The Dark Knight: Tomatometer 94%

[Menolly]

Nolan apparently has a serious reworking of Cat Woman in mind, the way he did The Joker. If this casting takes place, I'll make an (objective) call on it after I see the movie.

(so, besides OPAL, we now need a fence sitter organization for Cher as Cat Woman)

[Lord Mhoram]

Eh, but the Joker in The Dark Knight wasn't really a "serious reworking." He was unique but not radically different from the comics Joker. Judging from the age difference alone, Cher as Catwoman is a pretty radical departure.

[Menolly]

True 'nuff, although I admit readily I have read very little of the comics.

Perhaps Nolan focused on The Joker first, in an attempt to take baby steps in reworking the preconceptions of his audience...

[JazFusion]

Catwoman=HOT, not 60 year old grandma (well, if her daughter were straight). I really don't care how much Nolan wants to rework Catwoman. IMHO Cher has had enough reworking herself.

And we definitely need a good Catwoman after the horror of movie's namesake. I couldn't sit through the first 10 minutes. That whole basketball scene did it in for me. wtf??

[AjK]

Catwoman=HOT, not 60 year old grandma.

Wow, it would appear that GCS Toys has quite the website and vinyl figures. But $62?

And we definitely need a good Catwoman after the horror of movie's namesake. I couldn't sit through the first 10 minutes. That whole basketball scene did it in for me. wtf??

Completely agree. I normally let movies that I watch and don't really like just pass by, but I would warn the entire world against this one if I could. Just awful. If Cher is Catwoman I will most likely pass on this one, too.

[CovenantJr]

Well, it's far from definite at the moment, from the sound of it.

[Rigel]

If Cher is the next Catwoman, it will just cement my reasoning for getting the real Catwoman tattooed on my back.

I'd pay the price of a ticket to see that

[dANdeLION]

Cher as Catwoman? No, no, no............bad, bad, bad idea. Unless they make the Catwoman a 'Dread Pirate Roberts' kind of character, and Cher's only part in the movie is where she's handing the Catmobile keys to her replacement.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

My main complaint, though, is the ferry bomb thing. Not the set-up itself, but the fact that the passengers chose not to blow each other up completely foiled the Joker's plan. He's been so devious and underhand so far, and he's thrown by this little - and not entirely unpredictable - outcome? It doesn't make sense to me.

Does it make me a cynic to say that this was the scene I found most unbelievable? There might have been

Spoiler

a couple guys willing to toss the detonator's out the window, but they would have been lynched by the rest of the mob.

For me, that was the scene that took me out of the film the most as it was unrealistic in my view of humanity.

Do I need a hug?

No, you are not wrong, nor are you right. You may need a hug however. That scene is the linchpin of the movie, the central aesthetic that confronts the existential issue of whether humanity is worth saving or even can be saved; our reaction to it tells as much about us as it does about humanity. The filmmaker, IMO, allowed his faith to intrude this one time into an amazingly stark and telling consideration of the subject of man's darkness. After lengthy drama and amazing tension, Nolan tells us that the answer was "yes" -- for now, provisionally as imagined in this movie and with the caveat that they can be pushed in the opposite direction.

[Zarathustra]

I just saw this last night before I went to bed. It was on some cable channel.

I think the only unbelievable thing about the ferry scene was the idea that the two Captains would walk around with the detonators like a child with an ice cream he's about to drop. Come on. They would have each locked themselves into their Captain's room away from the mob of civilians or the mob of hulking criminals who (strangely) seem to be able to roam the ship at will. They wouldn't have put themselves in such a dumb position, and allowed all the "debate" to happen with the damn thing in full view for someone to grab.

It could have been an interesting psychological experiment, if it weren't so stupid. I didn't need to watch this movie to know that humans are dumb. But to be told that they're that dumb is just a caricature. I suppose that shouldn't surprise me, since every character in this movie is a caricature. It's a comic book movie, after all. I just don't understand why people treat it (i.e. the ferry scene) so seriously, as if the moral quandary here is actually revelatory of human nature. We know that humans can be violent/selfish, just as humans can be altruistic/peaceful. We need the Joker to tell us this?

