The Dark Knight: unqualified masterpiece

Cafe Society
221

[QUOTE=Omniscient]
I found it strange that Lucius Fox was so put-off by the cell phone surveillance device. He was a military contractor and built all manner of devices to create death and destruction, but he was somehow rattled by the fact that Batman would have access to spying equipment? Weak. Vigilante justice is OK, eavesdropping isn’t? That’s some strange manner of morality at work there.
[/QUOTE]

Tell me about it…and eavesdropping used solely to locate a deranged terrorist mastermind running around the city, blowing people up.

Granted, they might be tempted to jump down the old slippery slope and start using it for other things. Like unraveling rampant mob conspiracies, or locating ninja-secret society-cultists trying to unravel western civilization, or figuring out which cops you could trust not to sell out your friends, allies, or squeezes to a gruesome death…

You know, sometimes, I can’t tell if society (or popular culture, anway) is getting innundated with pharisees and moralists skipping towards oblivion, or if I’m just a calculating, ruthless son of a bitch. Though personally I’m of the opinion that having people survive to get to that “time when men decide and feel safe to call the war insane” is the point of the whole superhero effort.

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Omniscient - I really, really like your commentary. It’s what I was trying to allude to pages ago when I posted at 3:00 am after seeing it and said it was too long. Poor pacing, poor editing, plot holes. Too much crammed into one movie. Anyway, what you said.

and your question of Fox’s morality, which Rahchoth found silly - again, sloppy screenwriting. The whole eavesdropping thing was just shoehorned in (theyt could found another way to locate Joker) for the political implications and nifty special effects.

223

[QUOTE=pravnik]
Are we still spoliering? A couple of the legal aspects bugged me mildly.
[/QUOTE]
I thought it was weird that the cops didn’t take a wet paper towel to the Joker’s face the moment they had him in custody. It was very obviously makeup that came off easily enough, wouldn’t getting a real visual ID of the guy be a priority?

I’m also skeptical that refusing pain killers & even basic reconstruction is an option when half your head gets burned off. I mean, not even his exposed eye with no ability to blink? :dubious: It seems they’d just pump him full of morphine and get his opinion on it after the fact.

Minor points but when you’re watching a great film it’s the dumb minor things that pull you out.

224

[QUOTE=Jophiel]
I thought it was weird that the cops didn’t take a wet paper towel to the Joker’s face the moment they had him in custody. It was very obviously makeup that came off easily enough, wouldn’t getting a real visual ID of the guy be a priority?
[/QUOTE]

Hadn’t thought of that at all, but it’s a great point. One of the things I liked best about the Joker’s makeup was that it was rubbing off in Ledger’s forehead creases. It gave him an even more deranged look. Yeah, they should have hosed him down.

225

and that’s also a great point about Harvey Dent’s wounds, Jophiel. Sloppy (or rushed?)screenwriting again. Writers couldn’t figure out where on the line of comic book fantasy v. reality they wanted to be on this as well as other points.

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[QUOTE=Jophiel]
I thought it was weird that the cops didn’t take a wet paper towel to the Joker’s face the moment they had him in custody. It was very obviously makeup that came off easily enough, wouldn’t getting a real visual ID of the guy be a priority?
[/QUOTE]

Well, every time someone got within arms reach of the guy he ended up dead. It seemed that it was a “no one within 10 feet” policy, can’t say I blamed them.

227

[QUOTE=Omniscient]
Well, every time someone got within arms reach of the guy he ended up dead. It seemed that it was a “no one within 10 feet” policy, can’t say I blamed them.
[/QUOTE]

They could have used a hose.

228

[QUOTE=well he’s back]
and that’s also a great point about Harvey Dent’s wounds, Jophiel. Sloppy (or rushed?)screenwriting again. Writers couldn’t figure out where on the line of comic book fantasy v. reality they wanted to be on this as well as other points.
[/QUOTE]

I think they wanted the pain to be part of the madness… however with wounds that bad I can’t believe he wasn’t still screaming! Speaking of which anyone notice when the pile o’ money went up our Hong kong Business guy went all silent. Hmm I wonder if horrific screams from being burned to death would have bumped the PG 13 up a notch. He seemed to have been completely ignored once the pire was started and vanished

Anyone get the feeling an unrated (more violent) DVD version is around the corner?

