Batman carries on beginning in ... The Dark Knight

I know he thinks he's a bit method, but this is stupid.

would love to see an HBO gotham mcu series, so long as there are super-villains

my guess is that because each 'first' film almost necessarily needs to deal with the origin of the hero in question, that the first films exist almost from the get-go as introductions before you get to the actual story the director wants to tell.

it makes sense, but i think i enjoy the origin part of superhero movies more than the soap opera love stories etc that sequels bring into it.

xpost maybe his mum and sister were planning a heist.

"I'm sorry, son, but Heath's performance is just better than yours."

maybe her tea's just not up to alfred's standard.

Entirely possible.

still, vigilante tea-inspired punishment beatings? bit much.

But he's still a wealthy and powerful guy using his own resources to impose his vision of social order by circumventing the legal and political systems.

Just like everybody else, ever. The purpose of every major character in these stories is to examine which rules stick and when and why to break the rest. Suggesting that a billionaire with nearly limitless resources should be a stickler about adhering to the legal system if he really cares about justice is some blinkered wishful thinking Rachel Dawes shit.

Ken Lay would agree.

yes, ken lay was very interested in justice and crimefighting, which is why he's such a popular and fascinating superhero character.

maggie g is kinda sexless

likes:

ledger - was concerned he'd be ripping off sociopath performances of filmdom past wholesale but he truly did his own thing. oddly enough, he reminded me only of cagney at certain points. the fact that his performance was one-note (but what a note!) actually helped to keep him from completely running off with the movie. I wasn't thinking "poor dead heath ledger" while watching it, but today I was struck by the fact he *won't* be returning for the sequel, which is total sadface. ah well, at least he left on a high note. joker in nurse outfit blowing up hospital was alltime perverse + delightful.

brought the gritty - much flatter than the previous batman, which suffered from marrying its bleakitude to outlandish, contrived situations. the policier vibe gave this one stronger footing. the relentless pace actually felt relentless.

zeitgeisty - the moral dilemmas of declaring war on terror weren't just superficial frosting, they were baked in. nothing it had to say about the morality of fighting crime was particularly astute (hoary old cop/criminal duality) and perhaps we will look back and laugh but I like the way it continually returned to the topic without getting didactic about it. a little bit of ambivalence goes a long way.

dislikes:

terminator action porn OD: from the supersize-it school of filmmaking. there's more soda in this cup than you could ever possibly drink, but that's okay, it's BETTER cuz there's MORE. around the 37th kidnapping is when I put my head in my hands.

pandering: some of the playing to the crowd was creaky, e.g. editing beats for audience reactions, dorky comic relief, made in china lulz no thanks

batman, why him growl? - okay, I know bale did diff bw/bm voices in the last movie, but this was ridiculous. perhaps it was an attempt to show batman becoming animalistic due to the devolving situation (definitely thought it became more pronounced as the movie went on) but no, that didn't work.

You might wanna check the comments in the link before you respond. Dave Kehr:

“The Dark Knight” is “Dirty Harry” stripped of Don Siegel’s ambivalence and ambiguity. Here again, one madman (Christian Bale’s Batman/Clint Eastwood’s Harry) is posited as the only effective way of combating another (Heath Ledger’s Joker/Andy Robinson’s Scorpio). The two figures are identified as morally equivalent (”You complete me,” says Ledger to Bale, nastily referencing “Jerry Maguire”), but where Siegel’s camera literally recoils in horror at the moment Harry leaps into madness (when he steps on Scorpio’s wound in the football stadium), Nolan seems to embrace, and even romanticize, his hero’s obsessive, abusive behavior. Is the Dark Knight just George Bush with a better outfit, demanding that he be allowed all of the available “tools” to combat terrorism, even if they include torture and eavesdropping? Like Bush, Batman has his own warrantless wiretapping program, but Nolan is kind enough to assure us that, once his goal is accomplished, the superhero will blow it up. Is he suggesting that we can count on the Dark President to do the same?

