."

Having seen the Burton films numerous times in past years (and having appreciated them much more for their art design than their storytelling), I can say, without hesitation, that Batman's killing of various thugs is handled in a purely superficial way, and, in the end, it carries no weight. Joker fell to his death, but Batman wasn't entirely responsible for that...he was just trying to stop him. He blew up a factory...a totally impersonal gesture, with no really emphasis placed on the lives lost. He burned a circus thug to death with his car, and blew another one up with a bomb: totally shallow sight gags. Burton really had no interest in exploring this concept beyond simplistic gestures like this.

Whereas in The Dark Knight, they're dealing in public perception, and how whether or not Batman actually crosses the line, he'll likely be seen as having done so regardless. And, let's not forget, he did allow Ra's Al Ghul to fall to his death in the first installment, willfully. But obviously the idea of actually killing the thugs is the line he created for himself (and has solidified since then) to distinguish himself from the criminal element. He comes extremely close to crossing it on numerous occasions, though, and his reasons may indeed be somewhat misguided, which creates an interesting dynamic, when it would be so much easier for him to quietly dispose of threats to the city.

"And lastly, what I mentioned before, I lacked a sense of real adult relationships in TDK. Why does Rachel love Bruce Wayne, or Harvey Dent? What do they talk about? What do they have in common? There is just too little development in this area to make the relationship 1) believable 2) have any impact on her death later in the movie. I also just get tired of seeing "the girl" dangling from skycrapers or tied to exploding barrells."

First of all, the film is breaking with tradition in actually allowing the so-called "damsel-in-distress" to die a horrible death...that alone carries some impact. Bruce and Rachel's relationship has developed over numerous years, since their childhood...they understand each other, and their common principles, better than any outside their close circle. That said, given the internalized nature of Bruce's existence, this could definitely be a case of a man putting all his eggs in one basket, in assuming she's the "only girl for him". He's so emotionally closed and guarded that he can't see any possibilities outside their relationship, which may indeed not be fully realized: basically, he's setting himself up for a disappointment, regardless of whatever happens. As for Dent and Rachel, again, they're two people devoted to their work, who have similar ideals...and Dent is somewhat given to hubris, and like Bruce, tends to compartmentalize his relationship as a necessary component of his life, regardless of whether their dynamic is fully developed. She's part-and-parcel with his rise to White Knight of Gotham. Personally, I only feel she's a "damsel..." on one occasion (as she's tossed out of the window by Joker), and she actually dies with a great deal more dignity (trying to talk Harvey through his situation, rather than worrying about her own) than a one-note scream queen (like Basinger in much of Burton's first installment). Bottom line: given the relatively emotionally closed nature of both Bruce and Harvey, I felt the film gave their relationships with Rachel the necessary amount of weight and believability to serve that section of the story, and that the actors generated a decent amount of casual chemistry.

As for Ebert criticizing "Batman Returns" for many of the same things he applauded TDK for:

I think the Ebert of today, were he to review "Returns", would be a bit kinder to it, even (possibly) awarding it 3-stars-out-of-4. That said, he complained about Keaton's character (again) not being developed: had he been properly developed in the first installment, this wouldn't have been an issue for Ebert, as Batman settled into a larger ensemble in the second film. Also, as with virtually all previous live-action depictions of Gotham, it was hermetically sealed, cut off from any semblance of the "real" world, and particularly artificial given its tiny soundstages. It also featured a villain that, given his growing up in a sewer after being tossed into it by his parents (?!), nonetheless fails to generate much sympathy as he's just plain obnoxious, loud, and gross. Were he designed to be menacing and little else, this wouldn't be such a problem, but given the screen time devoted to sentimentalizing his predicament with his parents, it's just plain dull, and hollow. Pfeiffer's character fares better, but her relationship with Wayne, which is really the centerpiece of the movie, still amounts to little more than "we're two freaks at a costume ball"...it remains that way for pretty much the entire film, and in the film's climax, Batman is robbed of any difficult choices, because, as per usual in most "superhero" films, the villain/anti-hero makes the choice for him (yawn) in "killing" herself, and disappearing.

Nolan's Batman is faced with a number of difficult choices, and frequently makes very questionable ones, and they're given the necessary weight they deserve.

Stephen, re: your post at 11:40am: Excellent, extremely well-thought-out points. Bravo!

"When I read a lot of the criticism of this film, I really do get the impression that the critic in question is projecting what they wanted out of the film onto it and picking out where it failed to live up to their model, rather than looking at what the film presents and judging it."

