That was, easily, the best and most, excuse my french, fucked up superhero movie I have ever seen. I’d guess that I’m not alone on that assessment, as The Dark Knight did over $150 million over the weekend and $67 million on opening night (or opening Knight, if you’re into puns). With a stacked cast, a director well-acquainted with creating chaos and trickery and a long-revered superhero franchise, this was the perfect storm for true Batman fans. Dare I say, Nolan’s The Dark Knight makes Tim Burton’s Batman look archaic and silly. It ups the ante for superhero movies from now on.
I’ll hold back from going into a full-length, in-depth review of the movie in and of itself, partially because I know I’ll leak some spoiler or another and partially because we have folks here at Sod that do that kind of thing already. I’m willing to bet that they’d take a large amount of umbrage with me for treading all over their territory. But there are a couple of things that I wanted to touch on.
The same goes for Ledger’s take on the Joker stacking up against Cap’n Jack’s take back in 1989. There simply is no comparison. They’re two completely different creatures. It’s probably easiest to say that they are indicative of the eras in which they occurred. Nicholson’s Joker is very late-80′s, extravagant, pompous and self-assured. Ledger’s Joker is much more violent, anarchic and less of, well, a joker. He makes Nicholson’s Joker look like a campy buffoon. Not that he doesn’t have an underlying sense of mirth in what he does, it’s just much more dark and sinister. He wants to see the world burn, not take it over. It isn’t necessarily about him as much as it’s about teaching us all a lesson.
At this point in our history, we could use a good lesson.
Every time that The Joker stepped onto the screen, my body involuntarily tensed up. Watching Ledger’s performance was like watching a coiled snake. I honestly had no idea what he was going to do next. His actions made little to no sense against the actions of those around him and in a movie, where the story arc is so often formulaic and sensible, this is completely unnerving, but also one hell of a ride. Even when he was doing some of the most heinous things, I found myself smiling. I was enjoying the acts of a crazy man. That’s quite a predicament to find yourself in, even if it is just a movie.
The performances, across the board, are stunning. Maggie Gyllenhaal and Christian Bale were the two weakest links among the major players, which is saying quite a lot, especially since neither of them put in a poor performance. It’s just that the stellar performances by Gary Oldman (Gordon), Michael Caine (Alfred), Morgan Freeman (Fox), Aaron Eckhart (Dent) and, of course, Heath Ledger (you know who) are so impressive. To have this great of a cast on a summer blockbuster is wonderful.
One thing that did bother me about this film is the rating. I think that the MPAA’s rating system is broken. The way that films are rated often seems arbitrary and the full scope of the film isn’t considered when the decision is made to slap it with a “G” or a “R.” The Dark Knight garnered a PG-13 rating. There is no real gruesome violence on-screen and hardly any cursing. In fact, I’ve already swore more in this review than it does in the entire movie. Wait…shit, cock, balls. There, now I’ve swore more than the entire movie. I guess this review might get a PG-13, as well.
In making up the rating for The Dark Knight, it seems like the MPAA took the lack of swearing, nudity and gruesome violence to mean that it wasn’t worthy of an “R” rating. I fundamentally disagree. The subject matter, situations and characters’ actions are extremely troubling and traumatising. I’m not usually one to advocate for a harsher rating for any film. I just think that the MPAA’s guidelines are misguided. There should be less of a focus on language and sexuality (two things that are going to be a part of everyone’s life, no matter the age) and more of a focus on the extreme violence and myriad of maniacal machinations. I think that we can all agree that evil actions have much more consequence in the real world than do evil words.