http://www.davekehr.com/?p=59

Sorry to beat a dead horse but every dramatic hero since the Enlightenment has been free of the normal rules that apply to you and me, by dint of either their profession (cop, private investigator, nobleman, spy, etc) or their criminality (mafiosi, man-on-the-run, etc). It's an interesting rut that Western dramatic writing has gotten itself into, that we can't imagine the sort of heroism we aspire to other than being embodied by someone to whom the normal rules don't apply. Batman is in the basic Scarlet Pimpernel / Zorro mold, a nobleman who disguises himself not so much as to not be caught by the law (since by being noble he is somewhat above the law anyway), but so as to retain his special position in society (and thereby continue his heroic tasks)

Dave Kehr again:

Both the ferry boat and the wrong-rescue scenes are typical of “The Dark Knight”’s strategy of setting up impossible, “Sophie’s Choice”-like moral dilemmas for its hero, and then resolving them through sleight-of-hand: in a bit of reverse racism, a scary-looking black man steps up to make the tough moral choice that a wimpy-looking white guy is unable to handle; Batman arrives to rescue his girl friend, only to find that the Joker has betrayed him (!) and switched locations. In both cases the hero gets to look fine and noble while he wrestles with issues that are then resolved with no moral cost to him. I agree that the movie is not triumphalist, but triumphalism is hardly in style at this point in time. Instead, it substitutes the dark romanticism of the misunderstood outsider, who takes on the sins of the community the better to redeem the poor saps who will remain forever ungrateful to him — a slight improvement over a ticker tape parade finale, but still a self-flattering, adolescent notion.

difference being, in real life you have to decide whether or not you trust a vigilante, and wonder what his reasons are.

batman is just a comic book hero, and we know he's the good guy. i don't think the parallel holds up.

he used the term "reverse racism" = don't listen to a thing the guy says

Batman arrives to rescue his girl friend, only to find that the Joker has betrayed him (!)

is this what happened? maybe i got jumbled, i thought the point was that Batman chose Dent

In real life you have to decide whether or not you trust the rules, too.

I said it could be read as a rather sympathetic critique of post-9/ll government overreach in my review. Didn't take that line of thinking as far as Kehr.

x-post

Hand's writing is so good.

batman seemed kind of fat and super slow in this. especially when the whole first movie was about how batman is a ninja. he really needs to go up a size in that mask

the audience in my theatre cheered when gordon reappeared - in this world, the heroes are celebrated just for *surviving*. I guess I'm getting kind of meta about this, but that seems like a low point for comic book heroics. so it's kind of hard to read tdk as a triumphant celebration of bush policies. have the ostensible good guys (and the audience by proxy) ever been so sadistically thrashed during a comic book movie? does anyone walk out of the theatre upbeat + feeling good about the state of gotham (or the world)?

would love to see an HBO gotham mcu series, so long as there are super-villains

max, have you read Gotham Central? if not, you would probably like it!

It took me a while to figure out that wasn't Renee Montoya tagging along with Gordon all the time.

have the ostensible good guys (and the audience by proxy) ever been so sadistically thrashed during a comic book movie?

It's difficult to think of any action movie in the last 15-20 years where the hero isn't beaten and bloodied by the end of it. We seem to need our heroes punished, with marks all over their bodies.

Thanks, pinefox.

In real life you have to decide whether or not you trust the rules, too.

Kerm, 22 July 2008 14:45 (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

nope. in real life you have to wonder what society is going to do about the people that break/ignore them.

yeah, they didn't see her name for awhile and i was sure it was going to be montoya.

You might wanna check the comments in the link before you respond. Dave Kehr:

“The Dark Knight” is “Dirty Harry” stripped of Don Siegel’s ambivalence and ambiguity. Here again, one madman (Christian Bale’s Batman/Clint Eastwood’s Harry) is posited as the only effective way of combating another (Heath Ledger’s Joker/Andy Robinson’s Scorpio). The two figures are identified as morally equivalent (”You complete me,” says Ledger to Bale, nastily referencing “Jerry Maguire”), but where Siegel’s camera literally recoils in horror at the moment Harry leaps into madness (when he steps on Scorpio’s wound in the football stadium), Nolan seems to embrace, and even romanticize, his hero’s obsessive, abusive behavior. Is the Dark Knight just George Bush with a better outfit, demanding that he be allowed all of the available “tools” to combat terrorism, even if they include torture and eavesdropping? Like Bush, Batman has his own warrantless wiretapping program, but Nolan is kind enough to assure us that, once his goal is accomplished, the superhero will blow it up. Is he suggesting that we can count on the Dark President to do the same?

http://www.davekehr.com/?p=59

-- Dr Morbius, Tuesday, July 22, 2008 10:27 AM (54 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

did this guy just call obama "the dark president"???

