Anybody else hate the Dark Knight?
Appreciated its willingness to go as far as it did (though damn, if a film deserved an R it was this one)
i can’t think of a better summation of right now (at least from the popcorn contingent) than Joker’s interrogation monologue….that was something powerful,finally hearing what you yourself have known for as long as you can remember & been too afraid to broach among polite company spat out like that; dunno but goddamn, that character got to me, burned a hole in the screen…. i really shouldn’t have watched it baked.
Overrated for sure, but as its already been said here, there was alot worse for the public to embrace at the time. The only reason to see it WAS Ledger, if only just to hear his fire & brimstone sermon
(…i still maintain theres something really, really weird going on here with Ledger & his ‘character’, considering the drugs he was on, its the only reason i keep coming back. Real car crash psychology….)
Well I dont hate it but…………… what I really hate is Bruce Wayne talking different while being Batman!!! He is a comic super heroe for god’s sake… In a comic world no body could’t recognize him ¬¬ What could do a superman by Nolan? ¬¬ or a Wonder Women? ¬¬
All people know how to do is hate and judge. I’d like to see any of you MAKE something.
I LOVE The Dark Knight!! :D
Savvy
Krza,that you just said don’t make sense.I mean,if we do as you say,then every film critic don’t have the right to judge a film,unless he has made one himself???Or the same with every kind of art.
In my opinion,everybody can judge(and hate,that’s his opinion)a film,in case he has seen it.Of course,there are people who hate a movie,just because they had to hate it.There are countless cinephils that love to hate each and every one mainstream film,despite of its real value,just because everyone seems to like it.But what you said above is absolutely wrong.
And,by the way,I really like The Dark Night.Moreover,I think it’s one of the best american films of the 00s.
It’s also particularly okay to hate and judge if the movie in question blows.
Of course film snobs don’t like it.
Of course
I think the film will get more recognition in 20-30 years time. Of course the hype was crazy when it was released, but every large blockbuster gets it, and this one was actually good. I do think the film was Hollywoodized a little with the PG-13 rating because that basically states that the film was made to appeal to a larger audience as most blockbusters are PG-13. Having said that, I think Nolan is still a very creative director, and he doesn’t like using a great deal of CGI (prefers camera tricks) which I appreciate greatly.
Now films like Lord of the Rings and Avatar are different stories.
I really don’t understand why people are so adamant about The Dark Knight getting an R rating, and why so many people are so positive that it’s simply for marketing. As a comic book fan, I can say that there hasn’t really been much in any Batman comic to warrant a warning label to children. People always want more, even if it’s totally unnecessary.
Now if Watchmen had been PG-13…
no
It’s time, I’m afraid, to let loose the dogs of apocalyptic cultural complaint, this time upon the throat of The Dark Knight, which I was coerced into finally seeing despite my official moratorium on voluntarily watching superhero movies, or any film in which someone puts on a mask or has “special powers,” the latter of which is all by itself a dead giveaway, as a narrative device, to the film-culture mess we find ourselves in. Superheroes are, essentially by definition, idiotic confections intended for children, and the fact that I can’t escape them as an adult so far this millennium makes my blood boil. I did my time as a kid loving X-Men and Spider-Man and The Avengers and Jack Kirby specials (and E.C. reprints and even Warren mags like Creepy and Eerie), and heaven knows I do not begrudge the American early-adolescent his or her time in the shade with comic books, or their afternoons in matinees watching Batman or Iron Man or whatever. But it’s gotten to the point that superheroes comprise the substantial percentage of movie options we have now, in one form or another, and to avoid them as a grown-up you’d have to avoid cinema. What’s more, adults are flocking, adults reviewers are treating the movies seriously, the filmmakers themselves apparently believe they’re making coherent and profound statements. Meanwhile, the digital whooshing and ultrasurroundsound noise are getting so assaultive it seems we’re not that far away from a movie somehow reaching out during an action scene and just hitting you in the head with three-pound piece of flying shrapnel, just to “make you feel” the chaos.
