BBC Does Blockbuster - Potter gets the miniseries treatment

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Rating - A-

In the history of sci-fi/fantasy film franchises Harry Potter stands out as a grand experiment. No blockbuster series has ever been willing to tinker with its formula so often in order to continue to make fresh and interesting movies. Of course, I can’t think of any major film franchises that have had this many installments (except the Land Before Time I guess...) so the Potter series stands out as something of a pioneer. For the less film geek-y here’s a short history of the series.

1. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was released in 2001 as Potter fever was in its profitable infancy. Children rejoiced. Chris Columbus’s direction introduced some positive trends like hiring veteran actors Richard Harris, Maggie Smith and Alan Rickman to fill out a strong supporting cast of adult characters while the kids developed their acting skills keeping parents well entertained as their kids went into spasmodic delight in seeing their favorite characters brought to life on the big screen. All-in-all Columbus put together a solid debut for the series, but the format was familiar big-budget fare: giant, expensive action sequences, cheesy quips, overblown soundtrack, ticking off the book’s plot points one by one without much thought of the film’s rhythm.

2. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets came just a year later and was likely the cause of what was apparently some serious soul-searching on the part of the studio and Rowling. Despite garnering generally positive reviews the film was overlong and shoddily assembled, once again following the book far too closely. Plus the kids’ acting didn’t seem to be maturing much. Columbus left not because he was asked to but because the franchise was taking over his life. Nevertheless, Columbus' departure proved to be a good thing.

3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: This was the turning point. After Columbus announced he was leaving the series producer David Heyman and Rowling decided to take the road less traveled and hire Alfonso Cuaron who took the film in a more visionary direction. Potter 3 was shockingly dark and artful, turning Hogwarts into a bleak yet transfixing world with sparing moments of joyful transcendence. His primary achievement was taking the time to mentor the three young leads into convincing human beings, infusing the story with a great deal more drama than Rowling’s book ever delivered. This film was an unprecedented move toward giving a major moneybag franchise a distinctive stylistic stamp. It would've been like giving The Empire Strikes Back to Stanley Kubrick to direct. Cuaron showed us that popularity didn’t necessarily have to stifle creativity as long as an inspired director’s creative powers were encouraged and the story could be interpreted rather than re-enacted onscreen.

4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Cuaron was pooped so Mike Newell took over for the fourth installment putting the film into steady British hands for the first time. Taking strong visual cues from Cuaron’s artistic reboot of the franchise, Potter 4 may not have had Cuaron himself at the helm but certainly benefited strongly from his influence. The fact that the film was only one film instead of split into two to support the overlong plot was Cuaron’s doing, once again saving good cinema from the complicated demands of rabid faithfulness to below-average source material.

5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: Longtime BBC TV director David Yates started his run on the series with a shockingly muted take on the fifth book giving new meaning to the term ‘less is more’. His film was almost entirely devoid of soundtrack, used visual effects sparingly at best and methodically built the tension using empty space and a hushed tone until the final explosive finale. Yates picked up Rowling’s slack turning problems of a poorly paced storyline, a ridiculously over-the-top villain and an incomprehensible climax into a film that dodged summer blockbuster goofiness with good British sensibility.

So now we come to the long-awaited sixth installment. It was delayed 8 months, much to the fans chagrin but it has proven to be worth the wait. The film is fuller than the fifth by blanketing a sparse Yates’ run on the franchise is characterized by challenges that the previous filmmakers didn’t have. Here’s another enumerated list:

1. He has had to adapt Rowling’s crappiest books: Books 5-7 just really lost focus. 6 is the best of the lot but in all they meander into a dullness and confounding web of plotlines.

2. He has to do 4 movies in a row, splitting the last one into a two-part feature.

3. He has to maintain interest in a franchise that is far past its height of popularity

4. He has to make a compelling movie despite the fact that everybody already knows how it’s going to end.

It’s this final challenge that is probably the most daunting since the element of surprise is not in his favor and plot twists lose their shock value. Yates overcomes by pushing a feeling of inevitability and terrible purpose on the characters as the events move along. Dumbledore’s death, for instance, doesn’t exactly come out of nowhere. It is a climax that is built up and all but spelled out for the entire film. Likewise, Ron and Hermione’s romance is wisely turned into one of those familiar frustrating sagas everyone has experienced in their groups of friends in which everyone else sees it coming miles ahead of the lovestruck couple. Ginny Weasley is even given the line “about time”.

At several points, the film transitions into outright comedy, keeping things novel. It's all very self-aware, making fun of the familiar narrative patterns that have become the norm in the Potter series. For example:

Dumbledore: You’re no doubt wondering why I brought you here, Harry

Potter: Actually sir, after all these years I just sort of go with it.

