Today I'm going to conduct an investigation by identifying suspects, collecting evidence and assessing their guilt to determine: who killed The Dark Knight?
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Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight was, at one point, an obsession in movie media. Every tenth YouTube video about movies was breaking down an appealing aspect or scene from the film, trivia lists were peppered with behind the scenes nuggets be it Heath Ledger genuinely startling Michael Caine on set or the lengths the stunt went to carry out the movie's action beats as practically as possible. And there's a good chance that at least one person you know dressed up specifically as Heath Ledger's version of the Joker for Halloween. But over 15 years later, that burning fire of enthusiasm has died down, but not in the expected ways. It's perfectly normal for film obsessions to crest and fall but even via memes The Dark Knight has gone from easy reference and after thought. So much so, that when the movie was featured on the The New York Times' "Best 100 Movies of the 21st Century," list I was almost shocked.
Which is wild considering the movie is still quite good, was a box office juggernaut in 2008, and features an Academy Award winning performance from its villain. Did sensibilities change? Is the movie worse than we remember? What happened? Who killed the fun? So it's time for me, as self-designated Hercule Poirot, sans moustache, to figure out what happened.
So today I'm going to conduct an investigation by identifying suspects, collecting evidence and assessing their guilt to determine: who killed The Dark Knight?
Suspect #1: The Movie Itself
Before we look at external parties, I think it's best to look at the movie itself and determine if there are any glaring flaws that weren't obvious upon initial release, or were drowned out in the hype surrouding the movie. Because if you tried to tell anyone in 2008 that The Dark Knight was bad, you'd likely be booed out of the room. But now with time between that hype and few more movie Batman's on screen, now's as good a time as any to look under the hood.
And what I can conclude is...the movie is still good.
There's a lot of reasosn that certain aspects of the film don't hit as hard, which I'll address later, but what still stands out is the film's propulsive energy. From Joker's heist introduction up until the finale, every scene in the movie feels lean and efficient and integral into the movie's ultimate payoff. It's also full of amazing moments and images like Bale's Batman standing over rubble, the pile of money going up in flames or the final monologue that's been mimic'ed and parodied to hell and back.
There's a lot of reasosn that certain aspects of the film don't hit as hard, which I'll address later, but what still stands out is the film's propulsive energy. From Joker's heist introduction up until the finale, every scene in the movie feels lean and efficient and integral into the movie's ultimate payoff. It's also full of amazing moments and images like Bale's Batman standing over rubble, the pile of money going up in flames or the final monologue that's been mimic'ed and parodied to hell and back.
Short version, there's a reason this movie was a mainstay in the pop culture lexicon for so long.
The qualms I have with the movie, mostly come down to stylistic preferences. Christopher Nolan has become a better action filmmaker over the years, but his Batman movies all feature a lot of choppy editing in hand to hand bouts and there's a number of movie logic leaps that stand out upon the second or third viewing (i.e. why does no one notice or comment on the bus leaving the front of a bank covered in rubble in the movie's opening?).
There's also an emotional distance in this movie that feels more at home with crime movies like Heat where hero and villain circle each other and all of the other emotional attachments fall by the wayside. As cool and heroic as Batman is in this movie, it's hard to empathize with him. He lacks Tony Stark's charm or Steve Rogers earnestness. That's not a dig on the movie, but in terms of giving the audience something to latch onto after the movie, it doesn't help.
This is also a movie you can't really make again. Much like its bleak superhero counterpart Logan, there's too many twists or emotionally resonant moments that you cannot replicate in a sequel or with this character again (i.e. Batman failing to save his childhood friend and love interest is not something I can imagine audiences being shocked by again.). It felt like a defining vision of the character for Nolan complete with its ending monologue that makes it feel like Batman will be out there and stay out there as long as we need him...until the sequel which had to break the character down in order to bring him back.
