Is it Overrated? - "The Dark Knight"

Welcome to yet another type of entry I'm doing for this blog. I'm going to take a look at a random movie that the internet has ranked above "The Bible" in its list of things that are "culturally significant". I'm going to go over the internet's most popular opinions and determine whether or not Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight is overrated.

WARNING: The following blog post contains opinions that the internet won't agree with. Not facts, opinions. If you hate opinions, think I'm an idiot, and want to continue to profess the "facts" to people you think care to hear them, click here.

OPINION #1 - CHRISTIAN BALE IS THE BEST BATMAN EVER: Debatable, but I can see where you're coming from. Christian Bale embodies the Bruce Wayne side of things impeccably. The greatest "Batman" on the other hand is a toss-up. On the one hand, Bale does a phenomenal job of carrying himself like Batman and feeling like Batman when he's on screen; it's just that fucking stupid voice. Here, almost ten years later (Fuck am I old) and that voice still sounds ludicrous. "But he's trying to sound intimidating". Please, my grandfather had vocal problems near the end of his life but I moreso had trouble understanding him than fearing him. "But he had to disguise his voice somehow". Come on, even Val fucking Kilmer did it effortlessly. A slight rasp is all you need in the comic book world to throw people off. Hell, in a universe where Superman teaches us that you just need a pair of glasses to fool people, a slight rasp isn't going to give you away at all. Plus it only makes it harder to understand him when he's yelling. When he screams "Where's the trigger?" at Bane, it almost becomes laughable. Yes, Bale's Batman had some cool moments and some cool lines, but "best Batman ever"? Gotta go with my boy Michael Keaton on that one. Next.

OPINION #2 - THE MOVIE IS A PRIME EXAMPLE OF HOW TO MAKE A COMIC BOOK MOVIE: Eh, yes and no. While I am all for making comic book movies more epic on a wider, blockbuster-sized scale, taking them into a realm of reality defeats the purpose of even making a comic book movie. The very idea of comic books were to suspend the reader's disbelief, to make them take a break from reality and delve into a world of fantasy for a read. Hell, that's just about any book. The Dark Knight trilogy instead makes you look at what would actually go into dressing up as a bat and fighting crime in today's day-in-age with today's technology. Now, granted by the time Rises came out that "technology" was getting back to comic book-level antics, but that only shows how one movie can be thought of as a prime example for how comic book movies are made only for its sequel to reneg on that.

OPINION #3 - THE FIGHT SCENES ARE THE BEST OF THE BATMAN FRANCHISE: I agree. I think if you take the fight choreography here and put them into Tim Burton's Batman, my personal favorite, you'd make it a perfect Batman movie. Just like if you put Michael Keaton in this movie, you'd make this movie a perfect Batman movie...well, sort of.

OPINION #4 - HANS ZIMMER's SCORE IS BETTER THAN DANNY ELFMAN's: Well that's just simply wrong. Danny Elfman's score is eons superior to Zimmer's score for Batman, just take a look at the theme songs. Danny's theme is an actual theme; a repetitious motif of comprised notes that provide the musical aura for a character. Zimmer's "theme" sounds like pretty much any time anything happens in the. Danny's felt more comic book-ish and gothic. Hans Zimmer's sounded like literally everything else he's ever done. Zimmer is woefully overrated and musically speaking, I think Elfman's Batman score blows Zimmer's Dark Knight score clear out of the water.

OPINION #5 - GARY OLDMAN IS THE BEST JIM GORDON EVER: Yeah, pretty much. I agree that Oldman's Jim Gordon is more natural and more involved in these movies and is therefore the much more likable Jim Gordon. Pat Hingle's Jim Gordon was too much of a background character and didn't really do much. Bob Hastings is extremely memorable as the voice of Jim Gordon in the DCAU and in my view he's a close second to Oldman. Gary Oldman somehow knew what to do with the Jim Gordon character managed to make him an interesting character in all three performances.

OPINION #6 - THE BATPOD IS BADASS: Not really. Maybe the scenes it was in were badass, but the vehicle itself kind of look like something somebody threw together five minutes before its presentation started. It doesn't even look very practical. Even the special features on the Blu-ray talked about how cumbersome it was and its difficulty making simple turns on-camera. I think the backlash against the Tumbler was justified; that thing is a generic looking pile of garbage that in no way spells "Batmobile", but if this is what we get in return, I'll take the Tumbler back.