McGonagall: Any time something happens why is it always you three?

Ron: I've been trying to figure that one for six years

Yates even pokes a little fun at the all-too-trite concept of Harry’s status as ‘The Chosen One’, a plot element so obviously cherry-picked from other fantasy epics like Star Wars, the Matrix and every other 'hero with a destiny' story it’s hard to take it seriously. The humor manages to add an odd gravity to it since the characters talk about it as if it’s a tired label, suggesting that the whole idea that Harry Potter is 'The Chosen One' has been so exhausted in conversation between the 5th and 6th movie that it's become a rather boring subject for the characters. It's a bit like reverse psychology making light of a subject for comedic effect and in the process re-affirming its seriousness.

Hermione: (after seeing a pretty girl and Harry making eyes at each other) Snap out of it! She’s only interested in you because she thinks you’re 'the chosen one'.

Harry: (pompously) But I am the chosen one.

Technically, the film is incredible. Bruno Delbonnel’s (Amelie) cinematography is the best yet for the Potter franchise. All the sets, costumes and props blend seamlessly to create a world that is at once surreal and believable. The visual effects are perfectly done, maintaining an elusive beauty. Mark Day’s editing was ultimately what sold me. He made things properly kinetic or calm and showed a remarkable ability to pick up or slow down the pace and maintain a stimulating rhythm throughout.

In the end it’s the mood that makes this movie work. Half-Blood Prince is the darkest Potter film yet yet but by ‘dark’ I do not mean violent, cynical or negative in any way. It’s just, well, dark. Most of the film is shot in cloudy grays and nighttime hues (a rather accurate depiction of England) Hogwarts is no longer the fantastical playground it was back in the Columbus days and it’s an effective progression. Yates manages to communicate how dire the situation is for our heroes what with the magical war brewing and dark wizards lurking around every turn. The students cut up and do what they’ve always done in the past movies: they fall in love, get in fights play their wizard rugby or whatever it is, but it all seems to take place under a dark cloud of foreboding. The events of the past films seem to have taken their toll on the mood of the school. Hermione’s prophecy at the end of the fourth film has come to its full fruition “everything’s going to be different now isn’t it?” The hallways feel much more deserted than in the past and the characters all act a bit shell-shocked. It feels like the students’ last hurrah before the storm, a final return to innocence and laughter that feels charming yet bleak. Everyone seems to be aware of how bad things have gotten but they’ve decided to have fun this year nonetheless, struggling to preserve normalcy in severe and challenging times. It’s all has a tragic feeling, like trying to revisit a lost innocence. By the end of the film as Harry announces his plans to end the war, one truly understands his decision not to return to his beloved school because it has been hollowed out. Friends are dead and gone, rivals have become enemies and the characters’ adolescence has been jolted into a premature adulthood. The Potter world is no longer safe.

The primary criticism I have heard leveled at this film is that it doesn’t feel like a complete movie. It’s long and doesn’t have a satisfying enough conclusion for a summer blockbuster. I think it’s important here to understand the philosophy new and final phase of the Harry Potter franchise. Yates is a TV director and as such he appears to be treating the latter end of the Potter series like a miniseries. The film does not stand alone as a film true enough but it remains as a strong installment in the Harry Potter series as a whole. He did downplay the finale but what has been unfortunately proven in Rowling’s writing is that big finishes do not necessarily mean good finishes. Every book seems to end on some big, overblown fight scene and I just honestly do not believe that would’ve made this film any better. It may have been overlong but Rowling’s books ramble so darn much it’s proven to be hard for anyone to pare it down to the bare essentials since all the plot lines are so frustratingly tangled together. Rowling would’ve benefited immensely from an editor who wasn’t a big fan; instead she hired a huge Potter nerd who knew her own invented world better than herself to help keep the world contiguous and all the plotlines straight (not kidding).

Though it may be slow I completely reject that the movie is ‘boring’ since every single shot seems to collect a million little curiosities, from magical cabinets to jars of liquid memory to twisty carnival-like corridors. If the only thing that holds your interest is spastic action scenes and big expensive special effects then take some ritalin and just accept the film for what it is. What it lacks in ‘action’ it makes up for twofold with its thick air of mystery and artful direction. Some stories just aren’t meant to be blockbusters. And that’s okay (though not usually for studios, which does producer David Heyman and Warner Brothers immense credit in my book).

Franchise films have a lot to learn from the Potter movies and the changes they have undergone. David Yates’ most recent work proves that film series can function like big-budget miniseries, making visually contiguous movies whose plots fit together rather than making one standalone film after another or shooting it all to hastily back-to-back (like The Matrix 2 & 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean). Lessons for big budget franchises: Take your time, be creative and realize that not every chapter in a series needs to be explosive to be magical.

