Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Overthinking: The Dark Knight

Ladies and gentlemen, get comfortable in your seats, dim the lights and whisper in a raspy voice because we are about to over think Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight.
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Everything's been said about The Dark Knight, good and bad, and almost in equal numbers. Some have been right, some have missed the point and others have been more than mean about it. We all have our reasons to hate or love this movie, but the haters usually point out the following:

For a movie so hell bent on r
ealism, The Joker is unbelievably lucky.

This is true; for a man convinced that he does not plan ahead for the sake of chaos and panic, he seems to have all his cards played out. In fact, in the end he disproves his own statement when he tells Batman that although he has been defeated, he still has a wild card prepared, this being Harvey Dent's fall from grace.

So, what do these contradictions mean? David (sorry, no last name provided) has a very interesting take on the Joker and his relationship with Batman, not just in the Dark Knight but throughout his existence in the DC universe.

Essentially, he figures the Joker must a trickster, a mythological entity like
Loki, Anansi or Manabozho rather than a super villain. He goes further to make the Joker fit into Joseph Campbells Monomyth, a series of steps that, when followed to any extent, make a fictional arc resemble mythology.

The presence of a mythological or otherwise supernatural being within the Dark Knight universe makes The Dark knight more like urban fantasy than fiction, and, as io9 suggests, science fiction.

This makes Neil Gaiman's upcoming take on Batman ironic and fitting, for Gaiman is the master of urban fantasy.

So, for those who hate the movie for its implausability, then perhaps they will now sit back, relax and let The Dark Knight be what it should have been considered in the first place: escapist fun.

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