What’s So Special About the Dark Knight?

There are a lot of things to admire about Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight.  It’s bold, dark, thoughtfully written, and powerfully acted.  It dares to be more relentlessly serious than most other superhero movies.  But I confess I am surprised at just how huge of a blockbuster it turned out to be.  As great as I think it is, it’s not perfect.  Like its predecessor Batman Begins, it’s longer than it needs to be, and the final quarter of the film is needlessly complicated and goes a little overboard with all the action sequences.  The thing that makes up for all that, though, and the thing that really sets The Dark Knight apart from all the other superhero movies and especially the other Batman movies, is the character of The Joker.  Thanks to the superb writing and the brilliant performance by Heath Ledger, The Joker comes to life in a way he never had before.  There is something genuinely terrifying, creepy, evil, and downright nasty about him.  He represents a kind of evil that is very real and particularly terrifying because there seems to be no answer to it.  The Joker doesn’t want anything.  He doesn’t want money, or power, or love, or even admiration.  He just wants to watch the world burn.  Just for the sheer pleasure of it.  So how can you bargain with a man like that?  How can you reason with him?  How can you fight that kind of evil?  We all instinctively understand it, because we all have a bit of it inside us.  Everyone has, at least once or twice, wanted very much to do something they knew was wrong – just for the hell of it.  Just to see what would happen, what it would feel like.  That’s why we respond so strongly to Heath Ledger’s performance.  He brings it home to us.  He makes it real.  We can see a bit of ourselves in him, and that’s the scariest part of all.  

Before The Dark Knight came out, I remember reading something about how Jack Nicholson was angry about all the positive buzz Heath Ledger’s performance was getting.  Because Jack wanted to be remembered as the best Joker ever for his performance in the Tim Burton version.  Well, sorry Jack.  We all love you, but your Joker seems so tame now.  Heath Ledger’s version feels like the real one, the only one.  Good luck to the next guy playing The Joker!