As for the question Ex brings up: is humanity worth saving? Can they be saved? No one asks this question of lions or sharks. We can see the value in saving them no matter how violent they are. To think for one second that humans might not be worth saving because they have a strong survival instinct is a bizarre way to determine the answer to this question. I certainly wouldn't have blamed a single person on either boat for trying to save his own life at the expense of others. To think that humans might not be worth saving because they might have failed some madman's moral test is more violent than the "damning" result itself, and says more about the tester/judge than the poor humans who have been forced into this impossible situation (in which they'd never find themselves in nature).

[Loredoctor]

As for the question Ex brings up: is humanity worth saving? Can they be saved? No one asks this question of lions or sharks. We can see the value in saving them no matter how violent they are. To think for one second that humans might not be worth saving because they have a strong survival instinct is a bizarre way to determine the answer to this question. I certainly wouldn't have blamed a single person on either boat for trying to save his own life at the expense of others. To think that humans might not be worth saving because they might have failed some madman's moral test is more violent than the "damning" result itself, and says more about the tester/judge than the poor humans who have been forced into this impossible situation (in which they'd never find themselves in nature).

I see your point, but if anything it's meant to link to the Joker's final scene where Batman essentially points out the flaw of his plan. Which is not a criticism of the movie/plot, just that the Joker really underestimated humanity. Remember, the ferry sequence is thematic - one because one of the themes of the movie is Escalation, hence he had to go that far (sure, he could have chosen a different bomb threat, but the scene makes us think).

[Zarathustra]

I see your point, but I don't think the flaw in Joker's plan was that he underestimated humanity. (In fact, for most of them, Joker was right: they really did want to blow up the other boat, they just didn't have the balls to do it.) No, the flaw in Joker's plan was that even if they blew each other up, it wouldn't have proven anything absolutely bad about humans. It would only have proven that they have a strong survival instinct.

If Joker wanted to prove that humans can be violent, etc., all he would've had to do was point to all the criminals who were already on the other boat. Humans victimizing other humans when their lives aren't on the line (i.e. crime) proves the Joker's point about humanity more than his "experiment" ever could. Criminals aren't all super-villians with interesting origin stories. Most of them are ordinary citizens who happen to be assholes and don't respect other people. That in itself is enough of an indictment of human nature. In this sense, the ferry experiment was both superfluous and inconclusive.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

Ah, Z, my fine feathered friend... I see you object to my attachment to the "dumb" ferry sequence. You think it's perfectly normal for a person to blow up another boatload of people to save himself, in fact you find it rather mundane. I don't really know how to respond, except to observe that you are advocating a psychopathic outcome. So, presumably, either a) you are a psychopath, b) you are deeply cynical and self absorbed to the point of solipsism, which is virtually the same thing, or c) you are using intellectual grandiosity to keep your humanity at a far remove ("intellectualizing"), and so you are spouting words without feeling their emotional impact and reality -- indeed this is why you are spouting those words.

"On Killing" would be an extremely beneficial book for you to read, since it renders the human emotional experience during an event like killing another into intellectual terms. Perhaps you might get it then... assuming you actually want to *get it*.

TDK is an epic meditation of the moral condition of modern man. Organized into a society so alienated and cynical that only tyranny (Batman) can hold it together, and even chaos (Joker) seems like a salve, the question must be asked to both Batman and the audience: is it all worth it? Is it better to just let it all burn down to the ground and start over, like the League of Shadows advocated in BB? Does man have a destiny and mission, or does man simply build himself up houses of cards that inevitably fall in a heap, only to start over again? This is the real moral blow Joker lands on Batman while he is whaling away with the dogs and lead pipe. And that is what this sequence is about, Joker striking at the very heart of what Batman thinks he is: is he a man with a mission or simply another guardian that is forced to become an oppressor because people are unworthy.

The failure of the experiment from Joker's point of view seems to push Batman further down the road to tyranny. Note that immediately afterwards he breaks his one rule and kills Two Face, then orchestrates a lie for the ages to manipulate all of Gotham. And the irony is we love him for it! No, I don't think the ferry scene is a "dumb" waste of time.

[Orlion]

I see your point, but I don't think the flaw in Joker's plan was that he underestimated humanity. (In fact, for most of them, Joker was right: they really did want to blow up the other boat, they just didn't have the balls to do it.) No, the flaw in Joker's plan was that even if they blew each other up, it wouldn't have proven anything absolutely bad about humans. It would only have proven that they have a strong survival instinct.

