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The Dark Knight

Christian Bale, Heath Ledger

Director Joel Schumacher gave Warner Brothers everything they wanted in a Batman film and almost killed the franchise. Instead of comedian Michael Keaton, executives had a real leading man, an up-and-coming Cary Grant-type in George Clooney. Two other box office superstars, Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze and Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy, were there to play the villains. At that time, no one had more box office muscle than Arnold, and Uma was considered the sexiest actress in Hollywood. If that was not enough eye-popping red carpet talent, two of the next generation’s potentially biggest stars, Clueless’ Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl and Chris O’Donnell as Robin, were on board. But mostly Schumacher listened to the executives moan about how dark Tim Burton, the director of the first two films, had made the franchise, potentially turning off parents with little children from going to the latest adventures of the Dark Knight. They wanted it to be more campy and fun like the 1960s television series starring Adam West and Burt Ward. They wanted more bang, pow, zoom. Burton was sticking his finger in the eye of potential licensed toy sales and happy meals. This time they were going to have a rip-roaring good time for the whole family all the way to the bank. Warner Brothers’ big summer blockbuster limped out of the theaters, taking in less than 60 percent of what the first three films did at the box office. Twenty-something and thirty-something year old kids with Ivy League degrees in suits, sunglasses, and bad tans had done what the Joker, Two-Face, and the Penguin could not, they killed the man in the bat suit (with nipples, we cannot forget the nipples). They also destroyed the careers of Silverstone and O’Donnell in the process.

What these Warner Brothers executives did not understand was that over the course of the last quarter of a century, the once campy man in cowl and cape in the pages of DC comics, first under Neil Adams and then under Frank Miller, was getting back to his dark Bob Kane and Bill Finger roots. (While Kane took the lion share of the credit, Finger was the real genius behind the character.) Instead of being the do-gooder who fought colorful, over-the-top villains and hung out with Robin, Bat-mite, and Ace the Bat Hound, the Batman was becoming a dark, brooding, nihilistic hero who was at home in the night as he battled the emotional scars of his parents’ deaths at the hands of a crook. At the same time executives were asking for more color and fun, DC was seriously talking about killing off the Robin character because a boy sidekick, a holdover from the 1940s, did not seem to work with the new ethos of Bruce Wayne. The new Batman was becoming a mirror to the male reader’s psyche and to mental illness and not the goofy dude running around with a chunky Batgirl and a boy sidekick with serious gay overtones. Fanboys hated it. Critics hated it. Adults hated it. Kids hated it. I am sure even Bat-mite hated it. In trying to make a film for everyone, they made a film no one could like. Some people even blame it for helping the comic book industry go into a major slump.

It should have been a lesson that everyone in Hollywood learned. When dealing with a comic book property, what is the ethos that makes that character popular? Why is it that character so beloved that fans are every month willing to plunk down two or three dollars to keep up with his or her adventures? When you get away from the core of what makes that character enjoyable, you kill the character and destroy what makes him or her popular. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel each time you put a superhero on the silver screen. You just need to figure out the key to what makes him or her the hero he or she is. Sounds easy, but just watch turkeys like Catwoman, Elektra, The Punisher, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and Constantine and you realize it is not. In each of these cases they left the character that was wildly popular on the panels and pages of their graphic novels and gave America what they thought they wanted instead. All bombed.

Queue stage right. Enter director Christopher Nolan coming off the success of Memento. It had been eight years since the last Batman movie. Silverstone and O’Donnell are leading candidates for “Where Are They Now” entertainment segments. Arnold who could not get arrested in a good film afterward ran for Governor of California and won. Nolan, unlike the executives, understood the character. He read the comic books. Loved Frank Miller’s work and wanted to put that character on the big screen. He cast a little known but fan-favorite Australian actor, Christian Bale, as the Dark Knight and sought to make a film that explained what drove Bruce Wayne to be the Batman. Several movie executives did not like the dailies they were seeing, too dark, too disturbing. One theater chain distribution manager told me after a screening that it was going to bomb, that if it cleared $80 million they would be lucky. Batman Begins cleaned up at the box office. It started out with a respectable $48.7 opening weekend, but unlike most modern blockbusters, it kept going, audiences returned the next week and the week after that and the week after that, clearing $205.3 million in the U.S. and $371.9 across the world. Critics loved it. Fanboys loved it. Most of all, audiences loved it.

In the last moments of Batman Begins, Nolan set up the villain in the potential sequel by having it mentioned that there was a new mad man in town, someone calling himself the Joker. Daring move considering that Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of the clown prince of crime is considered one of the two greatest villains of modern cinema, right up their with Darth Vader. In a daring move, Nolan cast Heath Ledger as the villain. As almost everyone knows, Ledger passed away this January of a drug overdose. What makes this sad is he had worked hard to overcome his pretty boy image. Taking a page from Johnny Depp, Ledger took off-beat roles and risky parts instead of going for the big paycheck. While not successful at first, he finally succeeded in garnering praise and celebrity when he agreed to star in the homosexual cowboy love story Brokeback Mountain, which turned into a surprise hit. Ma and Pa Middle America were ready for love John Wayne style and Ledger found himself an actor directors wanted to work with. Then he died. Still, Ledger does not have the charisma of Nicholson, almost nobody does and before the actor’s death, Nolan knew that the two actors would be compared, just like Brandon Routh was compared to Christopher Reeve in the role of Superman. Instead, the director headed this problem off at the pass. Just like with the Batman, Nolan has chosen to follow the comics’ direction and darken the character of this villain that had been around since the 1940s. Instead of Nicholson’s big personality, Nolan has chosen to focus on people’s fear of clowns. With 10 to 20 percent of the population claiming to suffer from coulrophobia, an irrational fear of clowns, and 60 percent who just find them annoying, long before Stephen King and The Simpsons made it popular, people hated those smeared in grease paint. No matter how you slice it, there is something scary about clowns especially the Joker. Some critics have claimed Ledger’s portrayal of The Joker helped lead to his death.

Picking up elements of Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke and Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One, Nolan picks up where the last film left off. Helped by Lt. James Gordon (Gary Oldman) and new District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), a.k.a. the future Two-Face (I wonder who the villain in the third film will be?), Nolan has made a better film than his first go around. While the previous film might have been one of the best superhero films ever, it kind of fell apart at the end.

Verdict: A Movie That Would Make Bill Finger, the real creator of Batman, Proud