Like some critics who complain about the film ratcheting up the tension too much, as though that wasn't entirely the point. It seems to me the large majority of negative reviews (which, comparitively-speaking, are a small drop in an ocean) are grasping at straws, particularly when they rely on that old fallback work, "nihilistic", which, given even the slightest amount of thought, in no way applies to this film.

JC: Thanks. I liked your analysis of the Burton movies above, as well--movies I like a lot, but are almost as unabashedly style-over-substance as Sin City or 300.

And I *despise* that "nihilistic" nonsense. I can't recall, are you one of the several people around here I've heard rightfully calling out Armond White, one of the worst film critics of our times? While I love to read thoughts on films that disagree with my own, and I'd never tell a critic they should fall in line with mainstream opinion, I have yet to find a time when it seemed like White's contrariness was coming from a place of genuine insight. He's often guilty, as many people are, of equating the *presence* of evil or nihilism in a film with the *endorsement* of evil or nihilism by that film. (For a much more forgivable version of this same phenomenon, see the various Tropic Thunder posts...)

Stephen: I don't recall if I called out Armond White individually, though his name is certainly one of the first to spring to mind when discussing critics whose opinions are typically so far off-base that they seem like they're from an alternate universe.

Cheers.

So; I think TDK can sit with The French Connection, Die Hard, True Lies(What a great, preposterous movie!), The Matrix, and Mad Max as one of the most engrossing action/thrillers ever. Start talking about No Country', Goodfellas, Scarface, Millers Crossing and the like, and that's when perspective smacks you.
It seems to me that it 's "cultural signifigance" is that it brought about Seven Hundred Million Dollars worth of people together to talk about themselves, and their tastes, and what THEY actually see when they're sitting next to you, watching a film.
The issues the film has raised - both in and about it - has lit a spark under our collective arse.
I just hope that the majority stay inspired long enough to make a similar impact themselves, in their own lives.
None of this can be bad.

Interesting article, good the vibe was a bit gone by when it was written (unlike uhlich's, which I guess was too a bit more vicious).

Why is this movie important? Because it became a phenomenon, through many different ingredients coming together if you will, but it did so. The movie is not bad, but flawed, some mentioned they can´t understand why the negative criticism as a film but those people seem to be judging it against action movies and superhero movies. This movie is more flawed than Iron Man but Iron Man is not ambitious at all, it follows a formula neatly and relatively well (I still think it got more credit than needed), but The Dark Knight simply rests in a higher league than Iron Man like movies, the comparison exists because, well it is about a super hero. The problem is when people, aware that it is above spiderman or iron man or even superman, put this movie alongside real works of powerful art. I am not saying that it cannot be called such just for being a superhero movie, but simply because it does not deliver that. For example, it annoys me when people say Rataouille can´t be considered a powerful art film because it is animated and restrained as to be for children (I don´t see it so much restrained, as I see it inhabiting a genre); but the Dark Knight is indeed restrained to please. It doesnt decide not to be overly violent, it is rather forced to be so; the action seems manufactured to please instead of being supportive to the whole, the dialogue is designed to impress rather than to reach to anything, the story seems rushed as to be wrapped up in a decent amount of time (which was long already as it is) and the characters, the franchise's most interesting element, aren´t developed enough, no matter how much we "like" the joker. This is not an art film, this is a popcorn summer flick with higher ambitions. A movie that does impressive things rarely done, and a failure as film due to its constraints and well, simply, its many flaws for whatever reason you may want (trying to fit in as much as possible and not doing it masterfully, obeying studio rules instead of building open them to begin with, wanting to look cool, etc, etc. ), but whose failures do not make it one of the most relevant accomplishments of the year for what it does achieve and for the impact it has had.

Ok, I'll just stop here, it´s almost october and this seems a lot less relevant (thought it probably will be again when the nominations are out).

I wanted to say by the end: but whose failures do not keep it from being one of the most relevant accomplishments of the year for what it does achieve and for the impact it has had.

>>After an altercation, the Joker is no longer mentioned; just a simple quick cut to a new scene moving along the film/story. A more disciplined writer/director wouldve at least given some minor sign of where/how the villan left;

You know, a lot has been made of this, when really, it's just another case of scene deletion. It's in the novelization, and every draft of the screenplay that's been made public. I suspect it will end up on a double-dip at some point in the future.