I was discussing the film with a friend, and we got to talking about our perception of how this film's Joker was different from previous cinematic Jokers. In my opinion, Jack Nicholson's Joker was essentially a mobster in makeup, nothing particularly special. I thought that he had potential when he began giving away money in order to gain popularity, but he so quickly released his toxic gas that the entire exercise seemed to have little point. Mark Hamil's animated Joker was always preferable to me, since he seemed much closer to the comic book versions that I've read. Hamil's Joker reveled in his chaos and violence, and he truly seemed to be playing some sort of joke on Batman and the city.

SPOILERS FOLLOW, SPECIFICALLY ON ALL THINGS JOKER RELATED IN THE DARK KNIGHT

However, Ledger's Joker significantly differs from both previous versions. What interests me are the cryptic statements that the Joker makes about the origin of his facial scars. Both stories are contradictory, but they both share a basis in family violence. It is also interesting that both stories present the Joker as either a child-victim or self-mutilating husband, neither of which is a story that a criminal might use to establish some kind of tough-guy credibility. I felt that these monologues offered a kind of glimpse into the Joker's psyche, and what I saw was pain. Ledger's Joker doesn't have any material goals to his crime, even though he says that "if you're good at something never do it for free." His self-stated ambition is to spread chaos.

But I question his methods. If the Joker merely wanted to kick over a few anthills and see what happened, he could simply start blowing things up at random. He has already proved his ability to infilitrate the most secure locations with his explosives, and, as he says, he has a taste for dynamite. However, the Joker chooses his targets very carefully. His choices are designed not only to spread chaos and panic, but to force people to betray their own morality. The ferry scene is a good example of this. If the Joker really wanted chaos, could simply have destroyed both ferries, or, to change things up, arrange it to appear that one ferry crew destroyed the other. Or whatever. The point is, in this plan, as with his plans for Dent and for Batman, the Joker doesn't just want to destroy things in order to watch the wreckage. He wants things to destroy themselves. He starts with the goal of "killing the Bat-Man," but his plans quickly escalate to discrediting Batman & Dent, and generally trying to not only kill them, but to destroy everything good that they've accomplished.

This leads me to two scenes in particular, that I would love to hear some other people's thoughts upon. The first is the scene where Batman is "interrogating" the Joker in the police station.

Which leads me to the second scene, a scene which provoked a heated debate between myself and my friend.

Thoughts?

My recollection of the Joker's line in the interrogation room was something like "Even with all your strength, you have nothing to threaten me with.". I thought the Joker's response to Batman in that scene as well as the hospital and ferry plots were right up there with John Doe in Seven. A consistent, purely evil villain who forces others to make horrifying choices.

I think you were right

Greg Boyd chimes in!

stu wrote:
: Because in a sense, Batman's super-power is basically the power of money, and the thing that elevates The Joker beyond other criminals is the disregard of money.

Wow. What an interesting connection. Thank you. I'll have to think about this. I'll certainly keep this in mind if I see the film a second time.

Bobbin Threadbare wrote:
: The Joker's desire to die is more than a lack of concern for his own life, I think it is an active death wish, so that his pain might end. The only reason that he doesn't kill himself is that he is so angry that he has to spread as much misery as possible before he dies. Anyone who is happy is an affront to his own pain.

Very interesting. I'll have to keep this in mind, too.

stef wrote:
: Greg Boyd chimes in!

Ahem.

Saw this last night, and it was excellent.

My favorite line (from memory) - "Let me get this straight. You believe your employer, one of the richest and most powerful men in the world, spends his nights dressing up in armor and beating criminals to a pulp with his bare hands. And you think you can blackmail this person? Good luck with that."

I don't know if anyone is following the, shall we say, lively, conversation about TDK over at Barb Nicolosi's site, but FWIW, thought you might find some of her latest "wisdom" amusing:

"The thing is folks, um, the main character dresses up in a vinyl rodent suit (or today in deference to the adult audience pouring over these things, kevlar...).

The story can't possibly ever attend to REALLY profound because to do so subverts its basic genre and the truth is COMIC BOOKS ARE MEANT FOR EIGHT YEAR OLDS!

Wrinkling your foreheads in serious analysis of a piece which more properly has large cartoon bursts proclaiming, "BAM!" and "POW!" just draws you deeper into the silliness. It's like you are trying to make applications from De Toqueville's Democracy in America to sociologically deconstruct an episode of Hannah Montana. It's absurd. Obviously so. But we don't have a keen sense of the obvious any more.

I only ever have one question of those of you who find the answers to all of your life's questions in how Charles Xavier can ultimately overpower Magneto:

"Fine. Okay. You like this stuff that you should have been done with by junior high. But if you, as a twenty-something year old man are pouring over cape wearing comic characters, than who is left to pour over Crime and Punishment?

Certainly not the eight year olds.

Batman (et al.) isn't profound. It isn't. Read The Brothers Karamazov or Howard's End or Wise Blood, and then see where this kind of material lands on the Pauline scale: "When I was a child, I thought the thoughts of a child, but now that I am a man, I dwell on a man's thoughts."


The thing is, though - I'm wondering how Barb really feels about this man-boy population.

