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Top Ten Reasons The Dark Knight Isn't As Good As You Think It Is

By AnonymousJuly 26th, 2008, 10:44 pmComments (26)

Yes, the first hour is great: a non-stop thrill ride, a tour de force. And Heath Ledger gives a mesmerizing performance, and we're all very sad that he's dead. I'm not even being sarcastic: his recent films indicated a phenomenal range, and he seemed like a nice enough guy, and I'm always very sorry when smart, decent, talented people die far too young (while Cheney continues relentlessly on).

And I understand how and why The Dark Knight made so much money. After all, we're all stuck at home this summer, since God knows we can't afford to drive or fly anywhere, and movie theaters are air-conditioned. Even my lovely Polish bride (who friggin' HATES all the usual summer superhero blockbuster crap) ponied up the bucks to go see Christian Bale, et. al. on the big screen.

But people...get a grip. It's not the best movie ever. It's not even as good as Iron Man, ferchrissakes.

And I'll give you ten reasons why...but DON'T keep reading if you haven't seen the movie yet, 'cuz the following post is spoiler-tastic to the max. Okay...you've been warned. Spoilers ahead.

1. It is, at the very least, half an hour too long. Probably more. Long movies are fine...movies where you feel every second of the too-long length?  Not so much.

2. It is WAY overpraised by critics because it features the last complete (and potentially Oscar-worthy?) performance by Heath Ledger. Need proof? Okay, which of the following awesome, iconic comic book movie performances were mentioned as potential Oscar contenders?

(a) Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman in Batman Returns, (b) Jack Nicholson as The Joker in Batman,  (c) Danny De Vito as The Penguin in Batman Returns, (d) Christopher Reeve as Superman in Superman, (e) Any other performance in a comic book movie ever.

(Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow doesn't count...that was a movie based on a theme park ride.  Not the same thing at all.)

3. It's a comic book movie that addresses topical themes like America's response to terrorism. And has nothing particularly interesting to say.

4. So...the evil genius who outwits the cops at every turn, terrorizes the city and kills a judge and the police commissioner is finally captured and then...left un-handcuffed in an interrogation room with a cop (in a department riddled with corruption)? The cop in question turns out to be dumb rather than crooked but...uh...Hannibal Lecter got strapped to a stretcher with a hockey mask just for eating a few people. I'm just saying.

5. Speaking of that scene where the Joker gets caught and then gets away (you know the one I mean?)...so they don't have metal detectors in Gotham City police headquarters? That might, for instance, detect a bomb in someone's abdomen?

6. And, okay, I know the Joker is an evil genius and all...but considering he tells Batman exactly where to find Rachel and Harvey Dent and the Caped Crusader and Gordon leave on their rescue missions at exactly the same time...how exactly does the Jokester arrange it for Gordon to arrive at Rachel's location just a few seconds too late? (Pay attention...this question will be on your SAT.)

7. The whole "bombs on the ferries sequence" (with the cameo appearance by everyone's favorite, The Magical Negro, i.e., the token appearance by the wise black character who shows whitey how to be a better whitey)?  Lame. Oh, so lame. (Oh, wait a minute...I forgot Morgan Freeman also has a major role in the film as, uh...a wise black character who shows whitey how to be a better whitey.)

8. Did I miss something, or is this just sloppy screenwriting? Eric Roberts tells Gordon he's had enough of all the Joker agita. As such, he tells Gordon exactly where to find the Joker. Cut to the Joker on a boat with all the surviving mobsters (except Eric Roberts). The Joker makes a speech, then burns a pile of money and a Chinaman. Then....leaves.  Did Gordon have a senior moment, or was that just sloppy screenwriting that NOBODY INVOLVED WITH THE PRODUCTION SEEMED TO NOTICE?

9. Let me get this straight: the Joker kills a bunch of people, lays waste to the city and burns off half of Harvey Dent's face...but the plan is that Batman will take the blame for Harvey Dent's death in order to keep the good people of Gotham from getting bummed out. Because, of course, nobody in Gotham City would believe that the Joker killed Harvey Dent...even though the Joker tied him up in a room with a bomb and burned off half his face, then blew up the hospital he was in. No, much better plan to blame Batman. Good thinking, guys.