But that’s my beef in general; The Dark Knight epitomizes the problem specifically not by simply being a Caped Crusader trifle masquerading as Paradise Lost, but because it failed to do the simplest things movies have always done: tell a fucking story. The film is quite literally one violent set-piece followed by a 20-second snatch of exposition, to explain what significance the set-piece is supposed to have, repeated again and again and again, for over 2.5 interminable hours. Stories require character and incidents that happen to those characters and decisions those characters have to make, and us watching them make those decisions, and then the tragic/triumphant/ironic result of those decisions. The Dark Knight runs along literally like a series of disconnected cabaret acts, with what passes for narrative happening off-screen most of the time, and the ample screentime remaining filled up with chases and fights so haphazardly shot and cut you can’t tell where anybody is or what’s going on. We hardly see Bruce Wayne, the Joker (yes, Heath Ledger was fascinating) has no backstory or motivation, plot holes loomed like event horizons (sure, you evacuated that hospital), dialogue scenes never lasted more than a few seconds – in other words, anything that might substantiate the film as dramatic material fit for adults was almost completely elided. I’ll tell you the two moments I appreciated, both missable in the melee: Christian Bale’s dry, almost imperceptible chuckle at Michael Caine’s I-told-you-so mini-punchline as they walked away from the camera, and the way the hulking gangbanging convict played by Tommy Lister went back to his seat after tossing the detonator overboard, brooding over perhaps having sealed his own death by doing the right thing. You can see why: these tiny instances involved humans, reacting and revealing their history. That’s about it for the whole film.
We wouldn’t be having this conversation if the audience were only kids, however large that audience might be. Somehow the entirety of American culture, young and middle-yeared and old, is embracing the childish universe of superheroes – which is structured around the easily-distracted worldview of kids, not around the reasoned, complex worldview we would hope children would grow into. Does America need that badly a post-post-9/11 big Daddy to vanquish danger so we can slumber in our cradles? The much-lamented infantilization of the mass populace continues, and at what cost? How much public effort and energy and time is spent consuming this attenuated nonsense – watching it, watching PR stuff about it, ‘Net-surfing for it, blogging about it, texting about it, pursuing gossip about it, rewatching it, YouTubing it, ad infinitum – and not attending instead to a government that eats tax monies like a Moloch and kills people by the thousands? Movies can be art, and can connect us with human verities and empathies and experiences that might help us deal with the real world. That’s what stories have always been for. But instead we’re using film as the walls of a bubble we’re constructing around ourselves like the disturbed children of abusive parents. Old Hollywood movies have always had their fair share of bullshit, but they were about people, always (or until Star Wars). Not anymore.
- Michael Atkinson
Oh yeah?
Rob Gibbs wrote:
Look, I don’t want to be one of the psychotic raging fanboys who have been indiscriminately flaming every negative review of this movie, but you appear to have staked out pretty much the polar opposite end of that particular spectrum as you announce an arbitrary hatred for movies about superheroes. Digging in your heels and refusing to enjoy any movie about a superhero suggests that all of them are the same, but as with any genre there are good superhero movies and there are bad ones. Your blanket prejudice against all superhero movies is as absurd as saying you all cop movies are stupid little boys fantasies, lumping The French Connection in with Tango and Cash. Summer blockbusters have always drawn in mass audiences young and old, they have always had at their hearts somewhat childish elements, but there have also always been films among the popcorn movies that have tried to be something more and which critics have responded to positively. These things are cyclical, after Star Wars sci-fi was the Summer Movie genre of choice, but within the genre there was a wide range of variations on a theme and a range in quality of films. Right now Superhero movies are the popcorn film of choice, but your assertion that any superhero movie is by definition stupid and juvenile and you overwrought outrage at the suggestion that a superhero film even could be thoughtful and interesting makes you seem like a closed minded pretentious jerk. You ignore the fact that in this summer alone there has been a huge variation in films about superheroes, and if you went to see The Dark Knight, Hellboy II, and Iron Man and felt like they were all the same kind of movie for the same audience I would have to question your judgment and fitness to be a critic. Now it’s true that after you get done bitching about the fact of comic book movies and their popularity you do finally get down to talking about The Dark Knight, but by the time you get there you have so thoroughly established yourself as unwilling to give the movie a fair shot that your opinions about the film just aren’t particularly credible.
