I was just watching the latest batman movie, the one with Heath Ledger as the joker. He makes a genuinely frightening villain because he doesn't care if he's caught, or punished, or hurtled off a building toward his death and saved at the last second. He goes down laughing, not bitterly, but gleefully, maybe thankfully. Add intelligence and the usual idiocy of the good guys, and the joker owns Gotham.
So, about these good guys: why leave such gaping holes in their defense? Do they just have too much to think about? Batman is a bazillionaire with awesome equipment he's always developing, and yet the joker and a few thugs just waltz in to his penthouse (later referred to as "the safest place in Gotham"). Ok, that's just silly. And in a movie where so much goes right. Many of the action scenes combine gritty pyrotechnics with moral ambiguity and keening tension. One main character is made and reborn and unmade. It's an ambitious movie. So how do the editors fail with the little stuff? Was it rushed out the door? Did they run out of money? Did they just get tired?
Batman feels unfinished and over-full. Still, it leaves me a little roughed up by the emotional mess, and hyped up by the adrenelized action and slightly bowdlerized violence. And that may be all the studio wanted--to jam the gutters of viewer's minds so full, that they emerge from their caves feeling like they've at least experienced something, even if they didn't like it.
your profile of the joker makes me want to see the film. it's that aw fuggit attitude that comes right before death or enlightenment, or like a kid saying "make me". and good guys are always somewhat inept do-gooders, nicht? except for santa claus, of course. the first time we get lied to biggish. m
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