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Scrooge Month Day 19: Jim Carrey in A CHRISTMAS CAROL (2009)
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Writer: Robert Zemeckis, based on the novel by Charles Dickens
Cast: Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Cary Elwes, Robin Wright, Daryl Sabara, Bob Hoskins, Molly Quinn, Fay Masterson, Fionnula Flanagan
Notes: This was the third film from director Robert Zemeckis in which he used his motion capture process to animate in 3D, following The Polar Express and Beowulf and preceding Mars Needs Moms, which flopped so painfully that his animation study was shut down. Although a fairly straightforward retelling of the story, he employs a lot of the motion capture tricks he’d used in previous films, such as using the same actor to play different characters opposite himself or at various ages. Jim Carrey, for example, plays Scrooge at every stage of his life, as well as all three of the Ghosts, using the logic that the ghosts are extensions of Scrooge’s own soul. Okay, I can buy that. Gary Oldman, meanwhile, plays both Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim and – for some reason – Marley, while Robin Wright plays both Scrooge’s sister Fan and the love of his life, Belle, which has some disturbingly Freudian implications.
Thoughts: Once there was a little boy named Robert Zemeckis. Robert made great movies in a far-off land called the 1980s, but as the 21st century began, he fell in love with a pretty girl named “Motion Capture CGI.” They had four children together before they broke up, and of the four, this is probably the best.
Part of it, let’s be honest, is the source material. A Christmas Carol is by far more classic than Zemeickis’s first or last motion capture films, and while Beowulf is a classic in its own right, he took too many liberties with that one (Grendel’s mom is hot? That’s sick.) for it to really rank. Here, though, he takes a legendary tale and gives it a pretty decent polish that makes it worth revisiting at this time of year.
One of the interesting things that Zemeickis pulls off is creating characters recognizable as the actors that play them while still giving them enough of a twist to work as animated figures. Carrey is clearly visible inside Scrooge, but his elongated nose and chin would look silly in real life. Gary Oldman can be squished down to play a short little Bob Cratchit, Colin Firth can be puffed up a bit so Fred looks comfortably plump. Carrey can also be seen in each of the three ghosts. It’s an odd choice, to have him portray the three of them, and I’m not entirely convinced of the point Zemeckis was trying to make, but Carrey’s performances as the ghosts are just fine. Christmas Past is light and airy, Christmas Present is enormous and bombastic. Christmas Yet to Come… well, he’s barely there, and that’s a good thing.
This version is also a good bit scarier than many of them, and at the same time, more in keeping with the original Dickens. Marley’s head wrapping – which was actually a tradition at the time to keep a corpse’s mouth from hanging open – comes loose, and his jaw opens up to a horrific degree. As he howls at Scrooge his mouth rattles around like something out of a zombie movie. Christmas Present doesn’t just age, as he often does, he withers away until there’s nothing left but a skeleton, its teeth chattering with maniacal laughter. Then there’s Christmas Yet to Come, who shows up initially just as a shadow – Scrooge’s shadow, in fact, in a warped and twisted form. We don’t really see much of a physical form for him at all, in fact, which is terribly effective. This is about as scary a version of A Christmas Carol as I’ve ever seen.
The scenes with the three ghosts are pretty by-the-book, but done well. In fact, one of the few times where Zemeckis’s love affair with his computer (more on that later) really works is when Scrooge is facing Christmas Present. Rather than teleporting him to the other locations, as he usually does, he turns the floor in Scrooge’s house transparent and we watch as they “fly” from one place to another. The visuals here – throughout the Christmas Present sequence, really – are absolutely top-notch, and are an example of what Zemeckis can do with his CGI at its best.
There are a lot of good things about this movie, but Robert Zemeckis brings the same problems to this as he did with all of his motion-capture films. First, and most problematic, the characters are largely expressionless. He can make a character move like a human, but he hasn’t mastered the skill of putting feeling into their eyes, which makes them seem somewhat stiff and lifeless. It’s the classic Uncanny Valley problem writ large.
