The Dark Knight (2008)
Some men just want to watch the world burn.
THE SUMMARY: Batman and Gotham City law enforcement battle an insane criminal bent on chaos and destruction for show. The Dark Knight is truly a masterpiece of all aspects of the craft. Tense action, thoughtful writing, challenging moral dilemmas, and compelling performances all combine so well I actually care about a superhero movie, which I almost never do. I wrote a wall of text about it, so I must have loved it.
FROM MOVIE-PICKER ‘THE HOUSE ALWAYS WINS’: Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker was so good it cost his sanity and his life. That along with a fantastic musical score makes this a standout film by a standout director.
JAMIE AND JEANNE’S SHOW AI ART FOR THE WEEK:
Give it five more years - Blonde will get to this stage.
THE BEST:
All the presentation: Movies of this excellence in presentation are rare, but The Dark Knight nails all of it.
Action and effects: It’s a superhero movie, so you know you’re in for explosions, but The Dark Knight still delivers in ways that surprise and maintain tension. Standouts include Joker’s pencil trick, the car chase with Joker shooting RPGs at Dent’s transport, and the opening bank robbery scene - I always appreciate a good dumpster defender cameo, even if it didn’t work out for the man wielding it this time.
Costuming and makeup: Of course Ledger’s Joker performance deserves the universal praise it gets, but part of what makes it great is the aesthetic. I actually like several other Jokers - Phoenix especially, and even Leto (I understand I’m in a minority). No Joker looks as sinister and scary as Ledger’s though, and that’s a big part of the difference.
Because Joker is so good in Dark Knight, Harvey Dent-turned-Two-Face is almost an afterthought, but he’s an incredible villain with an incredible presentation himself. That (two) face reveal is convincing, and you won’t forget it. I was wondering how they pulled it off, since this effect is necessarily subtractive of skin - you can’t add makeup or a mask to achieve that effect. Director Christopher Nolan and his effects crew used ‘digital makeup’ - a complex system of computer-generated manipulations of the real actor’s face. The result is completely realistic, and the fact that it was achieved 15 years ago is all the more impressive.
Performance: Heath Ledger’s Joker is a villain benchmark for a reason - it’s a masterclass on how to present as an authentically insane person without a hint of cringe to it. It’s not overacted, which makes Joker too much of a… well, joke. It’s not underacted, which minimizes the man’s absolute madness. And best of all, this Joker is gritty and dark (which is why I love Phoenix’s Joker too). This character is ruined when he’s cutesy and fun. He’s best when when scary first, but still charismatic second. And Ledger crushed that.
Writing: To the next point, there are several Dark Knight philosophical themes that fascinate me, but there’s an added layer of excellence in summarizing these ideas in memorable, well-delivered, conversational lines. And those lines still stick today. ‘Some men just want to watch the world burn.’ ‘Why so serious?’ ‘You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.’ These are all common quotables, but they aren’t just some throwaway laugh line in a comedy. They all summarize profound moral questions, and writing that into a conversation that sounds authentic is not easily done.
The moral dilemmas and philosophy: I could probably list ten moral dilemmas or philosophical concepts that Dark Knight stuck in my mind for hours, but I’ll pick my top four.
Is having no rules actually a win?: The movie’s core premise is a battle between the law and lawlessness, with a recurring claim that lawlessness will have an upper hand. Joker tries to bait Batman into breaking his ‘one rule’ and killing him. Dent argues that the Romans were right to seize emergency powers when necessary. Implicit in Alfred’s speech about ‘watching the world burn’ is that these amoral villains have a strategic advantage in adhering to no moral structure.
But do they have an advantage? What does Joker actually achieve? He has no family, he kills his friends on a whim, and he doesn’t even care about money - he burns it for fun.
He believes in nothing, so he gets nothing. If there is no morality, there is no goal. If there is no goal, there is no purpose. If there is no purpose, there is no satisfaction. That may sound like flowery fluff, but the point is ‘the rules’ are not arbitrarily made up. The rules are the rules because, on average, or in more cases than not, following them leads to good outcomes. Following them leads to prosperity. Following them leads to purpose and contentment. I’m still waiting to see the man who lied, cheated, stole, and murdered his way to happiness, and as much as I like this Joker, he’s not that guy. And he’s not supposed to be. He’s tortured, and he tells his story of torture while torturing others.
And if the counter is only the morally flexible survive, sure, maybe - but there are fates worse than death. Like living a purposeless life. If you could live 100 years of pointlessness, or 20 quality, fulfilled years, which would you honestly pick?
