To try and top the former, I suppose.
In terms of sequels, TDK outdoes the BB, not just in terms of acting, story, scope, but also in box office revenues.
Warner will definitely try for a third movie, with hopefully the same cast from the first two films, as well as the director.
Personally, without Nolan and Bale, I can’t see a third film being able to top TDK.

You have to admit, that the Box Office sales, is downright impressive. Over 423 mil. with the possibility of sinking the Titanic at 601 mil.

I, however, despite all it’s flaws, liked the film.

So um…. Mr. Burgas, you hated the movie ?
Liked it ?
I see the fkawsm vut still loved it

What, you were trying to be LAST?
————-
I think the theme of the movie is how thin the line is between good and evil, and how easy it might be to make one cross the line.

2 cops go bad, helping Joker. 1 good cop decides to cross to the evil side and pummel Joker while Joker is captive. Gordon perpetuates a lie to the public (twice!), and to his family. Batman crosses the line several times, eventually crossing back to good. Lucius Fox participates in illegal activities. Alfred actually betrays Rachel’s trust by burning her letter. The only pure main character seems to be Dawes, but she knows the secret of Batman and keeps quiet about it. Bad guy Maroni finally helps by giving a lead to try to stop Joker. The “Good” people on one barge vote to destroy the other barge. The “Evil” people (in the person of the inmate) do good by throwing the detonator out the window.

Good versus Evil. A thin line separates two ideas, a thin line that is easy to cross.

So, what do you think about various suggestions that Reese is the Riddler? In case you missed it, he’s smart, knows Batman’s secret, and Mr. Reese (Mysteries) is a good stand in for E. Nigma.

Joyless? Hardly. A movie in which the Joker dresses up as a nurse can’t be joyless.

The Hong Kong bit pointless? Not really– it shows us a Batman in control, a Batman that’s become an unstoppable force (or immovable object– the Joker’s probably the unstoppable force). He’s the uber-Bats from the end of Begins. Joker comes in, though, and wrests the control from Batman, completely destroying his world. It’s there for contrast.

The Joker, yes, is the standout character here– thanks to Ledger’s ludicrously amazing performance, of course, but also because of the writing. He’s a force of nature, the “shark in Jaws,” as Nolan put it, an absolute. We don’t know who or why he is, we just know he shows up and breaks things, and everyone else in the movie is forced to react to him and his shenanigans. We don’t know if he’s truly a master strategist or if he’s just making it up as he goes along. We don’t know if the destruction of Harvey was his overall plan, or just a contingency, or Plan Q after A-P failed. We do know that he forces every other character to make hard choices, and some of them don’t live up to their own ideals.

Batman faces many dilemmas, but he remains Batman at the end. Gordon is probably the most heroic of all the characters, but even he deceives his own family pretty severely. Harvey is the tragic, Shakespearian character, who succumbs to fate after so many years of making his own luck (I loved the development of his coin in this film). Rachel’s the innocent victim, the woman in the refrigerator (I’m actually surprised there wasn’t a stronger reaction about that). The Joker sort of wins– he breaks Harvey, and he breaks Batman, if only for a little while– but he also loses– the people of Gotham don’t succumb to his games, and Batman is scarier to the baddies than ever before.

But I’m one of those guys who finds the movie unquestionably brilliant. My biggest gripe is that they used CGI for Two-Face, rather than prosthetics– which isn’t really a big gripe at all.

Just wanted to drop a note in here to say, we’re not all in agreement that Dark Knight was a conservative movie. In Permanent Damage, Stephen Grant quoted a letter from his colleague Adi Tantimedh that shows why it isn’t. Grant Morrison certainly doesn’t think it was conservative or he wouldn’t be praising it every chance he gets. And I didn’t feel like it was conservative at all.

I think it’s a movie that poses a lot of questions. Far more questions than most super-hero movies pose, and I don’t think it poses them with any right answer in mind. It doesn’t have a moral, a solution, a straightforward message – it simply presents its ideas quite dramatically in a way that leaves it up to the audience to decide what to make of them. Very much unlike the Matrix, for example, and much more like Fight Club.

Sure, Gordon certainly frames Batman as a hero to his son at the end, but all the “heroes” in the story, those would enforce order, to tend to make pretty morally ambiguous choices throughout the movie and it often doesn’t work out very well for them, or for the people they’re trying to protect.

Mmm. It’s late, so I’m actually just gonna post an excerpt of Tantimedh’s comments, re-posted from Permanent Damage:

“Nolan has pretty much raised the bar on the genre. I can’t stop thinking about this movie, which is pretty rare for a mainstream Hollywood movie, and I’ve been checking out some of the negative reactions from snootier critics, many of whom purport to be on the liberal side.

Many of them have started accusing it of being a Bush apologia, since they think the movie endorses Batman’s vigilantism and surveillance of ordinary people. In fact, the movie keeps pointing out that Batman’s actions are illegal and downright unethical.

The attempts to draw a Bush parallel are missing the bigger metaphor:

Batman is America in the 21st century – well-intentioned, but ethically compromised, stuck with trying to pick the lesser evil from bad moral and ethical choices, doomed to carry on down an increasingly futile and destructive path, living on borrowed time, and hopelessly lost.

Maybe that’s why audience are raving it up. It’s more than just the action and set pieces and Ledger’s acting. I think they sense what it says is true, even if they might not want to acknowledge it out loud. The message has been translated into a visceral emotional experience that bypasses the intellect, and the critics that don’t like it are struggling to use their intellect to bring their conflicted emotional reactions under some kind of control.”

The Hong Kong scene also enforces another theme in the movie: the Mythology of the Batman. Think about the end of that sequence from one of the police officers’ point of view.

You have this prominent businessman, who escaped the authorities in Gotham-and the United States in general-only to be grabbed by this Mythological Demon from America (who, is literally surrounded in flames) and swallowed into the darkness. From there we find that NO ONE can escape the Batman. You do the crime in Gotham, you do the time. It’s an extremely important point, and everyone keeps seeming to miss it.

One minor shortcoming that I haven’t seem anyone pointing when comparing The Dark Knight to Batman Begins is the setting.

