Dark Knight Discussion

I found a decent article on MTV Movie News by way of reading it, reprinted in its entirety and without permission, on another blog. I'll discuss that in a second, but let me first say I completely disagree with anyone doing that sort of thing; that is not just "plagiarism," it's outright theft and it's one of the biggest reasons we bloggers are getting a hard time from many traditional journalists and other writers.

That out of the way, Shawn Adler wrote a series of articles on The Dark Knight, with two devoted to Batman and Joker, respectively. They are well-written articles, though I have a few nits to pick:

The Joker was actually killed-off in the first issue in which he appeared; a savvy editor later had him resurrected. That's a bit Nerdier than we should expect from the layman, but I'm making the point that these are fluff-pieces written with the singular intention of hyping the movie and I am not going to allow Empty-V, Hollow-wood, or any of the Johnny-Come-Lately pop-culturalist-wannabes to rewrite one of my favorite character's backstory - even if they just "gloss-over" a few niggling tidbits here and there.

While it is true that Cesar Romero's portrayal of the super-villain was campy, the entire show was campy, and I think Mr. Adler's article faults the actor; Cesar Romero was a highly-skilled and respected actor, and had the TV show called for a different approach, I do not believe he would have intentionally "camped-it-up." A lot of people like to pan the old show, but it was what it was - and it knew what it was - and it wasn't supposed to be anything else; it was intentionally campy, fun, silly, and tongue-in-cheek - Batman's cheesiness was no accident and there was no butt of the joke because everyone was in on it.

I have also always taken umbrage to the idea that Batman is not a "super"-hero simply because he has no suprahuman powers. Some will note his indomitable spirit and will, his acrobatic prowess, his superior intellect, but he possesses none of these abilities to above-natural level. Wealth, people; Batman's "superpower" is unlimited wealth. That's where he gets those wonderful toys, without which he would literally be nothing more than a guy in tights. Bruce Wayne's unlimited wealth is definitely super, if not a power, and is the source of his crime-fighting success.

Adler correctly identifies Batman's turn from the campy back to the gritty in the late-80s, but he calls it "a series of near-consecutive occurrences." Nothing could be further from the truth. The Dark Knight Returns is what inspired Burton's Gotham and the movie, in general. The architecture is Exhibit A, were I asked to "prove" this. Miller even wrote a screenplay based on his magnum opus, and later referred to it as "a film that will never get made." From what I understand, the current Batman movie series is based loosely on that script.

But Adler's insight as to how the characters of the Batman mythos have gone from one extreme to the other several times throughout history is fairly spot-on, even if he didn't correctly identify all the pieces of the puzzle. The original characters - both Bats and Joker - were far darker and more violent. They lightened-up after the Comics Code, more out of necessity than any creative direction, and got back to their brooding roots in the 80s, following - what else? - Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns.

When you get right down to it, Miller's Dark Knight is the penultimate turning-point in Batman and his mythos. Nothing has ever defined the character so well, with so much detail, and the character will never be the same again. And nothing is ever going to have as massive an impact until the Dark Knight's final tale is told.

While these articles are clearly "buzz" for the upcoming movie, Adler's research barely scratches the surface. He notes the Silver Age outer-space adventures which causes most historians to grimace when mentioned (but were right along the lines of the TV show and at the same time), but he uses that brief period as the primary contrast for almost everything post-Dark Knight (Returns). Even worse, he gives the erroneous impression that Bale and Nolan "pioneered" this "new direction" and are basically responsible for the "resurrection" of the real Batman - none of which is even remotely accurate; Frank Miller reinvigorated the character in 1986 and several scenes from the upcoming movie were literally lifted from that work.

But as I am writing this to clear-up misconceptions, I shouldn't add to the confusion: The Dark Knight movie is not - and cannot - "rip-off" Miller or anyone else's work on the character. For one thing, Batman is DC's property. For another, they are the very source material from which the movie is drawn. How could you make a movie based on a comic book without drawing from that work? (Hancock doesn't count here, since it is a movie about a superhero and was intentionally not based on any previous work.) What we sequential artists do in comic books is called "storyboarding" when done for a movie.

I appreciate a staff writer's job and understand that Mr. Adler probably had the job laid on his desktop at crunch-time, but as influential, iconographic, and ubiquitous a character as the Batman, research material abounds. Even a brief skimming of some of the more important works would have made these articles more accurate (and interesting). I also fully appreciate the fact that these were written for MTV - the very network that created the ADD-style of film editing, so many claim is ruining our culture, but these are articles, so whomever chose to run them had to expect at least someone was going to read them!

I found the articles atypical of Hollow-wood and the Hollow-wood mindset: with their tentacles firmly entrenched in the genre, the showbiz machine is going to try and superimpose its retelling of these ages-old characters over the actual mythologies. Yes, in the movie, the Joker was the guy who killed Bruce Wayne's parents, but all we fanboys know better (and did when we saw the movie) and that movie did not change anything.

But how many times have you had to explain that to some young whippersnapper or faux-fan who thinks he knows it all because he's seen all the movies 2349023490234989 times? What "Jack Napier" needed was better PR!

© C Harris Lynn, 2008