CCC: Like Lemmings Over a Cliff

People are lemmings. They're idiots. This is proven countless times everyday. I'd list examples, but I don't have all day. People are generally so bored and lazy these days that just about anything passes as entertainment. No one wants to think for themselves, they want to be told what's cool, what's trendy, what's funny; no one wants to risk the embarrassment of forming an opinion of their own. I don't know why, I just know what is. Fear of being embarrassed? Because it requires thought and they might have to defend their points?

Whatever. I keep coming back to my thesis: people are idiot lemmings. Tell them a cool, expensive new movie is coming out, and that it's supposed to be good, and within a week of it's release, suddenly it's the greatest. Thing. Ever. This is because people are afraid to think for themselves. So they buy the hype, they drink in the buzz and they go along for the ride.

So this is all leading me into a rather lengthy review (about 3300 words) of The Dark Knight, the Batman sequel that came out a few months ago and was immediately declared, even before it's release, the greatest film of the last __(insert # of years here)__. People immediately started fan clubs and movements for a posthumous Oscar for Heath Ledger. There was a massive groundswell of rabid, unquestioning support.

If you want to spare yourself a lot of reading, just read this paragraph of my review. Don't get me wrong. I love Batman. I my opinion, it's the greatest superhero/comic book franchise ever. I like Christian Bale. The man is the most dedicated, crafty actor of his generation. I know this is a comic book movie and there's going to be unrealistic occurrences in the film. But tell me something is the Greatest Movie Ever, and I'm going to start looking for flaws. Because you've just raised my expectations. All in all, The Dark Knight is an outstanding movie. But it's no instant classic. It's a glorified summer blockbuster. Everyone in it gives very good performances, but again, nothing award-worthy here. Everyone should just calm down and take a deep breath.

Now, on with the full review.

The Dark Knight

I rewatched Batman Begins four days ago in anticipation of getting The Dark Knight for x-mas. Reason one was to make sure I was familiar with the story in the last one. Reason two was to be for comparison purposes. Here are some observations and thoughts I had watching this.

Gotham City
Was it just me or was it made to look dingy and dark in Batman Begins, because it was so overrun with corruption? The lighting was often pale and the streets had that creepy glow and feel, with steam coming out of sewer vents. But now it’s glossy and the exterior shots look clean and shiny. I know Gotham is on the way to being cleaned up, but it’s not there yet. Why the makeover for the city?

Wayne Tower
Is it just me or does this look nothing like the tower in Batman Begins? The building wasn’t destroyed in that film was it? Not that I recall. And if it was damaged to the point they’d have to rebuild it, how could they rebuild a massive downtown high-rise quicker than they could rebuild Wayne Mansion?

Opening Scene
We jump right into a push in on a large shiny building, where a masked clown shoots a window out. It’s apparent we’re already up to our neck in some kind of shenanigans, but there’s no setup, no back story. They drop it in as part of the dialogue between characters, but it seems forced and rushed. This strikes me as an odd opening, but it becomes apparent as the film runs on for over 2:20 that this was probably done this way due to time constrains.

Joker Standing On The Street
A better setup would’ve been to see him walking around on the street, getting to the corner where he’s picked up. When he takes his mask off at the bank he’s got his makeup on, but he didn’t have time to put it on in between. So he had to stand on the street corner in his makeup. Wouldn’t this strike people as odd? The Joker is already making a name for himself, so surely someone would’ve recognized him.

The Joker is noted as an anarchist, not one for having a big plan. But the characters in the opening bank robbery scene seem to all have had a sit down, separately, where they went over the robbery plan in some detail with, presumably, Joker.

Sound Mixing
The background music is way too loud. I also think it’s featured too prominently throughout most of the movie. I know they went to great lengths to create this anxious, tense music and they want to set a tone, an ambient vibe for when the Joker is about to do something or is on camera, but this is silly. It’s all music, no substance.

Fake News
Too much of the plot is advanced through the news reports. I don’t know if this is supposed to be a commentary on modern media or what, but I hate watching people watching TV. There’s nothing that feels like more of a waste of time. Once or twice in a film, ok. I can see how that could be a necessary plot device a couple of times. But there’s like seven cuts to “GCN” – Gotham City News.

