The Summer Blockbuster, Reinvented: THE DARK KNIGHT

In 1979, SUPERMAN invented the modern superhero film; ten years later, in 1989, BATMAN reinvigorated the genre and invented the "event film".  In 2002, SPIDER-MAN blasted the genre back to the top of the summer blockbuster game, where it remains to this day, and revamped it with the unprecedented possibilities of computer-age special effects.  The next major landmark in the genre and in the blockbuster industry altogether, came six years later, almost two decades after the legendary battle between Batman and the Joker first shattered records in BATMAN, the two iconic figures returned to reinvent the summer blockbuster once again.
THE DARK KNIGHT broke records and more than a few rules.  It turned the classic comic book story into a hard-edged, balls-to-the-wall crime saga filled with bleak moral ambiguity, philosophical puzzling, grisly sadism and political commentary.  It was truly a superhero film for adults.  It's predecessor, BATMAN BEGINS (2005), may have reinvented the Batman franchise, but THE DARK KNIGHT reinvented the genre.
Although it concluded with a teasing calling card for "the Joker", BATMAN BEGINS was not produced with a sequel in mind.  Certainly the possibility was open, and certainly the filmmakers would be interested, but BATMAN BEGINS was designed to work as a stand-alone film if it weren't immediately successful and every applicable idea was used.  David S. Goyer, who co-wrote the screenplay (and has a surprisingly disappointing repertoire outside of The Dark Knight Trilogy) for the film with director Christopher Nolan, had written up some story treatments for two potential sequels; reportedly, the second would feature the Joker, who would scar Harvey Dent, leaving him as Two-Face for the third part.  A year after BATMAN BEGINS was released in July 2005, production on a sequel was initiated, and again it was decided to use all applicable ideas, just in case it would be their last film in the franchise, so the story elements from the treatments were combined.
At the time of its release, THE DARK KNIGHT skyrocketed through the charts to become the second highest-grossing domestic release of all time, and third internationally; a brief awards season promotional re-release pushed it past the highly-exclusive $1 billion mark, the third ever.  Today it remains the best-reviewed comic book film adaptation ever made and was a frequent presence on "best films of the decade" lists a couple of years later.  It is one of the most prominent examples of a film that has been united in the overall opinions of mass audiences, critics and film scholars.  Although a time frame as minute as five years (as of this July) is rarely a suitable span of time to determine the lasting influence of a film, but THE DARK KNIGHT has clearly become a cultural phenomenon with a strong claim to iconic status and has been a highly notable influence on multiple major films in those short five years.
Chris Nolan, a British-born director best-known for cerebral psycho-thrillers before BATMAN BEGINS, approached the Batman character and its story universe with a real-world aesthetic, more of a crime world thriller than a superhero science fiction, but his first Batman outing maintained an non-intrusive level of restraint, so as to not alienate the proven comic fans demographic.  After that worked, THE DARK KNIGHT took the crime saga aesthetic and pumped it to the maximum, using Michael Mann's 1995 thriller HEAT as a tonal inspiration.  When taking this approach to Batman's most iconic antagonist, the Joker, Nolan cast Heath Ledger after seeing him in BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN and admiring his boldness.  Under the combined talents of, primarily, Nolan, his brother Jonathan and Ledger, who tragically died a few months after shooting completion, the Joker, the "Clown Prince of Crime", who utilized sadistic pranks in the comics, was twisted into an astonishing and highly-relevant new form of cinematic villain.

"Here's my card."

"THE JOKER"
The Joker from THE DARK KNIGHT is one of the greatest cinematic character creations of all time.  The performance by Jack Nicholson in 1989's BATMAN as the Joker was highly-acclaimed, but the Ledger's take left everyone scrambling to justify Nicholson's with the time and context, but that was futile.  I'm a fan of Jack myself, but for that particular character, Ledger is the unmerciful better.  Prior portrayals of the Joker, including Nicholson and cartoons and comics, were darkly humorous; an insane crook who murdered with deadly versions of old pranks, like acid-squirting flowers.  To create a real-world Joker, in the years of the so-called War on Terror and the controversial Bush Administration, he was transformed into a disconcerting, cobbled-together urban terrorist.  In THE DARK KNIGHT, the Joker is an amped-up version of what can be seen on television; he is a flamboyant crime lord on an idealistic mission to instill fear in society.
Ledger's Joker is impeccably crafted in every detail.  The make-up design, which Ledger settled on after the Joker, a mysterious anarchist wearing clown makeup as "warpaint", grubby and unkempt, speaking with odd tics and an inexplicable penchant for sadism.