X Men Origins:  Wolverine

This movie is bad.  I wasn't betting on a prequel movie about Wolverine, perhaps the most overrated superhero ever, to be that good but just how bad it ended up being simply stunned me.  How bad is this movie?  The answer lies in this scene, supposedly the emotional center of the tale.  A pensive and brooding Logan sits in his log cabin living room deep in some of those mountains somewhere in Canada, his lover, the aptly named Kayla Silverfox, stares out at into the night sky and says:

"Do you ever wonder why the moon is lonely?"

Logan plays up the attractively shallow brute, and his lady then launches into a monologue detailing some phony Native American legend not worth repeating and they end up making out. 

AAAAHH!!!  It's just this kind of scene that kills otherwise well-meaning comic book movies.  Upon hearing the above line I could actually feel my brain cells screaming in pain.  It didn't start out so bad.  The audience is first treated to a fun though brief little jump back to Logan's childhood in the 1800s to uncover the original connection between Wolverine and Sabretooth and the reason why Logan is always so dang depressed, both of which boil down to an event that happens in about three minutes.  Then a visually arresting opening credits montage ensues showing the ferrel fréres taking part in every war they can enlist in from the Civil War to Vietnam.  From there they get drafted into a mutant special forces squad doing black ops for a suspicious Colonel Stryker (anyone with that name just can't be a good guy).  Logan gets cold feet about killing innocents, quits the team, runs away to some mountains in Canada, finds a supermodel ditz of a wife and pretty soon sitting around the campfire listening to her talk about about why the frickin' moon is lonely!!!  AAAAH!!!

Of course, things don't stay that way for too long.  All hell breaks loose once Logan's old buddy Sabretooth goes missing and starts bumping off former members of the team.  Cue explosions, about a hundred incidental characters showing off their powers and more really really bad writing.  In parts, the special effects are just bad, which is unfortunate since it's at just those points that the movie is relying on eye candy.  The camera lingers unabashedly on the obviously CG rendered claws as if nothing is screwy.  There's just no reason to CG the dang things.  Prosthetics just aren't that hard!!!  I swear, I'm going to start a list of unnecessary digital FX.  This ranks just behind George Lucas superimposing Temuera Morrison's head onto a completely CGed suit of stormtrooper armor.  I was positively screaming at the screen.  PUT THE GUY IN A SUIT!!!!  AAAAH!  But I digress.  Many other shots suffered.  They got sloppy on Professor X showing up in a chopper to save a bunch of fleeing mutant lab-rats.  It's so clear that neither the set, the props nor any of the actors were in the same place at the same time.  Why?  What's so hard about getting everybody together and shooting a real life shot instead of cobbling together a poor patchwork green-screened images.  It's laziness that actually ends up causing more work for the post-production dept. and costing more money.

There's really not much more to say.  Will. I. Am is horrible, LOST stars Dominic Monaghan and Kevin Durand don't even seem like they're even trying and Taylor Kitsch puts on a crappy creole accent to play fan fave Gambit.  Granted these guys seem to have been given dialogue that was written by a 13 year old taking a screenwriters' correspondence course at a community college so it must be insulting.  Only Ryan Reynolds is able to pull off the snarky Deadpool character, another long-awaited character for fans (though his backstory is seriously tampered with).  But that's 'cuz Reynolds is a huge Deadpool fan.  Likewise, you gotta be a huge Wolverine fan to overlook the long list of aesthetic crimes this film commits.  But it's especially the fans that hate to see their beloved superheroes handled so carelessly.  But perhaps the story is uninspired to begin with.  Wolverine is one of the original antiheroes, and today, antiheroes are all there is.  Films are so saturated with 'the dark side' of our protagonists that there may not be anywhere to go with a character like Wolverine these days.  What more is there to be explored about the exaltations and consequences of revenge and violence that directors like Clint Eastwood haven't already gone into?  How is Wolverine any different from all the other badasses out there?  Here is where the source material fails the film.  Wolverine has always been a two-dimensional superhero through and through and though Gavin Hood and his crew didn't have to butcher the tale so much, he probably found himself without any more interesting direction to go.

But really, "Do you ever wonder why the moon is lonely?" there's just no excuse for that.