Wiederspahn quoting Barbara Nicolosi:


Who says we can't pour over both?

I keep telling myself to stop reading anything that Nicolosi writes, because it only irritates me, but for some reason, I keep reading. I'm a glutton for punishment I guess.

Um, comparing The Dark Knight to the "bam-pow-wham!" Batman comics "for eight year olds" is like comparing... well, actually there is no comparison.

Does Nicolosi find anything worthwhile in the Chronicles of Narnia and other "children's" literature?

Just dumbfounded. I think the Narnia point is a good one though.

Condescending ignorance, thy name is Barb Nicolosi.

My own favorite thought-experiment: take the argument back a few years.



It seems to me that every respected art started out as a basically popular form, all the way back to the construction of epics. Crime and Punishment is one of my favorite novels, but it's in a relatively young family of work and builds off of what would now be considered definitely sub-literary forebears. I daresay (without having much history in the form) that film's done the same thing--um, "The Kiss," anyone?

The Dark Knight does what almost every classic work has done before it (not arguing, for the moment, that TDK is in this camp)--it takes well-worn tropes and ideas and reworks them so that they somehow contain more than they did to start with. Same as Dostoevsky and Dickens and Faulkner did with the melodramatic novel, Shakespeare with the melodramatic play, and whoever-it-is-we-call Homer did with the myths surrounding Troy. It's not where you get the parts--it's how well the car runs.

Here's a quote from C.S. Lewis, recorded during a conversation he had with Kingsley Amis and Brian Aldiss (the latter of whom wrote the short story that A.I. Artificial Intelligence was based on), which I now dedicate to Barb Nicolosi:

This chatter about the moral danger of the comics is absolute nonsense. The real objection is against the appalling draughtsmanship. Yet you’ll find the same boy who reads them also reads Shakespeare or Spenser.

I think you'll also find that the draughtsmanship is nowhere near as appalling as it used to be.

And FWIW, although I don't have this particular phrase in front of me as I type this, I believe Lewis supplemented this quote with a line about how his own stepsons were "so terribly catholic" when it came to selecting their reading material. They would, and did, read EVERYTHING.

Just a quick interjection, a friend of mine wrote an article on his blog regarding the idea of 'Soft Superheroes'. It's definitely a good read, a fascinating perspective.

It does however, provide me with a springboard for some thoughts I have had in regard to the movie, where I might differ slightly, and from what some have said here about the relationship between refraining out of weakness, or from strength. At the beginning of the movie, Batman responds to acts of evil and violence from a universal sense of justice, and the need to protect and defend all people of Gotham city. He may have felt great empathy for those who were affected by said acts of violence, but that empathy was a reflection of his desire to see all people protected from evil. At some point in the movie (and I think it is in the aftermath of Rachel's death), the conflict becomes a personal, individual struggle between Batman and the Joker. Had Batman carried through and killed the Joker, it seems to me that the act would have been one motivated by vengeance, rather than justice. Such an act compelled forward by such intentions would have been antithetical to the very essence of Batman. It would have made all that he had represented hollow and futile; he would have been defeated by the very thing he set out to defeat.

I feel like I've seen a trend a lot over the past few years with people's reactions to other superhero movies. There's a humanness in many movie superheroes that I think we, especially as Christians, forget, in our zeal to find savior-archetypes hidden in the personalities of our Bruce Waynes and Peter Parkers. I think we subconsciously superimpose Christlike characteristics onto our superheroes, in that our superheroes are sanctified and anointed for purging evil in their respective stories, and have the right, in turn, to deal out either vengeance or compassion, without being held to it. In reality, Bruce Wayne is not anointed, nor is he righteous enough to take upon himself the mantel of vengeance. He is a complex, intelligent, but ultimately human figure, full of doubt, and riddled with his own inadequacies. Batman came extremely close to falling, and would have no doubt exposed himself, had it not been for the courage of Harvey Dent, to take that role vicariously upon himself. I think we ought to be more forgiving of our superheroes, especially in coming to the realization that this movie is not about the good guy doing the right thing and saving the day, but rather, it is an exploration into how people will honestly and truthfully react when faced with evil.

I think the danger is that we (again, especially as Christians) are sometimes overly concerned, it seems, that our heroes be stereotypical protagonists, rather than looking for characters that honestly portray nuanced individuals like the Batman, who, like everyone else in the real world, struggles between what he holds to be true by conviction, and what he faces in reality. Perhaps Batman's struggle not to kill the Joker is an internal fight between his convictions ("I will not kill"), and what ought to happen ("the Joker must die"). Regardless of whether or not the Batman made the correct choice, it was an honest portrayal nonetheless, in my perspective.

I've been a longtime reader of this forum but have posted very little, so please forgive any missteps.

I read the comment thread at Ms. Nicolosi's site and while I think some of her responses were a little too much shoot first, think later, I can find some agreement with her point about the comic book medium. As I understand her, she does not believe there is much use in deep analysis of either comics or movies derived from them, when the same analysis can be performed on better works, which will likely lead to much richer results. She believes, I think, that the time spent analyzing much of pop culture at best takes away from time that could be spent on better things and at worst it actually makes analysis and appreciation of finer works of literature more difficult if not impossible.

