Dark Knight: Less fun than having your appendix out.

[richardf8]

After reading much critical acclaim Morgan and I went to see this with a friend of ours from Shul.



Batman/Bruce Wayne is the greatest villain in this universe. The Joker? Acting according to his nature, barely responsible for his own actions, as with a rabid animal running loose in a town the only moral course of action is to kill him. And Batman fails to do this. Why? I can't tell. Does he think that a justice system that has already failed tragically to hold him once is going to do anything about him? Indeed the Joker has effectively destroyed any semblance of Law and Order by the time Batman sends him hurtling to a certain death, only to save him at the last minute.

The Joker argues that Batman's refusal to reveal his identity makes Batman responsible for the Joker's murders. Harvey Dent correctly identifies this as a terroristic threat, and acts accordingly. Batman is not responsible for those murders. But having had the opportunity to kill the Joker and having passed it up, every single murder that the Joker now commits is on Batman's head, as far as I can tell.

And what the hell is up with that paternalistic BS that Batman/Bruce Wayne and and Commissioner Gordon pull at the end with preserving Harvey Dent's image as Hero and demonizing Batman further because "the common folk need something to believe in?"

When all is said and done, this film was a morally bankrupt morass of angst and horror that failed either to entertain or edify. Christopher Nolan has perpetrated an act of narrative sadism on the public, and the public, it seems, is either sufficiently depressed or sufficiently masochistic to sustain the film in the top rankings.

I go to movies to be entertained, if I want to stare into an abyss of moral depravity lacking either hero or savior, I'll watch CNN.

A word on Heath Ledger - his portrayal of the Joker was excellent, and I suspect led him to his death. Jack Nicholson, who has portrayed The Shining's Jack Torrance, Satan, and the previous Batman's less disturbing joker is said to have warned Ledger about the role. From Jack Nicholson, such a warning is to be taken seriously.

Comments

[deckardcanine.livejournal.com]

You're pretty brave for writing this. Professional critics who've given less-than-stellar reviews to TDK were surprised at the "insane" foulmouthed threats they received by the figurative truckload. Of course, you don't have nearly so wide an audience or so strong a perceived authority on movies.

I found years ago that several movies in the IMDb top 250, including some near the top, are too gritty for my taste. I also found with Memento and The Prestige that Nolan is big on antiheroes and philosophically disagreeable to me. I tend to respect his films more than I like them. That said, I think Batman Begins may be the best superhero movie ever and TDK comes close in its own way.

It helps that comic book readers have informed me of Batman's questionable mores. In the comic canon, the Joker has killed uncountable numbers, never spends long behind bars, and shows no signs of reforming. Because he's diagnosed with a mental illness, the courts cannot have him executed. Presumably, the police could legally shoot him in the midst of a would-be murder, but Batman, with his no-kill rule, prevents that from happening. The Penguin has declared that Batman is effectively the Joker's partner. Why does this happen? Because the Joker is too popular with readers to let go, as one fake death revealed. But clearly many readers are questioning Batman's hero status.

This may be in bad taste, but after the couple of times that the Joker indicated a codependent relationship between them, I thought of this: "I wish I knew how to quit you."

It might even be a good thing that Batman spared the Joker this time. After all, how else would he have learned about the Gordons' peril in time to save them?

The IMDb FAQ has several responses to the question of why Batman takes the fall for Dent in the end. Batman has learned that allying himself openly with the police puts other people at risk. Claiming to be a murderer -- in effect, to go by no hard and fast rules -- makes him scarier and less predictable to criminals. Perhaps most importantly, by keeping the chief prosecutor's name clear, he is preventing all the prosecuted criminals from being summarily released.

Actually, I've seen other reasons listed outside of IMDb. As a hero, the only thing Batman could inspire anyone to do was impersonate him, which he didn't appreciate. The idealized Dent, by contrast, gave people hope for a Gotham with a clean police department as well as clean streets. They won't lose all that hope just because he's dead; they might even try extra hard to see to it that he didn't die in vain. (I'm assuming he is, in fact, dead. There are rumors, stemming in part from the fall looking no farther than Moroni's.)

[richardf8]

I doubt Dent's dead. This film was Two-Face's origin story, and he too is a canonical villain.

Batman Begins was superb. The gulf between that and this is huge.

Memento, which I watched twice for a class at my Shul on the subject of faith, left me with the impression that the protagonist, with very good reason, set himself up to be set up to kill his antagonist. I found it satisfying; the protagonist killed someone who was cynically using him as a killing machine.

TDK did not give me that satisfaction - call me shallow, but I want catharsis. Memento gave it (though it does demand two viewings) TDK did not.

[deckardcanine.livejournal.com]

This tells me that you're big on stopping a killer by killing.

[richardf8]

Yep. Its a moral imperative, in my mind, to kill someone who is taking innocent lives. With Joker its a no-brainer. He's killed many, he's remorseless, and he thinks up creative ways to kill more. Someone like that you kill. Period. To even have such a thing as a "no kill rule" when dealing with a creature like that is suicide at best, genocide at worst.

[deckardcanine.livejournal.com]

And you don't even mention the fact that the Joker already busted out of jail and half-expected his re-arrest. His plans for escape might be endless.

Let me tell you, the two main objections you raise are the same main reasons I don't readily list TDK as my favorite superhero movie. (The other reason that comes to mind is contrivedness, but that's almost inevitable for a philosopher-artist.) But what did you think of the movie before the last five minutes?

[richardf8]

And you don't even mention the fact that the Joker already busted out of jail and half-expected his re-arrest. Actually, I did note this. But who's going to hold him. Why does arresting him even matter? He blew up the last place they put him by planting a bomb in an inmate!

But what did you think of the movie before the last five minutes?

"The catharsis had better be good, the catharsis had better be flipping good, this film owes me some major catharsis, it had better be good."

And. . . it wasn't even there.

[deckardcanine.livejournal.com]

That was my point, really. If I thought prison could hold him a long time, I might approve the decision to have him arrested instead of killed.

But I like to think that no criminal will ever be that effective in real life.

[childings.livejournal.com]

He'd better not be dead! He was the greatest thing about the entire movie!

I feel you on the morality of the movie -- actually I found myself siding with Two Face more than Batman. He was almost totally justified in his actions (I certainly had no problem with him killing off the inside men). It was Gordon's fault that he and his fiancé were able to be kidnapped (crooked cops within the police force), Batman never took the proper measures to take care of the Joker, etc. Batman liked to talk big about how Harvey Dent was the "hero Gotham deserved" but when Dent claimed to be Batman when Wayne didn't come forward, Wayne just let him take the fall, which was foolish and cowardly. A real hero wouldn't do that.

Dent was a person who tried to do what was best for Gotham and live up to his campaign promises, although he did exhibit some violent tendencies when pushed, he was basically a good man. I think if I ended up in a hospital with half my face missing, my significant other killed, and my city in utter chaos, I'd be getting revenge too.

I still thought the movie was amazing and I'm probably going to see it a third time (also I have to admit that I'm enamored with Aaron Eckhart in that role... so...)

[richardf8]

when Dent claimed to be Batman when Wayne didn't come forward, Wayne just let him take the fall, which was foolish and cowardly. A real hero wouldn't do that.

With this statement, I disagree. By doing this Dent was saying to the real Batman "Look, I don't know or care who you are, but I know you're in the room right now, and if you think you are going to get out of dealing with the Joker by handing yourself in, you have another thing coming, because I'm going to deprive you of that option."

Wayne's silence was thus a "Yes, Sir."