Wrote this in a sophisticated stream of rage after seeing THE DARK KNIGHT back in July, just started listening to the podcast, realized David Chen didn't care for the film, so I figured I'd post this on the most recent comment board, what the hell, maybe I'm lame:

Christopher Nolan is the greatest director to breakthrough to the public consciousness in the last decade. That is not saying much considering the dearth of new talent coming out of the “independent” scene or even Hollywood for that matter. However, the fact that Mr. Nolan’s latest movie, The Dark Knight, the second installment in his re-imagining of the Batman franchise, is being so universally lauded does say quite a bit about his own status as an auteur, confirming it in my mind.

I feel this way not because I think The Dark Knight is great movie, but because I think it is essentially a mediocre one.

I have not liked a single film in the two Batman franchises. Tim Burton’s two inaugural entries contained the only actor to not sound silly as Batman; Michael Keaton, but just like everything else in the films, potential greatness was squandered through what came to be classic Burtonization. Weak, schlocky scripts, clunky directing, and a supposedly artistic look and tone that smothers any amount of soul left in the performances. Thanks a lot Scissorhands. Joel Schumacher’s films suffered a very similar fate, only obviously through his implementation of his own Schumacherization, a less unique but equally annoying style. However, had those scripts not been as bad as they were, his garish touch wouldn’t have really bothered me that much.

All in all we had four lame movies that wasted one of the greatest characters of 20th century literature, as well as besides Keaton, the acting talents of Jack Nicholson, Kim Basinger, Michael Gough, Pat Hingle, Jack Palance, Billy Dee Williams, Danny DeVito, Michelle Pfieffer, Christopher Walken, Val Kilmer, Jim Carrey, Tommy Lee Jones, Nicole Kidman, Chris O’Donnell, Ed Begley, Jr., George Clooney, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Uma Thurman, Alicia Silverstone, and even Tracey Walter, not that most of these individuals don’t mind doing that themselves most of the time, but come on; what a mind-blowing waste of resources.

Due to Mr. Nolan, the fifth outing, Batman Begins, was a significant leap forward. For the first time, Batman was taken seriously, basically meaning that for the first time, Bruce Wayne was treated like a real person, and not just the less interesting half of an already not so interesting guy in a bat suit. However, what began as an extremely well crafted origin story of how Bruce Wayne became Batman soon fell apart, basically as soon as Bruce Wayne actually becomes Batman. Once Batman appears, we are subjected to the silliest Batman voice yet, as well as an inept dramatization of one of the comic’s most frightening villains; the Scarecrow, not helped in any way by an unconvincing performance by Cillian Murphy. Then we are subjected to the unnecessary introduction of a second uninteresting villain, with the unnecessary return of Rah’s Ah Ghul, also carrying with him an unnecessary twist. And finally we are dragged through a very muddled third act, containing action that doesn’t really ever explode like it should. Only when Bruce Wayne rather hilariously kicks out his party guests do we feel any relief.

Most people liked Batman Begins more than I did, but very few of them spoke of it as a near masterpiece, which is how most people are speaking of The Dark Knight.

I am not one of them. As I mentioned before, I did not like the film. I think that overall it is mediocre, mainly because it has an extremely flawed script, to which Mr. Nolan and his brother Jonathan are responsible for.

Most of the dialogue that isn’t said by The Joker comes off as the worst kind that one could read in a comic book, but because it can work when next to the panels of a virtuoso artist like Frank Miller, it also works onscreen when Nolan floods the screen with IMAX-aided cinematic grandeur.

Both the love triangle between Bruce Wayne, Harvey Dent, and their shared object of affection Rachel Dawes, as well as the dichotomies between Batman and Harvey Dent, and Batman and The Joker, are all sacrificed necessary development time so that Batman can do things like go kick some ass in China. Granted, that visuals in that scene are something to behold, but because of scenes like that, those two storylines do not pay off as they should. The same goes for Harvey Dent’s transformation into Two-Face. We get about half a scene and a few lines of dialogue developing his dark side, and then all The Joker has to do to enable that Dark Side to completely take over is crack some jokes and contrivances in a nurse’s uniform. Very pedestrian stuff.

As I hinted at before, Heath Ledger’s mesmerizing performance as The Joker is the only one that isn’t murdered by the script, although his asides in the film’s big chase scene do along with some from Nicky Katt as a SWAT team member mar one of the movie’s few otherwise spectacular sequences. For the most part though, the dementedly funny nuances that Ledger surely brought to the movie himself, provides it with its only truly effective moments, the most effective being the slightly mentally retarded walk he takes before he blows up an entire hospital.

After that is when the whole movie totally self-destructs and even manages to take Ledger with it, his climactic scheme resulting in a laughably gaping allegory for the Patriot Act inflicted age we live in. The movie’s final scene involves the film’s main characters literally just standing around and explaining the movie, over and over and over and over again. And when they’ve decided that they’ve flogged that dead horse enough, they take the same exhaustive amount of time to set up the next movie. The lack of ambiguity that’s usually a staple of comic book movies is completely superseded by the lack of brevity.

However, in the hands of a non-auteur, even with the exact same actors and the exact same crew, this script would result in a movie that people would not like very much. And if you went one step further and took Heath Ledger out of that movie, it would result in a movie that people would just plain hate.

An overwhelming amount of critics, people in the film community, and the general public alike, all seem to love this movie.

Only an auteur can swindle that wide of an audience like Mr. Nolan has done. Hopefully with his next movie, he won’t need to do so.

C'mon you admit that that was pretty sweet.

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