Her metaphor, which compares the hamburger of comic books with the filet mignon of finer literature, is imprecise, mostly because preferring one to the other is a matter of taste, not quality. I have eaten very bad filet mignon, and I have eaten very good hamburgers. If I were making the case I think she's making, I would have said she's asking why you would want to listen to Itzhak Perlman play one of these when he could play one of these. Or if you like, why would you listen to B.B. King play a shoebox strung with rubber bands when you could hear him play Lucille. The artists will perform, but the time they spend on the sub-standard instruments is time they aren't playing the tools that show them at their best. We can analyze comic books, or the movies they engender, and we can analyze Survivor or Everybody Loves Raymond or whatever to see what it tells us about humanity and its issues. Or we can turn to time-tested and proven works of immensely higher quality, which might in turn inspire thought and reflection of similarly higher quality.

As I said, I don't entirely agree with this point, but I'm pretty sure Ms. Nicolosi isn't the first to make it, even with respect to Christianity and the arts. At several of the websites I've read from forum contributors and even now and again in different forum posts here, I think I've seen laments wishing people would set aside their love of Kinkade to look at some Michelangelo or even DiCianni. Or how they would put down the LaHaye and pick up some O'Connor, or get rid of I Could Sing of Your Love Forever Part 40 so their ears could soak in some Sam Phillips, Buddy Miller, Mark Heard or T-Bone Burnett (and there are those who would want us to dispose of them too so we could focus on Bach). Or even how preachers and Bible study leaders could get past using low-quality faith-centered films like Facing the Giants or the usual suspects like The Matrix and illustrate their lessons or ask the questions posed by people like Wim Wenders or Terrence Malick.

What I see in common between those kinds of statements and Ms. Nicolosi's position is that our finite resources of thought, time and reflection are better used when applied to work of better quality. I read comic books and I enjoy them. I'll even grab an illustration out of one now and again, as well as anyplace else I figure I can find something that echoes a point I want to make in a sermon. But in the end, they're comic books, and as much as I appreciate Kurt Busiek or Mark Waid as comic book writers, I'm not going to be able to go as deep in reflecting on humanity and such with them as I will with Tolstoy. Batman may show what kind of price a man pays when he is committed to justice to the point of obsession, but so does Inspector Javert, and Victor Hugo outranks Bob Kane.

Unlike what I believe Ms. Nicolosi to be saying, I don't think reflecting and analyzing comic books and other parts of pop culture is pointless. But I believe that unless we develop the tools to do so by honing them on the best art, literature and music of our inherited culture, our skills will remain limited to what pop culture provides. Contra the Lewis quote, which was probably apt for its day, they won't be reading comics and Shakespeare, because the serious thinkers will somehow feel since they've analyzed and reflected and considered the human condition as it's found in the comics or Oprah's Book Club, they can take a pass on Will.

A lot of college course catalogs, for example, list classes dealing with comics, pop music, TV, videos, etc. Not all that many offer much on the Bard of Avon. Our best popular artists infuse their work with the deep questions of human existence, I believe, because they learned them from those great artists, writers and musicians of the past. If all we study are these secondary levels of the expression of those questions, I think we lose quite a bit. I'm not sure Ms. Nicolosi is right that if we start at the secondary we won't ever move to the primary level. But I do think it's less likely.

The didactic, philosophical, and spiritual qualities of a story have very little to do with the method in which the story is conveyed and much to do with the quality of the manner in which it is conveyed... assuming the story is worth telling.

I'm reading through Watchmen right now. It won a Hugo award and appeared on a 2005 list of the "100 best English-language novels". Much like other storytelling mediums, most things produced are not worth spending much time on, but there are a few diamonds in the rough that are very much worthwhile. Pretending they don't exist, as Nicolosi seems to be doing from the quotes above, is just silly. Ebert did the same thing with video games.

Finally got a chance to see The Dark Knight this afternoon, and absolutely loved it. I've read the last 5 pages of this thread in the past hour, and I don't have a whole lot new to add that hasn't already been said, so my this will be brief.

1. Heath Ledger's performance exceeded the hype IMHO. Even when not onscreen his presence was felt throughout, much like Hannibal Lector's in Silence of the Lambs. I know there has been a lot of speculation on a supporting actor nomination, but at this point I'd go all out and nominate him for best actor. I think that many people forget that Anthony Hopkins total screentime in Silence is just about 16 minutes - the shortest for a best actor winner - so I don't think it's all that far-fetched to give the same consideration to Ledger, depending on how other performances pan out later in the year.

2. It took me a bit of time to get into the "realistic" Gotham city of this film. The Gotham in Batman Begins, while much more realistic than the Gotham of the Tim Burton films, still had a "mythic" quality that The Dark Knight seemed to play down.

3. I haven't come across this in any earlier posts. Did the Joker's "you've got a choice" scenarios remind anyone else of the "you've got a choice" scenarios presented by Jigsaw in the Saw series?