"It's not about the money.  It's about sending a message."

experimenting with drugstore products, is deliberately handcrafted in its look, in a way that the character might apply it himself, and has a skull-like resemblance.  The full socket area of the eyes is painted in black and the base of the face paint is a chalky white, and like lipstick messily applied by a child playing dress up, red is smeared across the lips, coming into crescents on the cheeks.  The Joker's permanent "grin" is hardly a grin, nor does it resemble one except by an unreasonable stretch of the imagination; it is comprised of ghastly "Glasgow smile" scars, also known as a "Chelsea Grin", where the corners of the the mouth have been carved open into the cheeks.  Wisely, the film never allows itself the distraction of a backstory for the villain, but the Joker does reiterate an assortment of depraved accounts for the origins of his scars, but it's unclear which, if any, is accurate.  He explodes on the scene as is.

"You look nervous.  Is it the scars?"

His title is a stage name, related to his warped appearance, but not so relevant to his manner; the closest he gets to the playful murderer of previous portrayals is the macabre "wanna see a magic trick" scene that ends with a pencil up in a man's brain, or a trailer with an "S" spray painted at the beginning of "Laughter is the Best Medicine" on the side.  No, this guy's favorite method is a knife, as he elaborates in a grisly monologue, and leaves victims with carved faces to match his own.  He also blows up hospitals, wires barrels of gasoline to explode and implants a bomb under the skin of a criminally insane lackey.
Heath Ledger's Joker has since inspired a streak of calculating, psychopathic terrorist villains in major movies, and the famous "interrogation scene" has been emulated as well in films like MARVEL'S THE AVENGERS, SKYFALL and this year's upcoming STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS.

                                                                                   "THE INTERROGATION SCENE"

"You have all these rules, and you think they'll save you."

In a then-highly unusual move, THE DARK KNIGHT's villain is arrested only halfway into the movie, which, needless to say, threw many viewers off guard.  Everyone knows that either the villain is killed or captured at the end of the film, or escapes incarceration at the beginning of the film; it didn't make a lot of sense to lock up your big tension only halfway into the film.  But what the Nolans had in mind was something out of Hannibal Lecter's book; after Harvey Dent, the "White Knight" as opposed to the title's Dark Knight, has gone missing, abducted by the Joker's men, Batman and the Joker get their greatest showdown of all in the interrogation room.  It's a crackling battle of wit and philosophies, fully exposing the two godly freaks as they collide like an "unstoppable force" and an "immovable object".  The Joker is shown to be everything that the Batman cannot effect.  There is no intimidation factor; the Joker has no rules, while Batman is governed by a single rule: thou shalt not kill; albeit not necessarily so biblical, admittedly.  Of course, it's that one rule which the Joker would so much more than anything desire to see violated, even at his own expense if necessary.  The Joker is an idealist, willing to put even his own life up for the cause of invalidating all causes, and the Batman is made powerless.  Then the Joker reveals that Harvey Dent is merely a pawn in a game of his to force Batman into a gray area of allowing a death.  "Killing is making a choice, a choice between one life or the other," as he gushes to Batman between taking the hits.  Having previously recognized Batman's interest in Rachel Dawes, Dent's fiancee, she has been dragged in, and both have been tied up in separate warehouses filled with petroleum barrels rigged to blow, and a phone line between them.  Batman has been stripped raw and lets loose all hell on the Joker, unleashing repetitive, loud-landing blows, but with each one, the Joker only receives deliriously masochistic glee.  He gives Batman the two separate addresses, but switches them, so that Batman arrives on the scene to discover that his choice has been denied.
The Joker escapes with a shard of glass threatening a cop's throat before making a phone call that sets off an explosive sewn into the body of an inmate; he takes the man the mob wants but has been protected in a cell and makes off.  Meanwhile, it's easy enough to minimize a threat by reassuring yourself of what they can or can't get away with a blockbuster, and one of which is that the hero will get the girl.  But screw that; Rachel is incinerated in a fiery explosion, and just to top things off, Dent gets half of his face burned off, the results shown in marvelously graphic detail.
The dark sequel is a regular motif in movies, because the typical film series is usually arranged for a trilogy, like a three act saga, and the second act is always the hero's low point.  THE DARK KNIGHT however, took the concept to an unprecedented level; the girl dies, the idealistic hero is disfigured and made into a murdering vigilante of vengeance who presses a pistol to a young boy's head for an extended period of time, the hero's ultimately lose and they barely manage to salvage hope by way of a bluff.

