Brickbats For The Bat

Something bothered me about The Dark Knight when I saw it on its opening weekend but until now I couldn't zero in on what that was. At first, I thought it was its weak third act. No matter what kind of trauma he suffered, I didn't buy that Harvey Dent would go from being the most virtuous man in Gotham to a guy who'd put a gun to a kid's head. That was a leap that didn't feel convincing to me. I also felt that it was annoying for The Joker to promote himself as an "agent of chaos" while spending an inordinate amount of time thinking ahead and putting multiple plans in place but I was willing to go along with that contradiction. No, it was something else about the movie that felt 'off' to me. Then I saw it again and I immediately knew.

By putting Batman into a more reality-based world rather than the stylized stomping grounds of the comics universe, it puts a heavier onus on the filmmakers to justify The Batman's presence and - on reflection - I don't think The Dark Knight pulls that off. Specifically, take a look at The Batman's jailhouse interrogation of The Joker mid-way through the film - what exactly does Batman hope to accomplish here? What about his methods does a veteran cop like Gordon think will work? The only thing The Batman does is rough up The Joker. That's it. He doesn't do anything to The Joker that the cops couldn't do themselves by turning a blind eye to ethics and procedure. He doesn't utilize some illegal technology or experimental drug that's out of the hands of normal law enforcement. No paralyzing ninja nerve pinch, even. For shit's sake, he doesn't even brutalize Joker all that much. He just throws him around a room. The only thing that's different from anyone else shoving The Joker around is that The Batman is doing all this while wearing, well, a bat costume. That's supposed to be his edge in this situation - that he's wearing a bat costume (oh, and he has his growly voice, too). That's supposed to break The Joker.

After The Batman gets nowhere by throwing The Joker around, he seems confused that this hasn't prompted an immediate confession. Because, after all, he's wearing a bat costume - which should tell The Joker how serious the situation is. When Batman opens his best can of whup-ass on The Joker, the one labeled "Emergency Use Only", Gordon tells his fellow officers that the Batman is "in control". But in this world, what good is a dude in a Bat costume if he's in control? You need a psycho in that suit - someone who's willing to break a few human rights and a few bones, too. In the world of The Dark Knight, The Batman's interrogation methods need some serious stepping up. He's still relying on the costume and the voice to do all the work - like he thinks he's in a comic book or something.

And while his comic book counterpart has always stopped short of killing his opponents, that moral stance doesn't make the same kind of sense for the Batman of The Dark Knight. In the comics, there's an arch-reality to that world where constantly returning his incurable adversaries to Arkham Asylum can appear to be a sensible, even noble, move. But the more evil, depraved and real you make a character like The Joker, the bigger an idiot Batman looks like for not taking him out for good. In The Dark Knight, The Batman tells Gordon that he's "whatever Gotham needs him to be" but really, he's just talking out of his ass. He says "Either you die a hero or live long enough to become the villain. I can do those things because I'm not a hero." but yet he could've decided he wasn't a hero fifteen minutes earlier, dropped a pile of sociopathic scum twenty stories and have done Gotham a lot more good. Director Christopher Nolan establishes Batman as someone who won't do much more than yell at criminals. And if that doesn't work, he's all out of ideas. So what is this version of Batman then, other than a guy who gets his kicks from wearing a costume?

Nolan has been acclaimed for his efforts to give The Dark Knight the feel of a gritty crime drama but given the approach to crimefighting that he, his brother Jonathan, and David Goyer (all three collaborated on The Dark Knight's script) have given their version of the Caped Crusader, it's no wonder that Gotham is going to hell in a handbasket. They want the audience to accept that Gotham's Guardian is needed because he's, well, a superhero but yet they present him as a ineffectual, self-flagellating loser.

Nolan's Batman seems like nothing more than a professional masochist, more interested in bringing pain on himself than waging an effective war on crime. For instance, with all the technology available to him at Wayne Tech, are we supposed to believe that he can't start packing some kind of sonic device to ward off dogs? To be surprised once by dogs is acceptable. I mean, who could see that one coming? But once should be the one and only time that trick would work against him. I mean, really - even a mailman wouldn't be attacked twice by a dog on their delivery route. But yet at the climax of The Dark Knight, there Batman is again with a pack of dogs on top of him, like dogs are suddenly Batman's kryptonite. At the end of the day, this Batman is more about perpetrating his own suffering than being the best vigilante he can be. It's only fitting that the only copycats we see his deeds inspire are out-of-shape fanboys (Do the wanna-be Batmen seen in The Dark Knight represent a not-so-veiled dig at the stereotypical comic book fan? And wouldn't it have been more interesting to see at least one person who's actually capable try to give Batman a run for his money in cleaning up Gotham's streets?).

