Batman carries on beginning in ... The Dark Knight

max, I might well have done but I just don't remember it. (Trust me, my L&O ref had nothing to do with suddenly recalling that image!)

not looking forward to the inevitable SVU spin-off, though

Paul Sorvino as Alfred

Seriously bored of the "pretending to raise moral issues" schtick now.

A.O. Scott: Instead the disappointment comes from the way the picture spells out lofty, serious themes and then ... spells them out again. What kind of hero do we need? Where is the line between justice and vengeance? How much autonomy should we sacrifice in the name of security? Is the taking of innocent life ever justified? These are all fascinating, even urgent questions, but stating them, as nearly every character in “The Dark Knight” does, sooner of later, is not the same as exploring them.

Scott's point is a good one, that the conventions of the superhero movie prevent TDK from really engaging these questions because the questions are raised in a structure designed to say SOMETHING ELSE.

Well, it would be a good point if he didn't forget about the Dostoevskyian ending...I don't think the movie ends ambiguously (we know exactly what happens and why) and i dont think it is incoherent because it's quite obviously forcing the themes of the movie, and the superhero movie in general, to the point of an aporia. it's an ending very similar in tone (to me) to The Prestige, which is actually the much more provocative movie, intellectually speaking.

The bottom line is that if a Bergman movie ended in aporia or moral ambiguity -- or lacked a clear cut POV on the morality and issue on display in the movie, rather than an "artistic distance" -- then I doubt we'd have much of a problem with it. So I think, on the one hand, it's fair to criticize TDK as being compromised to the point of incoherence or shallowness by its genre. But I think you miss what it's doing to its genre, which is is actually pretty interesting without being original.

And Dan, where did you find that!

It's been posted on ILX before! I just googled it.

the funny thing is it can be found IN THIS THREAD

I think tuomas did it like 8000 posts ago

Hahaha, beautiful.

we should really break this thread up into distinct eras - paleozoic, mesozoic, contenderizer first appears on two legs

More shoehorning! Collect your 'so-and-so...Dark Knight' stories here:

'Jason Baron, Dark Knight'

'Tricky: trip-hop's Dark Knight'

Etc. etc.

“I feel like I’m dumb because I feel like I don’t get how many things that are so smart. It’s like a Ferrari engine of storytelling and script writing and I’m like, ‘That’s not my idea of what I want to see in a movie.’ I loved The Prestige but didn’t understand The Dark Knight. Didn’t get it, still can’t tell you what happened in the movie, what happened to the character and in the end they need him to be a bad guy. I’m like, ‘I get it. This is so high brow and so f–king smart, I clearly need a college education to understand this movie.’ You know what? F-ck DC comics. That’s all I have to say and that’s where I’m really coming from.” -- Robert Downey Jr.

I love that quote.

Also occurs to me that one of the biggest flaws with the movie is that it is chock full of false dilemmas. That is, moral problems that are only problems in the hypothetical sense.

For instance, lucius balking at the sonar device strikes me as insincere because I doubt anyone on earth, in those particular circumstances, would really even hesitate to use it. Does lucius make the "right" choice? Unquestionably, in my mind. Is he compromised by that choice? In terms of theoretical ethics, almost certainly. Would any of us hold him accountable? No. Would the law? Yes, because the law isn't a person. And on and on.

The instant (albeit via traumatic means) transformation of Harvey Dent was really the only plot element that didn't work for me.

(the film's conclusion is) quite obviously forcing the themes of the movie, and the superhero movie in general, to the point of an aporia. it's an ending very similar in tone (to me) to The Prestige, which is actually the much more provocative movie, intellectually speaking.

The bottom line is that if a Bergman movie ended in aporia or moral ambiguity -- or lacked a clear cut POV on the morality and issue on display in the movie, rather than an "artistic distance" -- then I doubt we'd have much of a problem with it. So I think, on the one hand, it's fair to criticize TDK as being compromised to the point of incoherence or shallowness by its genre. But I think you miss what it's doing to its genre, which is is actually pretty interesting without being original.