What’s more, Zemeckis was so in love with the technology that he often did things just because it was possible that didn’t really add anything to the story. There’s an extended sequence where Scrooge – for absolutely no reason – is shrunk to the size of a mouse and whips around London. It reminds me of the scene from The Polar Express in which a train ticket is taken by the wind and blown around. It looks good, but ultimately, it’s a meaningless scene that doesn’t go anywhere or do anything. In both instances, I felt like I was watching the film of one of those motion simulator amusement park rides, which is pretty dull when you’re in a stationary seat. Zemeckis does similar things several times throughout the film, to the point where it starts to get actually obnoxious when you sense the first few seconds of the next such sequence.
It’s actually a shame that he never quite got a handle on how best to use this sort of technology, because when it works it works well. But like George Lucas dropping in added effects to the Star Wars special editions, Zemeckis got so excited that he could do certain things that he never stopped to think about whether they should be done. The result is like going to an industrial sawmill to cut a single two-by-four in half. It’ll work, but it’s overkill, and there are much better ways to do the same thing.
The first Reel to Reel study, Mutants, Monsters and Madmen, is now available as a $2.99 eBook in the Amazon Kindle store and Smashwords.com bookstore. And you can find links to all of my novels, collections, and short stories, in their assorted print, eBook and audio forms, at the Now Available page!
DRACULA WEEK DAY 4: Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Writer: James V. Hart, based on the novel by Bram Stoker
Cast: Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins, Keanu Reeves, Richard E. Grant, Cary Elwes, Billy Campbell, Sadie Frost, Tom Waits, Monica Bellucci, Michaela Bercu, Florina Kendrick
Plot: In 1492, the warrior Vlad Dracula (Gary Oldman) returns from battle to find his wife Elisabeta (Winona Ryder) has killed herself after hearing a false report of his death. Enraged, Dracula renounces God and stabs a cross, which begins flowing with blood. He drinks the blood and screams.
Over four hundred years later, solicitor Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) is given an account from his colleague Renfield (Tom Waits), who has gone mad. Harker says goodbye to his fiancé, Mina (Winona Ryder again) and travels to meet his new client, Count Dracula of Transylvania – now a frail-looking old man, but with horrible power. When Dracula sees Harker’s photograph of Mina, he is stricken, believing her to be the reincarnation of his long-dead wife. Harker explores the castle, only to be found and fed upon by Dracula’s three “brides” (Monica Bellucci, Michela Bercu and Florina Kendrick).
Mina’s friend Lucy Westenra (Sadie Frost) is romanced by three separate men: a visiting American, Quincy Morris (Billy Campbell); Dr. Jack Seward (Richard E. Grant); and Lord Arthur Holmwood (Cary Elwes). She ultimately accepts Arthur’s proposal of marriage. Dracula, meanwhile, has boxed up himself and the most important parts of his household and is sailing to England and his new property in Carfax Abby. As they arrive in England, Dracula transforms into a wolf-like monster and seeks out the home of Harker’s fiancé. Mina awakens to see Lucy, mesmerized, leaving her home in the midst of a storm, and finds her being ravaged by the wolf-man. When he sees Mina watching, he flees. In the morning he appears as a young man, and introduces himself to her as “Prince Vlad of Sangre.”
Concerned for Lucy’s ailing health, Seward calls for Dr. Abraham Van Helsing (Anthony Hopkins). He arrives to see Lucy again being drained of blood, this time by Dracula in shadow-form. He gives her a transfusion from Arthur. Elsewhere, Dracula plies Mina with absinthe, wooing her slowly. Harker manages to escape from Dracula’s brides and sends for Mina to join him so they can finally be married. When she bids farewell to her “prince,” he goes into a mad fit and kills Lucy. After her funeral, Van Helsing convinces her three suitors to join him in opening her crypt, only to find it empty. Lucy, now a vampire, enters the tomb with a small child intent on feeding, and the men slay her. Harker joins them and tells them Dracula resides at Carfax Abby, and they plan to destroy him.
