I finally saw Dark Knight this past weekend. I definitely enjoyed it and I’m glad I saw it in a movie theater on a big screen. I do recommend seeing it if you haven’t already. Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker is as good as everyone says. But there are tons of great reviews of the flick out there and it continues to break all kinds of ticket sale records. So I thought it would be more interesting to discuss the five negative issues I had with the film. These issues don’t keep Dark Knight from being a very good film that is worth seeing, but it’s not quite as amazingly perfect as some reviews would have you believe. Please don’t read this if you haven’t seen the movie as it’s rife with spoilers.
1. The Voice: Okay, this is the most obvious one and other reviewers have picked up on it. But the voice Christian Bale puts on when he’s in the Batman suit is just ridiculous. I get the idea that’s he changing his voice to avoid being recognized. But the ludicrous gravelly growl of Batman is pretty hard to take seriously.
2. The Fight Scenes: All of the fight scenes involving Batman are disjointed, jerky and forgettable. Can you remember a particularly cool fight scene from the movie? I bet you’re thinking of the Joker and his pencil trick which is great. But how about involving Batman? The way the fight scenes are filmed with extreme close-ups and tons of camera cutss make them unintelligible, even on the big screen. Batman moves his arms stiffly - people fall down. Batman shoots stuff out of his suit - things blow up or collapse. But there is no poetry or even clarity to it. We know action is happening but it’s incoherent.
3. The Anti-Climax: The film is long. And it seems all the more long because of the many “false” climaxes in the movie. There were several times I thought the film was reaching its climax, so I thought I would hold off on hitting the restroom until then. But then, lo and behold, yet another problem arises with another climactic moment. By the time we get to the ending, we’re left burnt out on the climaxes and merely shrug when the credits finally roll.
4. The Abrupt About Face: I can suspend believability with the best of them. I didn’t mind when Batman uses the bizarre reverse-ballistics fingerprint mumbo-jumbo which somehow leads him to an apartment that happens to overlook the parade at the perfect time for an egg-timer to go off. That just rolls off of me. But when it comes to a major shift in a character’s whole morality, it’s a little tougher to suspend believability.
The first two-thirds of the movie convinces us that Harvey Dent is truly the “hero that Gotham needs.” And then he suddenly becomes a murderous villain. You can say there was foreshadowing in the way he interrogated one of the Joker’s henchmen, but that’s a far cry from murdering an innocent child. Okay, maybe it was Rachel’s death that completely changed him but their relationship did not feel that well developed or convincing in the first place. And when he is in the hospital afterwards, he seems angry, sure. But not evil. So one conversation with the Joker, a person he hates, is enough to turn him into a villain?
The film spends time on other storylines that either could have been cut or were really underdeveloped: the trip to Hong Kong, the copycat Batmen, the lawyer who threatens to reveal Batman’s identity. But no time at all is spent on the transformation from Harvey Dent, the golden D.A., to Two-Face, the immoral criminal. It’s far too abrupt and we don’t really see Dent sliding into the darkness. Apparently, he took the express elevator. It’s just tough to believe that he would really blame Gordon so much that he would kidnap his family but let the person ostensibly responsible for all the problems, the Joker, stroll out of the hospital.
5. Clichés: Even though the film tries very hard to be dark and artistic it still resorts to absolute clichés: the woman in distress, the child in distress, the faked death of a main character. And there is definite overuse of the Xanatos Gambit.
The script also really pounds us over the head with supposedly deep but actually clichéd moral dilemmas: Will the prisoners or the “good people” blow up the other ferry? Will Batman step forward and reveal his identity? Will Batman run over the Joker? Will Lucius go along with the phone tapping techno-babble? Will Alfred give Rachel’s letter to Bruce? Will Batman save Dent or Rachel? It’s moral choice after moral choice shoehorned in right up until the final choice Batman makes to protect Dent’s memory. And to drive it home we have Two-Face and his coin, the walking epitome of the two sides of human nature. It’s just a bit heavy-handed and redundant.
What’s more, although the film apparently strives for realism, the deep philosophical statements constantly voiced by the heroes and villains (even amidst fierce battles) are a definite comic book cliché.
These issues aside, Dark Knight was indeed a very good movie. I just don’t think it deserves to be the number one movie of all time, as the voters on IMDB apparently maintain.
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I disagree with you on all five points.
1) I think many people hate the voice because thanks to every other TV show and movie doing nothing to disguise Batman’s voice, they expect him to sound like Bruce Wayne… but in these movies Bruce is trying to portray the Batman as a mythical monster of the night that get bad people, the voice goes with it, and personally I think its perfect.
2) I couldn’t tell you about any fight scenes from the comic books either… or even from any of the previous Batman TV and movie incarnations (except the TV show, but not the fights themselves, only the BAM! POW! WHAM! stuff). I don’t feel it detracts from the film at all… in fact I think it helps the film not be just another summer action flick full of fights and explosions.
3) I wouldn’t use the term “burnt out” to describe my feeling at the end of the movie. Exhausted, like the way I feel after a particularly good roller coaster.
