Superheroes!
So, as it happens, I’ve gotten myself involved in developing a superhero project, so my analysis of The Dark Knight wasn’t just for my own edification after all. This is a character has yet to make the jump from the page to the screen in any form, so there is no long cinematic or televisual history hanging over my head. After I analyze the cinematic Batman movies, I will be doing some studying the forms and stories of our most successful superhero movies to see where they are similar and where they are different, where they succeed and where they fail, where their plots flow and surge and where they curdle and disintegrate. As always, your suggestions of movies to watch are welcome. Which ones "work" for you, which ones bring the character you love to the screen in a compelling and truthful way, which contain the most interesting and dynamic, fun stories, which tell you something about the character (or yourself) that you hadn’t thought of before? And so forth.
Dark Knight postscript
Over the summer, I saw The Dark Knight three times in the theaters, and came away stunned and baffled each time — it elevates the superhero genre so much, in so many different ways, it makes Batman Begins look like Batman Forever and it makes the 1989 Batman look like the 1966 Batman. It solves many of the problems inherent in the genre and places the characters in a complex continuum, instead of a hermetically-sealed corporate product. In many ways it is still as broad and "comic-booky" as any superhero movie, but by taking its characters seriously as human beings and thinking their actions through on a broad social level it succeeds in creating cinematic characters that breathe and speak to us. It is also a god-damn freakin’ plot machine, a script so complex and ambitious that I can only sit and wonder at it. Ideas in movies are easy, but plot is hard, and superhero plots are some of the hardest of all, which is why no one — until The Dark Knight — has managed to pull it off. And then, to have the movie be about the hero’s failure instead of his triumph, and then to have it go on to be the biggest movie in the history of the genre, well, that’s some kind of amazing thing.
In August, I had a meeting with a producer who has had some experience producing Batman movies. The Dark Knight was still the number one movie in theaters that day, and conversation naturally turned to it.
ME: So — The Dark Knight.
PRODUCER: I know.
ME: Right?
PRODUCER: I know. It’s amazing. I know.
ME: So. You tell me. You make this kind of movie. You tell me. How?
PRODUCER: How what?
ME: How does a movie like that get made? In this environment, where anything complicated or challenging or pessimistic or visionary get ironed out to appeal to the broadest possible market, how does a movie like that get made? That’s an expensive movie with a lot of moving parts — the producers, the cast, the special effects, the location shooting — how does a picture like that get made, and end up that good?
PRODUCER: Because Christopher Nolan gets no notes.
(pause)
ME: What do you mean?
PRODUCER: I mean, the studio gives him no notes. None. Zero.
ME: The director gets no notes?
PRODUCER: None.
ME: So, you’re telling me, Christopher Nolan and his brother write the script —
PRODUCER: And then they shoot it. And the studio gives them no notes. They’ve given them the project, they trust their vision, and they let them shoot it the way they want. And that’s how a movie like that gets made.
The Dark Knight part 4
At the end of Act III, Bruce, despite his best efforts and his bravest sacrifices, has pretty much screwed up everything in Gotham City. In the act of cleaning up the Mob, he’s created the Joker, and in the act of making his act legitimate (shades of Michael Corleone) he’s created Two-Face. By upsetting the status quo, he’s gotten his girlfriend killed and turned her new boyfriend insane. In Act IV, he will do his best to defeat the Joker — and fail, forcing him to face the consequences of the decisions he’s made.