229

In case this hasn’t been posted, it should have been:

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[QUOTE=Red Barchetta]
They could have used a hose.
[/QUOTE]

That wouldn’t have been “by the book!”

231

I haven’t fleshed out my thoughts on the movie yet.

The plot-elements were definitely weak and confusing. Joker-mob-chinese guy. . .did all of this really hold together logically? Logically enough to piece together while watching?

That’s not to mention the stuff like leaving the joker at the party. Or, was there a reason for the joker to have all the captives with masks & duct tape at the end, or was that just there to provide great batman-cop excitement? It certainly wasn’t necessary for the joker to pull off the ferry boat stunt.

Some of it was just annoying. . .kill this guy in an hour or I blow up a hospital. So, in an hour, they dispatch police and evacuate all these hospitals. And, how did the joker know whether the guy was alive or dead within an hour? Did he have something implanted in the guy? And, if so, I didn’t see him checking a tracker in the hospital.

Why did Gordon fake his own death, and did he come up with it right on the spot when shots were fired?

Why did Batman shoot 5 bullets into concrete? Were we to believe that the destructive patterns formed by those bullets informed him of the destructive patterns of the “key” bullet?

I can’t figure out if Joker’s inconsistency was Nolan’s inconsistency, or a parallel to the real-world. By inconsistency, I mean the fact that he repeatedly stated his love for chaos and disregard for rules, but blatantly had the most elaborately schemed sequences of any character in the movie. E.g., he required Batman pulling the fingerprint off that bullet and getting to that apartment at exactly the time of the assassination. Not to mention the bank robbery, the belly-bomb, the ferry boat, the hospital, etc.

Now, if Nolan wanted me to believe that Batman and Dent THOUGHT the joker was merely chaotic, but in reality was more careful than them, that’s one thing. That’s an interesting parallel to our views of terrorism (much of which is elaborately planned, and requires precise timing and forethought). But, the Joker himself believed himself to be chaotic – he stated as much. What are we to believe?

This is a thematic inconsistency, not just a plot hole.

I think it’s unfortunate for this movie that No Country For Old Men used this idea of fate and evil being decided through chance. It was an interesting twist in Dent’s character once the coin got its second side.

FInally, some nice humor in this movie. . .

“UP”

“Want to see me make this pencil disappear?”

232

[QUOTE=Trunk]

Now, if Nolan wanted me to believe that Batman and Dent THOUGHT the joker was merely chaotic, but in reality was more careful than them, that’s one thing. That’s an interesting parallel to our views of terrorism (much of which is elaborately planned, and requires precise timing and forethought). But, the Joker himself believed himself to be chaotic – he stated as much.
[/QUOTE]

The Joker also directly stated that he got his scars from his father… or his wife… or I don’t know, his poodle. I’m pretty sure we’re not supposed to treat his own statements about himself as reliable. Consistency, and honestly, are pretty low on the list of the Joker’s salient qualities.

233

[QUOTE=Trunk]
E.g., he required Batman pulling the fingerprint off that bullet and getting to that apartment at exactly the time of the assassination. Not to mention the bank robbery, the belly-bomb, the ferry boat, the hospital, etc.
[/QUOTE]

Actually, he didn’t need Batman there. His plan looked something like this, I think:

  1. Clear out an apartment belonging to a henchman.
  2. Kidnap all the cops doing the gun salute, and tie them up in that cleared-out apartment, in the line of fire of a window.
  3. Put a Venetian blind over the window, attached to a timer that’s set to go off right before the gun salute. Put something that looks rifle-like (the telescope) in the window
  4. When the timer goes off, the snipers will see the sudden movement with the rifle-like object, and will fire. Hopefully they’ll kill the tied-up cops, and hopefully they’ll be distracted long enough for the henchmen to kill the mayor.

Batman’s appearance was just unexpected gravy, since he stood at the telescope at exactly the wrong moment.

(The only problem with this theory is, why a telescope and not a rifle?)

Daniel

234

[QUOTE=storyteller0910]
The Joker also directly stated that he got his scars from his father… or his wife… or I don’t know, his poodle. I’m pretty sure we’re not supposed to treat his own statements about himself as reliable. Consistency, and honestly, are pretty low on the list of the Joker’s salient qualities.
[/QUOTE]
Different. He was clearly and deliberately lying about his facial scars in a way he thought would most affect the person he was talking to, and we were clearly let in on the “joke”.