I don't think The Dark Knight will surpass Titanic, but I think it could have a shot at Star Wars. But don't worry Peter. Even if The Dark Knight could reach the $500 million mark, a 3D release of Star Wars has a great chance of reclaiming the number 2 spot.

If box office estimates hold up, The Dark Knight won its third weekend in a row with nearly $44 million in ticket sales, compared to $42.5 million for The Mummy 3. Mummy 3 started strong on Friday, grossing almost $15.4 million compared to TDK's $12.7 million. But Mummy 3 started to desend in ticket sales on Saturday, much in the same way as last weeks X-Files I Want to Believe, while ticket sales for TDK increased. Saturday's haul for TDK was $17.4 million, while Mummy3 dropped to $14.8 million. Estimated numbers for today give TDK a chance to take in $13.7 million, while Mummy 3 is expectected to drop down to around $12.3 million.

That would bring The Dark Knight's total box office to just about $394.9 million by the end of today, with a possibility of hitting the $400 million mark either tomorrow, or Tuesday for sure - 18 or 19 days into release - shattering the 43 days it took for Shrek 2 to reach the same mark.

Friday was the only day that The Dark Knight did not rank #1 at the box office.

Even if The Dark Knight could surpass the box office total for Titanic, I think one record that Titanic will hold onto is its amazing 17 week run at #1.

revbrett wrote:
: I read the comment thread at Ms. Nicolosi's site and while I think some of her responses were a little too much shoot first, think later, I can find some agreement with her point about the comic book medium.

A point of clarification: The issue here is not the medium, but the genre.

The comic-book MEDIUM has included excellent, serious, award-winning works such as Maus and Watchmen, and a number of graphic novels have been turned into excellent films such as American Splendor and A History of Violence. I don't think Road to Perdition is as good a movie as those, but it, too, was based on a graphic novel, and I am reminded that The Godfather was based on a rather pulpy novel which, itself, might not be taken all that seriously any more these days if it weren't for the fact that Francis Ford Coppola had transformed it into a thoughtful and compelling film.

What Nicolosi is objecting to, I hope, is not the comic-book medium but the superhero GENRE. She objects to the idea that people would ever take stories about supernatural beings and cape-wearing vigilantes all that seriously. And, well, okay, given the pulpy origins of the genre -- and given how the comic-book industry went out of its way to make things safe for children in the '50s and '60s, when Nicolosi was a child and the government was rattling its sabres against the industry -- I can understand that.

But we're not living in the '60s any more, and haven't been for some time.

: We can analyze comic books, or the movies they engender, and we can analyze Survivor or Everybody Loves Raymond or whatever to see what it tells us about humanity and its issues. Or we can turn to time-tested and proven works of immensely higher quality, which might in turn inspire thought and reflection of similarly higher quality.

But how can a thing be "time-tested" unless we take the time to test it? And is it not by studying and analyzing things that we begin that process of testing?

Your reference to Survivor is particularly interesting, for me, because I can remember having some very interesting conversations with people about the first season of that show ... even though I Never. Watched. A. Single. Episode.

The series was extremely high-profile at the time, so much so that EVERYONE was talking about the stars of the show on a first-name basis, and people were discussing whether the series was subverting or encouraging stereotypes about race, religion and sexuality, etc. So although I never watched the show -- and thus I had nothing to say about the quality of the show or anything like that -- I found myself getting swept up in discussions about these broader issues, simply because they were so fascinating. (I may not have watched the show, but I did read Ramona's diary in Entertainment Weekly, and interviews with Dirk in various Christian media, and I read their bios on the show's website, and I found myself wondering why there was so much hype over the white guy's faith but not about the black girl's faith. That sort of thing.)

I think there is most definitely a place for being a PART of that discussion. I think it can be a good thing to recognize that a pop-culture artifact has "united" people, for at least a moment in time, and to use that connection to engage with those people on deeper issues.

And that's before we address the question of whether a film like The Dark Knight, which openly INVITES consideration of those deeper issues, might have more lasting significance than a TV show where people basically just compete for a big cash prize.

: Batman may show what kind of price a man pays when he is committed to justice to the point of obsession, but so does Inspector Javert, and Victor Hugo outranks Bob Kane.

Well, so does Chris Nolan, I think.

To put this another way: Is there any reason we should take Batman Begins and The Dark Knight LESS seriously than Nolan's other films, i.e. Following and Memento and Insomnia and The Prestige? Does the fact that BB and TDK are superhero movies somehow make them LESS serious about morality and the human condition than those other films are? I don't think so. Or at any rate, I do not think the case has yet been made.

And what about the fact that many of us, including me, are familiar with Inspector Javert ONLY from the movies and musicals that have been made about him, rather than the book that was written by Hugo himself? Is it the medium, or the story, that is the issue here? (I hope it's not the medium, otherwise Nicolosi really shouldn't be teaching screenwriting, should she?)