What really stands out is almost everything you could hammer this movie for as a current movie-goer...has little or nothing to do with the movie itself and more how the movie and cultural landscape shaped around the movie. Starting with...
Suspect #2: Movie Media
One of the biggest players in oversaturating The Dark Knight is movie media. Specifically the, at the time, nascent movie YouTube analysis space, blogs, and podcasts that would break down why individual scenes or movies work as well as they do. Combine that with a thriving home video/physical media market which would include extensive behind the scenes featurettes that folks actually watched, and now the baseline of "this movie is good," can expand into..."This chase in The Dark Knight is awesome and here's how they did it."
Whether it was listicles on Cracked, or film bro analysis, The Dark Knight was everywhere. But why The Dark Knight instead of Iron Man that came out the same year?
Whether it was listicles on Cracked, or film bro analysis, The Dark Knight was everywhere. But why The Dark Knight instead of Iron Man that came out the same year?
To put it simply, The Dark Knight doesn't feel like a superhero movie. It definitely is one, but even compared to the other movies in its own trilogy, The Dark Knight feels more adult and intense. Named characters die, Batman fails an awful lot, and we're doing things like burning letters that could kill Bruce Wayne's entire motivation in our finale while Batman is claiming murders he didn't commit as his own. And we haven't even gotten into the whole Joker of it all, a character so defined by destructive nihilism that a bunch of idiots have decided that it's a worthwhile ideology (but more on that later).
So you have darker themes, more intense character moments, a bunch of intricately constructed set pieces using practical effects in one of the most profitable/seen movies of all time coming out just as the internet is figuring out how to monetize "talking about movies." All perfectly timed to flood the box with think pieces, analysis videos, and long-winded praise for a movie that's still good, but is now drifting into the dreaded "overexposed" territory. And then come the superfans.
Suspect #3: The Fanboys
The Dark Knight fandom might've been my first experience witnessing fan crash out on the internet. And it all centered around the 2009 Oscars. As Oscar season arrived there was furious debate about whether or not The Dark Knight, the highest grossing movie of the year, should be nominated for Best Picture. In the Oscar era where only five films were nominated for the top prize. So even though Heath Ledger's performance seemed like a shoe-in both for a nomination and a win, there was a lot of hand-wringing about whether or not the Academy would "respect" a comic book movie enough to give it a best picture nod. And it didn't.
Instead it gave nominations to three historical dramas (Frost/Nixon, Milk and The Reader) and two book adaptations including The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and the eventual winner Slumdog Millionaire.
None of which surprised me, because the Academy is rarely trying to reward blockbuster movies as high art. So even if the fanboys kinda had a point here, because only two of those five films are truly great in my opinion, this wasn't worth the crash out that followed. The Dark Knight made over a billion dollars and just made the "100 Greatest Movies of the 21st Century" list from the New York Times. It's in good standing.
Instead it gave nominations to three historical dramas (Frost/Nixon, Milk and The Reader) and two book adaptations including The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and the eventual winner Slumdog Millionaire.
None of which surprised me, because the Academy is rarely trying to reward blockbuster movies as high art. So even if the fanboys kinda had a point here, because only two of those five films are truly great in my opinion, this wasn't worth the crash out that followed. The Dark Knight made over a billion dollars and just made the "100 Greatest Movies of the 21st Century" list from the New York Times. It's in good standing.
But the fanatical devotion that triggered enough Oscar-outrage to expand the "Best Picture" category to 10 films, which is now dubbed "the Dark Knight rule," didn't stop there.
There were all of the Joker costumes for over a decade. The parodies of Christian Bale's Batman voice. And a slavish commitment to the idea that Batman adaptations, a comic that features a character named Batman facing off against a Man Bat, needed to be dark and gritty, because that's more realistic. Before it became a popular term The Dark Knight had stans...and also went on to inspire and provide contrast to its own genre that exploded immediately after.
