A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Dark Knight pre-blogging

I haven’t seen The Dark Knight, and probably won’t for at least a couple of weeks, but – while I enjoyed Batman Begins – the NYT review gives me pause:

This is a darker Batman, less obviously human, more strangely other. When he perches over Gotham on the edge of a skyscraper roof, he looks more like a gargoyle than a savior. There’s a touch of demon in his stealthy menace. During a crucial scene, one of the film’s saner characters asserts that this isn’t a time for heroes, the implication being that the moment belongs to villains and madmen. Which is why, when Batman takes flight in this film, his wings stretching across the sky like webbed hands, it’s as if he were trying to possess the world as much as save it.

To which I say: The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller’s seminal “reinvention” of the Batman character, came out in 1986. The whole “dark” Batman is nothing new. If anything, comic afficionadoes widely regard the 1990s as the reductio ad absurdum of “grim ‘n’ gritty” superheros with their flexible morality and high body counts. Haven’t there been any new ideas since then? Has nothing interesting been done with Batman in the last 20+ years that isn’t just a retread of Miller? (This isn’t a rhetorical question; I haven’t really followed Batman comics since high school.)

No doubt this is part of the ongoing campaign to convince us all that comics are Very Serious Literature that grown ups should see as Important and Significant (and, naturally, should fork over loads of cash to see the movies based thereon). Fine; good; I’ve been enjoying the renaissance of superhero flicks as much as the next geek. But can’t superheroes still be fun? For my money that was a big part of the appeal of Iron Man – the hero, while facing an existential crisis of sorts, wasn’t perpetually tied up in knots of angst. He was having a good time being a superhero!

And my impression, as a comics reader of only the most casual sort (I think the last thing I read was the collected paperback of vol. 3 of Joss Whedon’s X-Men), is that many of the stars in the current comics firmament are trying to recapture some of the fun, and the fantastic nature, of comics (Grant Morrison also comes to mind), instead of sticking exclusively to a grim and plodding “realism.” Maybe in 20 years the movies will catch up with these guys.

(I realize this is all a lot of criticism for a movie I haven’t actually watched…)

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4 responses to “Dark Knight pre-blogging”

  1. Jamelle

    As much as I’m a fan of the “fun” superhero (Spider-Man, for example, has no business being a “serious” comic book), I don’t think such an approach would work for Batman. Characters like Superman and Wonder Woman have a bit of the whimsical about them. For Batman though, there’s always been something of a sinister undertone, even in the more lighthearted incarnations. In the Joker’s first three or four appearances in the comics, for example, he kills upwards of three dozen people. It’s hard to return to a more gentle past, when the past is already so dark.

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  2. Jeremy

    When I read that excerpt at another blog I also thought it was strange. I don’t know anything about the comic books, but weren’t the Batman movies of the 90s pretty dark, too? If I recall correctly that was the thing that I enjoyed about them. Until the tiresome George Clooney got involved.

    I watched The Dark Knight at the drive-in on Friday and loved it, but not because it’s “darkness” was particularly new. It was an exceptionally well done superhero movie. I think Heath Ledger actually deserves the Oscar buzz he’s getting.

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  3. Lee

    The two Tim Burton installments (Batman, Batman Returns) had, unsurprisingly, a kind of gothic weirdness that Batman Begins lacked (let’s not even talk about the Val Kilmer-George Clooney period). But, like I said, I enjoyed Batman Begins a lot on its own terms. The NYT review just made me afriad that we’re going down the whole dark, antihero road with this one. But I’ll reserve judgment till I see it. 🙂

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  4. Gaius Sempronius Gracchus

    If a play, an opera, or even a musical can be “really serious literature” (and who doubts it?) then surely “a play with drawings and little dialogue balloons” can be.

    But most aren’t.

    In fact, I am not aware of any “graphic novel” that has come up to the standard of plays (or operas, or . . .) that are “really serious literature.”

    As for Batman, he’s like the Vampire.

    The concept is interesting, but the storylines rarely do much but exploit it to provide a gory or funny action flick.

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