State of Play

State of Play recontextualizes a 2003 BBC TV series into a contemporary American setting.  Russel Crowe and Rachel McAdams play two reporters trying to discover the truth behind a murder that might be connected to the contention between an idealistic senator (Ben Affleck) and a corporation responsible for supplying mercenaries to the U.S. government.    Mercenary activity in Iraq and Afghanistan is a spicy enough topic for a political thriller but the film's drama centers more around the rules of reporting and the tension between America's societal institutions than the kinds of thrills one would expect from one of the Bourne films.  Our heroes find themselves at odds with the competing interests of the police, military, congress and even their own newspaper.  The film follows in the tradition of more refined political thrillers like "All the President's Men" and "Breach".  There are more boardroom shouting matches than gunfights.  The film manages to keep a decent amount of intrigue but leaving the murder unsolved until the very end is like dangling a carrot out in front of a horse making the 2-hour runtime feel like an unnecessarily long haul for the final payoff.  

In a thriller like this, actors are little more than placeholders and with the exception of an entertainingly sleazy Jason Bateman, the cast wisely goes no further than that.  Ben Affleck and Rachel McAdams play things close to the belt and Russel Crowe fits right into his role.  There's something to be said for an actor who is best known for epic parts like a Roman gladiator, a schizophrenic mathematician and an 18th Century ship captain, who is just as good at portraying normal American citizens (no small task for a native Aussie).  He's not the flashiest actor in the world but his understatement is his strength.  

State of Play  is cliché, but not boring.  Government thrillers rarely try to shoot the moon with contemporary relevance or emotional depth.  It's good enough to keep the audience guessing and provide a few thrills in a realistic environment.  The problem with State of Play is that it doesn't take the time to construct a solid infrastructure of subplots to adequately support its final conclusion.  The unexpected finale makes an otherwise good film feel slightly careless.  The final plot twist comes so out of left field it would make any attentive viewer groan.  In my view it's better to run the risk of predictability in the interest of a sensible outcome than to ensuring a surprise ending by using improbable leaps of logic.  Still, the film is not bad, and if you can keep your brain from being too offended by the ending, then it is easy to admit that the film is entertaining, though not much else.

Read the Comic or Watch the Watchmen?

Zack Snyder's adaptation of Alan Moore's cult comic book classic is one of the most highly anticipated films since The Phantom Menace. Never before have nerds and fanboys been so eager to see a film and so unforgiving of infidelity to its source material. The comic was long deemed unfilmable due to its wild imagery, esoteric themes and multilayered plot, most vocally by the author himself. Snyder's answer to that was "why not?" and proceeded to make a doggedly faithful adaptation that translates the book to the screen at times word-for-word and frame-for-frame.

A note to the uninitiated: Watchmen is not just another comic book. Watchmen is the comic book. It is equal parts philosophy, noir mystery, apocalyptic black comedy and emotional character drama. According to Moore, one of his goals in writing it was to showcase certain elements that comics could bring to a story that other media could not. Moore uses the picture-book layout of the comic to frame iconic imagery to add thematic depth to the events in the plot. For instance, the image of the familiar yellow smiley face with a blood droplet over its right eye recurs in different forms: a clock with the hand set 5 minutes to midnight and grinning shark with a wounded eyeball to name a few. What does the image mean? Is it a statement about human nature? A countdown to nuclear apocalypse? Is it both? Reading Watchmen is a symbolic journey and the film succeeds brilliantly in recreating the thematically weighty imagery. Snyder makes no attempt to ‘realize’ the movie into a familiar setting or make the characters or plot any more believable than what happens on the comic pages—and it’s pretty wacky. The Dark Knight this ain’t. Watchmen is an ornate mythological tale that appeals almost exclusively to what little right brain moviegoers have left amid the shaky-camera, ‘docudrama’ style filmmaking that currently dominates modern cinema.

But alas, there are problems. Though Snyder hails his film as a labor of love, the result feels strangely soulless though it's not for lack of trying. Snyder's Watchmen is not an adaptation but a re-enactment of its source material which makes it fun to watch if one is familiar with the comic, but as a whole, the film rings hollow as inexperienced actors butcher Moore’s dialogue. After a spunky opening credits sequence, the meat of the film feels drawn out and uninspired as Snyder’s penchant for grindhouse-style violence and sexuality overshadows the story's intelligence.

Understatement is not Snyder's specialty but then again, it's difficult to imagine how any narrative could retain a subtle tenor when its main characters include a nerdy ex-crimefighter, a nihilistic detective with an inkblot face-mask and a fluorescent blue and totally nude demigod. But this is exactly what Moore accomplished in his 1987 comic series; Watchmen is a farfetched 'Twilight Zone'-esque fable about the exaltations and miseries of human nature in a time of apocalypse. In the film we see the comic's weighty and cataclysmic events depicted with cinematic virility, enhanced by a sensational score and perfectly timed editing and perhaps it is exactly this pomp that undermines the cleverness and sharp wit of perhaps the only comic than can truly be called ‘literature’. While reading the comic, one is allowed to muse over the symbolic undertones of the story's labyrinthine plot while enjoying the participative process of interpreting its symbols and taking sides with characters. A film by nature must be more straightforward. The original Watchmen was a pallet for interpretation and inference, but the film is unavoidably concrete.