POLITICS
In Summer 2008, nearing the a November election which would be won by Barack Obama, the nation had been at war for seven years, and in two wars for five years, since the controversial Operation Iraqi Freedom.  George W. Bush and his administration had been in power nearing the completion of two terms, and while every president and accompanying administration is controversial in its own time, America was under particular strain, facing an unprecedented environment of economic downturn, with the Great Recession newly formed, and terrorist threats of a post-9/11 world.  The Bush Administration had initiated the extremely controversial and Constitutionally questionable "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001", better known as the Patriot Act, which utilized potentially intrusive and dangerous methods of surveillance to apprehend terrorist threats.

"How did you catch him?"  "We burned the forest down."

THE DARK KNIGHT does not take a direct opinion on the matter, although I wouldn't want to take away the pleasure of conservative-minded persons who have claimed the film for their side (on a side note: in spite of the accusations of conservative/Christian persecution by the media); but it does address the ethical dilemma straight on.  That's the primary methodology of the Joker's campaign of terror, to create impossible ethical decisions in order to exposed his perceived notions of the futility of "civilized society".  Batman is faced with an opponent with no rules, who directly reveals the restricting shortfalls of even Batman's singular rule, and in order to stop the Joker, he makes a hard turn to desperation, using a sonar-based surveillance system to spy on the entire city of Gotham.  In order to stop evil, he has allowed himself to smear his morality, and while not breaking his rule, he has gone too far into what he should be fighting against, and eventually, those methods become the only option he's been left with.  The film does not condone Batman's extreme anti-terrorism methods, in fact, it condemns them outright via Lucius Fox, one of the film's raisonneurs, that is, one of the author's voices for the story's truth.  However, liberals ought not to become all high and mighty, after all, Batman is a one percenter and has oft been portrayed with a slight conservative slant.

THE DARK KNIGHT rattled the film industry to its core and rocketed expectations for summer blockbusters and comic book adaptations (which are often one and the same).  As the awards season approached, the possibility of an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture was highly anticipated, and when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences failed to render one (THE READER, really?), the outcry resulted in a drastic modification in the number of films that can be nominated in the category.  As hollow a gesture as that actually was, the fact that any gesture was made is an indication of the film's status.  Even without a Best Picture nod, the film was nominated for eight Academy Awards; an impressive count for any movie, but even more so for a summer blockbuster and a record for comic adaptation.  It also received an award in a major category, Best Supporting Actor, in a landslide for the late Heath Ledger.
THE DARK KNIGHT TRILOGY, made up of BATMAN BEGINS, THE DARK KNIGHT and THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, is considered by some to be one of the best major film trilogies ever made, and definitely of the post-New Wave era, ranked alongside TOY STORY and THE LORD OF THE RINGS.  However, THE DARK KNIGHT is without significant dispute, the crown jewel of the trilogy, and definitely the only superhero film to date to be compared to THE GODFATHER PT II by a major critic.


THE DARK KNIGHT (2008)
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Starring: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Gary Oldman, Maggie Gyllenhall
4 out of 4 stars
PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and some menace.