What Color Knight are You?

Perhaps no one will be tremendously shocked to hear that I enjoyed The Dark Knight considerably more the second time around. Somehow everything hung together much better. More later!

EDIT: Some thoughts from the second time around. The film seemed considerably more focused and coherent. The first time it seemed scattered, over-long, and somewhat pompous, somehow, but this time I didn't really feel that way about it. There are many plot elements, but they center around some key concepts and themes, and the Joker's hand is in the middle of it all. Although he is a master architect of mayhem, this nonetheless provides a kind of glue for all his machinations.

I still didn't like Gyllenhal's Dawes. She came across as cynical and irritating, and not really the type of woman to inspire such admiration, and the majority of her scenes (except her final one) seemed to be relatively extraneous to the plot. The Dent/Two-Face plot also still felt a bit miscalculated to me, and strained. In the first place, Dent's reaction doesn't seem very realistic--how could be possibly blame Gordon or Batman?--and in the second place, the Joker is such a toweringly successful villain that Dent's involvement, especially after the climactic face-off with the Joker, weakens the end a little. As a representative of the Joker's destructive power, he is important, and his involvement at the end does lead up to one of the movie's important themes/moral points, so it might be difficult to simply cut him out. He still seemed like a drag on the conflict, though, dramatically speaking.

The action was more intriguing and exciting, Batman's involvement seemed a bit more meaningful (helpful in a movie about him), the scene with the multiple Batman impersonators didn't completely confuse me, Ledger still delivered, and I paid more attention to the soundtrack, which I like (I find those brooding Batman themes more or less irresistible, as one with a strong taste for dramatic, non-cheesy film scores :D). Gordon is really cool. It's still sad they nuked the Tumbler.

There are a lot of things thematically that I liked about it, too. It seemed less unilaterally dark than I remembered. Even though the amount of evil in it is huge, we still get frequent little reminders of what the good guys are trying to preserve. I thought it made an important point that there are no 'shortcuts' to overcoming evil. The Joker, who seems more or less to be an impersonation of almost pure evil, manically delighting in destruction and negation for its own sake, can't be bullied, bribed, or ignored. Ultimately, those who wish to defeat him must do so by sacrificing themselves. Batman, as David pointed out, can only undo what was done to Dent by taking his crimes on himself. The passengers on the ferries can only foil the Joker's scheme by taking the ultimate chance that the other boat isn't similarly inclined. (I found the climax more climactic this time around. For what it's worth, I didn't notice last time that the big prisoner who throws away the detonator goes over and starts praying with five or six other inmates. Interesting, and pretty cool.)

One thing that rather confused me was Batman's statement almost at the end of the movie when he says that "sometimes people deserve more than the truth. They deserve to have their faith rewarded." This line is spoken in a pretty critical part of the film, so I assume the filmmakers were very intentional about this and meant for viewers to think about it. Is Batman intimating that the best way to reward someone's faith is with a lie? That's doubtful, and probably what he is more nearly saying is that, the citizens of Gotham deserve to have a beacon of hope (Dent); Batman will keep that illusion alive so that the memory of Dent's apparent sacrifice in the name of good will help raise Gotham from the depths, while Batman will be the fall guy. What Batman does here is noble, but this still seems like a bit of a dangerous way to word things. People in the Bible certainly lie to protect others from harm, but this opposing of truth and faith seems like something rather different. But perhaps I'm delving a little too deeply here. I'm confused about the philosophical implications, which means that I will probably misread or misinterpret it somehow if I try to go too far.

So, in sum, the movie was a lot more 'fun' the second time around, a lot more engaging. Despite the prevailing darkness, I found it more hopeful than I remembered. It manages to explore the really tough moral decisions that often need to be made trying to combat evil in a way that few or no other superhero movies have really done, at least in my experience. It has a good screenplay, a good soundtrack, and generally top-notch acting (except Gyllenhal). The ending, though perhaps a bit compromised by Dent, is nevertheless still powerful, closing off the movie nicely while leaving room for more. And the end credits music! Ahhhh.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, the scene where Batman is interrogating the Joker at Gordon's place (MRU or whatever it was called) was really quite powerful. The visual imagery of Batman, muscled and armored, a symbol of savage power and unrestrained justice, clenching his fists in furious frustration while the Joker, so supremely confident in his insane worldview, fearless of physical intimidation, laughs hysterically at his feet, was pulled off really well. As The Joker says (paraphrasing): "All that strength, and you can't do anything. You've got nothing to threaten me with." Like I noted above, Batman's spiritual fiber is considerably more important than his martial arts or kevlar. Nolan certainly takes pains to make Batman a cool superhero, but he doesn't let all those forearm strikes supplant more metaphysical issues, and I think that's something that will make The Dark Knight a much more enduring superhero film than, say, X-Men or Spider-Man.

All right, this is getting really long. I'll just close with a thought rather incidental to any critical consideration of the movie, which is that some few parts of this reminded me a wee bit of Immortality--the dark tone, a metropolis troubled by corruption and violence, and a conflicted and unique protagonist.

So yeah, all that to say, it still had some weak points, but over all I liked it a lot more than the first time around. :-)