- B-

Taken

French producer Luc Besson has showed us in the past that there is a way to make a predictable action movie and keep it interesting. The films that have come out of his studio including ‘Unleashed’ and ‘The Transporter’ have shown that skillful directing, snappy editing and careful cinematography can keep something moviegoers have seen a hundred times fresh and interesting. Besson’s longtime cinematographer Pierre Morel seems to have learned little from his colleague in his English-language film debut ‘Taken’, an uninspired thriller starring Liam Neeson as an ex-CIA agent chasing sex-traffickers who have kidnapped his teenage daughter.

Since Morel’s debut, ‘District B13’ was a highlight for European action films, it seemed logical that his first English-language film starring major Hollywood actors would be a prime opportunity to show of his cinematography skills. Unfortunately, ‘Taken’ lacks the camera-tricks and detailed set pieces that made his previous projects so novel. There are a few jumpy Euro-style edits here and there but Morel stays trapped in the stylistic wake of the Bourne films with little originality displayed.

As far as the acting goes, the performances are overall wooden. Neeson is decent as a cool, collected killer but the role forces him to be a little too charismatic, marring his strong, silent mystique. Famke Jannsen’s supporting role as Neeson’s ex-wife is standard boilerplate. Maggie Grace (of “Lost”) delivers a compelling performance as the kidnapped seventeen year old but she gets so little screen-time it doesn’t help things much.

A predictable plot and two-dimensional performances are typical of medium-budget action flicks. The true deal-killer for ‘Taken’ is the inclusion of sex trafficking as a major plot element. Putting such a serious subject into an otherwise cartoonish action film overshadows what few strengths the film has. Filming half-naked women with insufficient reason is cheap filmmaking but making them sex slaves to boot is just disturbing, exploiting a weighty issue to provide a dull film with some ‘eye-candy’.

‘Taken’ is a pedantic and at times inappropriate entry into the growing genre of Euro-style action thrillers. Expect its Box Office position to drop rapidly.

- C

Coraline: A Nightmare Come True

Eight years is an unnaturally long time to develop a film in today’s frenetic entertainment industry. The YouTube generation has made entertainment an instantaneously available commodity and as a result the feature film industry has been recently forced into a more efficient machine often at the expense of good craftsmanship. But for every trend there is an exception. The 3-D stop-motion animated Coraline is proof that even in a digital age patience and hard work still produces some of the best art. Henry Sellick (The Nightmare Before Christmas) has meticulously construction what is without question a visual masterpiece of hand crafted elegance and thoughtful simplicity.

The plot is adapted from a book written by unsung fantasy scribe Neil Gaiman. It’s an eerie tale of a young girl who escapes her boring life through a small door in her house and finds a parallel version of her family in a perfect world that just might be too good to be true. The familiarity of the plot is its strength, adorning the archetypal realm of childhood nightmare with outlandish spectacle.

Coralline is a noticeable step ahead of all previous stop-motion feature films. Though it may lack the nuanced characterization of Nick Park’s Wallace and Gromit series, Sellick makes up for it with a smooth-as-silk frame rate and eye-popping set pieces that must be seen to be believed. Since Coraline is Sellick’s first venture outside of Tim Burton’s guiding influence he seems to have been able to play to his own particular strengths. The tone is noticeably muted, trading Burton’s sensory barrage for a more composed approach. The Nightmare Before Christmas was a clamorous musical, but Coraline is a whimsical bedtime story.

Though the film is also being broadcast in standard format the simple fact is that it must be seen in 3-D. The newly innovated “Real-D” technology keeps the film’s wide range of colors intact and creates a perspectival panorama with seamless layers of illusory depth. The Real-D effect transforms the claustrophobia of stop-motion animation into an expansive moving diorama. This is stop-motion as it was meant to be seen.

Though Sellick tactfully employs a small degree of digital enhancement Coraline is almost entirely hand made. It is a captivating experience that shows how combining new technology with creativity, an old school work ethic and our generation’s scarcest virtue, patience can make good films great and create timeless art from simple ideas.

- B+

The Dark Knight - A


This is more of an analysis than a review. If you've seen the film, you already know how much of a masterpiece it is.