If Joker wanted to prove that humans can be violent, etc., all he would've had to do was point to all the criminals who were already on the other boat. Humans victimizing other humans when their lives aren't on the line (i.e. crime) proves the Joker's point about humanity more than his "experiment" ever could. Criminals aren't all super-villians with interesting origin stories. Most of them are ordinary citizens who happen to be assholes and don't respect other people. That in itself is enough of an indictment of human nature. In this sense, the ferry experiment was both superfluous and inconclusive.

I disagree. What I find interesting in this case is that the hardened criminal refused to blow up the other boat. They also decided this before the other ferry. The other ferry could very well have become the criminals, showing that chained or not, imprisoned or free, all are scum. I think it was a powerful scene, one that dovetails nicely with the Joker's other experiment of 'kill this man or I blow up a hospital.' It's interesting how people reacted when they felt they were saving others vs. when they were saving themselves.

[Zarathustra]

Not a bad point, Orlion. I don't think that the Joker's experiment showed us anything we didn't already know about human nature, but I like the way you defend it.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

An interesting essay about TDK, anticipating TDKR, and talking about the morality of Nolan's films.

theotherjournal.com/2012/04/17/bleakness-and-richness-christopher-nolan-on-human-nature/

No scene is as provocative as the ferry scene. The setup is this: the psychopathic Joker has rigged two ferries with explosives. One boat carries civilians and one criminals. The Joker then gives each ferry the detonator to the other boat’s bombs, and claims that if neither ferry has destroyed the other by midnight, he will destroy both of them. It’s the classic utilitarian dilemma spiked with authority issues—can we discard some lives in order to spare others? Are there scenarios where it makes sense to succumb to a terrorist’s terms? Who makes the decisions?

The results of this experiment are maddening to anyone looking for a straightforward lesson on human nature. The civilians vote three-to-one for destroying the other ferry, but no individual is willing to engage the detonator. The criminals take no vote; their choice is made by a strong-willed leader who throws the detonator out the window. Neither destroys the other, and for that, the Joker seems to have failed in his thesis: “When the chips are down, these civilized people, they’ll eat each other.”

They don’t eat each other. But they wanted to. So who won?

This is the type of question repeatedly invoked in The Dark Knight and, indeed, throughout Nolan’s dark body of work. Perhaps the decision to make “Why so serious?” into the Joker’s sinister catchphrase was arch—for it is precisely Nolan’s seriousness that made the film so wildly successful. The Joker is more than a villain—he is a force of nature, “a dog chasing cars,” nihilism embodied. Batman is repeatedly characterized as a shadowy symbol, as “more than a hero.” When they face off, ideas hang in the balance, and we can feel the urgency. Batman deals blows to a Joker who merely laughs; it’s justice versus chaos, Batman’s unstoppable force meeting the Joker’s immovable object.

But The Dark Knight resists moralizing. It is not a mere allegory or clash of the ideological titans. There are archetypes here, ethical puzzles, downfall, and sacrifice; there is no doubt that Nolan has created a deeply moral film, forcing us to contend with evil in every scene. By the end, though, it doesn’t seem that the film has answered its own questions, at least not consistently. From where does evil come? How can we fight it without surrendering to it? Why must one, as more than one character in The Dark Knight pronounces, “die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain”?
The film leaves us with a captured villain, a fallen saint, and a Dark Knight—“the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs,” as Commissioner Gordon calls Batman in the film’s final lines. The first few times I watched Batman ride off into the fray, taking on the sins of another and living out his noble lie, I felt a tension in my gut: the urge to cheer coupled with an unfinished, haunted feeling. I had a suspicion that Nolan had merely evoked philosophy to give the film a false depth, that he had flung themes and questions at us without the decency to resolve or connect them. Worse, I feared that he might have been manipulating us into applauding for reprehensible, elitist attitudes about truth and human nature by slipping them among chase scenes and explosions.

It didn’t seem fair. It is one thing for an art house film to float out questions about evil and let them hang; it is quite another for a summer superhero movie to take the same approach. I could not shake the sense that Nolan was being nebulous where he had every obligation to take a stand.

[continues...]

[Zarathustra]

I don't know I didn't respond to this last year, maybe I just now noticed it...

Ah, Z, my fine feathered friend... I see you object to my attachment to the "dumb" ferry sequence. You think it's perfectly normal for a person to blow up another boatload of people to save himself, in fact you find it rather mundane.

I don't believe I said that it's mundane to blow up another boatload of people to save yourself. In fact, I said that this is a situation in which people would never find themselves in nature. It took a madman to put them in that impossible situation ... far from mundane.