Like Bush, Batman has his own warrantless wiretapping program

morbz is obsessed with obama saying as president he'd scrap the fisa stuff he voted for

those aren't morbz' words. He's quoting Dave Kehr.

I have no idea who Dave Kehr is or if he's obsessed with Obama and FISA.

It's difficult to think of any action movie in the last 15-20 years where the hero isn't beaten and bloodied by the end of it. We seem to need our heroes punished, with marks all over their bodies.

like a passion play?

I liked how the Joker was a Satanic kind of figure...his only goal seemed to be bringing out the chaos and rage inside normally virtuous people. It's made quite clear in the movie that he "wins" so long as you stoop to his level--and while this isn't profound or anything I hardly see how it could be seen as a endorsement of Bush-style anti-terrorism policies.

http://www.darrenlester.co.uk/images/jpg/emperor3.jpg

which is precisely why batman is "hunted" and dent is lionized--Batman doesn't believe in his own methods!

x-post- haha!

have the ostensible good guys (and the audience by proxy) ever been so sadistically thrashed during a comic book movie?

It's difficult to think of any action movie in the last 15-20 years where the hero isn't beaten and bloodied by the end of it. We seem to need our heroes punished, with marks all over their bodies.

but it's more than just rambo getting a christ-like set of cinematic bruises. besides the physical abuse there are rafts of emotional and mental torments in tdk, the pervasive hopelessness, the poisoning of the innocents.

more anecdote: the woman sitting next to me had her head buried in her hands when twoface was tormenting gordon's family - never saw that at screenings of xmen or hellboy.

i thought the point was that Batman chose Dent

-- goole, Tuesday, July 22, 2008 9:41 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

me too

well he yells "rachel!" when joker tells him the locations, etc, so you can take it either way. I felt like he was going for rachel.

I thought gordon asks batman who is he going to save as he's running out the door and batman says rachel. gordon then heads out to save dent. but the joker swapped the addresses on them.

I think that is correct - it must be.

I understand how people want to read allegorical comments on geopolitics into films like this, but somehow I find that a dubious exercise.

ah so.

missed that.

> I understand how people want to read allegorical comments on geopolitics into films like this, but somehow I find that a dubious exercise.

If we don't, it's just the latest version of "Driving Fast With Guns" and our egos won't permit us to believe we'd really go for that shit.

made in china lulz no thanks

i thought the same thing at first but the whole scene is dent being a totally and completely over the top grandstanding politician, in which case.. makes sense to say that, obnoxious as it is

I agree with a great deal of what Edward III says upthread, not least about '37th kindapping' - excess: precisely.

I don't understand his comment 'made in china lulz'.

I also don't think I can agree that the spectacle of the hospital blowing up was delightful. I think it is disturbing and sad. Just writing the words 'hospital blowing up', and picturing it again, troubles me so. It feels so terrible, wanton and wrong. Yes, the film was showing wanton wrong. But I don't think that can be delightful.

i really need to see this again, especially the bit about saving harvey or rachel! i thought it was a head-fake of the movie to let us believe batman was after rachel, and really picking dent, not a trick of the joker's. hmmmm

im agree it's dubious to read geopolitical allegories into the movie...it's definitely to ascribe real-world political opinions to it as well.

that kidnapping scene is interesting....esp if goole is correct, which I think he might be (regardless, batman did choose). Makes one think that if Batman was on one of the boats he wouldn't have had any trouble pushing the button.

definitely dubious, that is.

So how does Christian Bale getting arrested for assaulting his mom and sis play into your analysis?

I understand how people want to read allegorical comments on geopolitics into films like this, but somehow I find that a dubious exercise.

films reflect the national consciousness - why is this not fair game for discussion? it's not different than talking about how easy rider, bonnie & clyde, taxi driver, etc were "of their time".

whatever you think of the quality of the movies, there's been a rash of imperfect superheroes confroting their dark sides - tdk, hancock, iron man, hulk, hellboy. I'd say america has an interesting psychological relationship to heroism at this point in time.