The Dark Knight

We used to watch movies all the time, but for about the past 18 months or so, we have really tailed off when it comes to watching them.

It could be that Kristie and I are pretty thorough readers. It could be that when gas prices soared over the summer, we curtailed out trips to the movie theater. It could be that since Kenzie arrived, we haven’t had time to hardly read let alone watch a movie.

It’s not that we haven’t rented movies. That we have. It’s just that we don’t ever get around to watching them.

However, we did manage to rent two movies over Christmas, Tropic Thunder and The Dark Knight. And we even managed to watch them.

Well, we watched most of Tropic Thunder, which was a major disappointment. I read several articles that hailed it as one of the best comedies of the year. But I hated it. It could be that I loathe Ben Stiller (the last decent thing – if not the only decent thing – he did was Meet the Parents. Oh wait. There’s Something About Mary. That’s his best work. Everything else stinks). It could be that Jack Black has really laid some eggs recently (I’ll give him School of Rock, but Be Kind, Rewind was maybe the worst movie I’ve seen in a few years). Either way, Kristie and I turned it off about half an hour in. It was really too stupid to watch.

For as bad as Tropic Thunder was, The Dark Knight made up for it. The film was brilliant.

Now, I’ve never been a big Batman or super hero fan. Strange, from an overgrown kid like me, I know. I think it was that horribly fake Adam West ‘70’s TV series.

I never saw any of the Spiderman films beyond the first one. I hated the Superman films. The first Hulk was terrible. I never even saw the first Batman with Jack Nicholson as the Joker. I admit that Iron Man was great. It was fluff, but it was great fluff. What are the odds of Hollywood producing two good superhero films? Let alone one superhero film that could actually stand alone as a legit film, much like Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy.

But The Dark Knight is incredible.

Heath Ledger’s version of The Joker was brilliant. The is nothing cartoonish about this Joker. Whether it's his Glasgow smile, the origin of which is never clear since the Joker offers two different tales for how he got the scars; his constant lip smacking and licking; his nefarious cackle; or his ability to make complete sense no matter how irrational he seems, the Joker is the highlight of the film.

Christian Bale is okay as Batman (check out his wonderful role in American Psycho), but the rest of the cast (namely Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, Aaron Eckert, and Michael Caine) was great.

Plus, the film takes a comic book character and treats it seriously. It doesn’t reduce the franchise to foolish cartoon-like roles – ala the George Clooney's Batman films of the late 90’s.

Ledger’s Joker is so creepy, that I got nervous every time he ventured on to the screen, much like I did when Javier Bardem’s character appeared in No Country for Old Men. I read that Ledger based his version of the Joker off of the classic Batman: The Killing Joke which fills us in on the Joker’s origin.

I think this film really hits the heart of what has attracted people to Batman for decades now – or at least since Frank Miller helped reinvent Batman with his dark, disturbing graphic novel, The Dark Knight Returns. This is not the Batman of Adam West and his cartoonish violent “Smash” and “Whammo,” where you knew some how or some way Batman or Robin would escape their peril at the last second. I mean, nothing bad would ever happen in that cartoonish world. Miller's The Dark Knight Returns focuses on a "hero" whose personal demons are equal to the real villains he battles in Gothom.

Interestingly, enough, the film makes one wonder about our society. It was no coincidence that the first major blockbuster after 9/11 was Tobey Maguire’s Spiderman. After all, Spiderman didn’t ask to be a hero. It just fell on him. Nor does he always do the morally right thing, ala Superman, the hero many believed America linked itself. However, after 9/11, America realized it was not as invincible and strong as it believed. Thus, when Maguire’s Spiderman came out, there was a protagonist Americans could relate to. And thus the first major blockbuster of post 9/11 America.

If Spiderman made Americans think about their own vulnerability and struggle to do the right thing, The Dark Knight tackles the theme of becoming a monster to stop one. As I watched explosion after explosion in Gothom and watch buildings tumble, I couldn’t help but think of what America has become in order to combat terrorism.

The Dark Knight never lets up. It could have gone on for another hour and I would not have noticed at all. I might even have watched all of Tropic Thunder – if I had to – in order to see The Dark Knight.