Van Helsing and the others go to the Abby and begin destroying the boxes of Transylvanian soil Dracula must sleep in. He, meanwhile, visits Mina, who begs him to grant her his gift of eternal life. As she drinks his blood, Van Helsing and the others burst in and force him back. He transforms into a horde of rats and escapes. He takes a ship to return home, but the others take Mina by train, a much faster voyage. Van Helsing and Mina travel to the castle, while the others try to head off the gypsies transporting Dracula’s casket. The Brides attack Van Helsing, but he manages to track them to their crypt and slay them by the light of day. The hunters catch up to Dracula at the castle. Morris dies in the battle, but not before stabbing Dracula in the heart. The wounded vampire crawls into the chapel where his curse began and dies, Mina by his side. She professes her love to him before cutting off his head, releasing him from his curse. A fresco appears, picturing the human Vlad and Elisabeta rising, at long last, into Heaven.
Thoughts: You’ve got to give Francis Ford Coppola credit – the man doesn’t do half-measures. From the first moments of the film, when we see Gary Oldman marching around in blood-red armor sculpted to suggest bare muscle tissue, we know we’re in for a wild sort of ride. That’s only where it begins, though – Coppola took great pains to give this film a unique look, eschewing camera tricks, even the sort of green screen that was common when the film was made in 1992. Every effect is practical, including the projection of words on the faces of actors, the reflection of enormous eyes onto glass windows, and some frankly humorous model train work. Lightning strikes don’t look remotely realistic, instead giving the impression of someone shining a flashlight through a cut-out flat behind the actors. It’s as if Coppola decided that he was by god going to make sure everything he captured on film was no more complicated than he could have gotten out of a community theater production of the story. And boy, did he succeed.
Despite the inherent goofiness of doing something this way, though, I find that the look of the film is one of the first things I loved about it. This doesn’t look like any of the other Dracula movies I’ve seen… hell, it doesn’t look like any other movie I’ve seen. It has a unique sort of style, not just in the design but in the way all the elements come together, that appeals to me in ways I can’t fully articulate. Let’s just say there’s something really cool about all of it, the same way you realize your dad was kind of cool when you get older and catch yourself making the same kind of jokes that embarrassed the hell out of you when he told them to your friends.
On the plus side, some of the monster effects are really cool. While certain other films downplayed the notion that vampires could change their shape or were limited by the effects of the time, Coppola pulls off a pretty convincing monstrous transformation on the screen, with Oldman metamorphosing from a pale creature to a hairy, wolflike beast. (Yeah, folks, in classic lore vampires could turn into bats or wolves. Also mist. It’s cool.) The design of the human-sized bat is really creepy and worthy of the nastiest supernatural horror flick. The set design is impressive, and the costumes are top-notch.
Gary Oldman… if ever there was an actor who gave himself entirely to the movie, it’s Gary Oldman. He’s given us the finest interpretation of Commissioner James Gordon ever to fit a Batman movie, and he’s also given us the insane, over-the-top lunacy of The Fifth Element. One thing you can count on is that he never phones in his performance. In this film, he revels in the cheesy dialogue and ridiculous character work he’s asked to do. Every chunk of scenery to be chewed, every wild arm flailing or preposterous accent… when Gary Oldman presents it to you, you know he believes it.
Winona Ryder is pretty effective as Mina, pulling off a passable British accent and a convincing amount of young naiveté, as befits the character. Anthony Hopkins brings his usual air of class to Van Helsing, and Cary Elwes continues to prove, as I asserted back during Robin Hood week, that he should have been born in an earlier era, because he has the presence of a grand star of cinema’s Golden Age. Keanu Reeves plays Keanu Reeves.
I’m a little weirded out by the ending, to be perfectly honest. Coppola appears to be trying for some sort of fable about the healing power of love, showing some sort of redemption for Dracula after Mina’s love “sets him free” (by means of brutal decapitation). That’s all well and good, lord knows there aren’t many people that believe in true love as much as I do, but is Dracula really the best place to insert that particular moral? The man is, by every definition of the term, a terrible monster. He chose to turn against God, he brutally murdered countless people over 400 years, but at the end he seems to get a pass just because he got a woman (that he gave the vmpire equivalent of a roofie) to say she loves him. That’s the ending of Beauty and the Beast, except that the Beast was only guilty of kidnapping and a little mild verbal abuse. How does Dracula deserve redemption?