Suspect #4: Superhero Movies
The one two punch of The Dark Knight and Iron Man in 2008 kicked off the era of superhero blockbusters. Two movies so successful that four years later three of the top ten movies at the box office are superhero adaptations and by 2017 seven of the top twenty are superhero movies.
And while there's nothing inherently wrong with a certain genre having its day in the sun, almost all the movies that followed, including The Dark Knight Rises weren't like the The Dark Knight. They were typically brighter, lighter, and full of CGI spectacle. Not only that but a lot of blockbusters borrowed elements that The Dark Knight did first.
And while there's nothing inherently wrong with a certain genre having its day in the sun, almost all the movies that followed, including The Dark Knight Rises weren't like the The Dark Knight. They were typically brighter, lighter, and full of CGI spectacle. Not only that but a lot of blockbusters borrowed elements that The Dark Knight did first.
A villain getting intentional captured as part of their grand plan? Hell two movies in 2012 including The Avengers and Skyfall did that. What was once a gimmick quickly became a trope.
Morally grey and gritty heroes that make questionable decisions for the sake of the greater good? DC would get stuck in that tumble dryer of an idea for Zack Snyder's entire DCEU tenure.
This is something that happens to a lot of influential or "game-changing" movies. They eventually became such a part of film language that their innovations or what made them special can get lost amongst a sea of films that were influenced by them.
As Morbid Zoo pointed out in her analysis of the evolution of the western genre, basically every modern western is a revisionist western that challenges the genre much like Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy did in the sixties that it can be hard to see what those movies special in the first place.
And what DC did next did not help.
Suspect #5: DC & Warner Bros.
The parade of bad and mediocre movies that followed The Dark Knight, and the somehow equally omnipresent fandom for said movies, definitely muted The Dark Knight's impact.
Starting with Man of Steel, Warner Bros. and DC kicked off the "Snyder-verse" DC Extended Universe, which was meant to be a competitor and comparatively darker and more adult take on the superhero genre.
To say it did not work would be a massive understatement. The only movies that DC released in this time that didn't bomb or severely underperform were secondary characters the studio thought would fail including Wonder Woman (a movie whose success and efficacy feels more and more like a fever dream every day), Aquaman, and Birds of Prey. Three movies that notably embraced hope and silliness even more than two superhero movies with Superman as a lead character.
To say it did not work would be a massive understatement. The only movies that DC released in this time that didn't bomb or severely underperform were secondary characters the studio thought would fail including Wonder Woman (a movie whose success and efficacy feels more and more like a fever dream every day), Aquaman, and Birds of Prey. Three movies that notably embraced hope and silliness even more than two superhero movies with Superman as a lead character.
Not that it matter to fans who, sincere or not, to this day decry any superhero movies that isn't from Zack Snyder as unserious or wrong.
It also did not help that The Dark Knight's definitive characters Batman and the Joker were turned into a satirists version of what Batman and the Joker are.
Because as much as I think that Ben Affleck was actually great casting for Batman, Zack Snyder's take on Batman took what even Frank Miller understood to be a parody and played it all with a straight face with his Batman branding criminals and definitely killing dudes, even in overall solid fight scenes.
Because as much as I think that Ben Affleck was actually great casting for Batman, Zack Snyder's take on Batman took what even Frank Miller understood to be a parody and played it all with a straight face with his Batman branding criminals and definitely killing dudes, even in overall solid fight scenes.
We also had Jared Leto's Joker, who took all the unpredictable creepiness of Ledger's performance and turned it into...a weird Machine Gun Kelly styled sex pest...which is exactly what I would expected from an alleged serial abuser like Jared Leto.
And then there's Joker.
If Joker did anything it marked a saturation point for enthusiasm around the character. Not just because the movie was a giant hit that earned Joaquin Phoenix an Oscar (still wild that that's the role that did it), but also because it revealed the ugly underbelly of everyone who loved the Joker as a character and a concept. Now that they had a slightly more sympathetic version of the character, fans of the Joker latched onto this one hard and declared it "important" because they empathized with it in a way that Ledger's nihilistic portrayal never fully allowed.