After watching the Dark Knight, I went back and rewatched Batman Begins to see how the two movies held up together I noticed one minor flaw that really annoyed me.

I am a fan of the settings being a character by itself. When you watch BB, the city is definitely Gotham. It’s dark, gothic and menacing. It’s a city with personality, with character. It becomes a character as important to the story as any of the supporting characters. When you watch TDK, it’s just Chicago branded as Gotham.

It’s not a major flaw by any means but still….

The political thing kinda bothers me I guess… I don’t think the movie’s universe was set up to be politically conservative, I think it was set up to allow an entertaining superhero story to be told. And Batman performing a citizen’s arrest and reading the Joker his rights isn’t nearly as satisfying as Batman punching him in the face… and in a world where the villain is as unquestionably and irredeemably evil as the Joker, the liberal’s choices are dangerously naive.

And heck, the cell phone thing is easily read as Patriot Act-style surveillance I guess, but the way it’s handled can be read, to me, as an indictment of the Patriot Act as much as anything. As you said, the Joker’s without motive, so stopping him stops the threat, but terrorists have motives and have followers who share their motives. When the Joker’s stopped, Lucius Fox turns the surveillance off. When Osama bin Laden is stopped, we turn off the Patriot Act right? No, because others will replace him and the threat continues. The idea that someone will shut off the Patriot Act when the threat is over is as dangerously naive in our world as giving civil liberties to the Joker in Batman’s.

That’s almost certainly me projecting my politics onto the movie, but it’s such a fantasy world that 1:1 political mappings just don’t make sense to me.

I’m with Stefan and Adi. I’m not convinced the movie is conservative at all, and I think the key is to stop asking “Does Batman win or does the Joker win?” and ask instead “Can anyone win?” Conservatism, by default, is about looking for easy answers; hence, it’s overt nostalgia for a fantasy past.

TDK doesn’t present any easy answers. Even if we accept the premise that Batman’s invasion of privacy is acceptable, it’s only acceptable because he’s Batman, because he has no ulterior motive, no desires (thus, the whole point of the relationship with Rachel is that his desire for “justice” will always overrule his basic sexual desire. Therefore, we can trust him to be incorruptible). You would have to want it really, really bad to compare him to anyone in politics.

When I point out the conservative nature of the movie, I’m not necessarily in agreement that it’s conservative from a political point of view, as I noted. I think superheroes in general are conservative, and the God of All Comics loving this movie doesn’t dissuade me. I think that Nolan, as a good Hollywood liberal (and I have no idea what his political leanings are; I’m just stereotyping, if you’ll indulge me), gives Batman and the others an “out,” if you will, by having Lucius destroy the technology that allows the “wire-tapping.” This is part of my belief that comic book writers (and I know Nolan isn’t a comic book writer, but he’s dealing with the genre, so I’ll lump him in with them) love dictatorships, as long as they’re “benevolent,” because then true upholders of the law could get things done.

I do like how it raises more questions than it answers, but the reason I don’t think it’s great art is because it raises them so obviously. Still, I loved watching it (for the most part; the arguments above about the Hong Kong sequence still don’t persuade me, although I understand the point) and thought the last half, when it really took off (from the Joker’s chase of Harvey and his subsequent capture), was breathtaking.

I don’t think the film is neccessarily a pro-Bush metaphor, but I think you could excuse anyone who did think that. The film gives us: 1) a successful example of extroadinary rendition and 2) Lucius and Batman deciding that it is okay curtail the citizens’ right to privacy because the Joker is exceptionally dangerous.

On the other hand, the numerous examples of torturing suspects for information never produces anything untainted or useful – maybe, Batman will try water boarding in the sequel.

I’m surprised that Greg rejects parallels between the Joker and terrorism. Besides the fact that the Joker uses many methods that we would associated with terrorism – video-taped executions, bombs, issuing demands to the media, etc. – but he also has a clear motive. His agenda – to make the world as violent and insane as himself – may be fantastical and unachieveable, but frankly, it is no more fantastical or unachieveable than Osama Bin Laden’s plans.

I’d be very surprised if Nolan made another Bat-sequel. I don’t really see how the story could progress. The only other suitable member of Batman’s rogues gallery would be Hugo Strange, and I can’t see Warner Bros. okaying a 100 million budget on him. So the next film will probably star the Penguin and Catwoman – maybe even Robin – and if we are lucky Joel Schmacher won’t be directing.

When Ledger’s Joker says how the underlying virtue in his behavior is to turn the schemers’ plans on themselves — revealing the underlying hypocrisy sheltered by the veneer of civilized society — that actually seems perfectly valid logically and morally. In the Ledger portrayal, he has that much in common with Codename V, and he’s actually providing a rational virtue of predatory sociopathy.

Where he differs from V — and where predatory sociopathy is morally unjustified — is that the Joker equates discretionary authority with freedom. If he can take control of the ball, then he can dictate the rules. If V equated discretionary authority with the freedom he championed, he would have felt no need to arrange his own death.

YAY, Nick Lockhead! Finally there’s someone besides me who’s bothered by the fact that Gotham City is no longer a character! Here are more of my quibbles:

1. The movie doesn’t feel like it ends and therefore feels unsatisfying. Joker = still alive and not incarcerated/receiving treatment or whatever. Harvey = still alive and not incarcerated (anyone who thinks he was dead at the end of the movie just WANTS to think he was dead because his death was never emphasized in any way shape or form). Scarecrow = still alive and not incarcerated. And that doesn’t even include Ra’s whom all Batman fans know is still alive and not incarcerated despite the previous movie actually feeling like it ended.

2. Every scene feels as equally as important as every other scene without any increase in stakes. This is probably just me but that’s the way it felt to me. I knew Rachel was going to “die” as soon as she was dating Harvey at the beginning of the movie. So I knew the double hostage scene was just to create Two-Face and to get rid of Gyllenhaal who had NO chemistry with Bale. So even though that scene was supposed to be more important it wasn’t.