-- ryan

While the film clearly implicates the existence and ambition of the Batman in the generation of the threat that eventually imperils the entire city, it does not cast as much doubt on his methods and/or motives as some posters here suggest. The plot’s most tragic outcomes have less to do with the Batman’s failures than with the Joker’s successes. Nor do I accept that the fundamental conventions and functions of the genre necessarily “compromise” the film. The Dark Knight could have intelligently engaged with its themes and situations while still respecting the superhero genre, had it cared to.

Again, it’s by no means a bad movie and really is an interesting entry in its genre, but I don’t believe that the filmmakers took sufficient care to thoroughly work out the ideas involved. As a result, The Dark Knight suggests a lot without offering much, and seems to make some rather dubious moral arguments along the way.

Downey quote is hilarious & endearing. He's Jeff Spicoli.

I didn't really treat any of the characters as a reliable narrator so I didn't take away the same level of import from Gordon's voiceover as you did, particularly since Dent's injury and Rachel's death were a direct result of Gordon's misjudgment.

Alfred's analogy as to the hopelessness of the situation Bruce and co. have created for themselves (if you want to get rid of The Joker, you're going to have to raze Gotham) resonated more with me than anything else; Batman doesn't want to do that, but he doesn't want to disengage and leave the city to the wolves either, so what can he do? The answer ends up being some sketchy shit (turning all the cell phones into spy transmitters, smacking around prisoners while they're in captivity, beating up riot cops) that, more or less, seems reasonable at the time but is rather clearly leading down the path of razing Gotham. The closure at the end of the film doesn't really resolve anything; the city is still fucked up, other criminals are moving into the power vacuum left by Harvey's rampage and the populace thinks their chosen vigilante hero has turned on them. I don't see that as an endorsement of Batman's ideas and methods, particularly when combined with Rachel's letter about how Bruce's idea of passing the reins over to someone legitimate are a fantasy because he's cuckoo.

Right. Which is why I feel the film's tone is tragic in the classical sense. What else are these characters to do when faced with such nihilistic evil? Dent crumbles in the face of it and becomes nihilistic too. Batman and co. are forced to compromise their moral integrity, but the logic of the situation literally allows them no other choice. The ending is merely batman's attempt to acknowledge this tragedy and own up to it. He's no hero for doing so as Gordon says, except maybe a tragic hero. Maybe that's the film's innovation then: superhero to tragic hero.

The film presents this narrative many times over. "die the hero or live long enough to be the villian"

What's remarkable to me is that a film with such pessimism is really reapnating with a large audience. Maybe they are seeing something else.

Dent crumbles in the face

Why would we see Gordon as a less than reliable narrator? It's an interesting idea, but I don't see how the film at any time undermines the validity of Gordon's POV. His failure to see through the Joker's dastardly plot hardly makes a moron of him. The film doesn't ever suggest that a reliable man would have known better, in fact, I think Gordon is presented as an avatar of moral reliability.

The point you make about Alfred's parable is a good one, though. That's the one idea the film does attempt to seriously wrestle with: how do you wage war without destroying what you're trying to protect? I'm not faulting The Dark Knight for its handling of this theme. It's a difficult question, and while I'm not sure that Gordon and the Batman ever really get the balance right, I still think the film is, in general, very much in their corner.

Gordon hires crooked cops, refuses to share secrets with the white-knight D.A., lies to his wife and kids... he's a sympathetic character but not someone whose point of view I entirely trust w/r/t issues of law, morality and justice.

Yes exactly; near the beginning of the movie, Dent and Gordon argue about the crooked cops in Gordon's department and Gordon has a "they're good cops who deserve a second chance!" shitfit. Later, two of those "good cops", who are still working for the mob and, by extension, the Joker, kidnap Dent and Rachel out from underneath the police department's nose, in fact WITH THE DEPARTMENT'S BLESSING (I've only seen the movie once but I vaguely remember some "we're putting our best people on the case" rhetoric right before the shitstorm).

