BIBTTP Reviews... The Dark Knight

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As our Superhero draft showed, we're a bunch of nerds here at Bigfoot Is Blurry, That's The Problem. So with the big-time nerd movie of the summer hitting the theaters last midnight, of course I was there.

As the last preview rolled, the DC Comics logo flashed, and the screen went black for the 12:01 showing of "The Dark Knight", a strange thought popped in my head. Even though I'd been eagerly awaiting its release, watching every trailer, reading every review, going to see the movie as soon as humanly possible, I didn't want to see this movie. Everything I had seen, everything I had read, everything I had heard had told me how great "The Dark Knight" was going to be. And yet... what if it wasn't? What if they'd all been setting me up for some spectacular failure, if the explosions were crappy, if the storyline didn't make any sense, and if, worst of all, Heath Ledger's much-hailed Joker performance turned out to be a hack job. If I didn't see it, if it never started, I could always imagine it to be that truly great film, and I would never need fear disappointment.

What an idiot I was. "The Dark Knight" was everything I had been promised and more. To be clear--for the movie itself is not afraid to be blunt about it--this is the story of opposites, of light and darkness. District Attorney Harvey Dent (Nick Nolte of "Thank You For Smoking") is Gotham City's "White Knight", while Batman is its eponymous "Dark Knight". We are poignantly reminded that is it always darkest before the dawn. And characters are constantly fighting their own dual natures, as the dark and light that is in all of us fights for control.

I could go into some whole deep-psyche thing and talk about how both Bruce Wayne and Dent are each torn between the light, how other characters reveal their own struggles, too, and how each of us, truly, must confront that evil lurking within, balance it with the good we have and share with the world. But I'm not going to do that.

Instead, I'm going to talk about the Joker.


Now, I don't know how the Oscars voters are going to react to this. I don't know if they're going to be hestitant to recognize someone who's dead, or someone who was in a summer superhero blockbuster flick, or someone who spends the whole movie wearing ridiculous makeup. Hell, I don't even know if Ledger would be up for Best Actor or Best Supporting. But he'd better win. Because my God, what an amazing performance.

See, characters are usually great because of their complexity. As I said, in "The Dark Knight" we see figures torn between the light and the darkness, between good and evil, and these characters are great, and plenty complex. But with Ledger's Joker--and make no mistake about it: this Ledger's Joker, and the Joker is Ledger; Nicholson can suck it--there is no complexity. He is an absolute: he came out of nowhere, he wants nothing, and he won't be back. (That's not in any way a spoiler, just observing that no one else could put what Ledger did into the Joker.) Cast into a black-and-white morality play, the Joker is like a top spinning through a chessboard: he has no time for or interest in rules. As Alfred remarks of him, "Some men just like to watch the world burn." Madness personified, the nihilist Joker is spectacular because he's so simple. Let others determine the morality of their actions, let others fight it out for the soul of Gotham, let others struggle between light and dark. While the world around him burns, he is.

RIP, Heath. You put your heart and soul into this one.