The Tumbler/Batmobile
How come no one ever shoots it in the tires? The first scene, which seems pretty unnecessary, just inserted for some quick action, the tumbler crashes into a parking garage and “poses” for a second while gunmen open fire on it. Lots of bullets seem to ricochet off the frame, but not one shot seems to catch it in the tires. With run-flat technology being what it is and the heavy duty construction of the tires, it could probably withstand some shots. But considering how much it jumps around, cuts and the general pounding the Tumbler takes, any weakness in the tires could become a big problem, real quick.

Bat Gadgets
Hope they don’t start relying on new bat gadgets in the story too much in future films. If I wanted to see that I’d watch any James Bond film. Batman uses his wealth to have these gadgets. He needs them; he’s just a regular guy. But his gadgets should be a means to help him defeat his opponents, not the reason he’s able to defeat his opponents. The reason Batman triumphs is because he’s a bright, determined man. But just a man. The reliance on too many trick weapons makes him just a masked 007 clone.

Defying the Immutable Laws of Physics
My biggest annoyance in any film, the sheer ignorance of what would really happen in a situation instead of what would make the best looking grandstand in a film. In his first appearance, where the criminals are trying to drive Batman out, Batman jumps down several floors of a parking garage onto the roof of a van which is being driven by Scarecrow trying to escape. The roof collapses and it’s not shown, but I’m sure he’s probably pinned, but why does the van immediately stop? Scarecrow’s foot was just on the gas. If someone lands on his head, he’s probably going to slam on the accelerator, not the brake.

And no, a 200+ pound man landing on the roof of a van isn’t enough to stop it dead in its tracks.

Substitute Batcave
I understand that Wayne Mansion is being rebuilt, hence no batcave. The underground bunker substitute seems ridiculously spacious. What happened to Batman keeping a low profile?

New Rachel Dawes
I couldn’t be happier that there’s no more Katie Holmes-Cruise. Maggie Gyllenhal is an alright substitute at first glance.

Harvey Dent/Two-Face
I didn’t realize his character was featured so prominently. I thought that this was a Joker vs. Batman movie. The involvement of a third major character means further watering down/complication of the storyline. I’m sure it also explains the extended running time.

Buying a plane for Cash & Flying it Over Hong Kong
C’mon. Maybe no one who’s seen the movie has ever flown privately, but the one thing I learned while in pilot school is that the FAA is even more uptight than the IRS, if that’s possible. Fart the wrong way and they investigate you. And since there are a lot fewer airplanes than cars flying around, it’s a lot easier job than you’d imagine. An unregistered plane doesn’t get off the ground and fly anywhere near civilization without being shot down. The type of plane that Wayne buys can’t make a flight across the Pacific due to fuel capacity. And it’s definitely not flying over a foreign country, particularly one as developed as Hong Kong without registering a flight plan or being shot down.

Joker Infiltrates Mob Hideout
You mean no one checked to see if he’s dead?

Batman Hand-to-Hand Combat
His moves seem choreographed. Overly choreographed, because of course they’re choreographed. He’ll strike one guy, then pauses momentarily, waiting for the next attacker to hit his mark. It seems like they’re fighting almost in slow-motion. He’s telegraphing his moves. Why people fight him the way they do is silly. The clumsy awkward swings these thugs take at Batman is just stupid. No one fights like this. A guy tries to hit Batman high, in the head. Batman deflects his punch away, and then cocks back to throw a right haymaker. The guy who threw the punch just stands there waiting to be hit. No attempt to recoil, no attempt to block or defend himself. And how come every time Batman punches someone does it sound like a small bomb has been detonated. These sound nothing like punches landing on human skin.

Escaping Hong Kong
The explosion can be seen blowing fire and shrapnel twenty feet out the window. Yet shots from inside the building show not a whiff of smoke or a sliver of glass flying near Batman and Lao. The explosive were on the outside of the window. They would’ve broken the windows by detonating them inward, not outward.