That aside, I enjoy this movie quite a bit. It’s a well-made production with its own look and feel that sets it apart from any other version of the character, and for me, that’s one of the most important things you can look for in a movie.
The first Reel to Reel study, Mutants, Monsters and Madmen, is now available as a $2.99 eBook in the Amazon Kindle store and Smashwords.com bookstore. And you can find links to all of my novels, collections, and short stories, in their assorted print, eBook and audio forms, at the Now Available page!
Batman Week Day 5: Christian Bale in The Dark Knight (2008)
Director: Christopher Nolan
Writers: Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan, David S. Goyer
Cast: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Caine, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Monique Gabriela Curnen, Chin Han, Cillian Murphy, Nestor Carbonell, Eric Roberts, Anthony Michael Hall, Colin McFarlane, Michael Jai White, Joshua Harto
Plot: A group of men wearing clown masks break into and rob a bank in Gotham City, each of them killing another according to their mysterious plan. The last of them, a scarred man in makeup called the Joker (Heath Ledger) boards a school bus full of cash and rides away.
Dr. Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy), a Scarecrow-masked villain who escaped Batman before, plans an operation in a parking garage, only to be interrupted by several men wearing Batman masks and sporting guns. As a shootout begins, the real Batman (Christian Bale) arrives, taking out criminals and fake Batmen alike. He warns the pretenders to leave the crimefighting to him.
Wayne and his butler, Alfred (Michael Caine) meet in a secret bunker they’ve been using since the destruction of Wayne Manor. They discuss the new District Attorney, Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), who is prosecuting gangster Salvadore Maroni (Eric Roberts). Dent celebrates his progress with his girlfriend — and Bruce Wayne’s ex — Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal), before meeting up with Lt. James Gordon (Gary Oldman), asking him to arrange a meeting with the Batman. That evening, Bruce has dinner with Rachel and Dent. Impressed by the new DA, Bruce offers to hold a fundraiser for him with friends that will fill his coffers for life. Meanwhile, the Joker interrupts a teleconference between a Chinese businessman named Lau (Chin Han) and the rest of the Gotham underworld. The Joker says they need to eliminate Batman – a task he’s happy to perform for a mere half of their bounty.
Batman meets Dent and Gordon, and the three of them make a pact – if Batman can bring them Lau, they’ll use him to bring down the rest. Bruce makes a visit to Wayne executive Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), who is secretly supplying him with impressive technology. He sneaks off to Hong Kong, where Lucius plants a sonar-like device that allows Batman to track Lau and bring him to Gotham. Dent, Gordon and Rachel interrogate Lau, making a deal that will allows Gordon and the GCPD make over 500 arrests in the next few days. The mayor (Nestor Carbonell) is upset at Dent for overloading the system until Dent points out that, although many of the top criminals will soon be out of jail, most of the lower-level hoods will be tied up for months, giving them the time needed to clean the streets. Their meeting is interrupted by the body of one of the false Batmen, lynched and painted to look like the Joker, dropped from the roof. The news shows a video of the victim being tortured by the Joker, who demands Batman unmask and turn himself in or the killings will continue.
That night is Dent’s fundraiser, where Bruce gives him a ringing endorsement. Rachel is angry at him, thinking he was mocking Dent, but Bruce swears he meant every word. He sees Dent as the man who can create a Gotham that will no longer need a Batman, at which point he and Rachel can be free to be together. Minutes later, she and Dent are alone, and he proposes to her, but she has no answer. As the party continues, the Joker kills the police commissioner and the judge who indicted Dent’s 500 crooks, then comes after Dent. Bruce knocks Dent out and hides him, then faces the Joker as Batman, just barely saving Rachel. A newspaper at a subsequent crime scene indicates who the Joker’s next target will be: the mayor.
