At the time of writing, Christopher Nolan’s 2008 film, “The Dark Knight”, sits as the number four greatest film of all time on IMDB’s top 250 list, only bested by “The Shawshank Redemption” and the first two “Godfather” films. It is one point ahead of “Pulp Fiction”. When everyone went crazy for the film upon its release, I figured a lot of the hype was built on Heath Ledger’s untimely death during the making of; a sort of necromancy written large. But here we are, almost seven years later, and the film is still regarded as one of the all time greats. Which I find odd given it is identifiably one of the worst films of all time.
So why do I assert that “The Dark Knight” is one of the worst films of all time? It’s long, about nothing, no fun and unbelievably boring. And on the last point, I do mean Coleman Francis level boring. Only having said that, I really do like all three of Coleman’s shitcakes better than “The Dark Knight”, even “Beast of Yucca Flats”. People who cherish the film seem to take a nonsensical, two pronged approach whenever it is criticised. If you say it isn’t about anything and has nothing to say, they retort that “The Dark Knight” is just a superhero movie and aren’t you expecting a lot here? When you respond then by saying, okay, but if we’re judging it by that yardstick it’s slow moving as hell and not in anyway exciting or even marginally coherent. “Superman” it ain’t, in other words. They then say that it’s slow because it’s dark and meaningful, taking the conversation back to square one.
The muddled thinking that went into the making of “The Dark Knight” is clear from any interview with Nolan on the topic of the film. Take the Joker character: Nolan said when the film was first released that they had based the Joker’s personality on Johnny Rotten.
“We very much took the view in looking at the character of The Joker that what’s strong about him is this idea of anarchy. We wanted to show the pure anarchy of someone who wants to do harm purely for its own sake.”
Okay, here’s the thing: whatever one might say about Jonathan Rotten ne Lydon, he is not, nor ever was a nihilist. The first side of the Sex Pistols only album contains one of the strongest anti-abortion songs ever written and closes with the most in your face denunciation of the British monarchy of all time. The guy believes in stuff, that’s pretty clear. When you understand your antecedents to that level of total misconception, it says something about the whole piece. Particularly when you’ve set out to make a superhero movie that is supposed to be existentially profound.
Take one of my real bugbears in regards to the “Dark Knight” and how deep it supposedly is – the boat scene. You know the one. The scene that made everyone talk about just “how dark” the film is in the first place. For those of you who haven’t seen the film or can’t remember what I’m talking about, here is the basic setup: there are two boats, crossing Gotham City’s harbour in different directions. The Joker sets up each with a bomb on board to blow them to smithereens, and a detonator to explode the other boat on each as well. The Joker takes over each ship so they can’t just sail away and then instructs each boatload that they have in their hands a detonator to destroy the other boat, something that they had better do before the other boatload decides to explode the lot of them.
To spice this up, one boat is packed full of “normal folk”, i.e. tax payin’ citizens coming home from work. The other: a boat-load of ne’er-do-well criminals. How they take over the boat and are in charge of it is really boring, like most of the movie – just go with it. So what happens in this incredibly “dark” scene? Each group of people ignores game theory completely and lays down their arms. In other words, even the criminals don’t blow up the normal people in order to save themselves. And this is supposed to be dark and twisted.
You want dark and twisted? Make the boat scene the first one in the movie. Same scenario, except this time round have the normal people panic and press the button, frying the criminals. They watch out the side of the boat in horror as burning bodies hurl themselves into the water for respite. The next moment, they die in an explosion as well. The Joker was playing with them and always intended to kill both sets of passengers, regardless of who did what. The Joker laughs evilly. Cut to opening credits. Now that’s dark.
I suppose I shouldn’t get so worked up about the plaudits handed to a superhero movie made seven years ago, but the reason it gets to me is something Bill Hicks once put beautifully.
“You’re lowering the standard!” he used to rant. He said this in the context of shitty pop music, but it can be applied to other areas of popular culture. If you can be called a genius for making something as rubbish as “The Dark Knight” why make anything good? And sure enough, even Chris Nolan has drank this punch. A guy who started off making the very good “Memento”, he’s now taken to directing piles of overlong, pretentious nonsense. Rewarding bad behaviour, as the audience did with “The Dark Knight” has its consequences.
