I went to see The Dark Knight on opening night on the IMAX screen. Overwhelmed, I knew I had him again to give a proper assessment. Then I got my hands on a copy of it to watch at home and spent nearly every weekend can not get out of the film world. Now that I’ve seen a few times, he deconstructs, reverse-designed it, and savored my favorite scenes repeatedly, I realize that this is not simply awesome. It is beautiful, graceful as a ballerina, and will be one of those films that reference we judge others against the decades to come.
For all comparisons Heat and Goodfellas, I am especially reminded of Natural Born Killers. Both films share a go-for-broke fearlessness in their vision of a world where what we see is real. They go way above, but making history in such a skillful landing that you not only buy it as possible, but probable and even likely, given the right circumstances. Batman Begins showed us the world of Batman in a way that makes them feel very real. The Dark Knight shows us the real world in the extreme where Batman makes sense.
Much of the attention the movie is about the quality of the centers. Everyone goes nuts over Heath Ledger, but I think Gary Oldman Jim Gordon in the stand-out performance here. But Gary Oldman is always great, and Jim Gordon is not the center of this movie phenomenon. The Joker is. Some tried to argue that the performance of Ledger’s attention is more to do with his death that the actual work he did. Bollocks to that. Cesar Romero is the best screen representation of the Joker as portrayed in comics, but Nolan and Heath Ledger is absolutely perfect characterization of The Joker as he would if he were a real man. And that brings me back to my comparison Natural Born Killers.
I loved talking with people who did not like NBK. The most common criticism was that it offers its odious protagonists as heroes. I then remarked that the genius of it is social commentary in which he makes the point that if Mickey and Mallory, happened for real, at the age of Marilyn Manson on the radio and television, Geraldo, he happen exactly as described in the film. And then the characters become real icons of the culture inspire tributes and homages to various media, all the way down to dress up as Mickey and Mallory becomes a rite of passage for couples sharing their first Halloween together. I do not even want to get into crimes imitation of real life. I return to The Joker, I promise.
To get the most out of The Dark Knight, you need to have attended the various viral sites which includes the largest marketing campaign for anything, ever. There were websites for everything from transit system for the Gotham newspaper network news 24 hours, with a weekly magazine show featuring characters from the movie as guests (all websites were “disfigured by the Joker one week before the movie release). I am surprised that no notice others have mentioned the brilliance and skill in how, through these sites, they began to tell the story two months before the movie even came out. At the beginning of the film, when Jim Gordon asks Batman if he trusts that the new district attorney, you know everything about him because you followed his campaign and the overwhelming victory over the internet.
But all this pales compared to what they did with the Joker’s own website. For over a year leading to the release of the film, “The Joker” had people to join his organization, then he gave them orders over the Internet. It was a great series of flash mob events, the grand finale of what has led participants to their local cinema to be the first to see the movie trailer. The campaign had rabid fans appear in cities around the world, in Joker make-up, often in large gatherings. And who does not even touch on the number of persons taking no part in the campaign that painted Joker make-up on their own Facebook profile photo. And that’s where The Dark Knight a ups Natural Born Killers. Oliver Stone has held a mirror up to society to raise the alarm about the fact that we live in a world where people can identify with Mickey Knox – an anarchic psychopath. The marketing of The Dark Knight, not only encouraged us, but we offered incentives to declare full allegiance to the Joker – an anarchic psychopath.
In the graphic novel by Frank Miller, The Dark Knight Returns, much of the story involves young people, without a more appropriate model, falling under the influence of the wicked. In the world of film The Dark Knight, I imagine the Joker would also inspire a crowd of disciples, imitators and copycats, and probably even use the Internet in much the same way that marketers of the film done. I thought it was something worth exploring in the film. That is, until I realized they did not need to because they had already done BY MAKING IT HAPPEN IN REAL LIFE. How much more of a boost it would have taken, were as much power and influence in the hands of an artist with a vision a little more creative anti-social, to postpone the Joker-philes in one place where life imitates art in a way that we do not even want to think? And if that happens, you have to wonder what kind of force would emerge to stop them.
People have been saying for years that superheroes are the Greek gods of our culture, and their adventures in comics and movies are our mythology. As technology has improved and the public has become accustomed to even higher levels of credibility, the filmmakers were able to inch ever closer to putting ourselves in a world where Batman and Spider-Man is real. Marvel and the studios, they were affiliated in the summer of leaders in the field, but Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk each fumbled in their own way. Each summer a little more than a step in the eventual establishment of the great film team in place, taking the audience for granted. DC Comics and Warner Brothers have not only been a classic of all time with The Dark Knight, they went and innovated the art form to a point where we can barely tell the difference between their world and ours, no more .
Freestyle Weekend Sean Ward
Every Friday http://www.seanward.net
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