When it comes time to make a comic book movie, all superheroes have a problem fitting into the present. Let's be realistic, most superheroes were created around the happy go-lucky days of brash American boldness and hucksterism; when truth, justice and the American Way was going to save the world. Superheroes were symbols of that power in the world, uncompromising, judicial power, American power. But anyone who reads comic books knows that superheroes have changed greatly since those old glory days. Spider-Man, the first superhero created with actual human impulses changed all that and began the descent of the superhero into where it is today. Slowly, the continuum culminated with Alan Moore's Watchmen in 1987 which delivered an entirely alternate take on familiar heroes removing the moral absolutism of the past. Since that event (a veritable paradigm shift for the comic world) comic scribes have felt the freedom to reimagine superheroes in more speculative ways. Comic series such as Kingdom Come, The Dark Knight Returns, The Ultimates and Ed Brubaker's Captain America have delivered alternate and more human takes on classic superheroes, putting them into our time and space, giving them new life and relevance for our day. Different writers will have different themes they want to explore, changing the characters slightly to achieve their desired effects. As a result, Batman has at times been characterized as a paranoid spook, Superman a self-righteous control freak. There are even some comic series (dubbed 'Elseworlds' by DC Comics) that reimagine familiar heroes in an entirely alternate universe. Gotham by Gaslight takes Batman and puts him in the late 19th Century, Superman: Red Son begins with Superman's rocketship landing on a Russian farm instead of in America, causing Superman to grow up as a Communist. The range of moral questions that comics nowadays ponder has become quite extensive and there is a seemingly endless realm of possible themes that can be explored with the same characters. The problem comes when translating a comic book character out of the freeing medium of the page and into the more potentially embarrassing spotlight of cinema. Superheroes re-entering the mainstream continually suffer from a lack of characterization, simplistic impulses and one-sidedness in the effort to produce a character that will resonate with the original spirit of the superhero without entering the sticky modern realm. The result tends to be little more than escapist fantasy and complaints are leveled that the films ignore the challenges of today and simply focus on special-effects and action scenes. Making a relevant superhero movie is just, well, hard. Christopher and Jonathan Nolan apparently realized this, looked at each other and said. "Well, it's a tough job, but someone has to do it" and then created perhaps the finest superhero film of all time.

Like the comics of today, this film is a radically alternative take on Batman. The Nolan Brothers have really stepped outside the bounds of the traditional superhero film and created their own 'Elseworlds' vision of the Batman mythology, one that intentionally places the Dark Knight into the today's troublesome world in a style they dub 'hyper-realism'. It's even different from their last film, in which Christopher Nolan successfully explored the power of symbol and legend in today's world, that it's not what Batman does to fight crime, but how he does it, using symbolism as a weapon to strike fear into the hearts of the bad guys. In this incarnation, Batman operates something like a high-tech SWAT cop working closely with the police force to bring down Gotham's organized crime syndicate once and for all, so that finally he can take off the mask forever. Gotham City is basically a milieu of stark, grayish shots of Chicago and the plot unfolds something like a noir true-crime thriller than a superhero movie. This is the perfect venue for what the Nolans wanted to do, explore the face of evil that America has encountered since 9-11 (and what man has encountered since Adam and Eve ate the apple), an irrational evil that answers to no one but its own lust for destruction. This is the terrifying insanity of the Joker. I should go ahead and say that despite the hype surrounding Heath Ledger's death and the exaggerative hoop-lah that tends to surround celebrity death, Ledger's performance was like nothing I'd ever seen. Somehow he sticks very closely to the Nolans' script (truly the heart of the film's success) and still manages to steal every scene with a broad range of bizarre emotional sadism, dark comedy and an unnatural drive for mayhem. This is the face of evil unseen by our forefathers in WWII, an evil that surpasses all intellectual process and even uses our own conception of justice against us. Ultimately, the villain's main weapon is the fact that people are not basically good. All he does is wipe away man's illusion of control and release man's inner demons. How does a superhero stop that?

The intricate plot is sometimes tough to follow. If you end the film confused, watch it again (or do like I did and download the script). Believe me, it's worth it. Thematically, I think this is one of the most important post 9-11 films yet made and it has important questions to ask an America still seeking to fight evil and establish justice.

