Top Ten Reasons The Dark Knight Isn't As Good As You Think It Is

re: Top Ten Reasons The Dark Knight Isn't As Good As You Think It Is

Yas — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 12:32:56 GMT

Dude...this article is missing out on the fundamental elements of nihilism vs principles and meaning that Nolan presents with clarity and entertainment. The ten points are by far the most contrived drivel I've ever read. This dude needs to go learn to write, because the arguments made don't discredit the movie, they just illustrate that it's a movie. Want realism go watch a drama, this was allegory moron!

re: Top Ten Reasons The Dark Knight Isn't As Good As You Think It Is

Peter Smith — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 16:05:26 GMT

Wow, it SET RECORDS? It MUST be the best movie ever!

Think I'll go see it again while I spin the best album ever, The Eagles' Greatest Hits.

re: Top Ten Reasons The Dark Knight Isn't As Good As You Think It Is

mj — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 19:27:19 GMT

Why is it that black people in these movies can't have intelligence or a conscience? Why is it so far-fetched that Lucius Fox could update the suit to Mr. Wayne's specifications? Why shouldn't Zeus be the one to toss the detonator out of the window?

As usual, folks overreact or object to black people having any intelligence in the movies. Case in point, anyone remember the original pilot for the series "Mantis"--mainly black cast--once the pilot was picked up--the major players were all white.

In "Dragon Wars" the original guardians/keepers of the flame for the reincarnation of the celestial dragons were Korean. When the action moves to current times, the major players are white?

Give me a break.

In closing, I thoroughly enjoy the movie each time that I see it. I was not happy with the Batman takes the rap ending and I agree that Heath Leger's Joker was outstanding. The movie was excellent.

re: Top Ten Reasons The Dark Knight Isn't As Good As You Think It Is

quan39 — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 11:13:38 GMT

lol someone hates the best comic movie ever made, too bad the records it has broken are ******* you now.

I wish the movie was longer and had more Joker, best movie ever hands down, I have never seen a villan played like Heath has; where you can just cut him out of the movie and he would fit literally right into the comics. Brilliant. Hopefully this movie raises the bar for more comic movies to be made and good luck too lol because Batman never gets old, as it has been around since the 30s or 40s I believe, and its now in its prime all these years later.

re: Top Ten Reasons The Dark Knight Isn't As Good As You Think It Is

otherguy83 — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 03:22:14 GMT

Nice comment thread you've garnered here, Osborne. I don't think I've ever seen these kind of numbers in the comments before. You should be proud of yourself.

It seems like you weren't able to connect a lot of the dots in the film and many of your arguments are based on the assumption that the Dark Knight doesn't work on some level, instead of assuming that its creators aren't complete idiots and are capable of putting together a linear plot without having the audience take logical leaps of faith.

Most other comments have reasoned away your complaints, but even if they still held any water I would say they are pretty superficial and petty criticisms. Sure, the film isn't perfect, but really, who cares? It's a solid film that transcends its genre's conventions in an exciting and inventive way.

re: Top Ten Reasons The Dark Knight Isn't As Good As You Think It Is

Roseskier01 — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:56:12 GMT

StoryBoard: He had on the suit that he was wearing when he was burned. It was burned on the same side. Presumably it was in the hospital and he got it before it blew up.

re: Top Ten Reasons The Dark Knight Isn't As Good As You Think It Is

motoko — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 03:11:42 GMT

All these points aside - I liked the first one better because it was more visually interesting and imaginative, and had a more compelling narrative. Sue me.

re: Top Ten Reasons The Dark Knight Isn't As Good As You Think It Is

StoryBoard — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:36:56 GMT

What was the deal with post-trauma Harvey's jacket? When did he have time to go out and have a new suit tailored for himself? Was that where he was when the hospital blew up?

re: Top Ten Reasons The Dark Knight Isn't As Good As You Think It Is

milesforrester — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 22:19:49 GMT

What about the voice Bale was putting on. It was even worse this movie. Forget stitches, every scene when he wasn't in costume, Bruce Wayne should have been sucking back tea like a motherfucker. I also hated that " Rome gave up it's democracy" thing. That was really stupid (and innaccurate, Rome was never by any means a democracy). Still a good movie though.

re: Top Ten Reasons The Dark Knight Isn't As Good As You Think It Is

orangeb — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 18:34:49 GMT

Wow - what a surprise. Someone got tired of hearing positive comments about one of the few well made big budget movies of the year. Rather than arguing with you over your lovely digestible bullets on how a film with multiple narrative threads might find it difficult to weave them together as gracefully in 2 and a half hours as you seem to demand, I think Noel Murray's comments (AVClub) on how critical and commercial success can end up damaging a good product might be slightly more beneficial. Granted he wrote this about Mad Men, but I think the point is made quite nicely:

