The Dark Knight

I don’t get why the critics have given The Dark Knight so many rave reviews. I don’t enjoy this movie any more than I liked Iron Man. In fact, I personally prefer Iron Man. In my opinion, it is a far wittier movie and a superb adaptation of a comic book hero. The movie Iron Man has made that superhero much more interesting than he has ever been on paper.

To me, Knight only proves one thing – Christopher Nolan is certainly capable of making a big budget Hollywood movie and he is excellent with action scenes. However, I miss the Christopher Nolan who made one of the most original movies in this new century, a huge indie hit – Memento. The success of his first feature length feature has led him to one after another major Hollywood production. Sure, he has revived the whole Batman franchise and probably made the Batman movies far better than under any other directors, but that doesn’t really say much about cinematic accomplishment. I find the entire Batman franchise takes itself way too seriously and needs to lighten up a bit.

One bright spot in Knight, of course, is the much talked about Heath Ledger. His Joker injects many much needed sarcastic comments to offset all the self-righteous sermonizing done by Batman and pretty much all the other “good” characters. A black and white matter is always boring in real life and putting them on screen doesn’t make it any more fascinating. I hope that the Nolan brothers will realize this fact and write some more real-life dialogues for their next Batman installment.

In The Dark Knight, two new characters are added and they are the Joker and Gotham City DA, Harvey Dent (played by Aaron Eckhart). Batman, Dent and Gordon all work together to deal with the chaos created by the Joker. Dent is also wooing Batman’s love interest, Rachel, hence a love triangle is born as a subplot. This is another problem for this movie – there are way too many characters, side plots and the actions are simply too long. I think any time when a superhero movie includes more than one super-villain, it tends to be too much and too distracting. The whole Two-Face transformation feels forced and too bad that Eckhart doesn’t get a chance to truly show his acting chops.

Seeing both Knight and Iron Man has also shown that Robert Downey, Jr. is a far more seasoned and experienced actor. I applaud Christian Bale’s determination to challenge himself in different roles, but unfortunately he seems to have about four or five facial expressions. When he plays the playboy side of Bruce Wayne, he looks so uncomfortable despite his good looks. He needs to be more relax in his work; super intensity after a while becomes too much to bear on the audience.

With the huge box office The Dark Knight has brought to the studio, it is certain that I will have to endure more of Bruce Wayne/Batman’s inner struggle. I hope at least next time we will face only one villain, one that will match up with Ledger’s genius and creativity. That at least gives me something to look forward to.