CONTRARIAN FANBOY: THE DARK KNIGHT

It’s sacrilege to speak ill of 2008’s magnum opus The Dark Knight, but as UTF‘s resident Contrarian Fanboy I’d like to take a moment to ask a sincere question…was it really that great?

So why the hell does everyone think The Dark Knight is so damn good? I know you’re expecting me to complain about the film profiting from Heath Ledger’s death…but I think his performance actually warranted all of the praise. I had no complaints…shocking!

I know I’m going to be hated for this, but I think a lot of the craze is owed to the people who obsess over Christopher Nolan’s direction, and these people are dismissively referred to as Nolanites. Without a second thought, their lives are consumed with every facet of Nolan’s filmography, from Memento to Inception. But is he really that great?

Don’t get me wrong, I like Nolan’s films, especially the lesser regarded flicks like Insomnia and The Prestige, but he isn’t exactly a Scorsese. Most of the praise that’s tossed in his direction is misguided. “The music was amazing”…well then congratulate world-renowned composer Hans Zimmer. “The look of the movie was great”…then laud the aesthetic choices of cinematographer Wally Pfister. “The story blew my mind”…everyone knows that Jonathan Nolan, Christopher’s brother, is the one responsible for almost every facet of writing that goes into these movies. So what room does that leave for Christopher Nolan? The answer is simple…not much. Toss in a whopping heap of Batman Fanboy-ism, and you can clearly see the foundations of the movie’s fanatics.

And another thing…

Is this a movie about Batman, or a crime thriller with a dash of charming super heroism? I understand that studio’s need to modernize comic book characters, but under Nolan’s direction (if you want to call it that), they’ve bastardize the Caped Crusader’s classical mythology. Gotham City is meant to be a Gothic yet whimsical interpretation of New York…that’s a fact. Gotham was, after all, a turn of the century nick name for NYC. So how does that satirical landscape of Bats and villains transform into modern-day Chicago? And how does that same comic book city, filled with noir and cigarette smoking charm, turn into a world littered with blatant, heavy-handed social philosophy…?

For all of the great strides the movie makes for Batman’s origins as a hero in Detectives Comics, it takes a few steps back for all of its philosophical musings. Why bash our brains in with, what amounts to, nothing more than a commentary on the film itself? As the audience, we’re supposed to watch the film, interpret, and then pose certain questions. The movie isn’t meant to blatantly dictate its own themes…that’s a cheap method to make Batman seem deeper and ‘high-minded’. We can make those associations by ourselves, why dumb it down for us?

Did I mention Christian Bale’s voice yet? Is he serious? Not to be crass, but his Batman persona sounded like a gargling, visceral fart. What the hell?

I guess that’s enough mind-blowing revelations for one day, but as always, I’m the Contrarian Fanboy.  If you disagree, which I’m sure many of you do, sound off in the comments below.

“Contrarian Fanboy is the asshole that Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now”