Can we dial back the Mad Men worship just a notch? Understand that I really love this show. I think somewhere around Season One’s “5G,” I realized that watching Mad Men each week had become one of those rare delights, like watching The Simpsons from Season Two to Seven, or Lost in Season Four, where I approached each new episode the way I might approach a wrapped gift. A couple of years ago, I wrote about the difference between “good” and “TV good,” with the latter referring to an entertainment that succeeds despite the typical sandbagging of episodic television—the compromises of serialization, of keeping actors happy, of courting a mass audience, et cetera. Mad Men is genuinely “good” more often than not, and even legitimately great at times, but it’s hardly perfect. The show can be damnably unsubtle, and can overreach for existential mystery. Any time a TV series is as acclaimed as Mad Men is, the knives inevitably start coming out, as contrarian critics and viewers begin finding flaws and carving away. It doesn’t help when fans and supportive critics gush so. It creates what I call “The Citizen Kane Effect,” where the uninitiated hear so much praise for a work of popular art that when they finally see it and it doesn’t change their life, they’re not just disappointed, they’re mildly enraged. (I can’t count the number of times people have told me they hate Citizen Kane or The Clash or some other near-universally beloved critics’ darling, and when I ask why, they say, “Everyone says it’s so great, but I didn’t think it was that great.” How “not that great” leads to “hate” is something I’ve never been able to understand.) Mad Men has its weaknesses, and we’ll talk about them some as Season Two rolls along, I’m sure. But it also spins a mood unlike anything else on TV, and something that special shouldn’t be shrugged off just because it’s not as drop-dead amazing as the hype would have you believe.

re: Top Ten Reasons The Dark Knight Isn't As Good As You Think It Is

Janet — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 18:10:38 GMT

6) Rachel's location is further away from the police station than Harvey's. How hard was that to figure out?

I also didn't think it felt as long as it was. My reaction was more surprise at how late it was when I left the theater than checking my watch during the movie.

I also felt that the Morgan Freeman scenes were a bit too Q for my liking. Especially the one with the new armor.

re: Top Ten Reasons The Dark Knight Isn't As Good As You Think It Is

Roseskier01 — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 18:08:04 GMT

On Luciens #13:

I think that the blind moving up was just to distract the cops and look in that direction. It would have had the same reaction whether there was a person at the window or not. Besides, Joker knew that Batman would not be there b/c it was daylight and he only comes out at night (in the movie Batman wasn't there, Bruce Wayne was)

re: Top Ten Reasons The Dark Knight Isn't As Good As You Think It Is

matt — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 17:53:16 GMT

Not as awesome as if he'd been the final opponent from Over the Top.

Or the four-armed puppet from Mortal Kombat.

re: Top Ten Reasons The Dark Knight Isn't As Good As You Think It Is

K Sawyer Paul — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:22:47 GMT

The fact that the prisoner on the boat was Zeus from No Holds Barred was pretty awesome though, right? Right? Anyone?

re: Top Ten Reasons The Dark Knight Isn't As Good As You Think It Is

lucien — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:43:03 GMT

How about:

11. Gordon has no qualms about letting his son in on the top-secret "Batman's gonna take the rap even though he's really innocent" plan, but doesn't bother to let him know about the whole "I'm gonna fake my own death" plan?

12. Rachel's bizarre non-reaction to Harvey coming *this close* to getting assassinated in that first courtroom scene?

13. I'm confused...did the Joker *plan* for Batman to reconstruct a single bullet with state-of-the-art technology only he has so he could find a single fingerprint on it that would lead him to that particular apartment at that particular moment that the timer was set to make the shades go up so the fake cops could shoot at him?

14. Is it just me, or was there way too much time and character introduction spent on a money-laundering / trip-to-Hong-Kong / we-cast-Eric-Roberts-for-some-reason subplot which is never particularly compelling dramatically, and whose payoff is basically "the Joker burns a giant pile of money"? Wasn't there a quicker, simpler way to get there?

15. Couldn't Alfred have been allowed a smidgen of reaction to Rachel's death, instead of existing solely as a catalyst for whatever's going on in Batman's head? (BTW, the "magical Negro" folks are really stretching with this one. What - is every black movie character who has something to say about morality automatically a cliche? Sorry, but the "magical Negro" dialogue is all coming from Alfred - he just happens to be played by a white man, no nobody has a quick knee-jerk dismissal term they learned on the internet for it. "Between this and THE PRESTIGE, I'm so sick of Hollywood's 'magical Michael Caine in Christopher Nolan movies' bullshit!")

Don't get me wrong - I liked the movie. I wasn't sitting there *looking* for problems; they just kinda kept smacking me in the face.

re: Top Ten Reasons The Dark Knight Isn't As Good As You Think It Is

Andrew Osborne — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 12:48:38 GMT

Actually, my woman pops a boner over Jon Hamm from Mad Men, but she thought TDK was kinda lame. Sorry.

re: Top Ten Reasons The Dark Knight Isn't As Good As You Think It Is

nd — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 02:23:20 GMT

It was a fun movie. Period. Yes, it was flawed, but what film isn't? Just don't hate on TDK if your woman pops a boner over batman.

re: Top Ten Reasons The Dark Knight Isn't As Good As You Think It Is

gh — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 21:18:15 GMT

At the party for Harvey Dent, Batman leapt out the window to save Rachel...leaving a penthouse full of rich people for the Joker to do whatever the heck he wants with!

re: Top Ten Reasons The Dark Knight Isn't As Good As You Think It Is

kaegan — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 20:48:30 GMT

It's just another summer Hollywood movie with explosions, pretentious and incomplete musings about issues which screenwriters know nothing about, and other crap like that. For that genre it hits a home run. For that genre it's amazing. But it's still just Hollywood summer fodder.

re: Top Ten Reasons The Dark Knight Isn't As Good As You Think It Is

Levon Swift — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 20:28:26 GMT

RevTen: He's lying about not having plans.

