I admit to being mildly surprised at the overwhelmingly positive response to Chris Nolan's The Dark Knight. It was increasingly obvious as we got closer to the film's debut that we were in for a treat, as we first saw what Heath Ledger had become, then heard critics' initial reports of a 'new standard for superhero movies.' But even so, the level of praise that we've been inundated with, from non-rabid fans, is astounding.
To be clear, The Dark Knight is an incredible movie. There will be no debate here. I have a hard time calling it "the best comic book movie ever," but that's really just because I have a crippling fear of hyperbole. (I was bitten by one when I was a kid.) This movie made me giddy. So let's explore that.
I saw the first full-length preview of Dark Knight at the movies with my mother. Remember that shot of the Joker where he sticks his head out of the police cruiser window and shakes his head around a little, like a happy dog? When she saw that, my mother gave a little start.
"I saw John Cazale do that out of a taxi in New York in approximately 1976," she said. "He was dying at the time, he had cancer."
Cazale was in The Deer Hunter and the first two Godfather films. He died of bone cancer in 1978. Heath Ledger's portrayal of the Joker was real enough to remind my mother of an instant from thirty years ago.
I'm wondering what the next step is after something like this. A movie that brings people together like this is not the end-all. The next step, what someone does in the wake of said film, is what will determine whether this was a blessed fluke or the representation of a sea change.
It has to be admitted that this is a cultural milestone. My father, with whom I routinely get into long arguments over the artistic merit of comic books, (about three times a year, like a checkup,) told me he was excited to see this movie.
Here's what I think happened. About five years ago the haze of this current craze started to lift a little and some folks at Marvel and DC comics started to take stock of the situation. Then someone made Fantastic Four 2. THAT woke them up.
"Wait just a f*****g minute here," one of them said (I'd like to think it was Stan Lee.) "This s**t is our LEGACY. Let's take some real responsibility for it."
It's like a parent discovering the nanny has been teaching little Janey to pole dance. Absentee parenting doesn't work.
Studios are now working to make fewer superhero movies, better. It's a very non-Hollywood moneymaking ploy, and it just might work. According to the Internet, Rise of the Silver Surfer has made $131,385,634 TO DATE. The Dark Knight made $489,416,885 in, what, a month and a half? I'm not going to shed a tear spending ten bucks to see a great movie. I downloaded FF2 and I want the money I paid for the electricity back.
So the possibility of more superhero movies at the same quality level of The Dark Knight has me giddy. But it's more than just that.
It's easy to entertain someone with people flying and blowing things up, but it's hard to dissect the character that can do these things and understand their motivations and demons. To see how things could have gone, for example, google "Bay's Dark Knight." That would be Michael Bay (Pearl Harbor anyone?), so you can guess where the script goes.
I remember the first time when I saw Richard Donner's Superman I was thrilled. I mean, he FLEW! And he had HEAT VISION. I was eight. And that movie was the best thing ever.
But, even at that age, I saw where improvements could be made. I read Superman comics. I knew that the character was realistic. The powers were spectacle. The people were real. But onscreen, something was missing. The characters became caricatures. Chris Reeves was great, and remains so, but even he was wrapped up in the silly fact that he was playing Superman.
But The Dark Knight was real. It wasn't a superhero movie. It was a movie about a man who dresses up like a bat trying to stop a man who dresses up like a clown from killing people. They did spectacular things, but they were not themselves spectacles. For the first time, I saw the characters truly move the way they do in my head.
I won't call this the best superhero movie ever, but it was the movie I have been waiting for since I was eight years old. And I want to see more.
