Is the Dark Knight Trilogy This Generation’s Star Wars?
I haven’t seen the movie that the PJ Tatler’s editor Bryan Preston calls “the best film of the trilogy and the best comic book film yet made” and that Breitbart Editor-at-Large Ben Shapiro dubs ”probably the most conservative film of all time” and ”the end of probably the greatest movie trilogy in film history.” And I won’t see it for at least a week and a half — when my wife finally returns from her artist residency in Spain then we’ll get caught up on all the big movies we’ve missed this summer. Nowadays I see little point in watching a film if she’s not there to enjoy it with me.
One of my friends shared this image last night on Facebook:
If this is the case then I’m even more excited to see Dark Knight Rises. Empire is certainly a better, deeper, more sophisticated film than Jedi, but it’s not the more emotionally satisfying one. If I’m wanting some fun, Star Wars childhood nostalgia then I’ll stick Jedi in the DVD player. Or I’ll watch just the scenes from Empire where Luke meets Yoda for the first time. As a 3-year-old I would demand to re-watch this sequence over-and-over again, celebrating it as “Star Wars with Yoda.” Thank you Youtube, I’d never seen the scene before in French:
Does Dark Knight repeat the pattern?
Related at PJ Lifestyle:
I’m going to leave the deep analysis for someone else, but I will ask the burning question that anyone who watches that Star Wars clip will want to know-
Does Yoda’s endearingly odd syntax come through in French?
Judging from my French friends, yes.
No. The Dark Knight movies have had nothing like the cultural impact that Star Wars had. They are definitely superior in many ways to Star Wars; their stories and scripts are superior and their director is evidently a much deeper thinker than George Lucas. However, they break little new ground technically. Star Wars was like nothing anyone had ever experienced before. That experience will never occur again – at least not until someone invents fully-immersive holographic theater.
Star Wars is just reheated Flash Gordon.
Yeah, the concept was admittedly nothing new and, as I said, the writing didn’t rise much above the Flash Gordon level. The characters were likeable. But what really got to people was the complete, lived-in virtual world Lucas created using advanced special effects. Flash Gordon was cheezy little spaceship models on strings. Nobody had ever seen anything like Star Wars before.
I am a huge fan of the character of Batman. When a new issue came out with an Infantino/Anderson cover, that was a big deal to me. And I followed the transition to the darker character the new trilogy is derived from.
I haven’t see the new one, but I don’t get the traction the first two films have among fans – I don’t get it at all. They are completely ordinary in every way. There is nothing stylish or innovative about them. The art direction and cinematography, compared to say, the innovative use of camera in Die Hard or the art direction of Blade Runner, are virtual no-shows.
As Bugs notes, the Dark Knight trilogy has had zero cultural impact in a historical sense, compared to Star Wars or even LoTR or Harry Potter, and that is how they will be remembered. Even The Mummy with Brendon Fraser or Serenity were smarter and more stylish presentations that tweaked stereotypes than the first two entries in this trilogy.
There is no memorable casting or performances; Heath Ledger, a great actor, gave one of the worse performances of his career as The Joker – he seemed to have nothing to say. The first two films are like that for me – artistically, they don’t really seem to have any conspicuously filmic artistry to put across. To me the essential difference is like the difference between an Infantino, Adams or Kaluta cover and that of a Giordano; it just ain’t happening. The films simply have no film language they speak and that they have made their own.
Star Wars changed everything and the film language it spoke was unique, original and influential. Even Lucas couldn’t capture that the second time around.
No memorable casting or performances?
One of the worst performances of Heath Ledger’s careers?
Gah!
I feel completely the opposite.
The casting choices and performances in the entire trilogy are beyond outstanding. While people might debate endlessly over Heath Ledger vs. Jack Nicholson vs. Cesar Romero, there is no doubt there must be an actual debate, as opposed to the differences in the performances in other roles, which merit little or no discussion.
