The Problem With The Dark Knight
Thursday, July 24th, 2008Today’s post has nothing at all to do with the music business. (Had to get that out the way, mea culpa)
I saw The Dark Knight last night for the second time. Everyone seems to be gushing about the film, but a few things occurred to me.
1) TDK is a better film then Batman Begins.
2) I enjoy Batman Begins more.
3) TDK is about 20 minutes too long.
To elaborate, as far as “art” is concerned, I think Nolan’s second outing with the bat-franchise is an improvment over the original. Not that the original is bad. To the contrary: I think that Nolan got as much mileage out of the story and characters as you can in a re-boot.
But why is it better artistically? All of the characters are developed further. The struggle of being Batman is brought to light in a way that hasn’t been done before. Ledger’s Joker is brilliant. The Harvey Dent character is great. Modern moral quandries are addressed without being too condescending (ie the cell phone eavesdropping.) The picture is sophisticated in a way that most blockbusters aren’t.
I just think I enjoy Batman Begins better.
I’d rather sit down after a long days work and put on BB. TDK is more of an event. Much the way the Lord of the Rings extended versions are. I’ll never put one of those on for shear kicks. I love them, but I wouldn’t. Starwars Episode 3: yes. The Return of the King: hell no.
The length is one of the major issues that I have with TDK. It’s about 20 minutes too long. Watching it the second time, I was hard pressed on what you could cut out of the film and yet still retain it’s greatness. Other then about 30 seconds of Bat-poddery the only other thing to do would have been to end the film at the capture of the Joker. Two Faces finale should have been saved for a third film. That’s perhaps the proverbial straw that broke the camels back.