But, the movie often counters his embodiment of chaos against Dent’s embodiment of order. It’s a major theme. Yet, his own statements about “we don’t need rules or plans” directly contradicts his own actions, and applies more to the “make it up as you go” style of Dent and Gordon.

You can’t write off an inconsistency in the character to “he was dishonest”, or “he was psychotic”.

He represents an idea, and that idea itself was inconsistent. What I don’t get is whether it was intentional, or just an oversight. If it was the only oversight in the movie, I’d lean more towards intentional and hash it out from that assumption. There were too many other oversights in the movie though.

235

[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
(The only problem with this theory is, why a telescope and not a rifle?)

Daniel
[/QUOTE]
And, my point was that the elaborate nature of it contradicted what Joker was supposed to represent.

You’re right that he didn’t need BM there, though.

Then, doesn’t that make the whole bullet investigation thing meaningless?

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[QUOTE=Trunk]
Some of it was just annoying. . .kill this guy in an hour or I blow up a hospital. So, in an hour, they dispatch police and evacuate all these hospitals. And, how did the joker know whether the guy was alive or dead within an hour? Did he have something implanted in the guy? And, if so, I didn’t see him checking a tracker in the hospital.
[/QUOTE]

On further reflection, I think the point of the “kill this guy in an hour or I blow up a hospital” bit wasn’t what it appeared on the surface. Sure, I think he wanted to cause some chaos and get some people to think about killing him to save family, but I don’t think that was necessarily the driving force. Notice, as the hospital was being evacuated was when he made his approach to Dent. I think he wanted to use the chaos to keep the Police and the hospital staffs busy so that he would be able to pull off his conversation with Dent and set him loose. I’d theorize that he probably would have blown up the hospital anyway. I think he just saw it as a convenient opportunity to provide a mask for his real motivation, or to get a little bonus from shutting that guy up, or both.

237

[QUOTE=Trunk]
I think it’s unfortunate for this movie that No Country For Old Men used this idea of fate and evil being decided through chance. It was an interesting twist in Dent’s character once the coin got its second side.
[/QUOTE]

I know No Country For Old Men was a fantastic movie and it deserved all those Oscars, but (and I believe other people have mentioned this too) Dent’s coin and his usage of chance to decide a person’s life has been used since the character was introduced almost 70 years ago.

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It’s still unfortunate for the movie that it was featured so prominently in another well known movie.

I’m not disputing its origins. But not too many who saw “No Country” would have been thinking, “oh, they ripped that off from old BM comics”.

239

Saw it last night (without having ever seen all of Batman Begins), and for me, although it was highly entertaining, there were…structural problems. The first half hour or so, particulary the opening robbery and the Joker’s first meeting with the mob bosses, was wonderful, but then things seemed to spiral further and further into unnecessary complication and filigree. Bale, Eckhart and Oldman were all pretty good, and I never mind seeing Maggie Gyllenhaal, but Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman were pretty much wasted. The one absolutely unqualified great thing in the film, however, was Ledger’s performance as the Joker. IMO it was everything advertised; I’d go so far as to call it one of the greatest villains in film history.

Seems like Nolan & Co. could have streamlined the plot quite bit and cut at least a half hour out of the film without weakening the story at all. In particular, I think the whole thing would have worked better, as someone said earlier in this thread, if it had ended with the Joker’s second capture and Harvey Dent’s transformation into Two-Face, leaving further development of that strand for a later film.

Concerning the film as a whole, good but not great. I note that it is currently #1 all time on the IMDB top 250, and that, frankly, is a ridiculous overrating.

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[QUOTE=El_Kabong]
Concerning the film as a whole, good but not great. I note that it is currently #1 all time on the IMDB top 250, and that, frankly, is a ridiculous overrating.
[/QUOTE]

I love the IMDB. While it is (mildly) ridiculous, it’ll drop off soon. They all do.

But I think it’s amazing that The Dark Knight has now set records for biggest 4-day haul and biggest 5-day haul (which is a little over $200 million, or more than Batman Begins full box office take).