However, people do blow each other up quite a bit. It probably happens every single day on this planet. While the decision facing the boat riders wasn't mundane, the situation facing Israel and Iran is.

Would it really have been surprising for the criminals (some of them murderers, surely) to blow up others to save themselves? While it might have been more surprising for the law-abiding boat riders to have done this, all it would have taken was one individual prone to extreme choices. It's not like they really had to vote. One person "speaking" for the entire boat wouldn't have proven anything about humanity in general.

Because the conclusions of this particular experiment would have been anecdotal in this instance, and unnecessary in the general sense (because people blow each other up all the time), I think it was dumb from the Joker's perspective. From a narrative or thematic perspective, it's not necessarily dumb. It makes us think, debate, and post on the Internet. But it wouldn't have told us anything we didn't already know, either way the experiment happened to go. It was theatrical, rather than revelatory. A clever story-telling trick in the sense that it manipulates the audience well.

I don't really know how to respond, except to observe that you are advocating a psychopathic outcome. So, presumably, either a) you are a psychopath, b) you are deeply cynical and self absorbed to the point of solipsism, which is virtually the same thing, or c) you are using intellectual grandiosity to keep your humanity at a far remove ("intellectualizing"), and so you are spouting words without feeling their emotional impact and reality -- indeed this is why you are spouting those words.

A and B are directed at me personally, and have nothing to do with my argument. I don't see how you can derive them from my statements, especially since you're deriving them from a distortion of my position, as I addressed at the beginning of this post. There might be some merit to C, but we are after all discussing a comic book movie that is itself grandiose and intellectualizing. I think that the Joker's melodramatic ploy is far removed from anything that happens in reality. Take, for instance, the Colorado shooting where a man called himself "The Joker." He didn't present a moral quandary to the theater patrons that made them think and choose and moralize. He just shot the place up in an inexplicable, chaotic display of inhumanity.

TDK is an epic meditation of the moral condition of modern man. Organized into a society so alienated and cynical that only tyranny (Batman) can hold it together, and even chaos (Joker) seems like a salve, the question must be asked to both Batman and the audience: is it all worth it? Is it better to just let it all burn down to the ground and start over, like the League of Shadows advocated in BB?

I didn't get this from the movie at all, and certainly not from the ferry scene. Tyranny didn't hold everything together during that scene (unless you want to call the one criminal making a "heroic" choice "tyranny," but that only applies to one boat). And tyranny doesn't hold our own society together. As for whether it's all worth it, or if we should let it all burn down, I can't imagine a question more removed from our humanity. Why in the world would a question like that occur to anyone except a madman like Joker? I'm not saying that I think you're a madman, but your A/B/C reasoning above does seem to apply more to this question than anything I've said.

As for your latest quote about the ferry scene, I haven't read more than the quote, but what you've provided so far sounds a lot like my own criticisms, especially this:

I had a suspicion that Nolan had merely evoked philosophy to give the film a false depth, that he had flung themes and questions at us without the decency to resolve or connect them. Worse, I feared that he might have been manipulating us into applauding for reprehensible, elitist attitudes about truth and human nature by slipping them among chase scenes and explosions.

It didn’t seem fair. It is one thing for an art house film to float out questions about evil and let them hang; it is quite another for a summer superhero movie to take the same approach. I could not shake the sense that Nolan was being nebulous ...

I left out the last part because I don't necessarily think he had any obligation to take a stand. But I do think the movie is a lot like Inception: layers and depth for theatrical effect, the illusion of depth instead of actual depth.

In the end, there is no more damning evidence of the Joker's experiment being a failure than the fact that it failed even in the context of the movie itself. It didn't prove what he wanted it to prove. But it didn't prove the opposite, either (due to the ambiguity noted in the quote above). It was an effect, like the layers in Inception. The illusion of depth.

[Zarathustra]

Honestly, I thought the conclusion at the end of Team America was more insightful and true:

We're dicks! We're reckless, arrogant, stupid dicks. And the Film Actors Guild are pussies. And Kim Jong Il is an asshole. Pussies don't like dicks, because pussies get fucked by dicks. But dicks also fuck assholes: assholes that just want to shit on everything. Pussies may think they can deal with assholes their way. But the only thing that can fuck an asshole is a dick, with some balls. The problem with dicks is: they fuck too much or fuck when it isn't appropriate - and it takes a pussy to show them that. But sometimes, pussies can be so full of shit that they become assholes themselves... because pussies are an inch and half away from ass holes. I don't know much about this crazy, crazy world, but I do know this: If you don't let us fuck this asshole, we're going to have our dicks and pussies all covered in shit!