Batman Rescues Rachel
How come every time Batman jumps off a building and lands on a car he’s never hurt? He landed on the van at the beginning and was fine. He saves Rachel, seems to fall about 15 stories, can’t deploy his wings to break the fall and lands on his side on top of a taxi. He’s a little out of breath but fine. The suit can stop a knife, ok. But a 200+ pound man falling fifteen stories onto a car….there’s no amount of padding for that. And furthermore, why is there always a car right where he’s falling? He never hits the sidewalk? Not once?

Transferring Dent to County Jail
So much wrong with this scene. The Tumbler taking the garbage truck low….nice try. But the garbage truck wins in terms of mass. The Tumbler wins in terms of leverage. And their velocity is about the same, so this collision should’ve been a push. But no, the Tumbler gets under the truck, and somehow has the velocity to drive it backwards into a pillar.

The bat bike is ridiculous on a number of fronts. We know they built a real prototype which is drivable. But the way it maneuvers and handles at the rate of speed it’s driven at is just asinine for people to believe. Even worse, the two gimmicky looking moments when its front wheel spins sideways for the sharp corner and the bit where it drives up a wall and rotates the body in mid air.

And don’t get me started on the way the fifth wheel tractor trailer goes end over end. That hitch would never hold through the flip. It would come apart and the truck would land in a crumpled, but crooked heap, not just flip over onto its roof.

Joker In Jail
Why does Gordon uncuff him? So Batman feels a little less bad about beating around a handcuffed criminal? After all that, why does the guard have to stand in the room? Nothing good can come of it. Joker can only kill him or get hold of him and use him as a hostage. And being that he’s mentally unhinged and uncuffed, doesn’t that seem entirely plausible?

Dent is coughing and spitting that fuel everywhere, including the side of his face that doesn’t get torched. So why doesn’t that side burn?

And when Joker makes his phone call and the bomb goes off in jail. How come the force from the blast knocks everyone down and incapacitates them, except for Joker?

I love Alfred’s little tale about a bandit in a forest somewhere. Robbing and killing for sport, for the thrill, for no other reason but to fuck with people. And like a terrorist there is no negotiating, no trading, and no talking to them. So to catch him, they just burned the whole forest down. It’s an apt little metaphor for the dark places inside himself Batman must tap into to catch Joker.

Batman’s X-Ray Vision
It’s supposed to be sonar, I know, generated by cell phones. But the building is largely empty, so there’s no cell phones on most of the levels to tap into, if that’s even possible. Furthermore, sonar doesn’t work like x-rays, seeing through walls, through steel girders and thick concrete walls to other floors and other rooms. Sonar works by sending out wavelengths which then bounce off of things. Judging by how long it takes to “ping” something and how many “pings” you get in response you can tell how close an object is and, roughly, how big it is. It won’t paint you cute little digital reproduction of how many people are in a room on a different floor, or how the furniture is arranged in your neighbor’s apartment.

I could do without a lot of the ferry footage. All the petty hand-wringing over detonating the other boat to save themselves can be safely assumed. It’s the end result that counts, not how they get there. And given the time the film runs, a lot of it would’ve been easy cuts for me.

Two-Face’s Last Stand
Batman survives another four or five story fall, this time onto bare dirt, with nothing to break his momentum other than his legs. He gets up, talks to Commissioner Gordon and runs off into the night. I know this is a comic book action movie and you have to suspend disbelief somewhat, but if falling five stories onto your ass won’t hurt Batman, what possibly will?

Questioning Reality
The logistics of much of this doesn’t make sense often times. There’s the whole gravity thing which I’ve covered. There are mechanical and technological issues, which I’ve tried to touch on. And then there are the technical and spatial issues, mostly with all the explosions going on. Joker jokes about how cheap gunpowder and gas is, and he’s seen sliding down a mountain of cash, so resources aren’t a problem. But moving all those explosives around and rigging them on the timers is a delicate and time consuming process. Not just any former convict escaped from a mental ward can do it. But within seemingly just a span of days and sometimes hours, the buildings Dent and Dawes are contained in, Gotham General, and two ferries are rigged with thousands of cubic pounds of explosives? More thought goes into rigging the annual 4th of July fireworks shows on the riverfront here in St. Louis than this mass carnage. And no one in Gotham General noticed all the explosives set to implode the building?

