Review: The Dark Knight

Some pretty much spoiler free thoughts on The Dark Knight movie

Here's the thing about the Batman move that impressed me so much. The superheroes and villains seemed more human in this movie than any of the other comic book movie I've ever seen.

One of the constant themes through the movie was how the public of Gotham City treated Batman, and without getting too spoilerish, I'm just gonna say that it ain't pretty and yet rang very true to human nature, IMHO. People forget that Batman is an Outlaw in the eyes of most people. And more importantly, we forget that Batman is a human being and his life _sucks_ because he has to be Batman and he is actually desperately grabbing at straws to have some semblance of a normal life.

Likewise, the joker, is not so much a supernatural evil force as he is an insane human being. For the most part, the things you see The Joker doing are not too far beyond the pale for someone that is insane, amoral, and unconcerned about whether he lives or dies. He even makes a point about 3/4 of the way through the movie that he favors simple tools like knives and barrels of explosives, and fire, etc. Throughout the movie, you get these insights into the origin of his insanity, but they aren't quite consistent with each other. In any case, the origins of his insanity seem almost mundane, as if any average Joe could become the Joker. And as insane as he is, The Joker understands that he and Batman have much more in common with each other than they have in common with the people of Gotham. And the Joker uses this to his advantage on multiple occasions. Likewise, the Joker understands the fickleness of the public and knows how to manipulate people both using mass media and in one on one situations.

The make up job on the Joker is really the least creepy thing about him. It's his insanity that creeps you out the most because it seems so human. And while much has been made of the creepy makeup job, the real genius in this portrayal of the Joker is in how Heath Ledger plays him physically. It's a combination of multiple nervous ticks with a lanky, slack, devil-may-care posture that really sells him as an amoral, insane man.

Harvey Dent's descent into insanity and transformation into Two Face was equally compelling though less developed just because he doesn't get the screen time that Batman and the Joker get. But there's a very subtle message in the Two Face sub plot because it adds some subtext to Batman's personality. It makes you realize just how easily Batman could crack up and turn just as insane as Two Face. It makes you realize just how tenuous Batman's grasp of being good guy is.

To reinforce the authenticity of the human motivations of the super heroes and villains, the Gotham City in this movie is super realistic. They do little to hide the fact that Gotham City is Chicago. And in fact I think the movie makers deliberately filmed at some of the famous Chicago landmarks so that you would realize that this Batman is set in the here and now and people are acting exactly like people in the here and now would react to Batman and the Joker, etc.

There were a couple plot tropes that got on my nerves a bit. The one that stuck out the most was a riff on the issue of mass surveillance which I thought was handled poorly. But I can overlook it in the spirit of just not having enough screen time to deal with it properly. Likewise, there's an exploration on how people act differently in crowds vs individually which was kinda crammed into the movie.

My only substantive gripe about the plot was that they were trying to ground the superheroes and villains deep into every day human nature. And this is why the movie works so well. But they contradict it a bit by giving The Joker and almost superhuman ability to set up all his traps and bombs and mass media manipulations in very short periods of time. But I guess it's easy to underestimate how much chaos an insane man can cause when he's literally got nothing else to do.

Lastly, I have to call the film makers out on one major point which is that this is an adult movie and honestly I would not recommend that kids see it. It is too brutally violent. With very selective editing, they managed to imply but not show all the gore in the movie. And there's no doubt in my mind that the film makers worked very very hard to qualify for a PG-13 rating, following all the objective criteria. But even so, the brutal violence is just too much for most 13 year old kids, IMHO. The film makers should have just gone for the R rating. Maybe they wouldn't have broken all the box office records like it did, but they would have convinced the world that there really can be a damn good comic book movie for adults.