OPINION #7 - THE MOVIE IS EQUALLY PACED FROM START TO FINISH: Bullshit, the movie is too long and has about three endings. The movie is equally paced...until Harvey gets scarred and Rachel dies, then its pace goes all over the place. You're slow and somber, then you're action-packed, then you're tense, then you're worn-out, then you're wondering when the hell its going to end by the time the Joker's upside down. You'd think since Batman Begins was the origin film, this one could be a little more light-hearted and ease up on the runtime, then you find out its actually longer than Batman Begins and it makes you want to jump off a bridge. I have ADD man, it's hard for me to finish long movies. By the time Batman and Gordon are arguing with Two-Face, I don't even care anymore. Just kill the guy and get it over with. Even Batman's very last shot, the final running from the police is drawn out so Gordon can have a short speech. JUST END.

OPINION #8 - HEATH LEDGER IS THE BEST JOKER EVER: Ah yes, the main event. This one has always been the debate, and it's a tricky one. You want to say "no" because of Mark Hamill, but you also want to say "yes" because the guy died doing this role and it shows in the movie that he gave every single scene he's in so much power and finesse. He was creepy, and in an insanely dark Batman movie, he'd be fucking scary. Ledger did steal the show with every single scene he's in and is the poster-boy for the whole movie. More people remember Heath for this movie than anyone else that's in it. I remember in 2008 in high school. It was like Heath Ledger's year. Every single girl had a crush on Heath after that movie came out (Which is weird for a shitload of reasons, mostly because he was dead by that point). I'm going to cheat and do a cop-out here: I'm not going to compare him. Every single Joker we have to compare him with was played differently than he was. You can easily compare the animated Jokers for sure, but you can't compare every single Joker with one another. There's different part of Joker's personality that different shows/movies utilize, whether by necessity or choice. For instance, you could say this Joker's darker than Mark Hamill's Joker because he kills people, but in the Animated Series, Hamill's Joker wasn't allowed to kill people because of the television censors. So you really have to know the background before you go making rash judgments. It's like comparing Nicholson and Ledger. Nicholson was more of a gothic, sarcastic, laid back, cartoon gangster while Ledger was more psychopathic and animated. He was a weird mixture of Hamill and Nicholson, with a little Charles Manson thrown in there.

OPINION #9 - THIS IS THE BEST JOKER EVER: See that? Two different things. Yes, we can't debate who's the best Joker ever, but we can debate if this character of the Joker is the best one. Visually, I'd have to say pretty much. He was an interesting, greasier take on the clown prince of crime. His hair was always so ratty, his make-up was poorly smeared on, and he had facial scars that he repeatedly made up the story for how he got them. Still, he looked like the Joker so I guess that counts. However, his abilities were through the roof of ridiculous. I mean, how impervious is this guy? He's supposedly just a regular dude dressed up as a clown, but he's not just committing petty crimes like the Joker; this guy is a full-on, large-scale terrorist who repeatedly slips through the police's grasp and continues to outwit and escape them. How smart is this guy? What are his powers? How stupid is the Gotham City Police Department that they can't catch this guy? Again, it all comes down to the runtime. When he blew up the jail, escaped with Lao and was back on the loose, I stopped caring. I knew by that point that they were going to kill him by the end...but they didn't. They just apparently re-captured him. Wonder how long he lasted in that incarceration before breaking out again.He was cool, he had great lines, he was creepy and haunted every scene...but he fucking wore me out.

So...the movie The Dark Knight as a whole; is it overrated? Yes, but not that much. It's still got phenomenal characters, great acting, spot-on dialogue and fantastic, on-the-edge action scenes. Its plot fumbles as the movie runs too long, its scenarios get too over-the-top, and a few of its objects and characters seem a little misinterpreted by the Nolan nut jobs out there. I get that they're great. I re-watched them recently and they still hold up (Well, two of them do. The Dark Knight Rises gets a little weaker with each viewing). I think its still a great comic book movie and a testament to a generation, but it does have flaws. It's not a perfect movie by any means, but its the closest we've come in a long, long time.