Lucius is approached by a Wayne employee named Reese (Joshua Harto) who is investigating the tech Lucius has funneled towards Bruce. Lucius laughs at the notion of blackmailing a man who spends his evenings beating criminals within an inch of their life. At a memorial service for the slain commissioner, the Joker attacks again. Gordon saves the mayor, but is shot himself. Dent takes away one of the hoods working for the Joker, finding a hint that Rachel is next. Batman brutalizes Maroni, but Maroni refuses to talk, being more afraid of the Joker than the Bat. Dent, meanwhile, has the gunman tied up and starts flipping a coin to determine if he’ll shoot the man or not. Batman arrives, telling Dent he has to remain pure, the symbol of hope Gotham needs. He tells Dent to hold a press conference in the morning, where he’ll give himself up. Before he can do so, though, Dent claims to be the Batman himself and is taken away.
Rachel gives Alfred a letter to pass on to Bruce “when the time is right,” then goes to see Dent in jail, where he’s being transferred to another facility. He gives her his coin, revealing it’s two-headed, and that he always “makes his own luck.” In transit, the Joker attacks. After a spectacular chase and battle sequence, the Joker has Batman on his back and is about to remove his mask, but is taken down from behind by a cop: Jim Gordon, very much alive. When they return to the police station with the Joker, triumphant, the Mayor announces Gordon’s promotion to police commissioner.
The joy is short-lived, however, when Dent goes missing. Batman interrogates the Joker, who tells him Dent is in a warehouse full of explosives, and Rachel is in a second one. Batman rushes to save Rachel, while Gordon goes after Dent. In the chaos, the Joker escapes. Rachel, who has an open phone line to Dent, tells him she will marry him. Batman discovers the Joker lied – he’s gone after Dent, not Rachel. The bombs go off and half of Dent’s face is terribly scarred. In the other warehouse, Rachel is killed. Batman finds Dent’s two-headed coin in the wreckage, one side blackened and charred. He returns it to Dent and goes home, where Alfred hides Rachel’s letter (revealing her intention to marry Dent), allowing him to believe Rachel was going to wait for him.
Reese goes on television with the intention of announcing the secret he’s found: the true identity of the Batman. The Joker calls the TV studio and says he’s changed his mind about Batman’s identity being revealed, so he issues an ultimatum: if Reese is still alive in 60 minutes, he’ll blow up a hospital. The Joker sneaks into Dent’s hospital room, preaching to him a gospel of chaos, and Dent decides to leave things to chance. He’ll flip his coin – clean side, the Joker lives, burned side, he dies. Moments later the Joker walks away, blowing up the hospital behind him. Dent is missing again.
The Joker announces that anyone left in Gotham will be playing by “his rules” by nightfall, and that people using the bridges and tunnels are in for a surprise. As people cram onto ferries to escape, Dent begins going after the criminals and corrupt cops tied in to Rachel’s death, flipping his coin to decide who’ll live and die each time. Lucius discovers Bruce has adapted his sonar device to allow him to use every cell phone in Gotham as a tracker. He’s disturbed at the invasion of privacy and agrees to help Batman find the Joker, but this will end their partnership. Batman tells him to type his name into the device when he’s finished.
The Joker incapacitates two ferries: one full of citizens, one full of criminals being transported by the police, each loaded with bombs. He’s also given each ferry a device he claims will detonate the bomb on the other ferry. If one of the boats hasn’t exploded by midnight, he’ll blow them both up. On the civilian ferry, the passengers vote to blow up the criminals, but nobody can bring themselves to do it. One of the convicts, meanwhile, takes the detonator from the guard and throws it overboard. Lucius tracks the Joker down and Batman chases after him, but another trick forces Batman to fight the police to get to him. Although defeated, the Joker is in high spirits, anticipating a long future of playing his game with the Batman.
Dent has kidnapped Gordon’s wife and children and brought them to the site where Rachel died. As Batman and Gordon confront him, Dent asks why – of the three of them – he was the only one who had to pay the price for their quest to save Gotham. He nearly kills James Jr., but Batman saves him, Dent dying in the process. He and Gordon agree to allow Gotham City to think Batman is responsible for Dent’s rampage, believing the myth of Harvey Dent to be more important to the city than the truth. When Lucius types his name into the sonar device, it self-destructs, proving to him that he had Bruce’s faith all along. Batman goes into hiding, allowing the city to make him the villain so it could have the hero it deserves, with only the Gordons knowing the truth about the Dark Knight.