In the comics, Batman is the world's greatest detective. He also possesses an unmatched grasp of human psychology and his success as a crimefighter hinges on his ability to claim the edge in any given situation.

That isn't the dude Christian Bale's playing in The Dark Knight, however. I mean, even Adam West wouldn't have suffered the indignity of multiple dog attacks. I don't care if you drive a missile-equipped tank, that sort of thing can wreck your mystique overnight. Once criminals start posting clips on YouTube of Batman flailing on the ground with dogs tearing at him, even a third-rater like Egghead would feel less daunted.

The Batman of The Dark Knight is the champion of our present age - a half-assed hero for half-assed times.

The Dark Knight

It's been a few days now since I saw The Dark Knight and I still haven't been able to shake it. It's not that I'm haunted by the film's despairing events, though. No, it's just that even days later when I think of Christian Bale delivering his lines in his 'Batman Voice' I have to laugh. I had the same issue with Batman Begins but it's only been amplified in Bale's second turn as the character. With all the attention that was given in Batman Begins to showing every step that Bruce Wayne took to refine his Batman persona, I felt the one element that was shortchanged was showing how he developed that Voice. I seriously would've loved at least ten minutes on that alone. Or to have it be a thread running throughout the film. You know, his first few nights out as a crimefighter Bruce just speaks in his normal voice and he doesn't know why he isn't having an impact on the thugs he runs into - he just knows there's some piece of the puzzle missing. He isn't quite "The Batman" yet. Then it hits him - it's the voice. He's got the scary costume with the cape, the cowl, the whole nine yards, but it's the sound of his voice that's got to sell all that crap.

So for the sake of telling the whole story, Batman Begins should've included a montage of Bale's Batman recording his voice, trying to figure out just the right tone of guttural rasp. Show him trying it out on Alfred, maybe crank calling random people, then finally locking it in. Yeah, I would've been all for seeing that because leaving the theater last Friday, all I could think of (besides Heath Ledger's go-for-broke performance) were the scenes where Bale's Batman had to actually say whole sentences in that voice and it gave me the instant giggles. I'd love to know how many takes it took to successfully film some of these scenes because I can't believe the actors opposite him weren't constantly breaking up. I kept hoping for at least one character to say to Batman "Look man, I know you're dressed like a bat but if you don't talk like a normal human being I'm going to pass out laughing!"

Yes, I know that Bruce Wayne has to alter his voice so no one can associate his voice with that of The Batman. But I suspect that when Bale came up with that voice he didn't think he'd have to use it as much as he does (I think other Batmans like Michael Keaton thought ahead more on this count) - that he'd deliver the occasional threat to some low-life, not be responsible for whole dramatic passages. Now that it's established, of course, it's got to stay the same no matter how many movies they do - they can't change voices in mid-stream!

That's fine by me - there's no way I'd want that voice to be toned down. In its own demented way, I think it works because I totally believe that no one would ever think that Bruce Wayne was Batman if only for the fact that most people would assume that anyone who talked like that must get locked away in a vault until they let him out to do his thing.

As for the movie as a whole, I liked it a lot with some minor reservations. The weakest section is the last stretch of the film (I'll assume that if you're reading this you've already seen it too so there'll be major spoilers ahead). The most nagging issue is that Harvey Dent's turn into Two-Face is a hard sell, even with Aaron Eckhart giving his performance all the conviction he can. Dent's overnight switch from crusading D.A. to Gotham's latest candidate for Arkham Asylum feels rigged by the demands of the story - Harvey has to go into super-villain mode right on schedule or else there isn't a climax. The best thing you can say about this movie's Two-Face is that it makes hay of the atrocious Tommy Lee Jones Two-Face in Batman Forever (1995) but yet the '90s animated series from Bruce Timm and Paul Dini was able to pull off a much more nuanced and believable Two-Face origin where they established that Dent was afflicted with a dual personality ("Big Bad Harv") long before the scarring. In The Dark Knight, Dent is too much of a straight-arrow and a stand-up guy (although we do see that he's willing to rough up someone to gain information) to regard his change to Two-Face as anything more than a hollow vendetta rather than the emergence of a split personality.

