The internet is overflowing with superlatives for the Dark Knight, and there’s probably not a single word to disagree with. Movies are a lot like video games; they used to be a fixture of our rituals, and now not so much. We tend to our Netflix queue, but the movies we actually buy a ticket for are few and far between.
But there was no way we were going to miss Batman putting a pounding on the joker.
Since we were already carving out time for the movie, we figured we’d see it in style. We bought our tickets online a full week early, so we could make sure that the shows in IMAX wouldn’t be sold out. Now, if you don’t mind taking a squeegee to your eyeballs, and collecting splintered pieces from your shattered eardrums off the sticky theater floor on your way out, then IMAX is definitely the way to see this movie. The screen is six stories high, and the Dark Knight isn’t one of those movies converted to IMAX, merely to double the noise and ticket price. There are moments when Batman is standing at the edge of skyscraper and the 70MM camera pans around him with what I believe is the full intention to give the viewer motion sickness. I don’t get motion sickness often; in fact I’d say almost never. But I kinda felt it after this one.
Daisy, who spent a year exploring Asia, said that it was kind of like being packed (standing room only) in a tiny relic of a boat, outrunning a storm on the outskirts of the Philippines, but far more exciting. She spent the weekend in recovery.
What made the Dark Knight so special for me, was that I spent two and a half hours in front of the kind of Batman movie that I didn’t think would ever have a chance of getting made. I’ve loved Batman since he had to share my Saturday mornings with the Smurfs. As I grew older, I cast aside the version of Batman that was, I thought, campy and silly, and embraced the mythologies shrouded in shadow.
I always preferred the Batman as the boogeyman of the bad guys; the dark creature that inhabited the scariest ghost stories passed in a frightened whisper from one criminal to another. I liked seeing Bruce Wayne use his powerful position and mind, even more than I loved the gadgets and gizmos.
Christopher Nolan’s first try with Batman was good, but his second is a classic.
Every single note played in perfect tune with the very best of the character’s nearly seventy year history, and yet it was also absolutely believable. The Dark Knight required no more suspension of disbelief than most other movies, and less than any other super hero film ever put to celluloid.
When Christopher Nolan was announced as the director of the Batman reboot a few years back, I was giddy that the guy who directed Memento (a twisted story of insane obsession, beautifully told with a broken narrative) was getting a shot at the darkest of super heroes. With the Dark Knight, Nolan fulfilled his promise; even if he left Daisy a crumpled mass, lying on the floor.
Writer Dad
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