The film begins with the aftermath of the previous one. The mob has been all but eliminated, organized crime is on the decline because of the combined efforts of the Batman, Police Commissioner Jim Gordon, and Gotham's new district attorney, Harvey Dent. He is the film's pivotal character around which the story rotates. Fortunately, he is a stalwart public servant and a staunch defender of truth and justice. Early in the film, Jim Gordon describes him as Gotham's 'White Knight' and obvious foil to the film's title and main character. He is a new symbol of optimism for Gotham, an uncompromising soldier against injustice. The only thing more important than Dent's campaign on crime is that his character remain incorruptible. It falls on his shoulders to be both a protector and an inspiration for good. To drive this point home Nolan lifts a recurrent phrase from Jeph Loeb's Batman: The Long Halloween making it an almost theologically resonant campaign slogan: "I Believe in Harvey Dent." By contrast, we are exposed to the problem of the Batman's inspiration in an early scene in which a gang of hapless vigilantes all dressed like Batman try unsuccessfully to take down a gang of criminals, including the Scarecrow from the last film. After the ordeal Wayne muses ruefully: "This wasn't exactly what I had in mind when I said I wanted to inspire people." Wayne sees early on that a city ultimately needs a higher hope than a mysterious masked man, that Gotham needs an example to follow and Batman is not that. One of the 'copycats' asks an important question after Batman ties him up: "What gives you the right?" Though he's a pathetic figure at this point, he has a point. Does simply having expensive gadgets and martial arts training give somebody the right to take the law into his own hands? What makes a hero? Interestingly, Wayne is smart enough to ponder these questions and decides that Batman's days are numbered and makes it his goal to end them sooner rather than later in order to eliminate the need for his vigilantism by supplanting the Dark Knight with the White Knight and giving the city over to Truth, Justice and the American Way.

The Joker, however, has other plans and begins by announcing his plan to kill Batman. His plan is simple: someone dies every day the Batman doesn't reveal his identity, but trickery is the Joker's ace hand, and it quickly becomes apparent that Batman is only part of what he's after. As the plot evolves, so does the Joker's plan almost as if he's making it up as he goes along, sticking to a main goal: killing Batman, but using it as an excuse to wreak as much destruction as possible. The most interesting thing about the Joker is that just as Batman uses the mob's motivations against them (their greed, desire for power and control), the Joker uses the good guys' motivations against them. Ultimately, his main weapon is people's own desires. He wins over people by simply presenting them with a choice: cooperate with me and survive or sacrifice yourself for others. He takes the utilitarian laws of our society and turns them in on themselves, collapsing the system like a house of cards. The best example of this is when he calls into the television program.

Joker: Mr. Reese, what's more valuable, one life, or a hundred?

Reese: I guess it would depend on the life.

Joker: OK. Let's say it's your life. Is it worth more than the lives of several hundred others?

Reese: Of course not.

Joker: I'm glad you feel that way. Because I've put a bomb in one of the city's hospitals. It's going off in sixty minutes unless someone kills you...Of course, you could always kill yourself, Mr. Reese. but that would be the noble thing to do. And you're a lawyer.

The social experiment with the two boats also touches on this. Prisoners on one boat, 'innocents' on the other. Each has the detonator to the other boat. Blow up the other boat first and you can go free. Don't and everybody dies. The situation makes the other side suspicious and turns people against one another. This is a much more real version of the Scarecrow's "Fear Toxin" from he last film. This time, the poison is in our very souls and in our animal instinct of self-preservation. This is an evil that the system is powerless to defend against because it is based on every human's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The Joker's deconstructive philosophy is exactly the kind of post-modern evil that America is powerless to face. What if humans aren't basically good? Then our systems are powerless to control the true evil that humanity is capable of. We say we believe in justice, but what if that justice costs you your life? We humans might be big on justice, but we're less interested in self-sacrifice. He explains it to a captive Harvey Dent in this scene.

Joker: I'm a dog chasing cars... I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it. I just do things. I'm just the wrench in the gears. I hate plans. Yours, theirs, everyone's...Schemers trying to control their worlds. I'm not a schemer, I show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are.

It's the schemers who put you where you are. You were a schemer. You had plans. look where it got you. I just did what I do best- I took your plan, and I turned it on itself. Look what I've done to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple of bullets. nobody panics when the expected people get killed. Nobody panics when things go according to plan, even if the plan is horrifying. If I tell the press that tomorrow a gangbanger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics. Because it's all part of the plan. But when I say that one little old mayor will die, everybody loses their minds! Introduce a little anarchy, you upset the established order and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. And you know the thing about chaos, Harvey? It's fair.

That last line is probably the most prophetic part of the film. Fairness is chaos. Think about it. A free for all is really the only fair social order as long as every man is an island. Our American system that gives people an unalienable right to pursue happiness basically sets society up for chaos. This is exactly the reason why I have no faith in any social system. It's proof that liberals and conservatives are chasing after the same fantasy, that humanity is basically good and that fairness is the highest ideal. People don't understand that nobody wants equality. An equitable social order just masks the inner desire for survival. I cringe every time someone starts preaching about 'social justice' and 'economic equality', 'gender equality', 'racial equality'. It's not that these things are wrong (or shouldn't be sought after), they're just not enough, they do not save the human soul. Here the Joker scoffs at the supposed morality of people:

Joker: Their morals, their code... it's a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. You'll see- I'll show you... when the chips are down, these civilized people... they'll eat each other. See I'm not a monster... I'm just ahead of the curve.