Also in regards to Dent, too much importance is placed on his fall from grace as being the potential last straw for the people of Gotham. To worry about Dent's courtroom victories being undermined is one thing - that's something pragmatic that needs to be addressed. I wouldn't even mind some concern shown to letting Dent's reputation remain untarnished just because it's what the man deserved. But the catastrophic emotional and spiritual toll that Batman, Gordon and The Joker believe Gotham's citizens will sustain if Dent is revealed to have turned into a violent criminal ("People will lose hope!")? I don't know - on a scale of 1 to 10, I'm going to go over Batman and Gordon's heads and guess it would rate a 3, at best.

If the truth ever came out about Dent, there'd be a collective shoulder shrug and that's that. And I also wonder exactly how the alternative truth that Gordon and Batman are choosing to sell Gotham is any more comforting than what really happened (to think that a good man died senselessly and a murdering vigilante is on the loose, eluding law enforcement, seems like just as much of a spirit killer as anything else). If Batman really is willing to be whatever Gotham needs him to be, as he says, then he ought to just bite the bullet and kill The Joker. Get your hands dirty. Finish the job, man.

But overall, I give high marks to The Dark Knight. It reminds me a little too much of the sort of heavy-handed, 'grim n' gritty' comics that were in vogue twenty years ago in the wake of such industry-altering works like, well, The Dark Knight Returns and I still think that a middle ground between the real-world approach of Nolan and the stylization of the comics could result in the best Batman of them all one day. But until then, The Dark Knight will have to do. To paraphrase the movie, it's not the Batman film we need, but the one that we deserve.

The Madcap Laughs

Up until I read a reprint of Batman #1 (1940) when I was probably about seven, I had never seen a truly sociopathic act in fiction - nothing that had stuck with me, at least. I know I had already seen plenty of death dealt in various films, TV shows and comic books but I had never seen anyone kill for the sheer glee of it. Marking the first appearance of Batman's clown-faced arch enemy, this story contained a scene in which The Joker used black paint to remove the yellow center line on a patch of road that traveled around a treacherous mountain. The Joker then painted a new yellow line (likely laughing as he did) so it went directly off the side of the mountain and when a bus full of passengers traveled this road late at night, the driver followed the yellow line straight off the road and sent every life aboard that bus careening to their deaths.

Although sending a bus off the road might seem like small potatoes these days, the amorality of The Joker's actions chilled me. Even as a kid, I knew it would take a lot for someone in the real world to emulate The Batman - they'd need an endless supply of money, technology ahead of what even the highest levels of law enforcement employed, the kind of physical training that only a handful of people in the world could provide, and a indefatigable spirit. And even with all that, anyone who really tried to be Batman would get their ass handed to them. But on the other hand, it would take very little to be The Joker and make it work - just a willingness to cross lines that others wouldn't and, as a child, that thought alarmed me. As I said, it had never occurred to me prior to this that anyone could kill randomly, without purpose (apparently I lacked imagination!). It introduced an anxiety that was new to me - that is, how can you defend yourself against someone who would kill you just as easily as they would the person next to you? How can you anticipate the sort of plans that a lunatic would put into play to murder people that he's never met?

So as a character, The Joker really unsettled me - but his incarnations in TV shows and movies have always been another story. I gave Caesar Romero a pass on his Joker from the '60s TV show but Jack Nicholson's wasted opportunity was almost enough to make me angry. Before The Dark Knight, I thought the closest to the "real" Joker that fans would experience outside of the comics was Mark Hamill's expert vocal performance in the Batman cartoon series of the '90s. But thanks to director Christopher Nolan and actor Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, for the first time on film, The Joker has earned his high-ranking place as Batman's arch-nemesis.

Rather than take the character's historic popularity for granted, Nolan's ambitious screenplay (co-written with his brother Jonathan) has put The Dark Knight in the front-running to be considered the definitve Batman/Joker tale. As an equal to comic tales such as The Long Halloween or Batman: Year One, The Dark Knight makes us understand how The Joker can get under Batman's skin in a way that villains like Killer Croc, Mad Hatter, or even A-listers like The Penguin and The Riddler can't. He isn't just a slippery character, he calls Batman's whole crusade into question.

