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The Dark Knight
The first thing that struck me is that The Dark Knight is even more influenced by The Long Halloween than Batman Begins was, along with the obvious The Killing Joke influence. (I hope someone pays Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale some royalties; I knew Alan Moore doesn’t want any.) The Killing Joke mainly comes in via the Joker’s “everbody is capable of anything, given enough pressure” game (and I think there were some literal Moore quotes in his speeches), with the outcome making the same point via different means. In The Killing Joke, Gordon, despite being kidnapped, tortured and given to believe that his daughter has been raped and killed (she hasn’t, but she has been crippled for life) still maintains his ethics, thus disproving the Joker’s “anyone can turn into a psychopath” claim; in The Dark Knight, the two crews on the ferries in the end refuse to survive by killing each other, thus justifying Batman’s faith in Gotham and humanity and again disproving the Joker’s nihilism. It’s a highly unusual climax for an action movie; the day is saved not by the hero physically defeating the villain (though he does that, too) but through the community (or at least the majority of them) proving their core humanity and ethics. (There is a vage similarity to Spider-man II and the people in the subway helping and shielding Spider-man after he saved their lives, but that isn’t the saving of the day.) It fits with a film where the titular hero has become distinctly background, in a startling contrast to Batman Begins.
The Long Halloween’s influence of course is the Harvey Dent storyline and the way it is executed, complete with the “I believe in Harvey Dent” declaration. In the comic, the opening issue’s three statements spoken by Bruce Wayne both as himself and Batman – “I believe in Gotham, I believe in Jim Gordon, I believe in Harvey Dent” - are repeated in the end, with Gotham and Gordon remaining for Batman and “I believe in Harvey Dent” spoken by his wife Gilda in a black irony, not just because Harvey has become Two-Face by then but because of what Gilda has done. You even get visual echoes of two crucial panels, the early one on the roof where Batman, Dent and Gordon start their crusade against the Falcone empire and the late one, again on a roof, where after Harvey’s completed transformation they are confronted with the price and have a last bitter conversation. I will say that while I think The Dark Knight equals and improves on Harvey’s development up to and including his post-disfigurement chat with the Joker, I also think the final showdown is better in The Long Halloween. In both cases, Harvey cements his fall to the dark side by committing several murders and ends up on a roof with Gordon and Batman after the last one. But Harvey killing Carmine Falcone right on front of the other two and then surrendering as a last gesture to his old self worked for me in a way that Harvey taking Gordon’s family hostage and playing Russian Roulette with his son did not.
Though that may be because the whole thing with Gordon’s son reminded me of an issue I had with Batman Begins, much as I admired the film otherwise, and had again here. Christopher Nolan and his brother and fellow scriptwriter seem to go out of their way to silence or replace what female characters the Batverse has. Speaking of The Long Halloween, in the obligatory flashback to the night young Bruce lost his parents, the comic makes the crucial pre-murder scene one with his mother. In Batman Begins, Martha Wayne is silent, and it’s all about the father-son relationship. Similarly, Jim Gordon comforting young Bruce at the police station takes the place of Dr. Leslie Thompson doing just that. It’s not that I can’t see the rationale – this scene helps introducing Gordon and making him likeable to the audience early on, plus Batman Begins is all about the father figures, what with Ducard, Alfred and Lucius Fox – but it’s a trend. Now, in The Dark Knight, we see a bit of Gordon’s family. Do we see or hear his niece and adopted daughter, Barbara, as in, Barbara, the future Batgirl and Oracle? No, we do not. We hear his son. Never mind how much more fitting it would have been if Barbara had that conversation with her father at the end about the type of hero Gotham needs.
It’s a minor matter in the overall film, but it irks me. And I’m not even a big Batman fan.
Speaking of women: Maggie Gyllenhall, while not being written differently than Katie Holmes was, makes Rachel into a person, but that doesn’t solve the problem this viewer had: she’s not given an own agenda (in Batman Begins, she at least had that), while her relationship with Harvey is believable, her relationship with Bruce is not (we’re being told he loves her and that she still has feelings for him, but their minimal screen interaction didn’t get that across), and in the end, her main purpose in this film is to die so Harvey can be pushed into supervillaindom. You know how this would not be irksome? If there were other women around for balance. Like, say, Leslie Thompson and/or young Barbara. Even just in a few spoken lines. I’m just saying.
