Batman: The Dark Knight (film)
Jul. 27th, 2008 09:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vcmwI am absolutely alone here, but I really didn't enjoy this movie at all.
That doesn't mean I didn't think it was good. I think, based on the metric of "accomplishes what it set out to accomplish," it's an excellent film. Just not something I enjoyed watching or something I could ever conceive of being willing to watch again.
The problem for me is that the more realistic the story attempts to be in tone, the more difficulty I have overlooking the assumptions made that don't match my "real world" assumptions. As long as it's just popcorn violence and pretty outfits and cool gizmos and fairy tale plotting, my suspension of disbelief is automatic. Give me realistic looking outifts and a more realistic psychological tone and my brain gets CRANKY about the differences between what I see and what I expect.
That doesn't mean I didn't think it was good. I think, based on the metric of "accomplishes what it set out to accomplish," it's an excellent film. Just not something I enjoyed watching or something I could ever conceive of being willing to watch again.
The problem for me is that the more realistic the story attempts to be in tone, the more difficulty I have overlooking the assumptions made that don't match my "real world" assumptions. As long as it's just popcorn violence and pretty outfits and cool gizmos and fairy tale plotting, my suspension of disbelief is automatic. Give me realistic looking outifts and a more realistic psychological tone and my brain gets CRANKY about the differences between what I see and what I expect.
The film lost me early on during the portion where Batman abducts the crooked financier from Hong Kong. My first thought: how much would anyone in the audience approve if some foreign superhero was abducting and extracting someone from our country? It would be considered dark and problematic at best, right?
Then the poor dude is burned to death later on atop a giant pile of money, and the film doesn't even honor him with like, some struggles or a reaction shot from an onlooker or anything. It's just, oh, we burned that dude on a giant pile of money. I choose to imagine that like, The Huntress or someone swooped down and took him away to use his skills for quasi-legal ends. Out of gratitude for his rescue he'll become an Oracle like financial force using his money skills to fund crime fighting for less well-off fighters than the Batman.
Right, item number two: the money thing. As Batman becomes more realistic, the persistent failure to address class becomes more bothersome. A rich batman who lives in a fairy tale city and fights funny costumed people a la Tim Burton's entries in the series? Then it does not bother me at all that he lives in a beautiful palace with endless supplies of coaches and outfits and, who knows, maybe magic mechanical mice to do his tailoring overnight. (Bats, it would be mechanical bats that sewed his outfits. Of course. To the BatTailor!)
Then the poor dude is burned to death later on atop a giant pile of money, and the film doesn't even honor him with like, some struggles or a reaction shot from an onlooker or anything. It's just, oh, we burned that dude on a giant pile of money. I choose to imagine that like, The Huntress or someone swooped down and took him away to use his skills for quasi-legal ends. Out of gratitude for his rescue he'll become an Oracle like financial force using his money skills to fund crime fighting for less well-off fighters than the Batman.
Right, item number two: the money thing. As Batman becomes more realistic, the persistent failure to address class becomes more bothersome. A rich batman who lives in a fairy tale city and fights funny costumed people a la Tim Burton's entries in the series? Then it does not bother me at all that he lives in a beautiful palace with endless supplies of coaches and outfits and, who knows, maybe magic mechanical mice to do his tailoring overnight. (Bats, it would be mechanical bats that sewed his outfits. Of course. To the BatTailor!)
