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Go See The Dark Knight

July 20, 2008 10:14 PM

here will be spoilers here, so if you haven't seen The Dark Knight, you should probably stop reading.

So I've now seen The Dark Knight twice--once painfully alone and once with friends. And here's what I've got: it's obviously the best Batman movie ever. Anyone with any sort of lingering love for Tim Burton's Batman movies just has to accept that. It's also clearly the best superhero movie ever. This admission pains me, but it's just true. It's also the most awesome movie I've seen all summer and the best movie I can remember seeing this year or even in the past few years.

So, the thing about The Dark Knight that makes it hard to compare to pretty much every superhero movie that's come before is that it's so fucking much more than a superhero movie. Part of this is the character: unlike Spiderman or Superman, for example, Batman's just a dude. This inherently makes him more believable, and the action in The Dark Knight is some of the most believable action in any action movie I can think of. No one lifts a continent over their head, there's not a bus that makes a magic jump across an uncompleted highway, there's not even a ridiculously unbelievable fight scene. All of the fights happen exactly how I imagine real fights between a fucking unbelievably fit and well-trained fighter and a bunch of random thugs would actually go. Maybe you can't hang glide from one Hong Kong skyscraper to another using a batcape, but that's not so fucking out of the realm of possibility, you know?

But while the realism of the action is one of the things that makes The Dark Knight so fucking awesome, that realism is more important in that it fits into the overall realism of the whole movie. The Dark Knight has some of the most realistic characters in any movie I've seen in a long time. Ok, sure, it's hard to believe that some guy would actually devote his life to fighting crime in a batsuit, but once you swallow that pill, Batman comes across as a real fucking person. He's torn in a thousand different ways--rage, the need for revenge, the love of a woman, the need to protect Gotham City, the desire for a normal life. Oh, and he's probably batshit crazy, too. All of the characters are believable in that you can understand both how they got where they are and why they want to go where they want to go. When Harvey Dent loses his shit and becomes Two-Face, we get why. Maybe it's not what I would do, but then I've never been where he was.

The exception to that rule, of course, is The Joker. Everyone's talking about how awesome Heath Ledger is as The Joker, and I wasn't really buying the hype. But the fact of the matter is that the performance is fucking amazing. The Joker is fucking scary. The calm, collected craziness is really, really unnerving. The casual way in which he kills and tortures is fucking chilling. Even the way he talks suggests a man who is both all there and completely gone. And the few scenes between Batman and The Joker--especially the one in the interrogation room, which is one of my favorites--are just fucking amazing. I don't know what one has to do to deserve an Oscar, but I wouldn't be pissed if Heath Ledger got at least a nomination. And I'd feel the same way if he was still alive.

And, of course, what ties it all together is the plot. Basically, Batman, together with Harvey Dent and Jim Gordon, are trying to take down the whole fucking mob. The mob freaks out and "hires" The Joker, and the whole fucking thing gets crazy from there. But that's all set up for what's really going on: The Joker wants to watch the world burn. Or at least he wants to wreak as much havoc as he possibly can. And he does a fucking bang-up job. The movie is fucking dark.

One of the things that made Spiderman 2 great was the fact that things really sucked for Peter Parker on pretty much all fronts. But even then, things got better by the end. That's not the case here. There is a constant sense of tension and apprehension--something bad is always about to happen. Most of the time, Batman manages to avoid the bad things. But sometimes--and especially in the case of Rachael Dawes--he fails. The fact that they actually killed the romantic lead tells you just how different this movie is. The first time I saw it, I expected her to be saved at the last second somehow--I sort of expected that they wouldn't have the balls to actually kill her. Then the building exploded and she fucking died. And it was sad, but also awesome.

That darkness and tension never really let up, either. No sooner does Batman beat one obstacle than The Joker sets up four more. And in the end, while Batman survives and the villains lose, you can't really say that Batman won. In fact, Batman took one for the team like a motherfucker. It's not a happy ending, but it's exactly the ending the movie needed, and the fact that the writers came up with it suggests that they really, really understood the fucking character.

There's really no way I could say too many good things about this movie. It would be stupid to compare this movie to pretty much any other movie with guys in tights, and it does a lot to show just how overrated Ironman was. God, that thing was wretched compared to this. The Dark Knight really does go beyond its genre and deliver something genuinely good not just as frivolous popcorn entertainment but as, you know, cinema and stuff.



4 Comments


Lauren said:

I completely agree. The best superhero movie of all time. And the Joker's magic trick, making the pencil disappear, set the tone for the whole movie for me. Dark, twisted and completely unexpected.

July 21, 2008 10:54 PM



Ismael Tapia II said:

Lauren,
I, for once, completely agree with you: the pencil trick was one of my favorite scenes. For me, it was the point at which I realized I was in for a treat. In those few seconds, I understood that the people behind this movie both understood the inherent darkness of the entire Batman universe and were willing to portray that darkness on film. And, of course, it served to make The Joker just perfectly terrifying.

July 22, 2008 7:02 PM



morenonesense said:

You know, i just don't know.

July 24, 2008 11:55 PM



Santi said:

Heath Ledger's performance was a work of art, pure and simple.

July 25, 2008 8:45 AM



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