Hello everyone, I recently saw The Dark Knight and I now love the movie I was searching on google to try to find out more information on the Joker and I came across this board and thought I would make an account. Everyone seems so intelligent here thats why I decided to sign up. I have a few questions on the Joker that noone can seem to answer so I thought I would turn to you guys. First off the Joker had amazed me by being such a psychopathic mastermind villain I was pretty much stunned at all the horrible things he made happen without even trying. Well, one of my questions is how did the Joker get the scars on his face? I tend to lean towards the story of him putting the razor blade inside his mouth because he seems like that type of personality who would preform an act of self mutilation and my second question is a scene that gave me chills. When Joker was in the hospital with two face [i forgot his name] Joker pulls out a gun and makes two face grab a hold of it [at first I thought that Joker was going to shoot him in the head] then Joker had turned the gun on himself, this really shocked me for some reason at that very moment did Joker want to die but insted of actually saying it he held the gun to his head as a symbol that he wanted to end his life and this leads me to ask was the Joker suicidal and if he was why did'nt he just pull the trigger himself and in the next scene I was even more shocked to see him walk out of the hospital room because I thought we wanted to die maybe it was just a matter of me not understanding the scene.

Please forgive me if these questions have already been asked and answerd
I just would really like to know

What you have is a story about a guy who respects and cherishes the gift of life (Batman) and a deranged, nihilistic psychopath who holds life (even his own) in very low regard. Apparently the Joker is more enthralled with the idea of harming others before harming himself, his raison d'etre.

The deal with the scars... it's not explained where he got them. The first story sounded pretty convincing but leads to the "oh he was crazy because he was a victim of abuse" kind of scapegoating and would trivialize the character... so they threw the second story in there to unbalance it. We aren't given any knowledge of which story was true... whether the Joker is an agent of anarchy because of a former love interest or because of child abuse or some other reason. We're not given any easy answers as to how the Joker came to be, which is a good thing, I think.

As for whether he's suicidal, it seems like he doesn't care if he dies, but he doesn't seem to actively be seeking death. His utter apathy toward things that most people care deeply about (life, money, etc) throws everyone off balance. If Batman kills him, he wins because he got Batman to break his one rule. If Batman doesn't kill him, he wins because short of death nothing will really stop him. He's the true hero of the film, really. Batman's principles may stay intact but at the end it really feels like he's lost and the Joker has won. The question is really whether the Joker is the unstoppable force or whether he's the immovable object.

Without the Joker this film would have been about as good as X-Men 3, and that's not a complement.

I do. We shouldn't pour over either. Cuz all you get is soggy pulp.

No, literally. In this respect Crime and Punishment is no different from Batman. If it's printed on paper, pouring over it is a bad idea.

Poring, now. That's a different story.

I thought a bit about this too, especially after reading Edelstein's review accusing TDK of, among other sins, sadism. That is a charge I would willingly convict Saw of, but I don't think that TDK is guilty. I think that the main difference is in the emotional effects of the "choiceless choices" in these movies. While I feel like the effect in Saw was to create a sadistic pleasure in the viewer as they wonder how the protagonist will choose and how they will be able to live with themselves after the choice, in TDK the effect is actually to distress the viewer, as the characters in harm's way are actually sympathetic personalities that the viewer has had time to engage and care about. I think that that sympathy for the threatened characters is a pretty significant difference between Saw and TDK.

Thanks for the clarification -- in fact I might not have gleaned the proper distinction from her post and the comment thread.

I would suspect that there are a number of genres that are just too shallow to allow reflection to produce results worth much at all. For Ms. Nicolosi, super-heros seem to be among them. For me, unscripted TV shows (like Survivor) are among them. For others, what some call "the CCM culture" is among them. We can probably all pick our own, although I'd bet there are some common threads.

I suppose the rub comes in the gray areas. I personally feel super-hero stories fall there -- I can definitely gain some understanding about humanity and its issues when I discuss and consider them, but I still believe I gain much more when I turn those tools on higher arts. I definitely respect Art Spiegelman's Maus memoir, and I'd add Joe Kubert's Fax from Sarajevo to the list as well. Maybe the problem comes because a pop-culture obsessed society gets lazy and elevates Maus at the expense of, say, Elie Wiesel's Night, instead of using both to explore the Holocaust and the issues it raises.

I don't necessarily have an answer here, but it seems that we for one reason or accept simplified explorations of complex issues and in so doing allow the more complex forms of exploration to gather dust on the shelf. I've spent time kicking around what Cowboy Bebop might be saying about redemption through suffering, and it's easier to watch a TV show than wade through some huge book, so what do I care what Dostoevsky says about it in The Brothers Karamazov? Such a person does pick up a little wisdom on the matter from Bebop, but I'm still a believer in the idea that reading a novel engages the imagination and the mind in a way that visual and auditory presentations alone don't, and that this extra engagement provides richer results.



I'm not the person to give a helpful answer here, I'm afraid, because while I liked Batman Begins and was intrigued by the simultaneous forward/backward storytelling in Memento, I've found Mr. Nolan's films seem more clotted than plotted and his storytelling runs amuck.

I also can't give you a good answer as to what I'd say to people who only know a character like Javert through the popular versions of him available through the musical or the movie. I can tell you what I asked myself when I realized I was in that position. A conversation that referred to Batman's "Javert-type" tendencies left me a little behind, because I knew him through Geoffrey Rush's portrayal in the 1998 movie and much of the talk focused on how Hugo had written him. So, I wondered. Why didn't I know him in his original format? Why didn't I know Hugo's novel? Because I had more or less been guilty of what I was talking about, lazily assuming I knew what I needed to know because I watched a movie instead of reading a classic novel.

