The Dark Knight

The thing about Christopher Nolan’s Batman is that it doesn’t resort to cheap gimmicks and the obligatory cuteness factor general audiences relish with glee (see: Tobey Maguire doing his Saturday Night Fever impression in Spiderman 3) with the intent to make the character more palatable to the masses. Compared to the, say, more popular Iron Man movie a few months back, The Dark Knight is uncompromising in its tone as its main protagonist is in his own moral stance against overwhelming forces that aims to subjugate him to their will. 

As artistic and visionary as it is for its genre, it won’t become too popular. Make no mistake: it is the masterpiece critics say it to be. With complex characters and excellent story and performances (I take back my initial dislike on Heath Ledger’s casting---the guy is THE JOKER), the movie is tailor-made for reference books that filmmaking students a hundred years from now will be studying. And the film was often compared to excellent crime epics like Michael Mann’s HEAT and the crime epic to end all crime epics: Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather 2. Great films, but only to the people who actually watch movies and not the average person looking for an eye candy to kill the time or take his date on a make-out session. 

Not that it’s the average moviegoer’s fault for disliking it. Nor am I insinuating that I’m somewhat better because I see things the snotty critics and the geek-boy comic book aficionados have. I perfectly understand the sentiment of the person I overheard going out the theater blurting out : “BORING.” Or the countless ‘film aficionados’ who dismissed it as too self-indulgent, whatever that means. They were looking for that formulaic BANG and never got it. Anyway I’m not going to expound more on this at the risk of sounding too much like the ‘aficionados’ who amuse me to high heavens. Go watch it, anyway. You’ll probably like it.

Or not.