Ledger's performance not only leaps past the hammy quality that deliberately snuck into even Hamill's Joker at times but he burns through the cliche of the 'scary clown', which always was the hook to previous portrayals of The Joker. In the history of the comics, Ledger's Joker reminds me most of the Joker as depicted by artist Neal Adams and writer Denny O'Neil as seen in 1973's "The Joker's Five-Way Revenge" (Batman #251) in that as drawn by Adams, The Joker was no longer a costumed super-criminal, instead he just dressed in a distinctive, but contemporary, fashion (after Adams' run, The Joker was returned to his familiar pinstripes). And as written by O'Neil, The Joker was returned to being the murderous psychopath that he was in his original '40s incarnation and the gimmicks, pranks, and props that had become so outrageous during the '50s and '60s were done away with (no more giant jack-in-the-boxes or rocket launching Pogo sticks) and his methods were brought back to street level (like Ledger's Joker, the things he likes - such as exploding cigars laced with nitroglycerin - are cheap). "The Joker's Five-Way Revenge" was a model for how to make The Joker 'real' and The Dark Knight is the first depiction of The Joker outside of comics to accomplish that with the same success.

I hope that Ledger's death won't shut the door permanently on The Joker in live-action. Although it's impossible right now to imagine anyone matching his approach to the character, his performance does prove that in the right hands, The Joker is far more than just a giggling buffoon.

Gotham's Mean Streets

In the November 1982 issue of Twilight Zone magazine, famed cartoonist Gahan Wilson reviewed John Carpenter’s The Thing and in comparing it to the original Howard Hawks/Christian Nyby The Thing From Another World, he pointed out that the world of 1982 offered a much harsher environment for its alien invader to contend with than the one that James Arness’ interstellar vegetable had encountered in 1951. The heroes of the 1982 film were a much rougher breed (as Wilson wrote: "I think if Jim Arness had shown up in front of this lot with his super-carrot makeup, they'd have spat at him."), as was the indomitable alien they had to thwart - a being capable of so many more tricks than its '50s counterpart. As Wilson noted: “It’s a good thing Carpenter's provided them with something really diverting.”

Wilson's review sprang to my mind the first time I saw a clip revealing Heath Ledger's unprecedented take on The Joker in The Dark Knight. The inclusion of The Joker this time around immediately invites a more direct comparison with Tim Burton’s original Batman (1989) than 2005’s Batman Begins did. But without having seen The Dark Knight yet, I can already tell you exactly how they compare: if Michael Keaton's Batman had to square off against Ledger's Joker, he'd likely crawl to a corner of the Bat-Cave and put both barrels of a Bat-Shotgun in his mouth. The End. And if Jack Nicholson’s Joker were to try any shit with Christian Bale's Batman, the Harlequin of Hate would find himself curb stomped before he uttered a single "Ha". Because that's just how this Batman rolls.

I only wish that Daniel Craig's James Bond could spend a rough weekend in Bale's Gotham City. Now that's a Brave and the Bold team-up I'd like to see (the Brave and the Bond?) - two sociopathic animals laying down all the hurt the city can stand. It's just too bad that Ledger's Joker couldn't be there to challenge them - but maybe Javier Bardem could pinch hit as The Riddler.

In Under Siege 2 (1995), Steven Seagal's Navy SEAL-turned-cook Casey Ryback said "No one beats me in the kitchen." Well, Gotham City is Batman's kitchen. And he likes to cook. So it’s a good thing that Nolan and company have provided the Cowled Crimefighter with something really diverting. And then some.

Burnt Offerings

Proving that it doesn't pay to be a crusading D.A. in Gotham City, here's an early look at how Harvey Dent fares against the underworld in this summer's Batman sequel The Dark Knight. As you can see from the above picture (concept art, not finished character make-up), it's not a sight for the squeamish.

For me, this look is just a little too real for Two-Face. As a fan of the character, I always liked the fact that Two-Face's disfigurement was more iconic than just an injury. Becoming Two-Face did more to Dent than just make him hard to look at. After all, he was splashed by acid and yet the scarring magically split his face into two perfectly divided halves - as though the accident was simply the trigger event to manifest something that was already inside of Dent. And Dent's scars were always depicted with a quality of baroque grotesqueness that would've been right at home in Chester Gould's Dick Tracy.

He may never have been anyone's idea of handsome but in the comics, there was something strong about Two-Face that shone through his appearance and made him exempt from pity. Here, though, the character just looks tragic. I know some fans like to applaud the 'real-world' approach that director Christopher Nolan is bringing to his Batman films but making a burn victim into a super villain strikes me as being not-so-fun.

All I know is this - if the action figure for Two-Face is true to this look, it might be the first of its kind to come with its own barf bag.