MOVIE REVIEW: The Dark Knight

Unless you've been living under a rock... a rock on another planet.... I am sure you have heard of a little movie called The Dark Knight. Well, John found out that it was playing in IMAX theaters as well as in regular ones, so he looked online to see if we had any in the area (we actually have two, but one's across the water in Hampton). So I called ahead and got us tickets for Saturday at the Marine Science Museum (which, by the way, is a great place that has renamed itself the Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center). The IMAX experience was both the best and worst of what I was expecting it to be: glorious "swooping between the buildings" shots where you got a little vertigo because it was so real, but it was also a little seizure-inducing during the fight scenes at the end where you just wanted to be about twenty feet further back. Overall, though, I enjoyed it and the movie.


I don't think that anything I will say will make someone change their mind about whether they will go and see it or not; this is one of those movies where the subject either is or isn't your cup of tea. But I will warn you that it is fairly dark subject matter: The idea of someone so crazy that they want to blow up a hospital just to see it burn. Forcing a literal "kill or be killed" situation onto innocent citizens. Trying to balance personal life with doing the right thing for the masses (in not just Batman's character). Lots of killing mobsters, threatening facial mutilation, and beating up bad guys. (And brace yourself for Two Face's bad side; they really went all out, and it's very similar to Jeff Loeb & Tim Sale's depiction in Dark Victory. It's one thing to see it drawn, but it's a whole different matter to see it on a real face talking to you.) In sum, it's more of a Frank Miller work than a Batman: The Animated Series episode.

Not that I enjoy B:TAS over Frank Miller, I like both characterizations equally. I just feel that there is dark, shallow, and violent, and there is deep, psychologically dark. Batman, I believe, is psychologically dark; but let's face it, as much as we love how stunted Batman is, if every comic and every episode was a foray into how he misses his parents, we'd all go crazy. Often I want to watch/ read the fluffy, action-hero plots that hint at how he is different from normal people, just enough so the kiddies can enjoy themselves, but the comic book dorks are happy on the inside (the animated Justice League recently has done well with that, I think). Though, to be able to do the lighter stories like that, you need to establish that Batman is indeed psychologically different. Dark Knight is really trying to develop that last push Batman gets that sends him fully into character. The main plot point of this movie is that he has to realize how much is needed to be sacrificed in order to be truly effective in Gotham; he can no longer try to separate Bruce Wayne from Batman.

I found a fairly good review online, and his main objection was that while Dark Knight was dark, it did not transcend into something greater than a fun summer movie. I considered that, and I am not sure yet if I agree if you could do a 'transcendent' Batman movie. I think the main issue with trying to portray Batman's pathology- and thus "be something more"- is that he is not a dynamic character, not even in the good comics. And by "dynamic," I mean that he does not interact much with the other characters. He is like the column in a room that does what it's supposed to do while the frantic activity goes on around it. In the comics, Batman is usually silent with only his mental narration letting us know what's going on (mainly because he rarely has anyone around him to talk to). Frequently, too, other characters step in and narrate for a few pages-- which I often find just as revealing of Batman's character as his own thoughts are. But such a mental monologue is impossible to do in a movie without being tremendously campy (Anyone watch Scrubs? They at least poke fun at the inner monologue while they do it). There is a pacing and a tempo in the panels of a comic book that I think would be very difficult to translate to the big screen, no matter how hard you tried. Believing that, I think that I am a little more lenient towards movie directors who are trying to develop comic book stories: I understand that it will not be as glorious as the first time I read Year One, but I am willing to go where they take me... so long as they don't drastically screw things up, like Tommy Lee Jones' Two Face referring to himself in the plural! Don't get me started on that travesty.

In the end, I enjoyed the movie tremendously (though I kind of want to see it on a small TV now, and not on IMAX, haha) Heath Ledger was glorious as the Joker (sooooo creepy), and Gary Oldman really came out of his shell as Gordon. Michael Caine can read the phone book for me, and I will love him, and Christian Bale is always yummy ... But let's face it, Batman fans have had to live with several VERY BAD movies, and we are desperate for ANYthing that does a good job in portraying our favorite vigilante. Yet, as desperate as we are, this movie did not disappoint, and I will definitely buy it for my own collection.