3. No directorial emphasis on key events. I’ll give you Gordon’s “death” (which also wasn’t emphasized) but what about the Commissioner’s death scene (drinking acid I guess? at least there’s a funeral), Rachel Dawes “death” (she’s an important character from 2 movies yet there’s no dying in the arms of Batman, no dead body and no funeral), Batman crashing his bike dealio when confronting the Joker (he just kinda falls off and Gordon appears for no reason), and Harvey’s “death”.

4. Batman no longer theatrical and scary and in the shadows.

And the Mike Yanagita scene is more important to Fargo than the Hong Kong scene is to The Dark Knight. Just cut to the Asian guy on the police steps, save all your Hong Kong money and turn Gotham City back into a character.

I could actually name a few more things that have relatively little to do with this post but no one cares and I’m tired of being negative about a movie I had a generally fun time watching (despite appearances to the contrary).

I agree that to label Dark Knight conservative or liberal is overly simplistic. I don’t think Nolan adopted an obvious political viewpoint. The conservative tropes of the movie were often balanced by liberal ideals.

As pointed out by Bernard, Batman’s use of torture never helps (not to suggest conservatives automatically support torture, just the neo-cons currently running the federal government). Additionally, he initiates a wire-tapping program that could cost him his closest ally. He’s secretive, and the Joker uses that against him. I’m sure the Dent cover-up will come back to bite him. He is ready to surrender his individual role so members of the government can replace him. He doesn’t stop the Joker by force, as the citizens of Gotham make the ultimate choice to defeat terror through peaceful means. Hell, even criminals are shown as not being all bad.

I thought the Joker failed to drive Gotham into total chaos, but he undermined every force for law and order, blew up hospitals, destroyed Gotham’s savior (who *must* be insane if he decides to kill people or not based on a coin flip!), threw the city into a panic, killed a lot of innocents, brought organized crime back from the brink (only to destroy it again), and almost had cops kill innocents and ferry-loads of people kill each other. He may not be a terrorist with a political goal, but he definitely had his cause (chaos, driving moral people into immorality).

Also, “…it’s not as great as people think it is?” Were we people, I don’t know, duped into liking this movie?

Sorry to disappoint, but the Joker and Scarecrow are in prison and Harvey’s dead. Just because we don’t see the bars slam and the gravediggers dig doesn’t mean otherwise. I imagine most people would disagree with you about the stakes not rising, too. I felt they sure as hell did. This is one of the few films, along with, oh, Serenity, that I thought “Shit, anything could happen now” whilst watching it.

Mike: Yes, you were duped! DUPED!!!!

I don’t think anyone was duped, and I don’t have any problem with anyone liking the movie. Hell, I liked it. But I don’t think it’s the greatest movie ever made (which IMDb users think), mainly because it’s so blunt. But that’s just me.

Bernard: The Joker may use the methods of modern terrorists, but, as I pointed out, “spreading chaos” is kind of a childish motive. The Joker is, after all, a child with more access to weapons, and therefore simply not as interesting as V, for instance.

He may not be a terrorist with a political goal, but he definitely had his cause (chaos, driving moral people into immorality).

And he considered himself of kind with Batman – so if he was a terrorist and Batman is the government, then the terrorist considers Batman to be a terrorist as well – and with some of Batmans actions, may well be right.

Personally though, I don’t think they were making that analogy.

My big question is, if Batman got on the smugglers plane to go to Hong Kong as Bruce Wayne, and got back on as Batman, don’t a group of criminals now know that Bruce Wayne is Batman?
Or is smuggling okay if you do it into a communist country?
Because if so, that’s a little Rambo 3 for more liking. (That’s the one where Rambo fights alongside Osama, and the film is dedicated to ‘The gallant people of Afghanistan’).

T. probably wishes that, instead of telling the story of a harrowing and enigmatic dream that illuminates the grand theme of the movie, Tommy Lee Jones had just told a knock-knock joke at the end of No Country For Old Men

I’m SOOO glad you made this point, because it brings up what I think is the main problem with modern comic fans. You say that because I felt this movie was joyless and pretentious, I must have had a problem with the tone and subject matter of No Country for Old Men. Here’s the thing: No Country for Old Men is not based on a superhero comic about a millionaire (now billionaire thanks to inflation over the past few decades) that trained himself to be the world’s smartest ninja, put on a bat costume and then built himself a tank sedan so that he can fight criminal clowns and wackos in costumes. I mean, I wouldn’t like Popeye being used for an ultraserious, joyless and pretentious study in gender relations and cheating, but that doesn’t mean I dislike a movie like Indecent Proposal. It just means that I think I don’t want a Popeye movie like that.

Comic fans have grown older and have been unable to let superhero fandom go. I think on some level this brings them a certain amount of shame. To deal with this and justify this, they have to recreate superheroes as something WAY deeper than they actually are. So now we have people (and I’m not singling you out Greg, other people online have used the exact same example as you) equating No Country for Old Men to Dark Knight, and saying that I don’t appreciate deep, psychological disturbing ultraserious movies because I hate Dark Knight. And that’s not the case. I just haven’t fooled myself into believing that Batman is best suited to support such heavy themes. What is the point of making a “realistic” movie about a man who is a billionaire but goes out at night to secretly wage a one man war on crime with ninja skills, cool toys and a Bat costume to scare crooks while driving around in a giant minitank? Such a premise is INHERENTLY FANTASTIC AND RIDICULOUS AND WILL NEVER BE REALISTIC, so just have fun with it. And the more serious and totally straight and down to earth you try to play it while sucking out all the fantastic and joyfully ridiculous suspensions of disbelief that make the comics fun for decades, you have to wonder what’s the point?

I’m making a movie about superheroes, but take away any of the larger to life aspects. And make the fighting boring. Don’t have him jump too high. That;s not realistic. And he can’t just “have” anything, even an outfit change, without an indepth explanation and a scene with Morgan Freeman explaining where he got it because we have to show his realistically acquiring it. Explain EVERYTHING to death. Oh and Joker can’t have white skin, it’s got to be face paint, because having your actual skin be chalk white is not realistic. One more area to suck out all fantasy. Oh and no fancy city sets, shoot on location in Chicago because gothic, fictional art deco cities aren’t realistic. Now here’s a big finale where our hero, who is not personally savvy enough to even alter his own costume without Freeman’s help, somehow singlehandedly sets up an outrageous super-seeing-eye satellite network that monitors the whole city at once through his Bat-helmet lenses before chasing down a guy with a wonderfully symetrically burned face that has left his eyeball somehow perfectly intact and has miraculously remained totally uninfected? What the fuck?