Joker: Nicholson vs. Ledger
Physically, Ledger is a better Joker. Nicholson was just too short. He looked like a circus clown in the pancake makeup perfectly done and the high-waisted pants on a little man.

They’re both psychotics, but Nicholson seems dimwitted in comparison. Nicholson seemed gleeful that he was now a big-time member of Gotham’s crime element. The way he danced through the restaurant to meet with Kim Basinger is a good example of this. Ledger is darker more into fucking with people than just stirring shit up. Nicholson gassed a major parade. Deranged, ok. Ledger’s Batman keeps giving people choices, forcing them to confront their dark side, to embrace it and use it in order to survive. He breaks the pool cue in two and forces the three gangsters to fight to the death. The prize for the winner is a spot in his organization. He sends detonators to both ferries with the choice: I’ll blow you all up in one hour unless you turn on the other ship and one of you blows the other up first. Then they just have to live with the guilt, knowing they’re one step closer to embracing his mayhem. Ledger’s Joker was a darker, more mentally-ill psychotic.

Now, much of that was the writing. And a whole bunch more of it's effectiveness is good makeup. What is to Ledger’s credit is his basketcase speech pattern, the way he draw out his words. His constant lip-licking. His alternating soft-spokenness and growling. His twitchy, shifty-eyed musings. Nicholson seemed docile and medicated. Like not even he could understand what he was doing because he was doped to the gills. But Ledger’s incarnation is an off-his-meds-and-out-of-his-mind type scary. You never know if he’s going to laugh in your face or stab you in the neck.

But not even Ledger’s Joker is that scary. I wasn't up all night because I was so disturbed by it (example: I was having trouble sleeping after seeing Zodiac. That was scary). We never actually see him kill anyone. He puts a knife to people. He fires a gun at people. The implication is that he kills. But we never see it in any gory details. And by insulating the audience from that, we never get maximum terror from the madman Joker. We never see his post-murder glory, which is half the sickening nature of Joker, his total disregard for human life. The film’s makers did this to still get the PG-13 rating, so they could cash in not just with the adults, but the teenagers out with friends and dates, and even the 5th-8th grade crowd tagging along with parents. If they wanted a truly menacing character, they should’ve showed him do the full deed a time or two instead of cutting it short.

I don’t get how Joker is supposed to be this simple, lunatic anarchist, who doesn’t have an agenda, doesn’t have a plan. He’s just a madman on the loose. He tries to pass himself off as that, and so do other characters. Like a rebel without a cause. But he seems very planned out during the bank robbery, the attempted assassination on the mayor (kidnapping fifteen cops and posing as them, with the timer on the window shade), his escape from jail and setting Batman up to decide between Rachel and Dent, and his whole plot to knock Harvey Dent off his shiny, dignified pedestal by slowly turning him into a murderous lunatic of his own. Seems pretty cunning to me.

As far as this talk of an Oscar goes, I think that’s the real lunacy. A memorable, good character Ledger was, but this isn’t the type of role that wins those awards. This is a glorified action movie. There’s too many characters working their own story lines to allow for any real development of any one character here, and all of Joker’s screen time is spent on his anarchy and destruction. Joker is passed off the most easily of anyone. He’s a simple nutjob who loves killing, and explosions and fire and living without any rules. There’s not supposed to be any reason he ticks. He has no relationships with anyone to explore, therefore there’s no depth to be mined from the character. There’s a reason all those artsy character-driven movies seem to win all the awards. Because the actors who play those characters have to carry much smaller casts, for much longer periods of screen time. They have to explore their characters more deeply and in more situations than Ledger does as the Joker.

DVD Packaging
I think this is a hearty sham job Warner Brothers is putting on people. Good film, worth buying, yes. The jewel case and slip cover is alright. But $24.96 worth? I think not. The second feature disc is mighty bare. There’s a making of feature and a making of the music feature. These are both very interesting and fairly long. The making of feature has the interview audio so low and the musical score so loud though that unless you’re sitting two feet from your TV, you have trouble hearing the soft spoken (or poorly recorded) Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale, among other cast & crew. But the rest of the second disc is your basic boring slideshows, cast & crew credits. Sure there are the full-screen versions of the seven or so GCN “News Reports”. Wake me up when that shit ends. There are also the eight or so scenes that were shot in IMAX, split out from the movie. I don’t know why we need second copies of these? Can’t we just rewatch the movie? How is this necessary?