This is true for Batman, too. Batman is a dick. Joker is an asshole. One ferry boat was full of pussies. Luckily, the other boat full of assholes had one dick aboard who took charge and fucked the Joker.

[Hopefully this is one analysis that is immune from the "intellectual grandiosity" charge. ]

Damnit, I think I've just talked myself into seeing some merit in the ferry experiment (though not from the Joker's perspective) ... the question isn't whether all this is worth it or if we should let it all burn down ... the question is how does a world full of assholes and pussies not burn itself down? Answer: dicks like Batman, the lone ferry criminal, and America. It's not tyranny, it's taking charge against evil when others are too concerned with morality or too impotent to do anything about evil.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

[Hopefully this is one analysis that is immune from the "intellectual grandiosity" charge. ]

I definitely find no fault in that analysis.

The really funny thing about that whole ferry scene is this--I suspect that either detonator would have blown up both ferries. At the very least, the detonators would have blown up their respective ferries, so the "good civilians" would have taken out their own boat and everyone would blame the criminals.

It was stupid for Batman to take the blame for Dent's murders, in any event. The clear choice for reassigning blame would be Joker--no one would question him killing both police officers and mobsters, since he has already done both. Of course, that is my single greatest dislike to Nolan and Bale's Batman--he isn't very bright. This is contrary to the entire Batman character, who is supposed to be a criminologist and scientist first then a martial artist second. *shrug*

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

Z, perhaps you should have read the rest of that essay:

So, finally: Does Nolan believe in a fallen world and in human depravity? It seems that the answer is yes. Bleakness runs through the core of every world he builds. Grief and guilt threaten to tear apart every good thing. But then we consider that only his villains believe in a degenerate humanity. “Never lose your faith in people,” Rachel writes to Bruce. The ferries are not destroyed. Alfred continues to help Bruce “pick himself up.” Are these optimistic threads mere Hollywood sugarcoating, signs that Nolan is unable to reconcile a superhero’s faith with his own dark philosophies?

For Nolan, the villains are not wrong to believe that people are corruptible. They are wrong to believe that people are past redemption. We have inherited Gotham, a once-great metropolis that we let go to the dogs. Harvey tells us that “you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain,” and we watch it become his story. In Nolan’s Gotham, humans fail. Bruce tries to enact his own human justice with a gun, but it was too small, too bleak. “As a man, I can be weak, I can be ignored,” he says, “But as a symbol, I can be incorruptible, I can be everlasting.” He needed to become more than a man to give us a justice worthy of the best in humans—and able to withstand the worst.

This, then, is what Rachel means when she tells Bruce to never lose his faith in people. If she had meant merely to trust in people’s better nature, she would be a fool. She’s a prosecuting attorney in America’s dirtiest fictional city. She knows better. Instead, she wants Bruce to hold onto his belief that people matter, that there is some tarnished glory in the human spirit that is worth fighting for. Bruce, the man, has been weak, vengeful, and consumed with fear. He knows better than anyone how miserable men can be, both from the crime done to him and his cowardly response. But he has also seen undeniable honor in his parents, in Rachel, in Commissioner Gordon, in Alfred.

I have a theory that Nolan thinks of himself as something of a Dark Knight. He works in shadows; he sees the world for all its darkness and duality. But he fights to show us the rich, resonating strains of worth that run through our Gotham. The Dark Knight enthralled us because Nolan used a comic book flick to speak boldly about our spiritual identity. It shook us because we thought the true tension of human nature was too heavy for a popcorn movie. But there we were on the screen: broken, terrified, and nonetheless imbued with a strange majesty.

When The Dark Knight Rises premieres, I’ll let myself cheer: not for the darkness or ambiguity I’m sure to find but for a director brave enough to show us our world for all its fallenness—and dogged hope.

The tyranny is Batman himself, a vigilante who violates every rule in the book in order to protect Gotham from Joker's limitless chaos. Some choices still stain the hands even when there are no other ready options.

BTW, even though I continue to believe your interpretation is grievously in error, I do apologize for being such a dick about it a year ago.