This is the problem with trying to make inherently ridiculous premises incredibly realistic, you end up holding it to a standard that it can’t possibly maintain. In Batman’s world, things will always be unrealistic and ridiculous at some point. A guy walking around with a half-mulitalted face and suit with a coin to judge fates is always going to be fantastic and unrealistic. A man dressing up as a Bat will be too. So why not just embrace it? There’s no shame in admitting that it’s silly, the source material is not that deep but it’s loads of fun like junk food, and just have some fucking FUN with it? If I want to see a movie with themes like No Country for Old Men, I’ll watch a movie that’s set in a world like No Country for Old Men. Why do I want to go see a movie based on a 4-color comic about a kung fu billionaire superhero that dresses like a cool Batmonster and drives around town kicking ass in a bombastic way and swinging on ropes and be given No Country for Old Men except with costumes? Why bother even making it about Batman then?

And modern comic writers and people like Nolan have similar problems as modern fans. The writers either want to write superhero comics because they are still obsessed with them as adult fans, but are ashamed of this so feel the urge to turn them into these grand shakespearean epics or intense deconstructionist character studies in order to justify writing them as adults. Nolan, to me, is ashamed to be doing a superhero movie, unlike Sam Raimi who gave Spider-Man 2 adult themes and situations, but overall was happy to also embrace some of the ridiculous and fun all-ages aspects of superhero conventions.

Also, I think it’s crazy that I can see other mainstream action movies not have these hangups and HAPPILY embrace the over-the-top and fun aesthetic contributions of superhero comics and deliver great blockbuster entertainment with them, but movies about actual superheroes are trying their best to distance themselves from these same aesthetics out of some apologist shame and need to pretend they’re so deep. I mean look at the great fight scenes in Kill Bill and the bright vibrant colors and trash talking and creative use of space in battles, complete with awesome villain monologues and people with ridiculous names like Gogo Yubari, Black Mamba and the Crazy 88′s. Imagine how cool a Batman movie would be with a Crazy88 style over-the-top fight scene instead of a poorly lit, badly shot Nolan fight scene that just shows quick cuts of elbows, rips and arm locks that we’re supposed to believe is better because it’s so damn boring (and therefore “realistic,” which apparently should be my biggest demand when watching a movie about a batman fighting evil clowns)? Or look at the over the top theatrics of Die Hard 4, which was also way more of a Batman movie than Nolan’s pop psychology joyless snoozer. MacClain fighting the parkour guy was awesome, as well as the single shot scene of the parkour guy jumping through windows and from building to building. And what about the action from the first two matrix movies. It’s like everyone has realized superhero comic books are cool except for Christopher Nolan, the guy actually making a movie about a superhero comic.

I’m going to add one more thing. Comic fans love proclaiming that this movie, in being so “realistic,” is somehow the most true to the dark, psychologically intense world of Batman comics. They say this because (a) they want to convince themselves that Batman comics really are this realistic and intense and (b) they want to convince others that what they read is so realistic and intense so that they can feel less embarassment at reading them. The reason they overrate this movie so much is because so much personal validation is tied into this movie for them. So the more realistic the movies are, the more comic fans will claim to anyone who will listen that they just witness a movie that is exactly like the books they’ve been mocked for reading for decades. But if this realistic tone is really so true to the comics as the fans say, then let’s run down everything in the Batman mythos and see if they can work in the sequel in this new “realistic” tone Nolan set up: Mr. Freeze? No. Killer Croc? No. Robin? Doubtful. Blockbuster? Maybe if they just did him as a big dude. Poison Ivy? DOubtful, unless you seriously tone down her abilities and take away her powers? Bane? Maybe. Dr. Phosphorus? No. Can you ever have other superheroes guest star? Definitely not. So if it creates a world where so much of Batman’s world from the comics, including Robin, won’t work at all or at least without being severely altered, how exactly is it true to Batman’s comic world?

It’s like everyone has realized superhero comic books are cool except for Christopher Nolan, the guy actually making a movie about a superhero comic.

Perhaps, but I found Dark Knight to be more interesting and enjoyable than Kill Bill, Die Hard 4 and The Matrix.
They may have had their moments, but all in some places went too far and destroyed any feeling of reality – even their own.
That’s why people are responding to Dark Knight – it may be about Batman, but it feels real, it isn’t but it’s in a universe that feels real, even it is only in and of itself.
You say by explaining things they take away from the fun, but all I know is, I shouldn’t have felt that edge of my seat in a movie about a man dressed as a bat, hunting down a man with half a face.

All I know is when they last made a movie with Two-Face, it sure as shit wasn’t this enjoyable – or well received.

So if it creates a world where so much of Batman’s world from the comics, including Robin, won’t work at all or at least without being severely altered, how exactly is it true to Batman’s comic world?

How was Year One?
How was Killing Joke?
How was Dark Knight Returns?
How was Arkham Asylum?

None of them were – DKR had other superheroes, but it distorted them to fit it’s world – and yet they are four of the most popular Batman stories ever told.
You’d be silly to go against these works, as it’s been proven that these are works that people like.
You may not like them, and that’s cool, but you have to admit that a lot of other people do.
And the Nolan movies have been a continuation of what people have shown they really like about Batman.

“Such a premise is INHERENTLY FANTASTIC AND RIDICULOUS AND WILL NEVER BE REALISTIC”

Was I the only one who found Batman’s costume rather jarring. Whenever he appeared, the other actors tried to convey a sense of awe, but there is no getting around the fact that they are looking at a man in a rubber suit. Spiderman’s costume also looks rather stupid when placed in a real-world situation, but Peter Parker is a geeky kid, so it follows that he would have a geeky costume.

Also agree with Da Fug, that ending was rather anti-climatic. Stakes-wise, the final battle between the Joker and Batman didn’t seem much different from their first battle.