So what does? How do you stop the Joker? How does Batman stop the Joker?

As for the Joker himself, first he lulls him into a false sense of security and then totally batarangs him in the face (cool), but to ultimately defeat the Joker's philosophical attack on Gotham, Batman must give up himself. By the end of the film, Harvey Dent has become a monster, scarred and twisted by circumstance orchestrated by the Joker to turn him also into an agent of chaos, dealing out executional justice with the flip of a coin. Batman realizes, standing over Dent's dead body, that people can never believe in Harvey Dent because of the sin he has committed, because of the evil within him brought to the surface by his encounter with the devil. Humanity has fallen once again from goodness and it's up to Batman to preserve that good. This is the role of the Dark Knight, an interesting (and pagan) take on the messiah as someone who covers up the truth: that humans are not basically good, to preserve social stability. He tells Gordon to lie, to report that the he, the Batman killed all the people Dent did instead of telling the truth. I see it more like a picture of Jesus who saw our Two-Faced nature and took our sin on his own person in order to preserve the good in us. It is interesting to compare Jesus and Batman. Normally one might pair Christ with Superman, someone lordly and upstanding. Batman, by contrast chooses lowliness, coming down from his wealthy status nightly to operate at street-level, immersing himself in the darkness of the world and ultimately is punished for humanity's sins to preserve its good side. It's not a theologically sound model to be sure (and at times smacks of the old heresy of Judas being the actual messiah, paving the way for Jesus' martyrdom) but in my mind does show a cool angle of Christ's mission for mankind. Here Batman explains why he needs to be blamed for Dent's transgressions.

Batman: Because sometimes the truth isn't good enough...sometimes, people deserve more.

Well, we don't deserve more of course, but gosh isn't that cool? That Jesus didn't just come down to show us how bad we were, as if reasoning with us would turn us away from evil, he came to do something about it. He knew it wasn't good enough to just reveal evil, he had to defeat it. Through his sacrifice he redeems our lost goodness and gives us a model of how to live, that we too must lay down our lives for others and this is the only way to fight evil, to give up one's life. The boat sequence reminds us who our neighbors are, the prisoners in one boat and the citizens in the other is a perfect comment on the societal divisions of race, class etc. The finale of the movie may seem a bit like a leftover in the overall plot, but it really ties up the film's philosophical problem: how can you do what's right when you realize that chaos is the only social system human beings can sustain, and furthermore it's the only fair social system and every other attempt is just an illusion? You give up your life for the other. You operate outside of societal expectations and fairness. You sacrifice your own life instead of taking another's. This way of life is hard (impossible for the unaided human being), but it is the only way to defeat evil, and the only way one can claim the right of a hero.

Batman and the Joker operate outside the social order, the one to destroy life, the other to redeem it. They are the eschatological figures out of whose war comes most of the film's drama. This is the one of the only places where the film departs from its good theology and dabbles in a bit of yin and yang spiritualism, making good and evil balance out perfectly. Batman won't kill the Joker and the Joker doesn't want to kill Batman. "I guess this is what happens when an unstoppbale force meets an immovable object" Joker says in a depressingly void characterization of evil. Even Satan was good once. But taken in context of the film's emotional center, it could be just another of the Joker's lies. I think it's a tired concept of good and evil balancing out to establish stability, how every hero has to have some bad in him and everything must include compromise. In this way the film falls prey to the same concept of balance that the Joker so effectively disproves.

Alfred burning Rachel's letter was a little weird. I guess it protects Bruce from disappointment and preserves his drive. It's like what Batman does for Gotham. If he knew the disappointing truth they wouldn't believe in goodness any more. I guess I just don't understand why Bruce would lose any faith in Rachel's goodness even though she did choose Harvey. She still passed the Joker's test. She was sacrificial to the end. She wanted Harvey to live instead of herself. Contrast this to the malice of Two-Face as he holds his gun to Gordon's son:

Dent: It's not about what I want. It's about what's fair...the only morality in a cruel world is chance. Unbiased. Unprejudiced. Fair.

The next line could be an interesting comment on trying to justify violence in the name of good.

Batman: Nothing fair ever came out of the barrel of a gun, Dent.

It certainly has ramifications for Guantanamo Bay and Iraq, torturing in the name of justice. I, however am still inclined to agree with Dent's line. Fairness itself turns ugly when you get down to the core of what it is. The only way to fight evil is to beat the hidden tyranny of equality and always choose the scarred side of Dent's coin, dying to self to save others.