Thoughts: The nature of this project being what it is, I could only allow myself to pick one of the three films from Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight Trilogy.” Rather than the first or last, I decided to go with the best film of the three, perhaps one of the best superhero movies ever made. But again, as I discuss it, expect spoilers for the whole series, because this is really here as an excuse for me to discuss the franchise as a whole.
This being the Batman Icons project, let’s start with Christian Bale himself. When Bale and Nolan came onto the franchise in 2005’s Batman Begins, they had the unenviable task of making up for the mess the Burton franchise became after the dreaded Joel Schumaker took it over. (I spent the better part of a decade firmly believing that Batman and Robin was not merely the worst of the franchise, but perhaps the worst superhero movie ever made. To this day, I struggle internally to decide whether or not Halle Berry’s Catwoman actually took that top spot away.)
The world Nolan created and Bale inhabited is as close to perfect as a live-action Batman has ever been. They tried to make it as realistic as possible, dropping any element of fantasy the previous versions used and making the technology as plausible as they could. All three of the films in the trilogy have at least one piece of tech that seems to fit firmly in the realm of science fiction, but none of them are as out of the blue as so many of the toys the Burton films conjured up. More importantly, the story and performances have a ring of truth, of authenticity to them that no previous version managed to capture. Although this is a superhero movie, structurally speaking it’s much more like a classic crime drama, a tale of steadfast police trying to take down the scum that have torn their city down. Nolan’s Batman universe has far more in common with The Untouchables than it does with the world of Adam West.
Bale is a pitch-perfect Bruce Wayne, able to put on the flaky playboy image in front of everybody but Alfred and Rachel, and becoming a determined warrior as soon as he’s in a safe place. He’s gotten some flak from people about the gruff voice he puts on as Batman, and yes, it’s somewhat exaggerated, but it’s never bothered me. The comics have often pointed out that Bruce alters his voice when he puts on the mask, and an abrasive tone is just fine. And honestly, if that’s the biggest complaint you can conjure up for Christian Bale’s performance, that still places him light-years ahead of, say, Val Kilmer. (I didn’t discuss Kilmer’s Batman Forever in this project, but in short, he gave us a Batman that’s short and flippant and a Bruce Wayne that was dark and brooding, exactly the opposite of every sane or logical comportment the character has ever had.)
Another reason I had to pick this film instead of the other two is because of the villains – the best two of the franchise and proof that it is, in fact, possible to make a superhero movie with multiple villains that doesn’t fall apart under its own weight. Heath Ledger’s Joker has become truly iconic, and probably would have done so even if he had not died before the film was released. This version of the character is nearly impossible to qualify, especially compared to earlier versions. He uses the veneer of madness that we expect from the Joker, but in his behavior he comes across more like a complete nihilist, a man dedicated to anarchy because of his philosophy rather than because he’s simply crazy. The Nolans and Goyer, crafting the story, picked up on the best parts of the character from the comics, particularly Alan Moore’s notion from Batman: The Killing Joke. Here, they dismiss efforts to give the character a true “origin,” for the Joker says if he has to have a past, he wants it to be multiple choice. As a nod to that, each time the Joker talks about how he got his scars in this movie, he tells a different tale. That lingering question mark, leaving his past open instead of filling in every blank like Burton did, makes him all the more menacing. He’s the most terrifying vision of the character ever brought to screen, perhaps the most terrifying vision ever. Romero was goofy. Nicholson was dangerous, but still amusing. There’s nothing funny about this Joker, he’s a creature of terror.