10. And Batman doesn't kill the insane, indestructible, unstoppably evil Joker...why? Oh, right. Principles. Like when he didn't kill Harvey Dent and resisted violating the civil rights of everyone in Gotham City...oh...wait...

Yeesh.

Related stories: How Batman Is The New Beatles, Fitting Farewells - The Top Ten Great Final Films, Screengrab Review - The Dark Knight

Comments ( 26 )

Wow, this is a really lame article, whitey. Yeesh, every point here is a stretch. I can't believe I read all ten. Blah blah blah blah.

Hooksexupric commented on Jul 27 08 at 1:16 am

1. Matter of taste, but complaining about a personal bias in a film critic forum is lazy.
2. Good point, but who cares about the Oscars as legitimate critical consensus?
3. A movie does not have to have an opinion on a subject (ie do we go down to their level or not?) to be relevant to that subject.
4. Handcuffs removed for benefit of Batman
5. If this point bothers you enough to think about, then how about this: they probably just threw him in the cell after a strip search turned up nothing, while assuming the equipment was malfunctioning.
6. Batman has better transportation (see semi-truck scene, or lambo scene).
7. Agreed about Mr. Magic Negro. But the fact that no one in the civilian boat was willing to detonate the prison boat makes more likely that one prisoner would be willing to toss that device out the window. All it takes is one prisoner, it took the entire boat of "good" people to make that decision.
8. Don't really remember it.
9. Totally agree with you. Really bothered me at the time.
10. Weak point. It didn't seem to me that Batman killed Dent on purpose, and even if he did it was a life or death situation. Killing Joker would have been stone cold murder. As far as civil rights go, Batman isn't a saint (look up the title of the movie). It is a matter of to what degree is willing to compromise his principles to fight evil that makes up a lot of this movie's guts. And personally, I think it is kinda neat that Nolan has people who agree with Batman's methods(or those who are rooting for Batman without his or her critical thought faculty engaged) as implicitly agreeing with the Bush wiretapping program. Slippery slope indeed. This also goes back to your third point. But yeah, Mr Freeman's half-assed protest ("just this once") is tried Hollywood tripe.

Anonymous commented on Jul 27 08 at 4:33 am

It's not a flawless movie by any means: I agree about the Magical Negro/bombs on the boats scene as being just one plot point too far, and the ending where Batman takes the rap (and then Jim Gordon basically comes out of the closet to his own son by giving his 'Yeah, I admit it, I'm totally gay for Batman ' speech) actually seemed like a hurried, ill-thought-out way to give the movie a downbeat ending (and that bitchin' final shot of Jim Gordon smashing the Bat Signal with an axe), but you know what? I was never, ever bored at this movie, not once, and frequently had my emotions, thoughts and sense of aesthetics engaged more vividly than by any movie since There Will Be Blood. The fact that I'm justifiably comparing this summer's big popcorn movie to one of last year's big Oscar/prestige pictures and not to, say, Hancock or The Incredible Hulk I think speaks volumes about the quality of Nolan and company's stitching....The Dark Knight is a fine, tailored suit compared to most blockbusters' baseball shirt and jeans. And lord knows I don't wear a fine tailored suit every day of the week, but when I do I feel important and special.....kind of like how this movie made me feel.

And one more thing (and I can't say this often enough): it's a much better movie than Heat or Collatoral. Michael Mann WISHES he was making movies that balanced action with thought this elegantly.

Anonymous commented on Jul 27 08 at 10:00 am

You overlooked the bit where Batman and Rachel drop 30 stories but it's OK because she's on top of him, he's wearing armour and their fall is broken by a car.

Watch it again, there's no explanatory batgadgets or anything, just the idea that you can fall out off a skyscraper and walk away just fine if you're wearing armour.

Anonymous commented on Jul 27 08 at 11:08 pm

yeah the sky scraper bit bugged me, but what really annoyed me was that the Joker has this whole rant about not being a "big plans aand schemes" guy, but everything he does has a huge, elaborate, and insane amount of planning involved. especially that ferry boat thing.

RevTen commented on Jul 27 08 at 12:13 pm

RevTen: He's lying about not having plans.

Also, Gordon and his men were about to crash the Joker's money burning party when the Joker announced he was going to blow up a hospital, meaning they had to re-direct their attention to the evacuation.