Jesus Christ I’m so glad I don’t have my head up my ass like some of the people here do.
Well, I liked it. There, I said it. I was troglodyting in the himalayas and had no knowledge about the hype et. al. Maybe that’s what helped. I came to it with no expectations or even desire to see it but it happened to be on my hard drive for 3 months and I was bored.
Limit genres, limit possibilities. I am absolutely not a fan of comic book super hero films, but this definitely impressed me. It wasn’t even about that, really.
Where are my tweed jacket and black rimmed spectacles for which to see the Truth?
Vocalities: I never let it get to me. In my opinion, if one is going to expend so much time and energy hating on a flick or defending against hating on a flick, then that’s one’s prerogative.
—PolarisDiB
I’m going to go watch Winter Light, now.
“…followed by a 20-second snatch of exposition, to explain what significance the set-piece is supposed to have…”
Great summary of classically bad action-directing, which I personally believe DARK KNIGHT was bursting with. Sure thought MEMENTO showed promise…
How much public effort and energy and time is spent consuming this attenuated nonsense – watching it, watching PR stuff about it, ‘Net-surfing for it, blogging about it, texting about it, pursuing gossip about it, rewatching it, YouTubing it, ad infinitum – and not attending instead to a government that eats tax monies like a Moloch and kills people by the thousands?
Amen, brother. That cat Atkinson just slays.
Yeah I thought it was really average and I like it less now that it’s been widely overrated. There were cool moments.
Philosophically reckless.
“How much public effort and energy and time is spent consuming this attenuated nonsense – watching it, watching PR stuff about it, ‘Net-surfing for it, blogging about it, texting about it, pursuing gossip about it, rewatching it, YouTubing it, ad infinitum – and not attending instead to a government that eats tax monies like a Moloch and kills people by the thousands?
Amen, brother. That cat Atkinson just slays."
And how much time do you guys spend on here?
—PolarisDiB
I thought it was fun!
But I really can’t see what makes it anything more than a slightly “over-average” Hollywood film…
It doesn’t do anything special in any area of cinema…nor anything new…
It uses a lot of gimmicks…but hey thats Hollywood, if you haven’t gotton used to it by now you never will!
people are entitled to their taste…
You know what I like better than the Dark Knight film? The Office (American ver.) Season 5 (forget which episode) where everyone dresses up like the Joker for Halloween (including Creed, my favourite character – creepy as hell) … I mean, come on, did they predict that one or what? I know I wasn’t the only one sighing as yet another kid dressed up in a Joker costume arrived at the party (this is back in reality, folks). Bleh, Joker burnout.
What I want is Trial of the Joker with Mark Hamill as the Joker. Really, that would just be the greatest Batman film by default.
I thought it was a fascist film that must be on Bush’s top list of favorite films; a playboy billionaire goes by the name of Batman who run a city, control every aspect of it, break almost every law, wire tap every citizen, takes the law into his hand. As for the Joker, according to him, he is just trying to stop Batman’s domination and monopoly, yet he is called a terrorist and an evil….it all sound so familiar!
yeah i love avatar
“How much public effort and energy and time is spent consuming this attenuated nonsense – watching it, watching PR stuff about it, ‘Net-surfing for it, blogging about it, texting about it, pursuing gossip about it, rewatching it, YouTubing it, ad infinitum – and not attending instead to a government that eats tax monies like a Moloch and kills people by the thousands?
Amen, brother. That cat Atkinson just slays."
No irony there at all. Nope.
I didn’t hate it,but waited to see it after all the hype had died down.It’s not a bad film,it’s not a great film just a bit of mindless entertainment,Heath Ledger does a good job as the joker,but then it is a far better role to play than Batman.
banal1
Yes. probably in part because it’s so overrated. and the fact that christian bale sleepwalks thru it.