As perfect as Heath Ledger’s Joker is, though, I think Aaron Eckhart is often overlooked as Harvey Dent. Everybody who went to this movie went in to see Batman and the Joker, but it’s Dent that’s the Shakespearian figure, the tragic hero that falls to the darkness. When we first meet Dent we see someone proud, idealistic, and determined to do good at any cost. Throughout the film his armor is chipped away – first by Rachel’s refusal of his proposal, next by the threat on her life, then a piece at a time until her death and his disfigurement. At that point his plunge over the abyss, his embracing of the Joker’s doctrine of chaos, seems utterly plausible. We weep in this movie for Harvey Dent, we bleed for the hero that Gotham needed, but that lived long enough to become the villain. Eckhart sells every minute of this transformation. Ledger got a posthumous Oscar for playing the Joker (a concession I still maintain was only given to him because he died – I simply can’t believe the turgid Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences would have awarded a “comic book movie” if the actor was still alive), but I think Aaron Eckhart was every bit as deserving of a nomination.
Next, let’s look at Gary Oldman as Commissioner James Gordon, and I apologize if the comic nerd in me becomes even more pronounced here than it usually is. Most of the Batman characters allow for different interpretations, but the version of Gordon dearest to me is that of the one good cop in a sea of corruption, struggling to right the ship. He’s one of the greatest supporting characters in comic books precisely because of this, and he’s the one character that none of the live-action versions ever got right. The 1966 Gordon was inept. The Burton Gordon started out okay, but never impressive, and spiraled down into a clown by the time Schumaker was done with him. Goldman, though, was magnificent throughout three movies. It’s Batman’s series, but Gordon here is a true hero in his own right, and I would have been just as happy watching him as the star. When he was shot in this movie, I didn’t really believe he was dead (although I knew I couldn’t discount it, as Nolan had proven himself willing to toy with the mythology of the franchise). Despite that, when he revealed himself, taking down the Joker, I jumped out of my seat and cheered right there in the movie theater. (My fiancé, Erin, still laughs about that.)
The third film in this trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises, has caused a bit of a division between fans. Although I don’t want to spent too much time talking about that movie right now there’s one point of contention I want to address, because I believe The Dark Knight sets it up very well. At the end of that film (and c’mon, spoiler warnings if I really need to say it), Bruce fakes his death and passes on the responsibility of protecting Gotham to a good cop, John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). This upset a lot of comic readers I know who argue that Bruce Wayne would never quit, never retire, because it simply goes against his character. And if we’re talking about the character in the comic books, I agree. But as I’ve been saying all week, Batman is a character that allows for many interpretations, and to me, The Dark Knight justifies the retirement of this incarnation of Batman. Several times in this movie, Batman clearly expresses a desire to quit. He latches on to Harvey Dent because he sees in him a man who can create a Gotham that doesn’t need a Batman. He wants to give it up and be with Rachel, but he doesn’t feel like he’s earned it and refuses to leave Gotham without a hero. Although Rachel is dead in the third film, he manages to find happiness with Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) and a hero to take over for him. Even in the first movie, Batman Begins, the groundwork was laid when Bruce indicates to Rachel that they can’t be together as long as Gotham needs Batman, as well as in an early conversation with Alfred where he makes it clear that he needs to be a symbol rather than a human being. If your version of Batman doesn’t allow for that, I can respect that. That’s pretty much how I feel about the 1966 version, after all. But I think it’s perfectly consistent with the world that Nolan created.
But this discussion is supposed to be about The Dark Knight, and I think it is The Dark Knight that is the Batman masterpiece. Warner Bros is already talking about restarting the franchise with a new Batman, as Nolan’s story is done, and I guess I’m okay with that. He’s been rebooted before, after all. But I can’t help but wish they’d wait a little bit longer, let this trilogy completely digest and fade a little bit before moving on to something new, because anything they try to do next will inevitably be compared to Christopher Nolan, Christian Bale, and Heath Ledger. And unless they pull off a feat of storytelling virtually unheard of in filmgoing circles, almost any movie that invites an immediate comparison to The Dark Knight will inevitably be left wanting.
The first Reel to Reel study, Mutants, Monsters and Madmen, is now available as a $2.99 eBook in the Amazon Kindle store and Smashwords.com bookstore. And you can find links to all of my novels, collections, and short stories, in their assorted print, eBook and audio forms, at the Now Available page!
Reel to Reel 