Also, Batman wasn't taking the fall for killing Dent, he was taking the fall for killing the people Dent killed. The Joker can't be blamed, since everyone knows he was by the river threatening to blow up the boats while Dent was killing people.

Also, I'm not entirely convinced Dent is dead.

Also, I never was bored. I wanted the fucking thing to be longer.

Anonymous commented on Jul 27 08 at 3:28 pm

It's just another summer Hollywood movie with explosions, pretentious and incomplete musings about issues which screenwriters know nothing about, and other crap like that. For that genre it hits a home run. For that genre it's amazing. But it's still just Hollywood summer fodder.

Anonymous commented on Jul 27 08 at 3:48 pm

At the party for Harvey Dent, Batman leapt out the window to save Rachel...leaving a penthouse full of rich people for the Joker to do whatever the heck he wants with!

Anonymous commented on Jul 27 08 at 4:18 pm

It was a fun movie. Period. Yes, it was flawed, but what film isn't? Just don't hate on TDK if your woman pops a boner over batman.

Anonymous commented on Jul 27 08 at 9:23 pm

Actually, my woman pops a boner over Jon Hamm from Mad Men, but she thought TDK was kinda lame. Sorry.

avasca commented on Jul 28 08 at 7:48 am

How about:

11. Gordon has no qualms about letting his son in on the top-secret "Batman's gonna take the rap even though he's really innocent" plan, but doesn't bother to let him know about the whole "I'm gonna fake my own death" plan?

12. Rachel's bizarre non-reaction to Harvey coming *this close* to getting assassinated in that first courtroom scene?

13. I'm confused...did the Joker *plan* for Batman to reconstruct a single bullet with state-of-the-art technology only he has so he could find a single fingerprint on it that would lead him to that particular apartment at that particular moment that the timer was set to make the shades go up so the fake cops could shoot at him?

14. Is it just me, or was there way too much time and character introduction spent on a money-laundering / trip-to-Hong-Kong / we-cast-Eric-Roberts-for-some-reason subplot which is never particularly compelling dramatically, and whose payoff is basically "the Joker burns a giant pile of money"? Wasn't there a quicker, simpler way to get there?

15. Couldn't Alfred have been allowed a smidgen of reaction to Rachel's death, instead of existing solely as a catalyst for whatever's going on in Batman's head? (BTW, the "magical Negro" folks are really stretching with this one. What - is every black movie character who has something to say about morality automatically a cliche? Sorry, but the "magical Negro" dialogue is all coming from Alfred - he just happens to be played by a white man, no nobody has a quick knee-jerk dismissal term they learned on the internet for it. "Between this and THE PRESTIGE, I'm so sick of Hollywood's 'magical Michael Caine in Christopher Nolan movies' bullshit!")

Don't get me wrong - I liked the movie. I wasn't sitting there *looking* for problems; they just kinda kept smacking me in the face.

Anonymous commented on Jul 28 08 at 8:43 am

The fact that the prisoner on the boat was Zeus from No Holds Barred was pretty awesome though, right? Right? Anyone?

Anonymous commented on Jul 28 08 at 11:22 pm

Not as awesome as if he'd been the final opponent from Over the Top.

Or the four-armed puppet from Mortal Kombat.

Anonymous commented on Jul 28 08 at 12:53 pm

On Luciens #13:
I think that the blind moving up was just to distract the cops and look in that direction. It would have had the same reaction whether there was a person at the window or not. Besides, Joker knew that Batman would not be there b/c it was daylight and he only comes out at night (in the movie Batman wasn't there, Bruce Wayne was)

Anonymous commented on Jul 28 08 at 1:08 pm

6) Rachel's location is further away from the police station than Harvey's. How hard was that to figure out?

I also didn't think it felt as long as it was. My reaction was more surprise at how late it was when I left the theater than checking my watch during the movie.

I also felt that the Morgan Freeman scenes were a bit too Q for my liking. Especially the one with the new armor.

