So everyone has been raving on and on about the movie and Adam and I decided to wait until I get to Seattle before watching it at the IMAX for $3 using his MS prime card. He bought our ticket a few weeks ago so we can watch it the day I arrived, which was yesterday. Despite the movie has been out for a month now, tickets for this weekend are still sold out and when we go to the theatre just after 9 for our 10pm movie, the line was already really long. However, even at $471.5 million and $800.1 million worldwide, it seems unlikely that Dark Knight will surpass Titanic's record of $600 million and almost $1.9 billion worldwide. You just dont get enough crazy women watching the movie 10 times at the theatre for the Dark Knight.
At any rate, although the duration of the movie isn't as long as Titanic either, 2.5 hours was still really long for me to sit in the theatres to watch that movie. By the time Harvey Dent was saved by Jim Gordon who magically came back from death, I was already hoping the movie would end.
However, that's probably the only major flaw to the movie, because I have to admit, I really enjoyed the movie. The Dark Knight is incredibly thought-provoking and brought a lot of philosophical conflicts into action. When people say that Heath Ledger's performance deserves an Oscar, they are not exaggerating. It's really hard to put the the face of the Joker to Heath Ledger, whom I best remember played the hot teen high school boy in 10 Things I Hate About You (I am sad to admit I have yet to see Brokeback Mountain).
The dark side of human nature was thoroughly examined in this movie. We begin with someone like the Joker, whom Alfred compared as someone who is only out there to create chaos; you can't try to understand him through logic and this was clearly demonstrated by his re-telling of the story of how he got his scars. But to me, I felt that the Joker isn't just out there gain pleasure from other people's pain, but he attempts to draws out all the tension, conflicts, and limitations of our understandings of human nature, human behaviour, and the world in general. He shows the world that everyone is on their own and that when we are pushed to our limit, we are selfish creatures. The prime example was when he broadcasted on TV that he would blow up the hospitals if the accountant who threatens to reveal batman's identity doesn't die. Immediately, even police officers, are chasing down the accountant in order to protect their own family members in the hospital.
Nevertheless, to restore our faith in humanity, we got that scene where Joker makes the social experiment on the two boats. Who will press the button? Although I do not believe that in a real life situation, it is guaranteed that human goodwill will triumph over the will to survive (personally, i think the situation will vary case-to-case depending on who is on the boat) but the scene was definitely needed to redeem what happened with the hospital. What saddened myself though, was when the big black jailmate who tossed the detonator out of the boat. It occurred to me that in spite the fact that I believe that no one should press that button, I never thought about throwing the detonator away. However, after thinking about the situation a little longer, it also occurred to me that to throw away that detonator is to take the choice of surviving away from the other people on the boat, which is just as easily be interpreted as unethical. By throwing it away, you may be the person responsible for killing all the people on your own boat, no?
And this is exactly the other point that Joker is trying to make, how futile it is for humans to try to control their surroundings. He tells Harvey Dent about the difference between schemers and doers, and he makes an example of how much people fail when they try to plan:
Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I’m a dog chasing cars. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it! You know, I just, do things. The mob has plans, the cops have plans, Gordon’s got plans. You know, they’re schemers. Schemers trying to control their worlds. I’m not a schemer. I try to show the schemers how, pathetic, their attempts to control things really are. So, when I say, ah, come here, when I say that you and your girlfriend was nothing personal, you know that I’m telling the truth.
It’s the schemers that put you where you are. You were a schemer, you had plans, and uh, look where that got you. I just did what I do best. I took your plan and I turned it on itself. Look what I did, to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple of bullets. Hm? You know what, you know what I noticed? Nobody panics when things go according to plan. Even if the plan is horrifying. If tomorrow I tell the press that like a gang banger, will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it’s all, part of the plan. But when I say that one, little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!
He points out that we try to plan, we try to control, and in the end, the control is really out of our hands. People should just recognize that half the time, the way of the world is left to chance. This brings us to the character of two-face, who eventually realized that he doesn't have as much control has he thought he did, symbolized by his coin with two heads. At first, he had all the control because both sides of the coin were the same, but eventually the control was taken out of him when one side of the coin blackens. It's all 50-50 in this world.
Honestly, I adopt a lot of the philosophies that are demonstrated in the Dark Knight, maybe because I am pessimistic about the world around us. Of course, I still have faith in human nature and I am not as extreme as the Joker, and I do realize, as Batman tells Two-Face, that some things we can still control, such as our free-will. In the end it's all about adopting a principle and standing by it.
Batman, as the movie unfolds, decides to adopt the philosophy of doing the right thing, even if some people get hurt along the way. You can't save everyone. But he also recognizes that people can't accept that--they need more faith than the truth. They want to believe that there is pure goodness and that the world can be black and white. Thus, for Batman to reward the good faith of Gotham, he becomes the dark vigilante so Harvey Dent can remain the symbol of pure goodness for the people. In the end, we realize that the definition of a hero is someone who is willing to sacrifice himself the the wellbeing of the society, not just Batman, but the people who refuse to push the buttons on the detonator. That's true heroism.
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