I was surprised how low-key Rachel’s death was, but that might be explained by her return in the next film.

Finally, there must be two films called ‘No Country for Old Men’, the one that won loads of Oscars and is being used in this post as a by-word for sophisticated film-making and the one I saw. The film I saw was a banal remake of the Terminator, only with a less realistic villain and Tommy Lee Jones mooching about in the background, droning on about the ‘good old days’. It is not half the film, the Dark Knight is.

Just re-read my posts. Let me clarify. Yes, it probably has a right-wing subtext and the hero looks sort of stupid, but it is still one of the best films I’ve seen all year, and the best blockbuster since I don’t know when.

Wow. Personally, I liked it a fun, summer, blcokbuster type of movie. I agree with T., much of the attempts to make it ‘realistic’ didn’t work for me either, but as I said, it’s still an enjoyable movie to watch. As for the debate about whether or not this movie endorses conservative values, the Bush Administration, etc…hasn’t Batman always been a right-of-center character anyway?

The thing is, Nolan’s movies don’t need Robin, or Killer Croc, or Blockbuster or anything else from the comics, T. It’s not a comic book and I don’t think it pretends to be. Its storyline deviates from the text it adapts and goes off on its own more than any other well-written, successful comics movie that’s been done. Okay, yeah, I hear what you’re saying, the missionary comics fan wants to say “see, see how cool Batman is” to all his friends who saw the movie, and when they come to the comics they’re gonna find Zurr-En-Arr, or what have you, and it’s a completely different experience. Sure. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it being a completely different experience. Think about how many different visions of Batman we’ve seen in the comics. I actually don’t think it would be possible, even remotely possible, to make a movie that included EVERY ASPECT of the Batman storyworld, because the Batman storyworld is too big. It wouldn’t even be possible to make a comic book story that included every aspect of the Batman universe (although Morrison may yet prove me wrong) — that’s why there are so many stories! I feel like the best Batman stories are those which are in total integrity with the elements they DO choose, and I think the Dark Knight did that better than any other Batman movie has done. After Nolan’s done — and I won’t be surprised if this is the last one — then somebody else can give us different Batman movies a few years down the road and they may well be over the top and overtly superhero-style, and if they are, I’ll love it. But I think Nolan perfectly captured the Year One-style Batman, the Dark Knight-style Batman. It’s not the only Batman but it’s an essential one, and I’m so glad I get to see it on the big screen.

A bit more…

It strikes me that Batman the evolution The Dark Knight brings to comics is an ironic one, because in a way it moves in the opposite direction from the kinds of things most of us comic fans want to see in our comic book movies — namely, want to see our comics on the big screen. We want faithful adaptations. I was thrilled when the first X-Men movies came out and it actually used the Cerebro scene from Morrison’s first X-Men issue, and it mentioned Senator Kelly by name, and it had all those little Easter eggs throughout. The X-Men movies weren’t high art by any means but they were well-told stories and they were relatively true to the comics in many ways. Spider-Man was even truer to its original, and in the last 5 years it’s truly remarkable how good Hollywood has become at making comic book movies without changing the plot too much.

Like most comic fans, I like it when the movies show me what the comic books have shown me for years, because it’s nice to see it in motion, and it’s nice to be able to bring my girlfriend, my friends, my little sisters to see those stories that they miss out on when they don’t read comics.

And here comes The Dark Knight. This movie startled me because it had so much in it that I’ve never seen in a Batman comic, and I loved it for it. You’re absolutely right, T., it’s not like the comics. It’s something brand new. And I say it’s time to rejoice, because we’ve evolved. To recap: For decades almost all comic book movies sucked. Then they started to make some really good comic movies, and the best were those that adapted the movies most faitfhully. X-Men was the first big step in that direction, at the beginning of the century, and finally Iron Man was the pinnacle, and now we’re moving into new territory altogether.

What if comic book movies didn’t just adapt the comic stories? What if they gave us brand new stories, true to the mythos but spinning off in their own direction — like the very best comic books? Morrison’s X-Men wasn’t great because it adapted Stan Lee’s X-Men or Chris Claremont’s X-Men. It was great because it took the fundamental ideas of the original and took it to a whole new place. What if comic book movies could do this? I think Spider-Man 2 actually took an early step here. When Spidey became unmasked and the people on the train put it back on for him — that was a moment I looked at and thought “Wow, I’ve never seen that in the comics – but I had, I’d have loved it!” (And I will feel foolish here if somebody points out to me that it was indeed done in the comics and I just missed it, but I don’t think it has, and if so, the feeling will pass) :-)). But the Dark Knight took it to a whole ‘nother level, and I hope the next Marvel or DC adaption takes it even further.

Buuuuuuut, it’s just a movie!!!!!

I note T’s comments are mostly about ‘comic fans’ – as if this is a movie that only appeals to these self-serious fans he is talking about, and the general public deeply wants to see all these crazy movies that he describes – but it falls down when you realize that The Dark Knight is more popular than any of them.
I’m not going to claim that high box office is a sign of quality – it’s often not – but it IS a sign of what the public wants to see. And the fact remains that TDK appears to appeal to the general public much much more than any of those films. In fact, even adjusting for inflation – and just going by tickets sold, it’s going to be the most sucessful superhero movie OF ALL TIME.
How can you say that only ‘comics fans’ want to see this? Clearly, the general public likes this sort of thing…you make it sound like Die Hard 4, and Kill Bill are what ‘normal people’ want, and only ‘comics fans’ like this – but obviously this has much, MUCH more public appeal.
In fact, Kill Bill, just to get off topic, was a horrible piece of film-making. It’s the movie equivalent of one of those comics that only exists so that the writer can talk about how much he loves a comic of the past, so he writes a pastiche of older works. It’s movies reflecting other movies – it’s an empty homage with not substance or style of its own. I don’t mind homage or love letters to the works you enjoyed when you were a kid – but they have to say SOMETHING. ANYTHING. I think that’s why they were box office disappointments – and, quite possibly – why they’re popular. But only with comic fans.