Anonymous commented on Jul 28 08 at 1:10 pm

Wow - what a surprise. Someone got tired of hearing positive comments about one of the few well made big budget movies of the year. Rather than arguing with you over your lovely digestible bullets on how a film with multiple narrative threads might find it difficult to weave them together as gracefully in 2 and a half hours as you seem to demand, I think Noel Murray's comments (AVClub) on how critical and commercial success can end up damaging a good product might be slightly more beneficial. Granted he wrote this about Mad Men, but I think the point is made quite nicely:

Can we dial back the Mad Men worship just a notch? Understand that I really love this show. I think somewhere around Season One

Anonymous commented on Jul 28 08 at 1:34 pm

What about the voice Bale was putting on. It was even worse this movie. Forget stitches, every scene when he wasn't in costume, Bruce Wayne should have been sucking back tea like a motherfucker. I also hated that " Rome gave up it's democracy" thing. That was really stupid (and innaccurate, Rome was never by any means a democracy). Still a good movie though.

Anonymous commented on Jul 28 08 at 5:19 pm

What was the deal with post-trauma Harvey's jacket? When did he have time to go out and have a new suit tailored for himself? Was that where he was when the hospital blew up?

Anonymous commented on Jul 28 08 at 7:36 pm

All these points aside - I liked the first one better because it was more visually interesting and imaginative, and had a more compelling narrative. Sue me.

motoko commented on Jul 28 08 at 10:11 pm

StoryBoard: He had on the suit that he was wearing when he was burned. It was burned on the same side. Presumably it was in the hospital and he got it before it blew up.

Anonymous commented on Jul 29 08 at 11:56 pm

Nice comment thread you've garnered here, Osborne. I don't think I've ever seen these kind of numbers in the comments before. You should be proud of yourself.

It seems like you weren't able to connect a lot of the dots in the film and many of your arguments are based on the assumption that the Dark Knight doesn't work on some level, instead of assuming that its creators aren't complete idiots and are capable of putting together a linear plot without having the audience take logical leaps of faith.

Most other comments have reasoned away your complaints, but even if they still held any water I would say they are pretty superficial and petty criticisms. Sure, the film isn't perfect, but really, who cares? It's a solid film that transcends its genre's conventions in an exciting and inventive way.

otherguy83 commented on Jul 29 08 at 10:22 pm

lol someone hates the best comic movie ever made, too bad the records it has broken are ******* you now.

I wish the movie was longer and had more Joker, best movie ever hands down, I have never seen a villan played like Heath has; where you can just cut him out of the movie and he would fit literally right into the comics. Brilliant. Hopefully this movie raises the bar for more comic movies to be made and good luck too lol because Batman never gets old, as it has been around since the 30s or 40s I believe, and its now in its prime all these years later.

Anonymous commented on Aug 03 08 at 6:13 am

Why is it that black people in these movies can't have intelligence or a conscience? Why is it so far-fetched that Lucius Fox could update the suit to Mr. Wayne's specifications? Why shouldn't Zeus be the one to toss the detonator out of the window?

As usual, folks overreact or object to black people having any intelligence in the movies. Case in point, anyone remember the original pilot for the series "Mantis"--mainly black cast--once the pilot was picked up--the major players were all white.

In "Dragon Wars" the original guardians/keepers of the flame for the reincarnation of the celestial dragons were Korean. When the action moves to current times, the major players are white?

Give me a break.

In closing, I thoroughly enjoy the movie each time that I see it. I was not happy with the Batman takes the rap ending and I agree that Heath Leger's Joker was outstanding. The movie was excellent.

Anonymous commented on Aug 03 08 at 2:27 pm

Wow, it SET RECORDS? It MUST be the best movie ever!

Think I'll go see it again while I spin the best album ever, The Eagles' Greatest Hits.

turbomcphazer commented on Aug 04 08 at 11:05 pm

Dude...this article is missing out on the fundamental elements of nihilism vs principles and meaning that Nolan presents with clarity and entertainment. The ten points are by far the most contrived drivel I've ever read. This dude needs to go learn to write, because the arguments made don't discredit the movie, they just illustrate that it's a movie. Want realism go watch a drama, this was allegory moron!

Anonymous commented on Aug 09 08 at 7:32 am

Great movie The Dark Knight
Iwill watch it now Thanks
I have some movies with Christian Bale - Rescue Dawn and I'm Not There best actor )
Does some else agree with me?

watch movies online commented on Aug 23 10 at 12:33 pm

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