As for the art direction, I do feel somewhat put out by the shift in the most recent film, but for the prior two the only thing it is possible to compare it to is something like Blade Runner. But then, is that deliberate? Is Gotham really that much better in the third film that it merits a completely new look? Hmmm . . .
While there may have been nothing groundbreaking in the use of the cameras, so what? Just because it does not create a new standard cannot be held to detract from mastery of an existing one.
Then there is cultural impact.
I think this trilogy has a massive cultural impact, just not one that will be apparent immediately. The entire message of the third film is going to take time to sink in. Without delving into spoilers, I think a lot of it has to do with Nolan’s use of end titles:
The first movie was so much of an origin story that Batman did not truly begin until the final credits rolled.
The second movie was completely about Batman, transforming only in the final scenes, which the title then informs us means the story is now about the Dark Knight.
The final movie was about a dark knight – the hero the city needed but who lived long enough to become the villain. And ultimately, it was not until the end that the dark knight rose – not in the sense of rising up to fight, but rising up above that status, undergoing what is closer to a full on apotheosis than a mere redemption. (And is there a hint of the “dark night” of Gotham, and various characters), “rising” (which is to say “lifting”) at the end? And what would that say about what “really” was the “dark night” on Gotham at the start of the third film?)
Ultimately this it not a mere hero-villain turn, or said simple redemption, or even ordinary vigilante morality play, but a new take on the overall heroic journey altogether.
I see a magnificent depth to this trilogy. It will take time, and likely multiple viewings of the entire trilogy at once, for that to become clearer – I know I noticed certain things I’d missed before when viewing the trilogy in the theater on opening night.
It is not Star Wars, but it very much is its own creature.
Completely disagree about the cultural impact. But I think we may be talking about two different cultures. I think you’re talking about geek culture, comic book culture, people-who-analyze-superhero-movies culture. For afficionados, Dark Knight is certainly a major event. For everyone else? Not so much. I’ll believe it’s up there with Star wars when I start seeing Dark Knight images EVERYWHERE, Dark Knight lines on everyones lips, crappy Dark Knight dance songs in the Billboard Top 40, crappy Dark Knight Christmas Specials on TV, endless crappy Dark Knight novelizations, and, almost 40 years from now, car commercials featuring cute little kids dressed as the Joker.
The only thing the wider American culture has gotten from Dark Knight is the expression “Some people just want to watch the world burn.” That will go down as one of the classic film lines in history. Its useful in today’s world and I think people will be saying it for a long time to come.
The Joker’s facepaint from the second movie is not ubiquitous in political satire?
Just because we do not have a swarm of cheesy merchandise cluttering up the nation does not mean the cultural impact is inferior, merely different.
Indeed that should be taken as a Good Thing (TM), as it suggests we really do have something more than the pathetic Consumer Culture everyone likes to denounce on a regular basis.
Fail Burton-THAT’ a lot od negation without illustrations. Call me unimpressed by any of your claims.
I’ll call you unimpressed by the difference between Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers. Not everything has a link or is 2+2=4. Some of it’s dead reckoning. Within art there’s this thing called evolution and within that history are things called highpoints and there’s the word seminal.
There’s the important and the unimportant and what I like as opposed to that concept. I have liked a lot of crappy pop culture expressions – that doesn’t make them good or important, groundbreaking or historic.
Hollywood today hides behind a lot of gloss so when one is watching the equivalent of a Steve Reeves “Thief of Baghdad” or Victor Mature “Zarak,” it is not nearly as evident. I loved both those films. They stink. The first two Dark Knight films don’t stink, but they certainly don’t rise beyond the level of their own material or even understand it really.
They are almost completely mainstream and matter of fact expressions of a genre that is decidedly NOT mainstream and the equivalent of bread and butter or a day at the office. Nolan punched in, punched out.
The Batman movies are awesome. They transcend the Star wars in many ways. The script, direction , montage everything about it is so superb and fantastic. ALl the Batman movies are interesting and worth watching. Star wars are not bad either , their effects are really awesome. In my opinion both are great entertainers. I enjoy both. Thank you