On Saturday morning my friend and consistent concert companion Patrick and I were walking to the train to take out to the festival. Walking in the other direction was a kind of lumpy kid with colored hair and too big clothes with army boots. Back in high school this kid would be considered a goth and, while I wouldn't have been slamming his head into a locker, I could have counted on this kid listening to Marilyn Manson, not really giving a shite about school and owning at least one shirt with Brandon Lee as The Crow on it.
Except this kid's shirt didn't have Brandon Lee on it. The face printed white on black and staring back at me wasn't The Crow. In a moment it all snapped together for me. The long run of Brandon Lee as the dead celebrity that most exemplifies the dark and brooding soul of a teenager was over. Fourteen years on the top ended quickly and quietly overnight on Thursday with the old king being deposed by a new prince of crime. It had barely been a day and a half since the first midnight screenings of "The Dark Knight." But already Heath Ledger was the new Brandon Lee. The Crow Is Dead! Long Live The Joker!
Now I could go off on a tangent about how the icon has changed from a hero who is righting a wrong and curing the world of its ills to a cynical villain who is creating chaos in the world. I'll just say post-Columbine it became very easy to vilify the outsiders who sat by themselves at lunch. Apparently those attitudes have not faded completely in the last ten years.
The point is this. Going back to the day they announced Heath Ledger would be playing The Joker... check that... going back to the end of "Batman Begins" when he flips over the playing card, it was apparent this movie would be riding on whomever played The Joker. When they cast Heath Ledger, it seemed an oddball choice and this role would have forever remained his legacy whether he'd died or not. I'm so sure of it, I actually wrote these first five paragraphs before I even saw the movie. And, having now seen the movie, I can tell you his legacy will be he was the only inspired thing in an otherwise terrible movie.
One of the things that "Batman Begins" got right was it returned the astray Batman franchise from focusing on flash and visuals and celebrities playing the villains to the dark and deep story of a man who brings justice to an unjust world. The movie walked you through the development of Bruce Wayne into Batman and you could see the dynamic character growing and learning. You could feel his motivations changing and expanding. At the beginning of the movie, he's ready to shoot the man who killed his parents. At the end of the movie, he allows the man who really killed his parents to die. He's stopped fighting the symptoms and started curing the disease.
Well, that one movie detour into truly timeless elements was short-lived. The franchise quickly and noisily reverted to 90% stunts, 10% "There's good and evil in the world. Get it?" The line I've been pushing this past week is that the movie should've been called "Die Hard With A Batman." But the truth of the matter even that is a misnomer because the third Die Hard movie actually had more plot than "Dark Knight." This movie was a return to the failed form of the earlier movies with flash and visuals and "Hey, it's that guy," playing a larger part of advancing the movie to its finish than things like story, character growth and dramatic rise and fall.
Which is what makes "Dark Knight" ultimately more than a bad movie. It's a disappointment because of the potential re-starting the franchise held. This franchise could've been a study in the human character wrapped into a blockbuster's skin. Now it's just the hollow skin. My guess is too many fingers ended up in this pot and the auteur sense used to make "Batman Begins" into a great movie was squashed under a mountain of memos. These movies cost and make too much money to just let someone like Tim Burton or Christopher Nolan play with them for too long. Eventually these pieces of art are about making money for the studios and to do that you have to appeal to the largest audience possible even if it means watering down your product to the point of oblivion.
My only solace will be to watch the "Watchmen" trailer over and over until it comes out next March. They can't possibly screw up the sequel to that. Word up to my fellow comic book fans who get the joke!