While the criticisms of it being over-long and boring are accurate, it is not at all true to say the film isn’t about anything. It is clearly about virtue ethics; specifically, it is about whether ethical value attaches to actions, or character. The film is full of people doing ‘bad’ actions for ‘good’ reasons, or vice-versa; Harvey Dent is a ‘good’, character who refuses to compromise his moral standing by taking the criminals on at their own level, and as such is ultimately powerless against the force of unmotivated evil that is the Joker; while the Batman sacrifices both his own virtue (for instance, using the mobile-telephone-device even though it is against his moral compass), and his reputation, descending to become to become a hated figure not so very different from the criminals he faces but in doing so achieves ‘good’ results.
This defines the antagonists too: the Joker is convinced that everyone’s character is fundamentally ‘bad’ and that therefore everyone can, if pushed far enough, be driven to ‘bad’ acts. And the theme comes to a head when Dent’s reaction to his powerlessness is to embrace randomness, thus becoming the embodiment of the disconnection between ‘action’ and ‘character’: whatever actions he performs, good or evil, they don’t come from his character at all but merely from chance.
The purpose of the boat scene is to focus on this question of character and action: the discussion on the ‘public’ boat is all about what kind of people they are, and could they reconcile a bad act (blowing up the other boat) with their images of themselves as people of good character, while the ‘criminals’ boat is full of people who are already assumed to be of ‘bad character’ so the question is whether that will determine their actions.
It’s over-long, and stretches of it are boring, yes, but it is one of the strongest-themed films I have ever seen. Every single thing in it hammers away at this idea of what it means to be a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ person.
If you don’t think it’s about anything… then you have missed the wood for the trees. You’ve missed the theme because it’s all theme.
Now, Inception, there really is a movie which is over-long, incredibly boring, and utterly lacking in any kind of point.
The Dark Knight is shit. I don’t understand why it’s considered the Best superhero movie. It doesn’t worth even 20% from Avengers Age of Ultron.
Man you’re a dumbass. Not even worth 20% of Avengers: Age of Ultron? Because that’s such a great film. Oh wait. It was not a great film. Why don’t you provide some real criticisms as to why it sucks. Or hell. Even the entire trilogy, because I guarantee I can shut that shit down.
Only Ledger was great but that does not automatically make the movie great. Lots of utter shitty movies that had great acting. But the movies were still utter shit. Same here!
Totally agree that TDK was complete shit. The only thing it has going for it is that it’s better than The Dark Knight Rises.
Nolan was allegedly trying to base his films in a more “real-world” setting. You’d think that he’d try harder to have his movies make logical sense.
Take, for example, the opening robbery sequence. We’re meant to assume that The Joker knew the exact moment that the school bus caravan was driving by and had his moves times to the precise moment? Okay, maybe. But wasn’t it convenient that there just happened to be a gap in the bus caravan which fit his own school bus perfectly? Are we meant to believe that no bus driver got on the horn to report a school bus that (a) cut into their caravan of little kiddies by (b) pulling out from the rubble of a bank?
Also, the breach of the rules they established in Batman Begins. Lucius Fox told Bruce that the armor would deflect knives, and even bullets under most circumstances. So right off the top, we see Batman under attack by Rottweilers that were able to bite through the suit. Oops. Anything to get him a new suit ASAP to sell toys.
Mopey Bruce: when Rachel gets killed, the Bale-Bruce gets depressed. The Batman we all know would use that as motivation to go out and GET the bastards. More than likely, he’d sit down and design an all-new badass set of assault armor to really deliver the pain. Now we get him a new suit AND make him truer to the Batman character in one move.
Having two villains face off with Batman was ridiculous. This is a flick about Batman and the Joker. No extra villain is needed. They should’ve kept it mano-a-mano, and have a scene at the very end when Bruce visits Dent in the hospital, Dent could turn his face to the camera as Bruce is leaving, revealing the disfigurement. The idea that he was physically able to get up out of his hospital bed a day or so after the incident was asinine. Maybe in a Joel Schumacher Bat-flick, but not in this supposedly real-world edition.
They had a lot to work with, but used it poorly. Dark Knight COULD have been great. Ah, well, it made a gajillion bucks, so who gives a damn what anybody thinks, really? Bastards got our money.