You couldn't say Ledger's Joker was right, and none of them are, but if you believed hard enough and ignored all of the other warning signs, you could say Phoenix's Joker was with a straight face.
And after all of that, when the dust on the DCEU had settled, we got The Batman a movie that whether you loved it or hated it, proved that a gritty and moody Batman movie that loved using practical effects, could be done effectively by someone not named Christopher Nolan, get critical acclaim, make money and didn't even need the Joker.
Not even twenty years later we've had two new Batmans, two Jokers, six movies that feature these characters, all of which garner their own fans that regardless of what folks say, will dub one of these their favorite rendition of the character.
Meanwhile Marvel has had one Iron Man, one Thor and the only characters that have changed names were introduced with the original character like Suri, Sam Wilson and Yelena Bolova. It's why Chris Evans can pop in to make jokes about playing Captain America and why Christian Bale, even though it's not his style, can't. It would have to be Pattison now.
Not even twenty years later we've had two new Batmans, two Jokers, six movies that feature these characters, all of which garner their own fans that regardless of what folks say, will dub one of these their favorite rendition of the character.
Meanwhile Marvel has had one Iron Man, one Thor and the only characters that have changed names were introduced with the original character like Suri, Sam Wilson and Yelena Bolova. It's why Chris Evans can pop in to make jokes about playing Captain America and why Christian Bale, even though it's not his style, can't. It would have to be Pattison now.
Through their own missteps and even successes, DC and Warner Bros. flooded the market with their own characters and diluted The Dark Knight.
Suspect #6: Christopher Nolan?
This might sound strange but Christopher Nolan is a potential culprit in lessening The Dark Knight's impact.
Part of it is because he made another Batman movie after The Dark Knight that tried to unpack the potential impact of the film in the movie's world. It's impact on Bruce Wayne, on Gotham, and the kind of villain that would arise after the fact.
And while I think The Dark Knight Rises is enjoyable, it's not the same. It lacks the same punch despite a seemingly greater threat to the city, the set pieces don't have the same level of intensity, and, this one is just something I noticed, also granted us a bunch of meme worthy lines and moments that would become parodied almost as much has The Dark Knight, via Tom Hardy's Bane.
Part of it is because he made another Batman movie after The Dark Knight that tried to unpack the potential impact of the film in the movie's world. It's impact on Bruce Wayne, on Gotham, and the kind of villain that would arise after the fact.
And while I think The Dark Knight Rises is enjoyable, it's not the same. It lacks the same punch despite a seemingly greater threat to the city, the set pieces don't have the same level of intensity, and, this one is just something I noticed, also granted us a bunch of meme worthy lines and moments that would become parodied almost as much has The Dark Knight, via Tom Hardy's Bane.
But that happens with a lot of superhero trilogies. The third movie often trips, but is doesn't lessen the cultural impact. Looking at you Spider-Man 3.
But Nolan not only had a hand in creating the movies that would flood the zone with Batman movies (i.e. he produced Man of Steel), he also kept making movies, all of which demonstrated more expansive filmmaking chops as he drifted between genres, made more original movies and eventually delivered his best movie to date.
If you look at Nolan's filmography, almost every movie expands his filmmaking oeuvre to be bigger, more expansive, more technically impressive, more thematically resonant. After making multiple Batman movies that seemed cut off from big emotions, he made Inception which not only features a number of visually inventive sequences but has a core emotional hook in trauma pain and relationships. Cut to Interstellar that prioritizes a relationship between a father and daughter as strong enough to save humanity. Then we have Dunkirk, a movie that clarified a lot of Nolan's visual language and forced him to be less choppy with his editing.