Gordon knows he has crooked cops with mob ties in his department but blocks Dent from getting to them, which later not only bites him on the ass but eats both cheeks and a good portion of thigh to boot. The moral compasses in the movie are Rachel (who blows the fuck up) and Alfred (who throughout both movies is constantly telling Bruce that Batman isn't the right answer because uh crazypants).

I feel like you got irritated with the direction the movie was going and stopped paying attention to it.

Gordon hires crooked cops, refuses to share secrets with the white-knight D.A., lies to his wife and kids... he's a sympathetic character but not someone whose point of view I entirely trust w/r/t issues of law, morality and justice.

-- max

I'm not saying that he's perfect. Nothing and no one in the film is 100% perfect (which is to its credit), but I didn't get the impression that the film repudiates his moral stance. Instead, it seems to sees him as a fundamentally good man who is nevertheless capable of errors and lapses. And it's a wiser, chastened version of that good Gordon who deliver's the film's moral.

It's not that I wasn't paying attention, but rather that I don't see the film the way you do.

That last bit goes out to HI DERE.

You saw wiser and chastened; I saw shell-shocked and upset.

This movie basically lets you put whatever reading you want to on it pretty comfortably.

Also I think it's pushing the idea that Rachel is 100% perfect, which is one of the reasons why she blows the fuck up.

This movie basically lets you put whatever reading you want to on it pretty comfortably.

-- HI DERE

Yeah I think the explosion sorta signifies that the good sheriff has got out of dodge.

Might be interesting to see if that's the moment some people feel the narrative/morality gets incoherent.

I think that's exactly when people started hating on the movie; the thing I keep seeing over and over, even from people who liked the movie, was how much it was let down by the final third.

I disliked the last third, but only because I started to get bored. That's the point at which the narrative surrendered to a seemingly endless series of loud things and overstressed "suspense" sequences. Somewhat before the explosion, mind -- during the tunnel chase with Dent in the police truck, that's when I started to get restless.

I agree with pretty much everything Dan says on this thread. here's a blog plug - http://rocktimists.blogspot.com/2008/08/dark-knight.html

Watched Candy last night, ledger's indie Aussie drug romance film from 2006 - very good. Didn't seem AT ALL like the guy who played either Ennis Del Mar or The Joker, to Ledger's great, and sad, credit. Something MENTAL struck me, though - if Nolan did want The Joker in a third film and was to recast the role, then Joseph Gordon-Levitt might just be perfect.

I think that's exactly when people started hating on the movie; the thing I keep seeing over and over, even from people who liked the movie, was how much it was let down by the final third.

having just seen it - I think maybe the problem is not that the last third is bad, but that the film is maybe over-long and people just blame the last bit.

Yeah, I think I'd go with that. First viewing, and even second, I was fine with it, but watching it a third time I was definitely thinking "OK, we can hurry up here".

The same can be said about the suggestion, in film’s closing scenes, that the dissemination of an inspiring lie can be more noble (or at least more socially valuable) than the revelation of a dispiriting truth. Rather than present this idea in shades of gray, the film’s penultimate scenes and Gordon’s closing voiceover unambiguously endorse it, stressing the necessity and mournful nobility of the Batman’s retreat to the shadows.

Wow, I think you're hanging on awful lot on "unambiguously" here without evidence to support it. It's not as if there's a closing title that says, " . . . and 12 months later, Gotham City was like Paradise on Earth!"

Yeah, my interpretation is that things are about to accelerate even faster into bleakness.

Finally, in lying to the wife and kids, he's only enacting on a personal level the sort of protective duplicity he and the Batman foist on the entire city at the film's conclusion. That is, he's "doing what's best for everybody," much as it pains him.

one of the moments in the movie that stays with me is when gordon comes home to his wife and she slaps him. if you're married w/ children, think about how this would go over: "I let you and the kids think I died, but it's okay it was a war-on-crime thing." it's a rorschach test as to whether you think gordon's actions were justified or not.

the other night on the colbert report he interviewed a woman who wrote a book called the dark side about bush + cheney's torture policies. colbert did a very funny spiel about how ideals can't be compromised if no one knows you're violating them, which put me in mind of tdk and the discussion here.

http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=179267

I been thinking... On one hand, by pushing hard at the question of whether or not the city really needs the sort of saving offered by the Batman, and by suggesting that he inadvertently empowers the evils he fights, The Dark Knight really does question the Batman’s implicit heroism. This is both interesting and admirable, especially in a big-budget superhero film, and it complexifies whatever political reading we might attach to it. I grant that.

