109
by slowriot_Archive
heres the largely spoiler-free review i wrote:
With high expectations, a few drinks already imbibed, and tickets procured several weeks ago, two cars full of potential Health Ledger For Oscar fanclub members left their cushy Echo Park hobo homes and drove to the Arclight Cinema in Hollywood for a midnight screening of The Dark Knight. That is the name of the new Batman movie, in case you've bee locked up in a closet getting fisted by your pedophile uncle for the past six or seven months. After a short delay at the upstairs bar, the ten of us piled into Arclight Cinema's theater five for a 12:25am showing. When the lights dimmed, everybody cheered. When the first preview ended, the cheers grew a little louder. Then they showed the Watchmen trailer, and my dick momentarily hardened. Then I recognized the remix of that Smashing Pumpkins they originally wrote for Batman And Robin, and looked on in horror as directory Zach Snyder's trademark slo-mo action sequences brought my dick down from missile-sized to a mere huge stick of dynamite. God, I hope it's not as bad as 300. I will be at the midnight screening for Watchmen on 3.06.09, and I will not be afraid to stand up and say "This sucks" if indeed it sucks.
When the last preview ended, the audience's excitement wasn't just palpable, it was banging you over the head with a clubbed baby seal. The movie opens with a bank heist, and it takes no less than three minutes until our first Heath Ledger as the Joker sighting, a moment that stirred up the emotions of everyone in the theater, who cheered wildly as the psychotic villain kills his supposed partners and gets away clean in a yellow school bus.
The next thing I noticed was that Nester Carbonell (or Richard Alpert to us LOST addicts) was cast as the Mayor of Gotham. Apparently his guyliner-thick eyelashes aren't fake! Who knew! He sits Lt. James Gordon down in his office and I prayed for him to ask, "Which of these things belonged to you...before." Instead, they talked about crime in Gotham or some boring shit.
I'm sure you're all going to see the film, so I won't get too heavy into plot details.
Perhaps the most viscous moment of the film (next to the Harvey Two-Face reveal, that's some makeup job they did on prettyboy Aaron Eckhart) is when the Joker arrives at a private meeting for all the major mob bosses in Gotham, and shows his twisted sense of humor with a very powerful and brutal magic trick involving a thuggish black man and a pencil. Just as the trick is completed -- voila! -- there's a quick scene cut. Odd, the screen is staying black for just a moment too long. People are cheering for the Joker, but the movie seems to have ended right then and there. Oh, no, wait, the fire alarms begin blaring, the emergency lights begin to blink, and theatergoers moan and scream. Some of them even break for the exit. I remained in my seat, listening to Pat shout insults at everyone who decided to leave the theater ("You wouldn't die for Batman!?", "I can't believe the nerds in costume are giving up on Batman!", etc.). Eventually everyone realized there was no fire (duh), and piled back into the theater. An usher got up and apologized, got heckled and booed, and they soon restarted the movie. Apparently the scene with the pencil wasn't even over. Oh well.
A few things about the film I didn't like. First and foremost, the scenes at the climax of the film involving two boats rigged to explode, where each boat is given the detonator attached to the other boat, and told by the Joker that one has to blow up the other before midnight or they'll all be blown to bits. Of course, one boat is filled with families and good, salt-of-the-earth folks, and the other is full of all the convicts from Gotham's prison. The way the writers handled that situation totally fucking lost me, and they soured the next twenty-five or thirty minutes for me, because I had to keep telling myself, "Did I just see that? Is that the most retarded thing I've seen in a movie all year?" I'm not kidding you, it was a Shrooms moment: the boat containing the good people are yelling and complaining about how they should blow up the convicts and one guy yells, "Let's put it to a vote! And the man holding the detonator says, "Okay, let's put it to a vote." Are you fucking kidding me? Would that ever happen in real life? There were 500 people on that boat, they fucking sat their in an orderly fashion, not really too concerned that the convicts might be killing everyone on their own boat to get the detonator and kill them, and decided to put it to a vote. Then, in the span of maybe five minutes, they hand out little pieces of paper and pencils to everyone, collect all the votes, and count all 600 responses. Meanwhile, the convicts are all just standing around waiting to see what happens. Yeah, I believe that. Not a ruthless killer among them, I'm sure. Not one guy who wants to rip the detonator from the hands of the guy in charge. I'm sorry, they really lost me with that one. Highly retarded.
The Batbike. It looked stupid, it performed some cool stunts, but it was also entirely unnecessary. The Batmobile apparently has a fatal flaw (hint, it can't take a direct shot from a bazooka) which called for the creation of a Batbike. I'm pretty sure I hit the nail on the head when I said that some asshole art director showed up one day with a drawing of a totally bitchin' Batbike, and an argument ensued about how to fit it into the movie, because the Batmobile is indestructible. "No, no no" says the artist holding the goofy looking cycle, "What if...the Batmobile...becomes the Batbike." Sir, you're getting a raise. That's a brilliant idea. A five year old could have designed and implemented a nicer bike than you, but they used it anyway.
Which leaves me with two things to discuss. First, the movie ran a little long. It reminded me of AI in that there's a possible ending to the film, and then it goes on for another 25 minutes. It was an excellent movie, dark, funny, full of great action and acting...but I don't need almost three hours of Batman. 120, 130 minutes, that's about where I max out on my Batpatience.
Lastly, but most importantly, my Heath Ledger is not Jesus rant. He played an awesome Joker. He took the character in an entirely different direction than Jack Nicholson, and played the part with more malice than any other Batman villain -- or any other super villain from any other comic-to-film adaptation -- I've ever seen. Granted, old Batman characters were dressed in fucking goofy costumes (hello, Mr. Freeze) and directed by Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher, so it's not like it's a fair comparison, but Ledger's performance as revolutionary? I don't think so. People in the movie industry do realize that they're comparing this to this and this, right? Ledger had the added benefit of being directed by Christopher Nolan, whose re-imagining of this franchise has taken it to darker and more sinister places than ever before. Is it any wonder that this incarnation of the Joker is the most sickeningly awesome yet? Could the entirety of the character be attributed to Heath Ledger -- the pudding-eating gay cowboy and star of 10 Things I Hate About You -- or could five other actors have stepped into this role and pulled it off just as well. I imagine the answer lays closer to the latter than the former. Talented? Yes. Oscar worthy? You have to be fucking kidding me. It would not surprise me if he became the recipient a posthumous nomination, because Hollywood (and the entertainment industry as a whole) so loves to show us commoners how progressive and caring and enlightened they are. What better way to toot their collective horn than to honor the guy who "accidentally" overdosed on drugs just as he was blossoming into one of the brightest talents in the world (that is to say, he could have been one of the best ever at "faking being somebody else," as David Cross once said). It would be a crime to capitalize on Ledger's death because -- while his performance is wonderful -- I think the real impetus would be to stroke the egos of self-important Hollywood actors who are endlessly searching for a new cause to undertake, a new flag to fly, and a new fan to tell them how wonderful and thoughtful and heroic they are, not his great performance.
And now, I release you back from whence you came. You may now go enjoy The Dark Knight and decide for yourself. I say "It's fucking good!"
