Sunday, July 20, 2008

The Dark Knight

Well, I was ready to eat all kinds of crow, hyped by Kevin Smith's rave review and the box office numbers, and...I hated it. Like Lord of the Rings (take your pick as to which one), this movie was about an hour too long. It was slow, there were too many plots that ran each over like steamrollers, and once again, too many villains.

Spoilers Follow














The Joker pulls off so many different and major acts of terrorism in this movie with no time to prepare and virtually no resources, he makes Al-Qaeda look like the Three Stooges. Batman and every other idiot in this movie actually believes the madman when he tells them something. Uh, hello, this is the Joker? When he gives you an address you put all of your resources into investigating it? When he threatens you with the death of innocents, you comply and believe that he will follow through on his promises? You deserve what you get from him.

And here's the true winner of this movie (paraphrased):

"We found three different sets of DNA on his card."

"Whose are they?"

"The judge's, Commissioner Loeb's, and Harvey Dent's."

"Where'd he get their DNA?"

No, the question is, where did YOU get their DNA? Is there a new requirement for public officials to have their DNA on file that I don't know about? I've been fingerprinted for federal background checks, but I never had to give a blood sample. Talk about harsh hiring techniques!


Ever since Batman Returns, comic book movies have this horrible pattern of putting too many villains in the movies. The Joker was a good choice for a villain, but to add Two Face was just too much. Harvey Dent's presence in the movie was welcome, but to make him into a villain was unnecessary to the plot and just to throw him away was wasteful.

And I'm just thinking aloud here, but if you have a device that can use every cell phone in the city to create a virtual imaging environment, then maybe you could use that technology to turn them off so THE JOKER CAN'T BLOW UP ANY MORE STUFF REMOTELY WITH THEM?
I don't know, I am just so tired of seeing movies with plot holes you can drive Bat-tanks through. And speaking of Bat-tanks, are they actually trying to tell me that they designed the Tumbler as a bridge jumper that breaks off into a motorcycle? No wonder the military didn't buy it. If Lucius Fox made modifications to it so that it did so, you'd think that they would have built a spare Tumbler, too, so that Batman wasn't limited to just a motorcycle for the rest of the movie.

And how did Bruce Wayne corrupt Lucius' cell phone technology all by himself? Did he go to engineering school between movies? I'm sorry, but that's Lucius Fox's whole role in this series and to think that Bruce can just go ahead and modify it like that without his knowledge or help is just going too far.
I really wanted to like this movie, but my sense of logic was assaulted too many times. Sorry, Kevin Smith, but I have to disagree with you here when you said, "It's the 'Godfather II' of comic book films."
"Goodfellas," maybe, but not "Godfather II." Okay, that's too strong. I liked "Goodfellas."

3 comments:

Michael O'Connell said...

You know, you're just way too smart to be able to enjoy these kinds of movies.

Schoolteachers. Jeez. Expecting stuff to make sense and everything. Expecting writers to know all that "science" and "common sense" stuff.

:)

(In defense of my glowing review, I couldn't wait to get the director's cuts of the LOTR films because I felt the theatrical ones were too short. I like my movies as long as possible. Maybe I just enjoy that sensation of my butt falling asleep a little too much...)

Jim McClain said...

What's ironic is that it isn't that I'm particularly smart or that I'm a teacher that spoils these movies for me. It's that I'm a gamer, and if these dilemmas had been presented to us as players, we would have solved them differently. It's a matter of perspective. The problem is with these movies is that the writers don't think like the lead characters. They think like a fan who wants to see this stuff on the screen without an internal logic check to make sure that the plot makes sense. I firmly believe that every plot for every superhero movie should be gamed to weed this stuff out of the scripts.

If some amateur like me can pull this stuff out in the 45-minute drive home from the drive-in, think what could be done by a professional with days or weeks to work with. We'd have better movies, that's for sure.

wasteco said...

Hey Jim.

Being along time comic fan i just had to get used, that theatrical adaptions of our favorite heroes adventures are corrupted, full of plotholes and made more suitable to the general public.

I general i have to concur with your point of view, nonetheless, when i watched the movie yesterday i was staring in awe. I really liked the way the joker was played (I never thought jack niccholson could be surpassed) I liked the double traps of the kind that lead to the death of Robin nr.2, and above all i liked the fact that the btman took responsibility for the murders of Harvey Dent, making himself an outlaw and criminal.

So, as I am willing to turn a blind eye to the obvious plotholes,
I really really enjoyed that movie and cant wait for the next installment in the series.

THX for your review tho ...