Knight is Darkest before the Dawn

It took me a few weeks, but I finally saw The Dark Knight, the Batman blockbuster that’s brought in nearly $450 million USD since its release.

I’m not a big comicbook guy (my collection is less than 20 books, all of them ungraded cheapies, which is peanuts by most collectors’ standards), so I can’t tell you which comic the movie was based on or what was left out, added, etc., but it is one kick-ass movie. The Dark Knight transcends the action and superhero genres—it is a dark, gritty tale with the lead character leading a double life, all the while grappling with the slippery moral slope of a vigilante, officially wanted by police, who fights violent crime with violence.

This Batman is as far from the campy Adam West Batman as you can get.

I liked the first Batman movie when it came out as it was the best superhero movie I’d seen up until that point. Michael Keaton’s portrayal of Batman and a sleepy-eyed, distracted Bruce Wayne were well done. But the subsequent Batman series of movies, increasingly camp and more about spectacle than the story of a disturbed man, treated the world of comicbooks as a childish fantasy. The movies were safe, touching on the troubled psyche of Bruce Wayne, but the filmmakers kept their hands clean.

This new Batman movie not only touches on the troubled psyche, it envelopes itself in it. Violence is not camped up—the cause and effect of explosions, blades, and bullets is shown, the victims display the shock and grief those things create in the real world.

Much attention has been paid to Heath Ledger’s Joker, his final performance before his drug overdose. Ledger’s Joker is breathtakingly evil, profane and funny, and one of the best portrayals of a sociopath I’ve seen. He enjoys mayhem for its own sake, so he not only messes with Batman and the Gotham Police, he takes on organized crime, all for the fun of it. Ledger’s Joker is a perfect counterpoint to Bales’s Batman—each is compelled to do what they do for reasons they may not understand (but Bruce Wayne is more self-aware and troubled by the path he has chosen).

The story of Dark Knight is very well done. For a 152-minute movie, there are no gaps or moments where I fell out of the story or got impatient for a scene to finish. And the plot twists were worthy of a first-rate mystery story, with the Joker’s schemes subtle enough that they weren’t obvious like most Hollywood on-screen schemes are. The audience realized the tricks at the same time as the characters, not minutes (or even hours) before. The screenwriters treated their audience’s intelligence with respect and assumed the average viewer would be intelligent enough to understand everything as it happened.

The pacing of the movie is relentless and, coupled with the performances and the story, makes for a very good 152 minutes.

After seeing the movie, I realized that the Batman franchise has updated itself to our times just as the James Bond franchise has done. In our post-9/11 world, violence and disasters have become real, random, and heartbreaking. Dark Knight, like Casino Royale did, reinvents a sometimes cartoonish character for today’s audience.

Blockbuster Season, 2008

When I was a kid, I worked for Dickie Dee Ice Cream, pedaling one of those white ice cream carts around the south end of Oshawa, where I was more the neighbourhood mobile nutrition centre than the floating dessert vendor. My favourite product was the grape Blockbuster, one of three flavours of a Creamsicle™-type ice cream bar.
But say the word blockbuster to me now, and I tend to think of the big popcorn movies that come out in the summer, what the industry types called the tent-pole movies (not sure if they still do or not).
This year, Iron Man led off the pack, opening at the beginning of May and doing quite well. Let’s hope that the inevitable sequel(s) maintain the same quality as this one.
The next big movie was the Narnia sequel, which I haven’t seen. The trailers for Narnia 2 give me the impression that the movie is much of the same as the first one, so I’ll probably skip it. It’s nice to see fantasy epics returning to the big screen in the wake of the LOTR trilogy, but the first one felt like a Harry Potter retread rather than a source of Rowlings’s scribbles.
This past weekend, I saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (hereafter shortened to Indy 4). This movie was as entertaining as Iron Man was, and it’s a worthy addition to the franchise. I went in hoping it would be better than Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and at least as good as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Fortunately, there’s no Jar-Jar Binks to be seen. Dr. Jones fist-fights his way on and off trucks, sneaks into booby-trapped ruins, and still manages to teach archeology to classes filled with enamored young women. The movie doesn’t drag, with godless Russian commies taking the place of the Nazis of the earlier films, and the movie is kind-hearted in its treatment of the characters in the world of the 1950’s. It’s not a documentary, so the plot holes are pretty easy to ignore—it’s pure, escapist fun intended to allow you to put the world aside for 120 minutes of adventure, which is how I define the summer popcorn movies.
There are a few other movies I am looking forward to seeing this summer.
Three high-profile superhero movies promise to make comic-con crowds dress up as more than just Imperial storm troopers this summer. The new Batman movie, featuring the late Heath Ledger, is coming out, as is a sequel to the excellent Hellboy movie.
I’ve only seen one trailer for The Incredible Hulk, so I haven’t decided whether it’s something to see (the 60’s TV cartoon is still the best Hulk experience, hands down, with a rockin’ theme song).
Tropic Thunder looks like fun: Ben Stiller, Jack Black, and Robert Downey Jr. playing war-film actors stuck in a real war. With a supporting cast that includes Steve Coogan and Nick Nolte, this should be a lot of fun. Downey plays a white actor who dons blackface to get a role, which has generated some controversy, but I’m sure it’s more a source of comedic gold than something racist. I saw posters at the theatre this weekend, and Downey’s makeup cracks me up. I hope the movie’s as funny as that poster….
There’s an Adam Sandler movie coming out—to come out in prime-time, it must be pretty good by Sandlerian standards. He plays an Israeli agent who just wants to style hair in New York. So… he’s a martial arts expert with a funny accent. You Don’t Mess with The Zohan may be my guilty pleasure this summer. Or it may be two hours wasted.
One controversial comedy is on its way: Mike Myers’s The Love Guru. Hindu organizations are up in arms over this movie’s portrayal of their religion, which will undoubtedly drive ticket sales up for the first weekend. The first trailer was the most unfunny thing I’ve seen in a long time, to the point that I was shocked they would put it out in the first place. The second trailer was actually funny, so I’ll probably end up seeing this one. Guru is a throwback to the politically-incorrect movies of Peter Sellers, such as The Party or The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu, where he impersonated people of other races. Today, that type of racial comedy is somewhat risky, with the unwritten rule being that you have to be from the ethnic group being mocked in order to mock a group of people. Still, in a world where Larry the Cable Guy’s white-trash, homophobic, xenophobic semi-routines have propelled him into making a series of what could be called next generation Pauly Shore movies, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised to see a white guy from Scarborough play a South Asian man. Still, the true test of a comedy is whether it’s funny or not. I have my doubts.
I may actually go to the theatre to see a Uwe Boll movie for the first time ever. Postal is getting decent reviews from the blogosphere, and it features the mighty Dave Foley, one of my favourite comic actors.
Surprisingly in the testosterone-soaked world of the blockbuster, the movie generating the most mainstream press these days is a chick-flick, Sex in the City, starring the ubiquitous Sarah Jessica Parker. Not my cup of tea since I don’t collect shoes or purses, but at least I have an excuse to ignore infotainment shows for the next few months….