Nevertheless, I believe the film ultimately implies that Gotham City really does need the Batman, though it can’t quite face this truth. To admit the necessity of the sort of “justice” the Batman dispenses and represents would be to admit how bad things have become, and this generates more despair than hope. Batman is the hero of last resort, a terrifying and dangerous savior appropriate only to the worst of times. That’s why he must be pushed back underground when the city tries to rise towards the light. Furthermore, while Batman does in a sense “create” the Joker, it seems to me that, in the film’s moral logic, this is an inevitable result of standing up against evil: you can’t overcome your enemies without first making them angry. And while there are risks involved, the consequences, terrible as they may be, are preferable to simply rolling over and playing dead.

So while there’s some subversive complexity here, The Dark Knight doesn’t attempt to “de-heroicize” or even, really, to critique its central character. The film’s depiction of the Gotham City and the Batman are entirely consistent with 20-plus years of comics storytelling. Despite the terrible, even pyrrhic cost of battle he wages, the Batman remains at all times the hero of the story (tragic and otherwise), and this is how it should be. As I see it, the film’s final scene attempts to provide a solution to Rachel’s story about how prideful Caesar eventually became the villain he fought, and also to Alfred’s warnings about what Batman risks destroying in pressing his quest. I suspect that this is why The Dark Knight so relentlessly stresses the city’s need for a symbolic savior: if real villains threatened the city, the Batman would have to stick around to fight them, and better times could never come. By shifting the field of combat from the physical to the symbolic, however, the film allows the Batman to become truly unnecessary, and this in turn allows him to make his noble sacrifice – becoming a symbol of the darkness he has finally (and probably only momentarily) vanquished, so that a symbol of the light can lead the city upwards and away.

Agree that I was stretching to defend Gordon. While I don’t think he’s depicted as “unreliable”, I don’t think the film excuses his treatment of his family.

Again though, all this hardly repudiates the Batman’s methods, and still works pretty well as a Bushco apologia. Among other things. Among a MILLION other things. No argument there.

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj242/donaldparsley/batmng.jpg

The only part of that I want to comment on is this:

Furthermore, while Batman does in a sense “create” the Joker, it seems to me that, in the film’s moral logic, this is an inevitable result of standing up against evil: you can’t overcome your enemies without first making them angry.

The other way to look at this is "every action has an equal and opposite reaction", a reading bolstered by the ending of Batman Begins.

that's some dumb-ass armchair social philosophy y'all.

on reflection, this movie was dumb. but fun for the first 2/3. probably wouldn't have been nearly as favorably predisposed if i hadn't seen the IMAX version.

i think i was partly won over by lots of really loud noises.

The movie was entertainment and I really loved it for that. The rest of it is just idle chatter for the most part.

http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/2812/riddlerpostercopycopyys0.th.jpg

haha only 3 more years left to talk about tdk guys

http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/2812/riddlerpostercopycopyys0.jpg

The other way to look at this is "every action has an equal and opposite reaction", a reading bolstered by the ending of Batman Begins.

I like your suggestion, as it subverts not only Batman's heroism, but the entire superhero premise (Peter Parker was right in the first place to let the robber go, and probably should have continued in his wrestling career).

And yeah, entertainment, woo.

hahahah so fake (xp)

damn burned by the internet again

"experts still have no answers to spate of mysterious letters"

Dudes the threequel is saved -- BRIAN AUSTIN GREEN has expressed interest in playing the Riddler!!!

haha waht

hope he raps all his riddles over Slim Kid Tre tracks