This can be explained easily: it’s a perfect storm of several mass hysterias at once. First there’s the comic fanboy hysteria that feels the more serious the source material is taken, the better the movie automatically is because it helps them achieve personal validation for the fact that they are reading it well into their 20s and 30s. That alone would make big box office, but you’re right that alone wouldn’t raise it to these ridiculous box office numbers. But then we get the “early death of a young genius” syndrome, similar to what happened to Tupac, Biggie, Bruce Lee, James Dean, Brandon Lee, Selena and most recently Kurt Cobain, where a genius that dies young is elevated to mythic proportions, and all their works, and ESPECIALLY what they were working on after they died, gets huge business. Ledger died and became our latest “Kurt Cobain.” Next comes the Brokeback Mountain crowd, those people that will automatically flock to a movie and rave about it if enough reputable critics drone on and on about how oscarworthy it is. These three groups combined to make the most overrated movie of all time a reality (I guess I’m making Cronin’s groupthink argument, sorry).

No, I’m sorry…that doesn’t make any sense. Comic fanboys number in the hundreds of thousands, judging by the sales figures – even the highest selling comic these days would never approach even 500,000. TDK has sold 62 million tickets – so far. At the very best scenario, comic fans make up 1-2% at most of the audience. And that’s being generous.
Next, I understand that the death of a star generates a lot of publicity. But publicity like that will affect up front demand – the opening weekend – NOT repeat viewings, and most of TDK’s gross is generated by that (it made $150m opening weekend, but will easily make ANOTHER $350-$370m on top of that). It’s weekend declines are small for a blockbuster these days, a sure sign of good word-of mouth.
Plus, looking at the box office grosses for other movies blighted by the death of a star, they don’t gross that much. The Crow is perhaps the biggest and most publicized I can remember, and it topped out at $50m.
Lastly, the art-house crowd? Please, that market is tiny, and you know it. Brokeback Mountain was touted as a huge hit by arthouse standards, and it only made $83m. And that IS a huge hit by arthouse standards. Most never get anything close to that amount.
Even accounting for those three factors, it’s still a runaway success. Sometimes the best explanation is the simplest – people like this movie. Why – because it’s what they want to see, and they enjoy it. I could cite the rankings on imdb, and rottentomatoes, but they usually tend to be skewed towards people stuffing the votes and geeks, so I won’t (even though they support my view), so I’ll note cinemascore – a market research firm that gets ordinary viewers to rank movies with a letter grade – and they give it an A – which does tend to reinforce the fact that the general public LOVES this movie.
And I will note you didn’t answer my point about the other movies you cited being quite unpopular, relatively.

Brandon Lee is no Heath Ledger. Remember the following he already had after Brokeback, the previous holder for most overrarted film of all time?. Hence why a tragic young Heath Ledger death added up to so much more Oscar buzz and box office dough than a tragic young Brandon Lee death. The larger the star, the larger the effect of his death.

most overrated movie of all time (TDK), previous most overrated film of all time (brokeback)…i’m sensing a trend here!

there is no way heath ledger dying is the biggest factor of this movie raking in so much dough at the box office. i’m not even sure it comes close to being a factor. if some weirdos did see it purely to honour their newly-found hero in some odd macabre way, well, sucks to be them. the rest of us were enjoying the film.

the viral campaign, the trailers and the teases already sold us all on it weeks, *months* before ledger died.

he could still be happily alive today and i’d still have gone to see it three times because its *fantastic*, not because ledger died.

i’d put more probable cause on fantastic marketing and a good, satisfying product being responsible for huge sales than ledger dying, personally.

Also, let’s take into account Kevin, the sales of the top selling single comic book does not necessarily indicate the total amount of fanboys who would look to Dark Knight for vindication. Sure a top selling comic today may have 100,000 fans, but that doesn’t mean there are only around 100,000 comic fans out there. They just don’t all read the same books. In any given month there may be 100,000 people buying Batman books, but I’m sure there are hundreds of thousands of fans if not over a million that have some sort of emotional investment in Batman even if not currently buying his books this month. A lot of these fans who may not currently like his comic will go out and see his movie. I for example am a huge Spider-Man fan but have not read any of his monthly books in over a decade. But if you make any Spider-Man movie or cartoon I will immediately watch it. Now after takikng to account that the fanboy army is much bigger than the sales of a single top comic title, also take into account the rampant amounts of multiple viewing this movie has gotten from said audience. There are many comic fans who have seen this 2, 4, 8, over 12 times. That adds up to MILLIONS of viewing. Then add to the mix their rampant online buzz they are creating for this movie by voting incessantly on IMDB to make it the top film of all time while voting down Godfather with negative reviews to bring its ranking down…you are severely underestimating their effect. Throw in the Brokeback Mountain female fans (a movie that made huge numbers and was Oprah-approved, thereby making Heath Oprah-approved, giving him an Oprah-level fanbase, one possibly even more cultish than comic fans ) who love Heath and then the people who hop on the death bandwagon and my theory makes a lot of sense. These three camps are huge, and once they combine to create the level of buzz they did, they end up sucking everyone else into the oberhyping mania and it becomes an epidemic.

Anyway, I’ve put up my own review over here with a bunch of my gripes about this movie:
http://therawness.com/why-i-hated-the-dark-knight/

he could still be happily alive today and i’d still have gone to see it three times because its *fantastic*, not because ledger died.

Because you’re in the comic fan camp. Therefore you still prove my theory of the three main camps driving this movies success.

T.
there a few more “camps” to add to this… I know people who were going to see this film primarily because:
A) they love Christian Bale
B) they love Michael Caine
C) they enjoyed “Batman Begins” as “it was the best superhero movie they had seen”

I am the only person in my group of friends who actually reads comics…

Oh and
D) Gary Oldman

E) All of the above…

“he could still be happily alive today and i’d still have gone to see it three times because its *fantastic*, not because ledger died.

