Taste Triangle 3: The Dark Knight / I'm The Goddamn Batman!

I've poked fun at Christopher Nolan's film style when I introduced the Heart category of my Taste Triangle, so it's only fair that I actually do a Taste Triangle review on one of his most popular films. In the last review I intentionally picked a dark, and depressing movie just to see how low my system could go. This time I want to look at a film I actually liked a lot that I still expect to have a relatively low score.

My History / Nananananananananananananananano Batman

I did not grow up with Batman. I used to read some local comics growing up, but not even any superhero stuff.

When the 90s Batman films came around they passed me by, and save for me being briefly interested by Qui-Gonn Jin being in Batman Begins as Bruce's mentor the same happened with the Nolan trilogy (of which The Dark Knight is the second film).
Sure, the internet blew up over Heath Ledger's performance of the Joker, but I just laughed along at the wave of memes and didn't think much more of it.

Then the Superhero Explosion happened, with Marvel entering the fray in a big way, intent on building a huge interconnected universe with crossovers, merging continuities and overarching plot lines. I love stuff like that!

So I fell into that pretty hard (more on that in another post), but I also went back to see what superhero stuff I might have missed.
The Dark Knight was basically at the top of that list.

Plot summary / Darkness. No parents. Super rich. Kinda makes it better.

We got all of the origin story out of the way in Batman Begins, which saves a lot of time (and is probably a good takeaway for any future Batman films. Less time wasting, more good stuff).

Instead the movie starts off by introducing us to The Joker, our hero for this film.

He bravely confronts a crime syndicate that, despite Batman's continued efforts continues to plague the city of Gotham, and threatens/blackmails them to do his bidding in exchange for promising to get rid of Batman. Unlike Batman he isn't afraid to get his hands dirty and kill people. He doesn't have a ton of resources to work with, so instead pits factions against each other, both within the crime families and Gotham high society.

In the mean time Bruce Wayne (Batman, spoilers I guess) is schmoozing with that same elite class while also sort of trying to contain crime at night (including a memorable but weirdly separate trip to Hong Kong to retrieve a crime syndicate accountant).

The Joker shows his willingness for sacrifice again by letting himself get captured to break out the accountant (securing the rest of the money), and it is here that he first truly meets Batman. They have a tense interrogation scene, the Joker reveals he had an out all along and gets away.

In the end he gets captured for real, but not before a nicely executed public display of humanity versus inhumanity with two ferries rigged with explosives and, far more critically, succeeding in having Batman breaking his one rule (no killing) by forcing him to kill his long-time friend gone bad Harvey Dent / Two-Face, and having Batman take the blame for both this and Harvey's crimes (once again painting him as a dangerous vigilante).

Corner 1: Adventure 6/10 / "The public likes you. That's the only reason that this might fly."

How much of an adventure is a Batman film? It tends to stick to the same locale, Gotham City, and even then primarily at night for the action stuff. Sure, we had that one bit where Batman goes to Hong Kong, but any significant Adventure points it gathers will have to come from the confrontations between Bats and his villains.

• 🚀 The Joker-Batman dynamic, it's an adventure to see the Joker at work.
• 📋 I get that Batman works at night, I really do. But they could have picked interesting places to show at night instead of random alleys / cityscapes.
• 📋 A grounded joker is great, a vicious Two-Face as well, but having these as the only two villains makes for a very gritty conflict. Especially compared to Scarecrow from Batman Begins.

Corner 2: Smart 7/10 / "Do I really look like a guy with a plan?"

Batman is the greatest detective, Joker his equal but opposite. This should have been better than it was...

• 💡 The Joker-Batman dynamic, especially the Joker puts in a lot of work.
• 💤Bats, however, is more of a reactive force. He tends to be outsmarted at every turn.
• 💡 I kind of like that somebody basically figured out who Batman is.
• 💤It's still dumb that ~nobody else has figured this out though, which is a general Batman / secret identity complaint.
• 💤Why did nobody try to verify if Harvey Dent admitting he's Batman was feasible/possible?

Corner 3: Heart 4/10 / "I'm sorry I let you down."

Oh Christoper Nolan, your struggles to understand human emotions are both numerous and well-catalogued elsewhere. This is not your corner. Attempts were made. There is a love triangle between Harvey, Bruce and Rachel (a character that is in the end so inconsequential that she didn't even make it into my plot summary).

• 💖 The Joker-Batman dynamic, it's creepy and unnerving and sets viewers on edge.
• 💔 It's dark, it's dreary, it's joyless. And Bats' grunty voice is weird.
• 💔 I expected more from the music. Hans Zimmer has composed far more memorable themes for films of which it was expected less (The American remake of The Ring springs to mind as a good example here).
• 💔 No Harley Quinn?! I get that the Joker-Batman dynamic was the core here, but it would have been great to see.

Hey, that turned out better than I'd feared! Let's see that triangle.

Yeah, that's respectable I'd say. Nowhere near full marks for Adventure or Heart, but Smart saves the day. Not really a huge surprise that that's the best corner a Nolan film though.

This comes to a surface score of...

38.32

Alright, now I'm sick of all these dark things. *starts searching for the most garishly colourful upbeat thing out there*