The Dark Knight-Rides Once More To Protect The Rich
Wow. The wow is referencing how shocked I am by the consistently awesome reviews of The Dark Knight that are floating all around right me now. Many may read this review and say, “this guy is a negative jerk that just wants to go against the grain simply because he wants to show what a free thinker he is.” Honest to God that is not the deal here. I wanted to be as blown away as I was supposed to be, but it just didn’t happen. Alright then, that said, The Dark Knight isn’t bad, its just not that great either. Sorry, the latest Batman incarnation is not that great. It does appear that, to some extent, a success con is being pulled- making people believe this film is a masterpiece before they even hit the seats.
Part of the problem is that the film isn’t tight and cohesive. This mostly stems from the script that at times seems like a team of drunks was at work. Most people will be too lost in all the shine, boom and bang to realize that The Dark Knight is a cluster of clichés and plot points that we have all seen before in countless other movies. I mean for God’s sake there is a damsel in distress-could this be any older, any more boring? One key problem with the film is that all sorts of writers with, in all likelihood, vastly more interesting ideas were passed up for the writing team of Christopher Nolan and Jonathan Nolan. Yeah, that’s right Christopher got his brother in on this action. Ridiculous? Well, of course, but isn’t that the day and age we live in folks? But it’s okay because, since they both also partially grew up in the UK and sort of have British accents we, of course, should listen to them and let them direct movies. That’s how its done, British accent equals the ability to direct movies. Everyone in Hollywood knows that.
Parts of the film are just confusing and too much is stuffed within its allotted time. Having Two-Face emerge is one thing, but then pushing this plot point beyond his emergence was forced and unnecessary. While on the topic of unnecessary, there is the extremely goofy romantic subplot with the “beautiful” Rachel played stiffly by Maggie Gyllenhaal, part of yet another amazingly talented Hollywood sibling team. How nice. It is truly amazing the way talent clumps along family lines and even in the same movie! Wow, just like politics!
One of the largest script problems is that The Joker is dumped in all our laps as a cardboard cutout of an insane villain. The Joker character of The Dark Knight is really just a camouflaged clichéd. No development of the character occurs at all, which was not Ledger’s fault, but the fault of the script. How anyone can argue that The Joker character is developed is beyond me, The Joker is brought in as an agent of chaos without motivation or reason. “Here’s The Joker and he does bad stuff,” should we the audience allow this? I have no doubt there is some sort of rationalization for this sloppiness, there always is, but just having your villains drop out of the sky, well, that’s crap.
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