Because you’re in the comic fan camp. Therefore you still prove my theory of the three main camps driving this movies success.”

my friend who i saw it with hates comics, and she enjoyed it more than i did. she went the next week with a similar bunch of people who haven’t touched a comic in their lives, and they loved it too. one of them went again yesterday for the second time. they’ve certainly spent a lot more money on it collectively than i have. there’s no way comic fans, death obsessives and a bunch of “female brokeback fans” have turned this into the smash hit box office money machine its become.

the answer is much simpler – its because its a good film and people want to see it more than once.

the “heath ledger dead / brokeback crowd / comic fans” claims remind me of the reasons given by the MPAA as to why tdk is a box office hit. they’ll cite everything from anti piracy measures to cheap gimmicks, but not once will they suggest its because the film happens to be good and tons of people want to see it.

T.: To get back to your original point, why does every superhero movie have to fit your mold? I agree that Spider-Man 3 was a failure largely because of the “darkening” of it, which even Raimi couldn’t take seriously. As others have pointed out, there’s plenty of space in the Batman mythos for stories like this one and for stories that are a bit more goofy. By your argument, “Batman Forever” and “Batman and Robin” would be better movies than this one, because they weren’t afraid to be goofy. If you’re arguing that, you can’t comment here anymore, because you need to check yourself into some kind of hospital and get the treatment you need.

I’ll have to read your review later. I’m sure it will be a hoot.

I’ll agree that Ledger was bigger than Lee, but as I pointed out, publicity may drive the opening weekend, but it doesn’t keep repeat business up. Only good word of mouth can do that.
And my point using the sales of comics – i’m using those figures because you can’t measure how many fans there are that don’t buy comics. There are no figures. All you can do is guess – I think you’re overestimating the appeal of fans, and with no real basis, either. And I was being generous too – my figure of 1% of the audience is USING over a million fans. If we only used the actual sales, it would be far lower than even a single percentage point. Even if you multiply the highest selling comic by a factor of ten, or even fifteen, you will never get more than 1-2% of the total audience.
I’ll illustrate. TDK will probably sell more than 75 million tickets. The average Batman titles sells a little over 100,000 copies. Even if assume the comics fanbase is 20 times larger than the people that actually buy comics. Even if you assume it’s THIRTY times larger, you’ll only ever get a miniscule % of the audience. The comics fanbase is tiny. It doesn’t matter all that much to larger movies.
And normal people don’t look at the IMDB before going to see a movie. They don’t look at internet buzz, for the most part. I’m not even sure that critics matter that much anymore either, looking at the grosses for hyped movies. It’s a rare movie that is a box-office smash AND a critical one.
And again you bring up Brokeback Mountain – a movie with a fairly small gross. And a massivley hyped one – in fact, by bringing up that, you prove my point for me. BBM was hyped incessantly by Oprah and her fans flocked to it. Total gross $83m. There is a limit to hype. That movies shows the limit of it. Tdk is benefitting from that, of course, but the influence is (relatively) small, and the number back me up.
A movie does not get to be the second highest grossing film of all time by not being popular (TDK will be there in a week or two at this rate). Hype has it’s limits. Publicity may drive the opening, but it won’t keep films stay on top – only word of mouth does that.
In fact, and please don’t take this the wrong way, but it sort of seems that since you didn’t like the movie, you seem to be making the argument that it’s success is artificial, and propped up by groups you don’t like. I’m not sure why, even though you don’t like the movie, you can’t admit that maybe the general public really DOES like the movie?
Ironically, really, I didn’t like the movie all that much. It was okay, though. Iron Man’s probably better.

To get back to your original point, why does every superhero movie have to fit your mold? I agree that Spider-Man 3 was a failure largely because of the “darkening” of it, which even Raimi couldn’t take seriously. As others have pointed out, there’s plenty of space in the Batman mythos for stories like this one and for stories that are a bit more goofy. By your argument, “Batman Forever” and “Batman and Robin” would be better movies than this one, because they weren’t afraid to be goofy. If you’re arguing that, you can’t comment here anymore, because you need to check yourself into some kind of hospital and get the treatment you need.

Every superhero movie doesn’t have to fit my mold. But some vehicles are better suited for some types of stories than others. Superheroes like Batman, as evidenced by most of his 60+ years of success, is best suited for dark yet still fun over-the-top escapist morality tales. Using Batman to tell a story along the lines of There Will Be Blood or No Country for Old Men is taking away all the cool things that Batman can explore best in exchange for a bunch of stuff that you don’t need a superhero to explore.

And I never claimed a superhero movie just had to be goofy in order to be be good. It has to have a good plot, writing, story, direction, costuming, effects and internal logic. Batman and Robin was horrible in those categories, so even with the fun and colorful factor it still sucked. But then again, Dark Knight failed in those categories too, but it did succeed in one thing and one thing only where Schumacher’s stuff failed, it treated the source material seriously.

T,
Is it possible to be a:

1. Comic fan…
2. who enjoyed TDK…
3. but not because it “validates” his love of comics by presenting a “realistic” and “highbrow” portrayal of a inherently unrealistic and fantastical character?

Is there room in your model for that kind of fan, or would you argue that no comic book fan is capable of separating (2) from (3)?

Granted, ten years ago I was the very model of the comic fan you described, the stereotypical nerd that found refuge from the scorn of his peers and his lack of athletic ability in the four color world of comic books (amongst other things), that would have embraced a movie like Dark Knight because it showed how “real” and “cool” comics were, how they (and by extension, me) should be taken seriously because they’re not just campy 60s Batman TV show stories, and they are capable of artistic expression worthy of the finest cinema or novel.

But jeez, I grew out of that need for personal validation sometime after high school. I’m proud of my comics love, not because of movies like TDK but because comics are awesome. Sometimes they’re silly, sometimes they’re serious, sometimes they’re goofy fun and sometimes they’re thought-provoking. I love comics in general and Batman in specific because they can tell and star in all kinds of different stories.

If someone doesn’t enjoy “Batman portrayed as realistically as possible” fine; to each his own. Some people don’t like a Batman who isn’t taken as seriously as possible. Some people, like me, enjoy both versions of Batman. I have no problem living in a world that gives us both Adam West and Christian Bale’s takes on Batman.

T – You’re so utterly wrong about… well, everything, that my head is spinning. I need a lie down.

I actually agree with a lot of what T. is saying. I want to try to write up a post about this extremely flawed movie.