Are they actually ‘your rules?’: That prior argument raises the question - whose rules are they anyway? Are these actually ‘Batman’s rules?’ Are not killing people and not stealing just ‘your rules’ that you decided to follow on a whim one day, or is there a fundamental moral truth that forms them?
The point is that Batman isn’t adhering to some code of honor he made up in the Bat Cave, and neither are you. Someone gave moral order to the universe, and you follow it inherently. They aren’t ‘your rules’ any more than gravity is ‘your rule.’ Sure, you can choose to deny the rule at any time, just as you can jump off a cliff. But you will suffer for that choice.
Decent men in indecent times: When Dent/Two-Face seeks his revenge on Gordon, he argues with Batman, resigning to the idea that you can’t be ‘decent men in an indecent time.’ It’s a fascinating exchange in which Two-Face, somewhat understandably, has it backwards. We don’t shape our morality to the times. We shape the times with morality. Decent men make times decent, through leadership, through winning the argument, and yes, even through defending themselves and their families when they must. We don’t defeat evil by resigning to it. We defeat it with a fight.
Strong men shape times. Weak men surrender to them.
Sometimes the truth isn’t good enough: For all his rule following, even Batman bends them, and the debate about whether he’s justified is also captivating. Batman spies on all of Gotham with his secret tech (itself worthy of another paragraph I’ll forgo for something close to brevity), and of course, in the end, Batman decides to lie about Dent’s death and actions to take the fall for it, because if Gotham were to learn that even Harvey Dent was corrupted, they’d have no faith in the city’s recovery.
At first I hated this move, because there is no ‘rule’ greater than the truth - you follow, uphold, and promote it for its own sake. If the truth ‘harms,’ so be it, because living a lie only causes greater harms later.
As I thought about it though, I started to entertain Batman’s choice more. Not because it’s a ‘lie,’ though it is, but because at some level, this is what good leaders of moral fortitude do. They take responsibility for those they lead, sometimes even wrongly.
After all, this is how you take care of yourself. The best piece of wisdom I’ve learned in recent years is ‘assume everything you don’t like about your life is your fault.’ It often isn’t, but the point is when you assume all things are under your control, you will maximize your effort and thus maximize your ability to change things, getting closer to your true potential.
Extend that reasoning to what Batman is doing, leadership in a group setting, and perhaps the reasoning holds. Assume anything wrong under your leadership is your fault, and you will do everything you can to become the best leader possible.
I can see the nugget of truth there, though my original problem still holds - it’s better to have the full Menendez bar of the truth than just a nugget. If you put Harvey’s revolver to my head, I think Gotham would be better off knowing the truth of the man, and their knowledge of it wouldn’t stop Batman from fighting for a better, safer city anyhow.
Joker’s magic trick
Sometimes the truth isn’t good enough.
The only way to live is without rules.
THE WORST:
Batman’s voice is hard to take seriously: I understand Batman has reason to conceal his voice - it’s to conceal his identity. But c’mon - this guy has the fanciest tech and gadgets on the planet. He doesn’t have to talk like he’s a kid faking sick to get out of school. He could install some sort of voice modulation into his mask, as they opted to do in future installments of the franchise.
Maggie Gyllenhaal as the love interest: Still, I can take Batman’s stupid voice more seriously than everyone fawning after Maggie Gyllenhaal. Not attractive. Not charismatic. Not compelling as the love interest of two of the lead men. Just no. Both of these guys could walk down any block of Gotham and find a hotter chick with a better personality. At least they had the decency to blow her up though. Appreciated.
Some of Joker’s tricks don’t really make sense: I get it - Joker is a slippery, sneaky guy. Still, some of his tricks don’t really make sense. He’s the most wanted man in Gotham, but he just walks into the hospital still wearing his makeup and disguised only with a wig and a mask? I’ll forgive that one just because the walkout scene with the detonation is such an excellent payoff.
But similarly, how does Joker just walk away from the jail detonation when he makes his phone call? Police have him at gunpoint, Joker detonates that guy’s stomach bomb by dialing it, and then post explosion all the cops are gone, but Joker is fine and leaves? The bomb blew away everyone else in the building, but not him? How?
Great movie. Silly voice.
They really shoulda burned her face off instead, but death is just as good.
THE RATING: 5/5 Wickies. A true masterpiece in every aspect, except asking me to believe that these two dudes are maneuvering to win Maggie Gyllenhaal.
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NEXT WEEK: Braveheart (1995)
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