To start off my long-gestating collection of well-thought-out (well, for the most part) essays on certain movies, records, books, comic books, comic book characters, graphic novels, graphic novel movie adaptations, adaptations in general, assorted collections of poems and overall - and in general - whatnot, I figured the most direct way to communicate what I'm getting at here is with the Second Highest Grossing Flick of Like All Time And Stuff - adjusted for inflation - Christopher Nolan's THE DARK KNIGHT.
And it's rated just right. Which is to say: simultaneously overrated and underrated. Such contradiction in a work of art is not unique to the world of flickdom, although no graphic novel or nonfiction rehab memoir gets nearly as much press as some comic book movie directed by the "Memento Guy."
The Dark Knight was over-hyped long before it ever entered pre-production. Such expectations, having been amplified to a degree no summer blockbuster movie could ever match (the relatively hushed, expectant wait for James Cameron's AVATAR reflects the lessons painfully learned by a hyperactive ad campaign). The film symbolized a major investment in the vision of a director with but four features to his credit - each one terrific in its own right, including Christopher Nolan's own Batman reboot. Grounding the cinematic world of Batman in cold, hard reality was not only a great idea, it was kind of an inevitable evolutionary step in the history of a character that has become the most prominent comic book superhero in American history. Arguments for Superman are acknowledged, accepted, and to some extent agreed with, but Batman is now the indisputably most iconic superhero figure. The key to understanding Nolan's success with The Dark Knight is his treatment of the badass, schizophrenic main character; Nolan seems to understand that this borderline-sociopath is also the great divided id and superego of us sycophantic citizens of Americana, Inc.
Batman/Bruce Wayne is a screwed-up rich kid with a conscience and deep, almost Puritanical streak of basic morality co-existing in the same mind and body as an angry, blood-chilling crimefighter. The stories that have filled the comic book pages and celluloid frames reveal an extraordinary flexible character, a superhero of dangerous, sometimes frightening fire who is still a powerfully neurotic, deeply lonely and driven man, aching to erase a permanent open wound to his psyche. Like Superman and Spider-Man, Batman lost his parents, but right in front of his eyes. He witnessed cold-blooded murder at a point in life when most people have yet to form any kind of self-consciousness or individual identity. His family would have been his universe, as it should be for all little kids.
Yet all this Freudian fire and brimstone is still confined within comics or flicks or queerly campy (or campily queer, your choice) TV shows starring the Mayor of Quahog. Mostly. In The Dark Knight, the lived-in, anti-Tim Burton quality to Gotham City reinforces the shock at seeing Batman or The Joker against the background of a sorta-sane, contemporary world. Either figure's appearance is at once ludicrous and somehow deadly serious, almost a blight on reality.
After all, it's just a comic book movie. It's also a moving tragedy and an assured, epic-scale crime film, and if Nolan decides to make a third one (as he's said in various interviews, and then move on from the Bat-universe), it'll be welcome. In the end, his first two still say it all.
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