4) To me, the “about face” wasn’t abrupt at all. Harvey, having lost the woman he wanted to marry, who has always jokingly let his coin, which was double headed, decide is now going to let it decide for real because the death of Rachel caused the coin to have two distinct sides. He lets the Joker walk because the coin comes up heads. That, in a nutshell, it Harvey Dent/Two-Face. People always talk about the momentous slide of Harvey into Two-Face, but its a story that has never been very deep. In fact, previous incarnations were less deep than the film (getting acid thrown on him by a witness in court).
5) Every movie, over analyzed, is pretty much a bunch of clichés. I suppose they could have shaken things up a lot more and thrown out all the source material, but then it wouldn’t have been Batman.
Hi, Jason - thank you for the well thought out comment. It is definitely appreciated. You certainly make some good points here and I’m glad someone called me out on my weaker assertions. I’ll address each issue:
1. I do like the idea of disguising the voice - it makes sense. But I did find the specific voice used jarring and some people I spoke with who loved the movie did agree on this point. I think this is a subjective issue but I do think in the future it could be tweaked a bit to be less bizarre to those of us who find it so.
2. I would be fine if there were limited action/fight scenes in a superhero movie. I tend to prefer drama, good dialogue, etc. However, there were a number of action/fight scenes and explosions in Dark Knight. I just don’t feel the director has a knack for that particular element. Take the scene with the hostages/villains in the building. On an intellectual level I understood exactly what was going on - the Joker had made the hostages appear to be enemies, etc. And I understood the use of the “sonar” element and the intrusion of the swat team. But on a purely visual level…the action and the fights were incoherent. It was very hard to register exactly what was happening. I found Batman moved stiffly and there was just no logical consistency to the movements and results. It was dark, lots of closeups were used and there were way too many camera cuts. I can think of plenty of great fight scenes in admittedly worse movies. I believe this is one area that Nolan can improve on. If he is going to have fight scenes and action scenes in his films, he can certainly do a better job with them. I do admit I felt the action viscerally - there was a sense of things happening. But there’s nothing wrong with some clarity, nothing wrong with choreographing a good fight sequence.
3. I’ve spoken to people who feel exactly like you do. I think the roller coaster analogy was excellent. I’m not going to argue with that - I think it depends on the individual and even on the mood that individual is in at the time. I think some people feel as I do and probably more as you do. But wouldn’t you say that maybe Nolan tried to shoehorn just a bit too much into this movie? Couldn’t it have been a bit of a “tighter” experience?
4. Great point about the coin…that was a very clever technique used in the movie. The fact that it has two sides now is a direct result of the event that pushed him over the edge and I love that idea. I still stand by my argument that the actual transformation was too abrupt and difficult to believe. I can understand anger and hatred and sorrow from Dent. But nothing in his nature up until that point would leave me to believe that any event - no matter how traumatic would cause him to threaten a completely innocent child with death. It just seemed to go too far, too soon. And I didn’t find it believable that anyone would think Gordon specifically was so much to blame for what occurred. I certainly could have accepted the transformation…if I had seen a “step” or two leading up to the complete evil. Or, perhaps, even a sign of an internal struggle (post Joker meeting) or a more adequate rationalization for his actions.
5. You know - you’re right about overanalyzing any movie to find cliches. I just was a bit burnt out on reading how deep, artistic and realistic the film was for a superhero movie. And I wanted to show that, underneath it all - Dark Knight still used many of the same tired tropes they all do. I also felt it was somewhat redundant and heavy-handed with all of the similar moral choices packed in.
You have made excellent arguments as a counter-point to my post. But I think even you would agree that this is not the absolute greatest number one movie of all time. I don’t want to rain on the Dark Knight parade - I really liked the movie. I just want to temper all the high praise the film has been getting by pointing out what I personally saw as minor flaws in the film. I don’t think any of these flaws prevent it from being a terrific movie. And Heath Ledger’s performance really is deserving of all the hype it has received.
In the end, I hope everyone gets a chance to see this in the theater, because it is deserving of that. I very much look forward to the next film in the series, although I do hope some of the issues I raised are addressed.
I would never say any movie is the greatest movie of all time. Its too subjective. As an example, I met a woman who explained to me why Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 was a better film than The Dark Knight… the problem is that she wasn’t wrong. For what she wants from a movie and what she expects for her entertainment dollar, Pants 2 was the far superior film.
Also, I’d never claim a film was great at all until I had seen it more than once. Since I’ve seen The Dark Knight three times, I think I can safely say that it currently is great… in a year when I watch it on Blu-Ray, I’ll let you know if the film still holds up.
To be perfectly honest, in my opinion, if I were forced to pick one, the greatest movie of all time would have to be Joe Versus the Volcano. Its the only movie I own that has stood up to insane repeated viewings (like over 50). It is flawless in its execution of its intended goals, and I never get bored of it.
As for the IMDB list… only movie nerds vote enough on that site to be counted in their top 250 list. If they opened it up to all votes, I think movies like Shawshank might actually gain, while The Dark Knight might settle down into the upper 8’s at best.
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