(Free) Movie Thoughts: The Dark Knight
Dec. 5th, 2008 09:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerYesterday evening, my department at work held a movie night with the promise of a free meal as well. It seemed a good thing to go out and socialise with my coworkers outside of regular hours, but neither of the titles announced quite seemed to compel me to see them... although in the end, I decided it would be a chance to see the late show of The Dark Knight at last. Unfortunately, it still meant coming up against a quirk, or failing, of mine. When a work of popular entertainment starts getting very widely praised and I haven't yet formed an opinion of my own about it, it seems that some contrarian streak in me emerges and I wind up more or less uninterested in it... it affected me with the "Lord of the Rings" movies (although I did get taken to those, to wind up being suspicious of certain changes between the books and the movies), with the "Spider-Man" movies, and perhaps this year with Iron Man as well... No doubt, of course, it has something to do with my being interested in other works of popular entertainment that aren't quite so exalted. (The same thing can happen for me with anime titles as well.)
Still, it wouldn't cost anything (save for the gas burned in driving out to work and back again), so in the end I watched the movie... I did seem to have stayed fresh for it. Trying to be vague just in case someone reading this has stayed even further away from the movie than me, one development midway through seemed a genuine shock (and then on top of that just how Batman wound up with his "Batcycle" seemed another blow), but that perhaps helped set me up for some pleased relief later on... but another development that followed didn't get any relief. What I did hear of the movie, though, may have led me to think that one part of the movie's climax would be the absolute "darkest" part, so perhaps there was some relief in realising I had misled myself. Still, I did get to thinking...
Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker was indeed very compelling, but one feeling that did creep up on me was that the character was somehow "too powerful," always able to spring another terrible trap on the protagonists. I can appreciate how he provides a bit of cruel mockery of the idea that a villain's origin can sum everything up, but when this particular villain just is and can just bear down on the protagonists until they break, somehow I started wondering what the movie was trying to say, or even ask, about "good versus evil." Somehow, it seems a little unfulfilling to just contemplate "deal with small problems before they get exploited by something really evil."
On a less profound note, I found myself sort of impressed by this movie's minimalist and quite well-lit "Batcave." However, Batman's voice seemed so growly as to be a little hard to take absolutely seriously; I sort of appreciated the scenes where it was just Bruce Wayne appearing. Too, I noticed that the particular version of the movie we got to see was in "full frame," and yet it hardly seemed to affect things, much less so than even watching the first episode of "Clone Wars" in "pan and scan"...
As a last footnote, just today, as I was trying to put these thoughts in order, I noticed that the next "Rifftrax" is going to be for The Dark Knight. For all that I shouldn't continue to make unfounded comments on them, I did wind up confirming that some people responding to the news were ambiguous about something "too good" being "riffed" on...
Still, it wouldn't cost anything (save for the gas burned in driving out to work and back again), so in the end I watched the movie... I did seem to have stayed fresh for it. Trying to be vague just in case someone reading this has stayed even further away from the movie than me, one development midway through seemed a genuine shock (and then on top of that just how Batman wound up with his "Batcycle" seemed another blow), but that perhaps helped set me up for some pleased relief later on... but another development that followed didn't get any relief. What I did hear of the movie, though, may have led me to think that one part of the movie's climax would be the absolute "darkest" part, so perhaps there was some relief in realising I had misled myself. Still, I did get to thinking...
Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker was indeed very compelling, but one feeling that did creep up on me was that the character was somehow "too powerful," always able to spring another terrible trap on the protagonists. I can appreciate how he provides a bit of cruel mockery of the idea that a villain's origin can sum everything up, but when this particular villain just is and can just bear down on the protagonists until they break, somehow I started wondering what the movie was trying to say, or even ask, about "good versus evil." Somehow, it seems a little unfulfilling to just contemplate "deal with small problems before they get exploited by something really evil."
On a less profound note, I found myself sort of impressed by this movie's minimalist and quite well-lit "Batcave." However, Batman's voice seemed so growly as to be a little hard to take absolutely seriously; I sort of appreciated the scenes where it was just Bruce Wayne appearing. Too, I noticed that the particular version of the movie we got to see was in "full frame," and yet it hardly seemed to affect things, much less so than even watching the first episode of "Clone Wars" in "pan and scan"...
As a last footnote, just today, as I was trying to put these thoughts in order, I noticed that the next "Rifftrax" is going to be for The Dark Knight. For all that I shouldn't continue to make unfounded comments on them, I did wind up confirming that some people responding to the news were ambiguous about something "too good" being "riffed" on...