My solution wasn't immediate, of course. Reading Les Miserables took me the better part of six months...

revbrett wrote:
: I suppose the rub comes in the gray areas. I personally feel super-hero stories fall there -- I can definitely gain some understanding about humanity and its issues when I discuss and consider them, but I still believe I gain much more when I turn those tools on higher arts.

Well, again, superhero is a GENRE and any given artform is a MEDIUM. The real issue here is whether a "higher art" can deal with subject matter that had "low" origins. Which is partly why I cited The Godfather in my earlier post, even though the film was based on a novel and not a comic book. The fact remains, the source material is rather pulpy. But Coppola's film transcended its origins and is now widely recognized as one of the greatest examples of American commercial cinema, precisely because of the way it tackles moral issues, etc. I think Nolan is trying to do something similar with his Batman movies. He might or might not succeed, but the underlying debate here seems to be whether it would even be POSSIBLE for him to succeed. For someone like Nicolosi, the fact that Bruce Wayne wears a cowl and a cope makes success of that sort immediately impossible. But I'm not prepared to make that assumption.

: I'm still a believer in the idea that reading a novel engages the imagination and the mind in a way that visual and auditory presentations alone don't, and that this extra engagement provides richer results.

I dunno. There's this assumption out there that the written word engages the imagination in a way that visuals don't. But I don't think that's true at all. Novels can spend a lot of time explaining, in detail, the thoughts of their characters -- but movies and plays force you to read the actors' faces and interpret the characters' decisions without giving you any insight into why they do what they do (unless there is a voice-over providing SOME explanation, and even then, we have to confront the possibility that the voice-over and the underlying action might not be in sync). So in some ways, visual and auditory presentations CAN engage the imagination better than the written word.

: My solution wasn't immediate, of course. Reading Les Miserables took me the better part of six months...

Exactly. Life's too short, sometimes.

The Dark Knight just became the #1 grossing comic book adaptation of all time...

Darryl A. Armstrong wrote:
: The Dark Knight just became the #1 grossing comic book adaptation of all time...

In unadjusted dollars, anyway.

In adjusted dollars, it is currently the #61 film of all time, behind:

• #33 -- Spider-Man -- $403.7 million in 2002 = $491.9 million today
• #47 -- Batman -- $251.2 million in 1989 = $445.7 million today
• #51 -- Spider-Man 2 -- $373.6 million in 2004 = $425.9 million today
• #60 -- Superman -- $134.2 million in 1978 = $406.1 million today

But hey, if the predictions come true and this film really does pass the $500 million mark, then it WILL reign supreme.

Your economics sadden me. They have no place in comic book film.

Even if they are true numbers.

(Just kidding.)

So. I'm anxiously awaiting the chance to maybe see this in IMAX. Still mulling over it in many ways. And in response to an earlier question from a fellow newbie, I think that the ambiguity of the Joker's scars is a throwback to his mysterious origins in the comics, and also necessary to the general creepiness of his character. In fact, I'm not even sure he remembers how he got them. Which raises another interesting point:

Not that amnesia is a case for insanity or sociopathic behavior, but how much of the Joker's background do we think, from this film, that he even has a handle on? People this disconnected tend to not only completely expect people to always believe them, no matter how outlandish their tales are, but also tend to believe themselves just because something comes up in their brain and sounds good to them. How much of the Joker's apathy perhaps comes from a completely missing past, in which there are no connections (severed, abused, cherished and lost, etc.) whatsoever to tie him to humanity?

Just...thoughts. Perhaps especially important because it is our sense of identity in Christ that is often most important to our own self-worth and treatment of others. I think this film is saying a lot about the topic of identity, and not just what we choose to do with that.

Four weeks at #1? If that prediction pans out, then The Dark Knight would be the first film to hold the top spot for that long since ... since ...

The last film to be #1 in its 4th week was 2005's The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe ... but that film was #2 in its 2nd and 3rd weeks, falling behind King Kong, so it's not quite the same thing ...

In 2004, The Passion of the Christ was #1 for its first three weeks and #1 again in its 7th week, but not for its 4th or 5th or 6th weeks (when it fell behind Dawn of the Dead, Scooby-Doo 2 and Hellboy, respectively) ...

We have to go all the way back to 2003's The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King to find another film that was #1 for four weeks straight. And that was during the Christmas season, where the movie that's #1 the week before Christmas tends to have the next couple weeks to itself, as well. Summer is supposed to be a little more competitive, is it not? (I mean, until a month or two ago, everyone would have expected The Mummy 3 to be #1 last week, right?)

It's gonna be close, that's for sure. Box Office Mojo's estimates for Friday are the ooposite of Fantasy Mogul's, with Pineapple Express taking in $7.9 million compared to $7.6 million for The Dark Knight. But TDK was second to Mummy 3 last Friday, and still pulled through on Saturday and Sunday.