In 2020 we have Tenent, which isn't the hit The Dark Knight was, but features a lot of Batman-ass stuff often done more cleanly than in The Dark Knight including jumps off of buildings, mind-bending vehicle chases, and hand to hand scenes that had to work backwards and forwards.
But the real one that probably moved Nolan away from The Dark Knight forever is Oppenheimer. An R-rated three hour character study biopic about the father of the bomb that received universal critical acclaim and...won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score and Best Film Editing. An overwhelming piece of art that proved that Nolan could make a film that audieces and the Academy would love in equal measure.
The Dark Knight is no longer a fumble on The Academy's part, it's a stepping stone to Nolan becoming an Oscar winner. But is that enough to remove The Dark Knight from the public consciousness?
Conclusion: Murder of the Orient Express
The 1934 Agatha Christie mystery, Murder on the Orient Express is one of the most famous mystery stories of all time. Not just because it features one of Christie's most famous detectives, Hercule Poirot and has been adapted into two feature films, but also for its ending. *spoiler alert for a very old story coming up*
What Poirot deduces is that the murder victim who was a horrific man directly involved in a kidnapping that led to the murder of a child, was stabbed to death by nearly a dozen people connected to the murder. In short, they all did it, and Poirot is left to determine what the moral thing to do is when the victim was such a terrible person and discerning direct guilt seems almost impossible with a list of murderers this long.
What Poirot deduces is that the murder victim who was a horrific man directly involved in a kidnapping that led to the murder of a child, was stabbed to death by nearly a dozen people connected to the murder. In short, they all did it, and Poirot is left to determine what the moral thing to do is when the victim was such a terrible person and discerning direct guilt seems almost impossible with a list of murderers this long.
And I've come to a similar conclusion about The Dark Knight.
There's not a single culprit here. The movie was/is a product of its time that broke the mold and expectations about what comic book movies and superhero movies could be...that also dropped right before the MCU came to define superhero cinema. It features an Oscar-winning performance from the lead villain, that all of the wrong people latched onto so much that another movie featuring a similarly nihilistic take on the character made a billion dollars that also won an acting Oscar. It was a movie that defined what people wanted from Batman, until they saw two to three new visions of what Batman could be or stood out by doing things differently from Nolan with new actors in the role.
And now we've got another "The Batman" movie in the works now that writer/director Matt Reeves has finished his script, which means a new generation of fans will see Pattison as their Batman just as millennials saw Christian Bale as theirs.
Or maybe there's a culprit that no one's thought of.
When a piece of art or pop culture hits critical mass it's easy for the enthusiasm to wash over you. To get swept up in it and watch and listen one movie, one song, one season of TV over and over again because it is scratching an itch you have. As someone with ADHD I know this feeling of fixation and repetition all too well, as I played the 19th series of Taskmaster, yet again, as I write this. The fixation is easy to explain. It feels good. It feels right.
The eventual drop off, is harder to explain. But at some point the serotonin hit doesn't hit anymore.
Because at some point you've heard too much about The Dark Knight or heard "Pink Pony Club" one too many times and you need to take a break. Everyone's saturation point is different, but once it hits culturally it turns the enthusiasm from endearing and fun into embarrassing, almost as rapidly as it rose to prominence. Sure you can wear a Jack Sparrow Halloween costume, but...doesn't that feel out of date or cringe?
But there's good news. The endearing pieces of art, come back around. In about three years, we'll be celebrating 20 years of The Dark Knight in a world that feels corrupt, chaotic and bleak. And there's a good chance that young or up and coming movie fans will check it out for the first time, and get to experience what we experienced upon first viewing. And sure their eyes with be clearer with hindsight, but my guess is, they'll see a movie that still holds up for all the reasons movie-fiends my age still like or love this movie. The even better part? The original fans...come back with nostalgia-fueled enthusiasm.
In my opinion The Dark Knight isn't dead. It's hibernating. Waiting to be revived by a new legion of Bat-fans.
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