The Dark Knight

Hype. So often it is so very wrong.

I like to think I don’t fall for hype as easily as some. That may just be vanity talking, to be sure, but there is some evidence to back up the claim. After all, I’m a guy who never saw what was funny about Seinfeld, never bought into Nomar Garciaparra, and still don’t quite trust the Mac. So when I heard that Heath Ledger was the subject of “Oscar buzz” for his final performance as the Joker, I was skeptical to say the least.

Now, I had no doubts that The Dark Knight could be a good movie. Its predecessor, Batman Begins, certainly was. However, I find it hard to believe that Ledger’s name would be swirling in Oscar talk if he had not so “tragically” died a few short months ago. Suicide really never did hurt an acting or music career—just ask Kurt Cobain.

That said, it is probably true to say that I walked into the theatre yesterday afternoon with something less than open mind. Preconceived notions are always dangerous for many reasons and in almost every situation. The funny thing about them is that we almost universally find ways to prove ourselves right when we have them. I can safely say this did not happen to me yesterday, because I was absolutely, completely, and totally wrong in two ways:

1) Ledger is quite good in this role. I’m not sure if he is Academy Award good or not, but this film is definitely at its best when he is on screen. This is a Joker who is much more sinister and psychotic than any we have seen in the past, and the actor behind the clown paint is very much the reason why. Like my man Johnny Depp in almost every role, Heath Ledger uses facial tics and body movements to communicate with the audience even when he has no lines. In this case the hype was right: Heath Ledger’s final performance is very, very good.

2) The movie, unfortunately, is not.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS BELOW!

The reasons why this film did not work for me are many, but the biggest without doubt is that the Joker, after all the hype, is utterly wasted here. He is simply a means to an end, the end being Aaron Eckhart’s hurried transformation from Gotham DA Harvey Dent to Batman villain Two-Face. I would have no problems with this if the transformation burned slowly throughout the film and pointed to a third installment, but that does not happen. Ledger’s Joker is left hanging upside down on the side of a building, waiting for police to take him away (and, sadly, as we now know, never to be seen again) while Batman rushes off to save back-from-the-dead Jim Gordon’s family from the suddenly crazy Dent in the film’s climax. You don’t have to be a comic geek or fanboy to understand that the Joker is Batman’s archnemessis. He is not treated as such in this film.

Ledger is not alone in being shortchanged. Eckhart is fantastic as Dent. You really do like this guy from the moment he walks on screen. Even knowing what his eventual fate would be, I found myself rooting for him. But then it all comes unraveled. Jim Gordon comes back from the dead, the Joker is captured, Dent rides off with a crooked cop…and the celebration is clearly premature. Again, if this film ended with a brooding Dent in a hospital bed my feelings would be quite different. But it doesn’t, and we are left with the character of Two-Face dead after having been shoehorned into a film that clearly did not have room for him.

But wait, there’s more. Maggie Gyllenhaal brings nothing to the table here as a replacement for Katie Holmes, not even a pretty face. The themes of government surveillance via the cell-phone-sonar (um…what?) and the goodness of man via the boats-with-bombs social experiment seemed too farfetched. (Really, if there were only two available ferries during a mass evacuation, would one of them be given to hardened criminals? No way. That was the sledgehammer of plot rearing its ugly head.) And Eric Roberts’ Mafioso character walking around with only a slight limp and a cane after having been thrown off the top of a building left me wondering if director Christopher Nolan or anyone else had thought this story through from beginning to end.

What works most in this movie are the three male leads, Ledger, Eckhart, and the mama-beating Christian Bale as Batman. Bale was excellent in Batman Begins and is just as good here. He looks just as comfortable in the costume as out, bringing believability to both the Dark Knight and the playboy character of Bruce Wayne. (That latter statement is true right up until the moment he uses a Lamborghini to take out a truck and then walks away without a scratch. Even a great actor can’t make that sell.)

So, yes, I was let down by The Dark Knight. The ridiculous dollars it has made guarantee a third installment, but the question then becomes “where do we go from here?” Heath Ledger is dead, and while the Joker may yet live again in the body of another actor, is the next movie the right time to do that? Probably not. Two-Face is also dead, wasted without a movie of his own. What does that leave us with? Batman’s rogues’ gallery suffers a serious drop-off after the villains we have already met. Is anyone really going to be excited by the Riddler or the Penguin? Catwoman is probably the most likely candidate, but after an appearance in the last series and a film of her own, haven’t we been there and done that? Granted, it is hard to plan for something like your lead villain killing himself during post-production, but the mishandling of Two-Face leaves this franchise in a precarious spot.

Hype can only carry you so far, and it fails to carry The Dark Knight for the full 152 minutes. I’ve seen worse movies, to be sure, but this film was very much a disappointment.