Interesting collection of films for weeks 4, 5, and 6 - a post apocalyptic horror film - a comic book movie about preventing the apocalypse - and a comedy that I'd probably chose going to hell rather than viewing.

Baal_T'shuvah wrote:
: It's gonna be close, that's for sure.

Or not -- the estimate for the full weekend has The Dark Knight ahead of Pineapple Express by almost $4 million.

And so The Dark Knight is now the #3 film of all time, domestically, behind only Titanic and Star Wars.

I don't know if I'm ready to live in a world where Star Wars is not one of the Top 2 films of all time. Thanks to all the sequels and prequels and the 30+ years of merchandising, Star Wars might seem like the #1 film of all time, but in actual fact, it has spent most of its life in the #2 spot. It was #1 for five years, from its release in 1977 to the release of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in 1982. And then, in 1997, the "special edition" re-release moved it back to #1 for about a year or so, until Titanic took over. But for over 30 years -- for nearly my entire life, and certainly for the entire lifetime of certain members of this board -- Star Wars has been in one of the top two spots. And now, within a week or so, it will be bumped down to #3. I never thought this day would come. (Of course, when Titanic came out, I never thought the day would come that neither Lucas nor Spielberg owned the top spot, which had been theirs for over 22 years by that point, going back to 1975's Jaws.) But life moves on... Jaws, the #1 film BEFORE Star Wars, is now down at #42, and E.T., which interrupted Star Wars' claim to the #1 spot for 15 years, is now down at #5.

Oh, wait a minute, I just thought of something. Of the $461 million that Star Wars took in at the box office over its first 20 years, $138.3 million was earned in 1997 alone (the "special edition" of this 1977 film was the 8th-highest-grossing film of 1997, believe it or not) -- which means that Star Wars would have had about $322.7 million prior to that. Which means that, prior to the 1997 re-issue, Star Wars would have been (gulp) #4, behind E.T. ... and Jurassic Park, which grossed $357.1 million in 1993 ... and Forrest Gump, which grossed $329.7 million in 1994. At least one of those other films was a Spielberg film, so that's sort of "okay", I guess. And the other film was directed by a Spielberg protege, so that's sort of almost but not quite as "okay", I guess.

But, hmmm, okay. Star Wars has been down at #3 before. It has even been down at #4. It can make a comeback. Maybe.

The thing is, back in 1997, there hadn't been a new Star Wars movie in 14 years, and an entire generation of Echo Boomers had grown up without seeing the movies on the big screen ever, and everyone still had fond memories of the franchise, etc., etc. -- so it made sense that the 20th-anniversary "special editions" proved to be big hits. But would there be a similar market for these films in time for, say, the 40th anniversary, nine years from now? I doubt it. We've had three prequels that either soured fans of the original trilogy on the whole franchise, or they created new fans and eclipsed the original trilogy with their over-the-top effects, etc. -- and Lucas is continuing to run the franchise into the ground, well past the point of anything resembling inspiration, with his Clone Wars cartoons, etc. Audiences won't be "hungry" in 2017 like they were in 1977.

Of course, all the figures above are in unadjusted dollars. In ADJUSTED dollars, Star Wars is #2, E.T. is #4, Titanic is #6, Jaws is #7, Jurassic Park is #17, Forrest Gump is #22, and The Dark Knight is currently #49 -- though if it grosses at least $500 million, as everyone expects it to, then it will rise to at least #31 on the all-time adjusted chart.

Finally saw this last night, and not had time to read the other posts or to write more, so just one question for now:

Why did they get Ned Flanders to play Lt. Gordon?

Matt

(blink blink)

Gary Oldman IS James Gordon. He's, like, the best thing in the series.

LOL.

Wow, I hadn't thought of the resemblance before, Matt. But that's pretty funny. He *does* look like Ned.

Hmmm.

Sicinski is underwhelmed.

Possibly the silliest Catwoman casting rumour yet.

Um, there's no indication that Catwoman will even be IN the next movie, is there? There's no script yet, right? I would imagine the Nolans might want to take a small break from Batman before diving back in and trying to make a movie with any chance of living up to The Dark Knight.

Wednesday marked the end The Dark Knight's run of $1,000,000 a day or better revenue, which it had topped for 40 days straight. Pretty impressive for a summer release, but well short of the 101 days of million-dollar plus revenue that Titanic amassed.

Story here.

Baal_T'shuvah wrote:
: Wednesday marked the end The Dark Knight's run of $1,000,000 a day or better revenue, which it had topped for 40 days straight. Pretty impressive for a summer release, but well short of the 101 days of million-dollar plus revenue that Titanic amassed.

Boy, and I thought *I* was into obscure stats!

But I do hear that this film just surpassed Spider-Man (2002) on the adjusted-for-inflation charts, so now there is absolutely no question: by any standard, The Dark Knight is the top-grossing comic-book super-hero movie ever.

'Dark Knight' plans rerelease
Batman will hit theaters again in January for Oscar push
Hollywood Reporter, September 11

Martin Schneider @ Metaphilm:

The thesis pursued in this article is that this strong thematic aspect of The Dark Knight finds its roots in a short story by the labyrinthine Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges.

