by Nelson
I want to try this format with a few titles that I’ve got a bit of a love/hate relationship with, and I figured there’d be no better one to start with than Chris Nolan’s 2008 Oscar winning sensation The Dark Knight. For many, this is the movie that truly elevated comic book cinema and what it was capable of producing.
But for me, a second-generation Batman fan who can’t really remember a time when I wasn’t aware of and totally enamored with the character, I just didn’t love The Dark Knight like the rest of the world seemed to. Initially, I didn’t like the radically different version of The Joker that we got, but, as time went on, I began to soften on that stance and even started to appreciate how that movie chose to approach Mr. J. But, even as I started to see past some of my initial misgivings, there was a bigger problem going on in The Dark Knight that, finally, I’ve managed to put my finger on.
But, more importantly, as time has gone on, I’ve become much less militant in regards to my opinions. While I’ll never love it as much as some fans or regard it as the be-all/end-all of live action Batman cinema, there’s an awful lot to love about this movie. So before I go into the one issue that I just can’t let go about it, let’s go over four things that this movie absolutely nails.
Bruce Wayne Being Cool
Despite how much I love Michael Keaton’s take on the character in Tim Burton’s two movies, it’s absolutely inarguable that audiences didn’t really get to see all that much Wayne action. Sure, he’s ready to get nuts with The Joker and willing to go fifteen rounds with Muhammad Shreck, but those moments, cool as they are, only serve to make me wish there was more.
Chris Nolan understood the value of Bruce Wayne and didn’t shy away from giving him opportunities to remind us all just how awesome this guy can be, whether or not he’s dressed up as a giant bat. Christian Bale’s version of Bruce Wayne is far more developed and nuisanced. We actually get two different versions of the character, the public face of Bruce as the partying, irresponsible playboy, and the true personality that we only see interacting with people close to him like Alfred and Rachel Dawes. I’m not sure there is a live action version of Wayne that’s truer to the source material than what Nolan and Bale presented, to be perfectly honest.
The Gotham PD Isn’t Useless
The entire point of this saga would be defeated if the GPD was uncorrupted and effective, but Nolan’s film doesn’t make the mistake of previous adaptations by portraying every cop in Gotham as a blithering idiot with a weight problem. Not even Commissioner Gordon, himself, was really portrayed correctly in live action until Gary Oldman’s take on the character. The Dark Knight (and Nolan’s trilogy in general) take more than a few cues from iconic Batman stories like Year One and The Long Halloween, which both spend a great deal of time developing the good and bad of Gotham’s finest, and the result provides audiences with a flawed group of cops who are trying their best to deal with the anarchy that is Gotham City and don’t seem to be nothing more than extras running around aimlessly for the bad guys to kick around.
Two-Face
It’s really no secret that, while Tommy Lee Jones really seemed to be having an awesome time in Batman Forever, the previous live action version of Two-Face was a far cry from how the character had been portrayed both in comics and on The Animated Series. One of Batman’s most tragic villains, the former Harvey Dent is, at his best, a dark mirror for Batman, a glimpse of the perils of obsession and duality, and a grim reminder of what The Caped Crusader could become should his alternate identity consume him entirely. But, in Batman Forever, he’s basically just a guy with a half purple face doing his damnedest to channel Nicholson’s Joker.
If The Dark Knight did one thing completely and totally right, it was capturing Harvey Dent’s doomed journey to becoming Two-Face. Sure, it played with the origin a little bit, and the decision to actually kill the character off at the end is certainly questionable, but thus far, Eckhart’s take on the character remains the one and only time Two-Face has been done right in live action.
The Joker
Here’s the truth, I’m a traditionalist when it comes to The Joker, and I’ve never been the biggest fan of Heath Ledger’s and Chris Nolan’s take on the character in The Dark Knight. But, at the end of the day, I’ve come to accept and realize that my issues with The Joker in The Dark Knight are either cosmetic in nature or rooted in a much larger problem with the film that I’ll go into shortly…..
Ledger’s Joker works, and it works in a unique way that can be incredibly rewarding for fans of the character, even fans of the character like me who may grumble a bit about how Joker shouldn’t be painting his face or wearing a dirty suit. Coming into the role, Ledger faced the momentous task of following the legendary Jack Nicholson, a guy whose personification of the comic book villain was at the forefront of the phenomena known as Batmania. Ledger wisely differentiated his approach to Joker from Nicholson’s in practically every way possible, going out of his way to avoid anything resembling imitation.
But despite how unique Ledger’s take on the character is, there’s no denying that he shares many of the same core characteristics found in Nicholson’s portrayal and across practically all mediums that we’ve seen Joker in. He’s a liar, he’s a showman, and he’s completely obsessed with Batman and Batman alone. Though they go about it differently, both Nicholson and Ledger dismantle Gotham’s organized crime world in order to make a one-man stand against Gotham’s Dark Knight.
While Ledger’s Joker did very much alter certain things about the character, probably its greatest success is that, despite all the changes, he’s still fundamentally the same Joker that audiences have been engaging with for over eighty years now.
So even though I’ve been able to finally get over the fact that Ledger’s Joker wasn’t totally in-line with the more traditional approach to the character, there’s still one thing about The Dark Knight that will always, always bother me, and that’s….
Batman
The Dark Knight’s greatest crime is that it totally misses the boat on its titular character. Batman is robbed of his mystique and is rendered near ineffective in his own movie.
This isn’t a problem that is consistent with Nolan’s Batman. I can’t say the same of the character in Batman Begins or in this movie’s follow-up, The Dark Knight Rises. Both of those flicks provide their fair share of awesome Batman moments.
But, in The Dark Knight, despite the fact that he reminds us early into the movie that he’s “not wearing hockey pads,” Batman is basically just a guy in a costume, and, perhaps worse than that, the movie ultimately shows us that he’s a guy who just so happens to be in way over his head. Ancient ninja leagues unleashing fear gas on the city was no biggie, but Joker manages to consistently manipulate and best Batman at every turn, even in the climatic final fight between the two arch rivals.
Maybe it’s just a matter of interpretation, maybe it’s a matter of me being stuck in my ways. But I guess I missed the part of the Batman/Joker relationship that consisted of Joker making Batman look like a fool at every turn. Sure, Batman has certainly played into Joker’s hands on occasion, but to fall back on a great line from Mr. J, himself:
That, to me, is the root of Joker’s obsession with Batman, and I just don’t think The Dark Knight really gives Batman much of a victory over the Clown Prince of Crime.
Consider, if you will, my all-time favorite sequence in all of Batman lore, from comics to television to film. It’s a moment in Mask of the Phantasm where we see Bruce Wayne first donning the cape and cowl, with Alfred dutifully standing by. The moment the mask is on and we see those white eyes lower, Alfred is terrified. The man who raised Bruce since he was a child can’t bear the sight of the monster he becomes when he puts on the Batman costume.
I’m not saying Batman should never fail or come up short. Throughout the, frankly perfect, Animated Series, he’s injured and repeatedly captured by the bad guys time and time again. But there’s always, always this moment where, against all odds, somehow Batman triumphs, approaches the cowering bad guy, and those white eyes lower while that amazing orchestral score plays on the soundtrack…
And failing provide that moment is how The Dark Knight ultimately drops the ball. Do I hate it? Nah. It’s got enough going for it that it’s certainly worth looking at, and, narratively speaking, it’s pretty essential if you’re going to watch Nolan’s Trilogy.
But, while I may well stand on this hill alone, I truly think Nolan’s work with Batman peaked with Batman Begins, and I don’t see myself ever wavering on that particular unpopular Bat-Opinion.
Doubtfire 