My biggest pet peeve is that there are no commentary tracks. I like hearing what a director was thinking during a scene, what technical hurdles and tricks the crew faced with a particular location or stunt, or what actors found amusing or interesting during the making of the film. I want to get some information about what it was like to be there making the film. But there’s no such insight.

The biggest reason for the inflated price tag seems to be that if you insert the DVD into your computer, you have a code so you can make a digital copy on your computer. This is what consumers have long been clamoring for. Most of us don’t want to flood the streets with bootleg copies. But we want to be able to make copies of something we legally paid for and acquired in case we lose or damage our original copy. If your product is so good that we take it to a friend’s house to watch, or that it’s so good someone would want to steal it, then we want a little insurance like that. But we don’t want to pay $8-$10 extra bucks for it.

This is a case of one step forward and one step back in terms of bonus features.

FINAL ANALYSIS:
Harvey Dent was supposed to be Gotham’s white knight, an incorruptible, happy face of all that is right to rally behind. But when you bill something or someone as a knight in shining armor or the greatest film (of the year, of all comic movies, ever, etc….) well, it opens up everything for scrutiny. And beauty often seduces us on the road to truth. There’s a wonderful parallel between Harvey Dent and The Dark Knight as a film. Harvey Dent did a lot of things right, and that was good for the city. But when he became the golden boy, the chosen one, he was put under a bigger microscope and the imperfections began to show.

Tell me The Dark Knight is a great, great film. One you’ll rewatch many times over and be entertained, and I’m right there with you. Tell me it’s the film of the years and Heath Ledger should be airmailed an Oscar, and I’ll start looking for reasons to tell you why not. And that’s how I feel after months upon months of hype and now finally seeing the picture. Very good, yes. Great? No, not quite.

For starters, the star here is Christian Bale, the hero is Batman. But with the juicy plot lines of Joker, Harvey Dent/Two-Face, and even Commissioner Gordon, Wayne/Batman is marginalized. He’s pushed to the fringe of the spotlight with a watered down part. Bale’s Batman is still the best ever. And now Ledger’s Joker is the finest incarnation of that character as well. But the sum of the parts here doesn’t equal the greater whole. The development of a young Bruce Wayne, from childhood to finding his way as Batman in Batman Begins still triumphs this picture. At the end of Batman Begins I got chills. I felt something that can’t be put into words. We see the full idea of Batman come to fruition. Bruce Wayne goes from troubled, angry youth adrift in this world to full-fledged hero. Here, we learn little more about Batman. It’s a new villain or two, new challenges, and Batman going through the motion to keep Gotham safe. The action is still great, but the story that action gift wraps isn’t quite as good; it doesn’t tug at you the same way, therefore, it’s not as good.

Report Card
Christian Bale/Batman/Bruce Wayne............A-
Heath Ledger/Joker.........................................A
Aaron Eckhardt/Harvey Dent/Two-Face.....B
Gary Oldman/Commissioner Gordon............B+
Maggie Gyllenhall/Rachel Dawes....................B
Michael Caine/Alfred........................................A
Morgan Freeman/Lucious Fox.......................B
Rest of Cast........................................................B-
Writing................................................................C+

Overall: 8.0/10

I see that about 400,000 voters at IMDB have given this an average of 9.0 and that it's ranked the #4 film of all-time on their site. Seems a little knee-jerk to me. Look, it's good. But it's not great. Check back with me in 10 years and we'll see if it's aged as well as the other great films throughout history. On another note, I'm becoming concerned with Christian Bale. He seems to have stopped taking interesting characters in challenging roles in smaller films for big production, glitzy features. He was locked into this one, I know. But his next film out of the shoot is going to be the new Terminator movie. I don't know how he's going to shine in the role of John Connor. It's been done before, and the focus of the Terminator movies is always the machines and elaborate fight scenes. Seems like a waste of his acting talents to continue taking these roles.