The story in question is called “Three Versions of Judas” (“Tres versiones de Judas”), published in the influential 1944 collection Ficciones (English translation, Fictions 1962).

“Three Versions of Judas” is difficult to encapsulate and is worth reading in full. The story takes the form of an academic summary of the life of an obscure Swedish scholar named Nils Runeberg, who (we are told) was active in the first years of the twentieth century. Runeberg had been by training a theologian but by the end of his truncated life had moved sharply into heresiology, the study of heresy. Runeberg becomes interested in the contradictory figure of Judas, a traitor whose treachery enabled the salvation of humankind. Runeberg begins to wonder if the scorn bestowed on Judas is truly appropriate treatment for what is, after all, a necessary cog in the cosmological narrative; he ends by assigning Judas the role of Savior.

For Runeberg, given the scale of the salvation that is offered, the sufferings of Christ cannot be sufficient; as the narrator of the story summarizes, “To limit all that happened to the agony of one afternoon on the cross is blasphemous.” If redeemed humanity is to last forever, so too must the infamy of the savior; hence Judas, residing in Dante’s ninth level of Hell.

But Borges is not quite done with his logical twists: if Judas’s infamy is to be complete and everlasting, his heroism must remain a secret. If the deep logic of God’s plan become known, then Judas becomes elevated as a Messiah and the punishment of being scorned on earth ceases to be fulfilled. Runeberg, having stumbled on the secret, cannot succeed in propagating it; his message must remain marginalized. Indeed, he recognizes in that marginalization a proof: “Runeberg intuited from this universal indifference an almost miraculous confirmation.” He has himself become a version of Judas; the second. The third is (I think) the narrator who is critiquing Runeberg. . . .

Nice link and interesting read, but I am not sure I buy it. Batman is the opposite of Borges' Judas almost in the same way he is the opposite of Harvey Dent. From the perspective of the viewer in either case: Judas is a despised, ugly, and humiliated figure, whereas Batman is a flashy, cool-looking, and ultimately feared semi-villian. As far as Nolan presents it, Dent has the civil and moral victory (at least initially), but Batman gets all the cool points even if some of his methods are immoral and fascist. This is not at all how Borges' describes his Judas.

The problem that cripples The Dark Knight is that its script and presentation send mixed messages concerning what we should think about Batman.

Does that cripple The Dark Knight? Or is that the point?

I am not sure how intentional it is, is there anything that would point us either way? I tend towards Sicinski in thinking that the film isn't really deep enough to sustain that ambiguous or profound of a Batman. The script wants us to be thoughtful and reflective about Batman and his methods, but the presentation, the film itself, just wants us to see how cool he is. This is not the good kind of mixed message, it is the sloppy or accidental kind.

Oh, I think Nolan is deliberately and consistently presenting Bruce Wayne/Batman as a flawed character that the audience should question. For all of the flashiness of his style, he's still a walking contradiction. His playboy behavior is clearly shown as indulgent. And his friends usually see things more clearly than he does. Heck, even Rachel, for all of her misguided affections, calls out Bruce's blindspots.

When Freeman's character disagrees with Wayne, I felt that Freeman's character was being portrayed as wise, responsible, and conscientious. He loses, in the end, but he's honored as a man of conscience.

Alfred is shown as being more intelligent too, in my opinion. He knows that Bruce Wayne couldn't handle the full truth, so he shields him from it. Thus, Batman is shown as someone who will only get the job done if his idealism about people is protected from the truth. (In the same way, Batman thinks he's beaten the Joker on human nature... when in fact two individual humans made the conscientious choice on those ferry boats... while the masses, if they'd been given their druthers, would have proven the Joker right.)

I think the film seems very calculated to make us question Gordon's wide-eyed hero worship at the end. Gordon and Batman are naive. Sympathetically naive, but naive all the same. Lucius sees more clearly.

That's why this is my favorite super-hero movie. It gives us a wide range of choices and consequences, and respects the complexity of tough questions enough to give us room to discuss and disagree.

Those who celebrate it as a defense of Dubya-ism are assuming that we're supposed to root for Batman at every turn. But this movie muddies the waters considerably. Or better, it admits that they're very, very muddy to begin with.

If this were the last film of Nolan's franchise, I would be pretty miffed about all the mixed messages, some of which I think are accidental. But I like long character arcs, and am willing to see how all these complexities get worked out in the future. From what I gather, a lot of these moral conundrums are lifted straight from later versions of the Batman mythos in its graphic form. Regardless, the Borges' comparison just doesn't pan out.

Yeah, I'm always writing from a point of limited education on "the mythos."

Because I don't read comic books.

That's a serious blindspot when reviewing comic-book movies. I don't know much of anything about the comic tradition. It makes me reluctant to review comic book movies at all. Anybody who actually *knows* something about the comic will see my ignorance within moments.

I agree with you about Borges -- it doesn't do anything for me (either w/r/t Batman or w/r/t Judas).

I also agree that the series needs at least a third film that offers more redemption than this one. This film offers hope, and gratifying flashes of goodness. But it works for me the way a good dark middle chapter works, like The Empire Strikes Back. Let's have a persuasive finale, please.

So we pretty much all agree. Wow... now what happens?