(To be fair: we do get Lt. Ramirez whom I was assuming was comics book character Montoya until told otherwise, and I do like the fact she’s a woman is incidental to her role in the plot – which wouldn’t be different if she was a man. In fact, all the Gotham cops are well done.)
Okay, enough of that. Heath Ledger’s Joker is as great as advertised; for me, the most impressive thing is that he’s really genuinenly scary every minute he is on screen. No camp here, clown outfit or not, and no Jack Nicholson self indulgence. You never stop being creeped out as well as fascinated, and you believe this is a completely insane but highly intelligent psychopath, far more threatening than the Mafia gangsters and R’as Al Ghul put together. I also approve of the way they dealt with the background, i.e. by letting the Joker tell various contradictory origin stories and making it impossible for the police to ascertain his identity. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter who he is, and who he was before he became the Joker. He embodies murderous madness in a way that can’t be tracked down to a single cause.
Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman were their reliable warm and wise selves; Gary Oldman was fabulous as Jim Gordon, and visibly enjoys being challenged to play the normal decent guy for a change. Aaron Eckhart does a great job as Harvey Dent, and if they do another film, I hope they can keep him. I think the most impressive achievement is that in his hospital scene with the Joker, the audience attention is divided instead of just fixed on the Joker; and that’s when he has just half his face to play with. I am not sure I buy the justification for Batman taking the fall for Harvey’s murders in the end, but then, I suck at American law – would the convictions Harvey got as attorney be overturned by him becoming a criminal afterwards? As for keeping Harvey’s name clean so the people of Gotham can continue to look up to him, well, if the need for an inspiring hero who keeps the law and isn’t a vigilante is so great, Jim Gordon is right there.
At a guess, this last twist is mainly because as opposed to Batman Begins, which is the most Bruce-centric of all Batman movies and not just because it’s his origin story but because while we get several villains, it really is all about him, The Dark Knight is hardly about Batman at all (I’d say the emotional storyline is carried by Harvey on the one hand and the Joker on the other), and he needed to make a major sacrifice to justify his heroic titular hero status. With this being said, Bruce’s attitude towards Harvey throughout the film is the most interesting thing with his own characterisation, wavering as it does between pragmatism (Harvey as his way out of the Batman role) and genuine admiration. (The slashers should have a field day, if they aren’t busy with the Joker.)
All in all: another well done Batman movie by Nolan. But not my favourite superhero movie of the year. My heart is still with Marvel right now, and I don’t think that’s just because of the origin story versus sequel thing – if it were Batman Begins, I’d say the same thing. It’s Bruce, I think. As for as millionaires hanging out in superhero costumes are concerned, I just find the one with a sense of humor even in his messed-up ness more relatable.
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Actually, part of that might go back to the novel - at the very least the con Olivia and Christian Bale's character (really bad with names today for some reason) pull on Angier was the same, but I think she got out of it differently, mostly because the backstory for the whole feud is rather different. (And a lot less melodramatic than in the movie, one might add - the woman dying as a motivator clearly is Nolan's addition, but he's also the one who made the two men friends beforehand, which just works a lot better.) Not having read the novel in a while, I'm not really sure how much the character was like this in the first place, but I think Nolan made her more self-reliant.
Memento: it is a good film, but it is also very gimmicky. I don't mean that in a bad way - the structure is developed superbly, and the continuity, except for one minor makeup mistake, is almost flawless, but I don't know if it holds up once you know the solution. The story itself has almost zero substance and the characters are cyphers more than characters - which fits the situation very well, but makes it a little unfair to compare for instance Carrie-Ann Moss's to other female characters in Nolan's work. It's a good mystery and well worth watching. I just don't know if I would want to rewatch it.
(Rachel did that, too, in Batman Begins, but now that's retconned into "you said you would wait for me" - wtf? )
Yeah, sure, Bruce, she'll wait for you until you get over your massive Daddy issues and that need to wear a rubber costume. That's exactly what she said in the first movie.
Seriously, it was so obviously a finite breakup, I never expected her to come back in the first place. Of course it seems she just came back for one particular reason, anyway. *sigh*
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Good to know we agree on the finite breakup as presented in Batman Begins.
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And now I'll try not to ask myself too much why I thought Aaron Eckhart was actually way hotter as Two-Face...*is weird*