The Dark Knight: Great Movie, Or GREATEST Movie? July 27, 2008
Posted by madkevin in Movies.trackback
This isn’t a long post, because new Batman movie The Dark Knight is way, way too good to give the usual Dude Movie treatment to. This is the fucking Godfather II of comic book movies. It’s easily the best movie I’ve seen this year, it’s easily Christopher Nolan’s best movie, and if you don’t like it you’re just wrong.
Go see this. Now.
two best movies this year, batman and step brothers
Yeah, I really enjoyed it, it was WAY better than Batman Begins. My main complaint remains Bale’s “Bat-Voice”. Look, I know he’s trying to disguise his voice so nobody figures out who he is, but it is freaking annoying. “Ahhhm BAAAA(SCRAPE,GURGLE, GARGLE)MAAAA(CHCHCHCHCHCHCHC)AAAN”.
Yeesh, see a doctor.
Michael Keaton was able to do it, but Bale apparently cannot.
Otherwise, extremely enjoyable.
I have two ridiculously geeky nitpicks with the movie:
1) The Bat Voice. It’s OK for short bursts, but anything longer than a couple of words and he starts sounding like Harvey Fierstein.
2) All the shit that happened to Gordon’s son should have happened to his daughter, to tie into Oracle better.
Other than that, BEST MOVIE EVER.
Also, aftet the Joker crashes Bruce’s party and tosses Rachel out the window, Batman dives out and saves her (luckily there was a car to land on 100 storeys below). My question is, what then? The film cuts to the next day. Did the Joker and his goons just shrug and walk out of the party full of rich folks? What happened, dammit?
I thought that was weird too. I mentally retconned it by assuming that the Joker knew he only had a little bit of time before the building’s security force and/or Gotham SWAT team showed up, so he high-tailed it out of there after he couldn’t find Dent. But you’re right, the movie should have showed that.
This movie is only good if you overlook: the massive number of plot flaws, the fact that it is an apology for the Bush regime, is overly long, is badly shot, has horrible acting (except for Ledger), and proves that batman sucks both as a superhero and as a human being.
Just remember, prisoners have the moral high ground and the common people are cowardly hypocrites.
Take off the blinders and see what a piece of junk this film is people.
You are one wacky dude, GenXMike. The apology for the Bush regime thing so wildly misinterprets the movie that I’m actually wondering if you wandered into a different movie by mistake.
The entirety of the ferry sequence can be seen as the most direct criticism of the Bush II era. The Joker presents the people of Gotham with the same option Bush presented the American people: blow up a bunch of strangers for the illusion of security. Unlike the US, the Gothamites reject that false choice.
It’s also interesting to note that none of the interrogation techniques used by Batman actually worked in the movie, another critique of the Bush era. And even when Batman feels compelled to turn cell phones into surveillance devices, he hands the machine over to the one person he knows would not be tempted to misuse such power, and who destroys it the second it’s finished serving it’s purpose.
Batman, in other words, is the exact opposite of Bush. Batman doesn’t have to play by the rules, but does so; Bush is supposed to play by the rules, but ignores them.
Dude, they do not reject that choice. They hold a vote and then demand that the captain detonate the prisoners. When the captain refuses to do so, the loud mouth stands up and demands to do it himself. He cannot find the resolve within himself to do what he wants to do and so, cowardly, gives up and sits down. He does not decide that it is a wrong thing to do, he just refuses to take personal responsibility for his actions. The people on the boat still want to blow up the prisoners, they just don’t have the balls to do it. Unlike the prisoners who are the essence of goodness.
As for the sonarphone, the correct interpretation of this is that they, of course, do use the extreme measures, but only because they really, really have to use it (so they believe, but only because Batman is so shit at being a detective in this film that he can’t figure anything out apparently). But it is all ok because they really, really promise that they will only use it this one time and they would never use it for the wrong reasons and when they are done using it they will be sure to never use it again. Honestly.
Which is EXACTLY what the Bush admin says about their use of illegal wiretaps. They are only doing this for our own good.
Finally, you can ignore everything else in the movie but when the climactic fight between the Joker and the Batman ensues, Batman gets beaten up by 2 dogs (the Joker’s secret antibatweapon was 3 Rottweilers?). Even though Batman knew full well that he had been bitten earlier in the film. How pathetic. Even Adam West would have had the foresight to bring Bat Dog Spray or something.
Which, of course, makes the Christian Bale/Chris Nolan Batman the WORST Batman ever.
I did like the fact that Batman was too stupid to figure out that the Joker was playing him when he gave him the choice between Dent and Rachel though. Nice to know that if he had made the correct choice (rescue Dent) that he would have saved the person he wanted to save. Whether this makes Batman a “flawed” hero or just a friggin’ idiot depends on your level of fanboiness.
These are just some of the glaring flaws. There are plenty more that can be presented from a plot point/morality basis/cinemtographic/artistic sensibility if you wish.
And all this time, I thought the battleship scenario was Prisoner’s Dilemma.