I don’t understand how anyone can say that The Dark Knight wasn’t fun. That movie was a rollercoaster ride.

And THAT was the point of the Hong Kong sequence. I mean, come on! Are we seriously arguing about anything other than spectacle and thrills in regards to a Batman movie?

It’s not supposed to be great cinema. No Batman movie ever will.

It was exciting, scary, and visually stimulating. That’s exactly what I want from a Batman movie.

And no, sorry. Sin City beats Brokeback Mountain for most overrated movie by a long-shot.

Did Sin City get good reviews? Huh. I remember critics calling it visually interesting, but shallow.

I don’t know anyone who has seen Dark Knight who has not liked it. Almost none of those people are comic book readers. I know that’s anecdotal, but I find T.’s argument empty. Yes, there was buzz and hype and good reviews, but one doesn’t go see something twice without actually liking it on its own merits. (unless you’re trying to bring down Titanic as box office champ. If that’s the case, I’m sorry you don’t have anything better going on) T., I don’t see why you feel you have to “prove” that Dark Knight is selling tickets for reasons other than people genuinely liking it.

Well, y’all know my stance on inferring the motivations behind people’s opinions.

“And modern comic writers and people like Nolan have similar problems as modern fans. The writers either want to write superhero comics because they are still obsessed with them as adult fans, but are ashamed of this so feel the urge to turn them into these grand shakespearean epics or intense deconstructionist character studies in order to justify writing them as adults. ”

Not necessarily.

I think you’re missing a point that many people who dislike “realistic” treatments of superheroes often miss.

I speak only for myself, but the reason I enjoy “realistic” takes on superheroes like “Dark Knight” and “Wild Cards” is not because I’m ashamed of being a superhero fan or because I want the respect of people that otherwise would look down on me for my preferences.

It’s a lot simpler than that, T.

I like the realistic takes because they’re the biggest wish-fulfilment fantasies of all. Speaking honestly, I’m fascinated by the idea of superpowers. I wish I had superpowers, and I’m sure some people feel the same. I want to be important and distinctive and powerful and unique.

And when I fantasize about MYSELF having superpowers, it’s myself in this world I live in.

And when I read or watch something that features superhumans in a “realistic” world, it obviously pushes my buttons, since it dovetails nicely with my fantasies. Conversely, superheroes in less realistic (“fun”) settings create more of a barrier for identification, and aren’t as intense an experience.

In that way, “realistic” fiction CAN be escapist too, my friend. Actually, it can be a lot more escapist than any Silver Age stories.

And that is one of the reasons that I enjoy Nolan’s “real world” Gotham a lot more than Tim Burton’s rococo city.

Well, y’all know my stance on inferring the motivations behind people’s opinions.

Oh I know, I even included an Cronin-related disclaimer!

Hehe, that is true.

What Rene said.

With the added caveat that for me, at least (and I’d guess but wouldn’t assume, a lot of other people too) there’s an appeal in both, the how-far-into-the-real-world-can-we-push-this as well as the over-the-top, fists-a-flyin’ traditional superhero fun (which isn’t to say that real world approaches can’t be fun, or that traditional superheroics can’t be serious/though provoking). Both can be a form of escapism. And fun. And Art. And entertainment.

Sometimes I enjoy the one type of story, sometimes the other. One of the things I love about Batman, he can work in many different styles of stories.

T’s ranting… I mean “critique” lost me where he starts bitching about Maggie Gyllenhaal’s appearance. Of all the reasons to dislike the movie, that’s the most superficial and disgusting one I’ve been reading over the past month. All the “waaah, she’s not as hot as Kim Basinger” whiners do is demonstrate that they need to either grow up or shut up. While I didn’t necessarily agree with the points made prior to that, at least they were stated logically, but when it comes to bitching about how a performer isn’t hot enough for the role…

It’s a rant AND a critique.

I’m not going to argue about anything on the goddamn internet, but obviously I’m a moron for forgetting that the Scarecrow was actually captured (now that I think about it, I’m sorta remembering a bunch of cops surrounding him with weapons.) I’ll stand by everything else in my post though.

I’m not reading through… most of this, really. Still haven’t seen the movie. But I was really not in to the first one on a spectacular level compared to the love it elicits, so I wonder if I will like this one half as much as the entire world but weirdoes like T. and inconoclasts like Joe. I may have that backwards. And also whatever Greg is.

Anyway, I just wonder if I’ll lose my nerd card over this. Althought not having seen it 20 times by now put me on probation, surely.

Anyway, I just wonder if I’ll lose my nerd card over this. Althought not having seen it 20 times by now put me on probation, surely.

I don’t know that it’s a nerd thing – people who ask me questions about Batman from the comics, because they’ve never read one, have seen the film more times than me.

I actually agree with a lot of what T. is saying. I want to try to write up a post about this extremely flawed movie.

Deeply flawed?
It’s not deeply flawed.
There are flaws, sure, but as a whole it’s an exciting roller coaster ride in and of itself.
Possibly the best action/roller coaster/popcorn film I’ve seen in at least five years, with or without a superhero in it.

I was thrilled when the first X-Men movies came out and it actually used the Cerebro scene from Morrison’s first X-Men issue

Unless Grant has finally cracked the whole space time thing for real, he took the scene from the film or it’s all a coincidence.
Morrison came on the book about a year after the film came out.

the one thing I would agree with T. about is that I would love to see a Batman move less like Robocop and more like a ninja. That would be cool.

{{{Unless Grant has finally cracked the whole space time thing for real, he took the scene from the film or it’s all a coincidence.
Morrison came on the book about a year after the film came out.}}}

Oh wow, you’re right. Why’s it so clearly the other way around in my usually trusty memory?

Gotta be Wanda.

Hmm, maybe the scene I’m thinking about is in the second one? Anyone know the movies well enough to answer this?

I respectfully disagree, but can’t be bothered writing why. I think you’ve exhausted the supply of words.

What comic is picture nine from? I know totally random but had to ask.

Same question for your last picture.

Jordan: Sorry I didn’t see your comment until now! Both pictures are from The Killing Joke, by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland. I hope you come back and find this comment!