Also, Gordon and his men were about to crash the Joker's money burning party when the Joker announced he was going to blow up a hospital, meaning they had to re-direct their attention to the evacuation.

Also, Batman wasn't taking the fall for killing Dent, he was taking the fall for killing the people Dent killed. The Joker can't be blamed, since everyone knows he was by the river threatening to blow up the boats while Dent was killing people.

Also, I'm not entirely convinced Dent is dead.

Also, I never was bored. I wanted the fucking thing to be longer.

re: Top Ten Reasons The Dark Knight Isn't As Good As You Think It Is

RevTen — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 17:13:48 GMT

yeah the sky scraper bit bugged me, but what really annoyed me was that the Joker has this whole rant about not being a "big plans aand schemes" guy, but everything he does has a huge, elaborate, and insane amount of planning involved. especially that ferry boat thing.

re: Top Ten Reasons The Dark Knight Isn't As Good As You Think It Is

The Dreaded Rhubarb — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 16:08:18 GMT

You overlooked the bit where Batman and Rachel drop 30 stories but it's OK because she's on top of him, he's wearing armour and their fall is broken by a car.

Watch it again, there's no explanatory batgadgets or anything, just the idea that you can fall out off a skyscraper and walk away just fine if you're wearing armour.

re: Top Ten Reasons The Dark Knight Isn't As Good As You Think It Is

danrimage — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 15:00:05 GMT

It's not a flawless movie by any means: I agree about the Magical Negro/bombs on the boats scene as being just one plot point too far, and the ending where Batman takes the rap (and then Jim Gordon basically comes out of the closet to his own son by giving his 'Yeah, I admit it, I'm totally gay for Batman ' speech) actually seemed like a hurried, ill-thought-out way to give the movie a downbeat ending (and that bitchin' final shot of Jim Gordon smashing the Bat Signal with an axe), but you know what? I was never, ever bored at this movie, not once, and frequently had my emotions, thoughts and sense of aesthetics engaged more vividly than by any movie since There Will Be Blood. The fact that I'm justifiably comparing this summer's big popcorn movie to one of last year's big Oscar/prestige pictures and not to, say, Hancock or The Incredible Hulk I think speaks volumes about the quality of Nolan and company's stitching....The Dark Knight is a fine, tailored suit compared to most blockbusters' baseball shirt and jeans. And lord knows I don't wear a fine tailored suit every day of the week, but when I do I feel important and special.....kind of like how this movie made me feel.

And one more thing (and I can't say this often enough): it's a much better movie than Heat or Collatoral. Michael Mann WISHES he was making movies that balanced action with thought this elegantly.

re: Top Ten Reasons The Dark Knight Isn't As Good As You Think It Is

Yiyer — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 09:33:28 GMT

1. Matter of taste, but complaining about a personal bias in a film critic forum is lazy.

2. Good point, but who cares about the Oscars as legitimate critical consensus?

3. A movie does not have to have an opinion on a subject (ie do we go down to their level or not?) to be relevant to that subject.

4. Handcuffs removed for benefit of Batman

5. If this point bothers you enough to think about, then how about this: they probably just threw him in the cell after a strip search turned up nothing, while assuming the equipment was malfunctioning.

6. Batman has better transportation (see semi-truck scene, or lambo scene).

7. Agreed about Mr. Magic Negro. But the fact that no one in the civilian boat was willing to detonate the prison boat makes more likely that one prisoner would be willing to toss that device out the window. All it takes is one prisoner, it took the entire boat of "good" people to make that decision.

8. Don't really remember it.

9. Totally agree with you. Really bothered me at the time.

10. Weak point. It didn't seem to me that Batman killed Dent on purpose, and even if he did it was a life or death situation. Killing Joker would have been stone cold murder. As far as civil rights go, Batman isn't a saint (look up the title of the movie). It is a matter of to what degree is willing to compromise his principles to fight evil that makes up a lot of this movie's guts. And personally, I think it is kinda neat that Nolan has people who agree with Batman's methods(or those who are rooting for Batman without his or her critical thought faculty engaged) as implicitly agreeing with the Bush wiretapping program. Slippery slope indeed. This also goes back to your third point. But yeah, Mr Freeman's half-assed protest ("just this once") is tried Hollywood tripe.

re: Top Ten Reasons The Dark Knight Isn't As Good As You Think It Is

nerveric — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 06:16:51 GMT

Wow, this is a really lame article, whitey. Yeesh, every point here is a stretch. I can't believe I read all ten. Blah blah blah blah.