Wow, your fucking stupid. First of all, yes the bus thing is overly convenient, but if that’s what you were focusing on then you must be attention deficit or something. Secondly, maybe for some other family, or friend that died, yes, Batman woulda immediately kicked some ass, but this was the woman he loved, which would, (realistically) make almost anybody depressed. The villain gripe is more an opinionated thing.
You say this film is about nothing, it’s no fun, and unbelievably boring. Your first statement then is objectively wrong, in that the film is titled after its main character and thus it has to be about something. I can’t say your wrong for finding it boring as I can agree that it has a slow pace, and unlike marvel movies, these films are grounded in realism, with world building and character development which the film prioritizes over it’s action, and if those aren’t qualities you are looking for in a film then you may find it boring so to each their own. When you say the film is no fun it’s hard to know what you mean as you don’t explain or describe what you find to be fun in movies or what your definition of “fun” is. This is a dark and gritty film, and light hearted fun is not what you will find here, nor is the film marketed that way. You also mentioned how in comparison to Johnny rotten, the character that Joker was supposedly based off of, that the Joker holds no beliefs and thus it is not a n accurate comparison to Johnny Rotten. While Nolan did say that Joker enjoys anarchy for the sake of it, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have his own beliefs, just not moral code, which is what the movie’s theme is largely about. You complained about the film not being dark or deep the way everybody says, but it without a doubt has societal messages wedged into it. Joker does indeed have beliefs, his main one being that people are only as good as societal rules allow them to be, and that under enough pressure everyone’s humanity will indeed snap. The point of the boat scene was to show this. You talk about how you would have preferred him to blow up both boats and laugh afterwards, but this is for one not your movie its christopher nolan’s, and secondly, this film is not aiming at being a comic book adaptation with animated characters and constant explosions, but a realistic take on the world and who we are as people. The boat scene is meant to create suspense but also to make the viewer think, which is the point of all Nolan’s films when you look at what they are based around.
I want to agree this picture is utter garbage. It’s a clunky overcooked mess of fanboy hokum pretending to be clever when it’s dumber than a maga hat. The same masses that chucked down their 10s on IMDB no doubt also think Trump is a stable genius.
Just watched the “Dark Knight” . Holy crap, what a load of drek. I’ve seen cops and law enforcement portrayed as imbeciles in other movies but this one takes the cake. Forget about its “dark psychosocial” aspect it’s just not enjoyable watching people behave in utterly illogical and idiotic ways that even my 5 yo kid could see through. They capture the Joker, the master mass-murderer, and then lock him up like a petty pickpocket so of course he gets away pronto murdering some more people in the process. And then there’s the fat guy with the bomb in his belly…Moe Larry and Curley just stare at what everyone else in the world can see is a bomb until tick, tick boom! Yawn. Then there’s the Joker himself. To plant all those bombs, be everywhere at once, know everything and everyone, and coordinate all the chaos, he would have had to put everyone in Gotham to sleep for a year and have had a budget like the GNP of Japan. Give us a break! I’ve got to agree with Trev that anyone dumb enough to like this grossly expensive series of explosions and murders is probably wearing a red hat.
Christian Bale sucks at Batman, his costume sucks, his voice sucks, his batmobile sucks, Morgan Freeman sucks (why the fuck was he in this movie?), the Joker was not intimidating or terrifying in the least, his laugh sucked, his acting sucked, him being a fan favourite sucked (people are supposed to hate and despise and dread the Joker), the plot sucked, the bank heist sucked, the idea of having a terrorist plot at the end sucked, Joker not dying at the end sucked, the fact that entire police, SWAT and Army were involved in this movie sucked, Harvey Dent sucked, the acting sucked, the fact there were no Italian actors sucked, the director sucked, the realism sucked, the fact the whole film was played in broad daylight sucked, the lack of gothic art direction sucked, the music sucked, the acting sucked, the fact that a bunch of White computer programming nerds made the whole movie sucked ass!!!
You know something? YOU suck!
When a guy says some film suck without actual reasons, he knows he sucks
It’s a great movie, but there are still some points that doesn’t make sense. Mostly the Batman part. No vigilante would dress up as a bat. But it’s otherwise a great movie.