Two Much

Last night, I got around to seeing The Dark Knight. I didn't rush here to review it, though, because I wanted to spend a little time rolling it around in my head to figure out exactly what I thought about it. Watching it, I was at first totally on board and loving it. Then somewhere along the way, that transformed into "I can't believe this isn't over yet. I'm getting bored." And I was a little hard-pressed to figure out when and how that happened.

I've decided that it's ultimately the same problem that plagues so many superhero movies: "villain creep." The first installment of a superhero franchise almost always centers around a single baddie, but when the sequels start spooling out, everyone stupidly assumes that "more is better," and they pile on two, three, more baddies. (See Spider-man 3 for one example.)

I didn't recognize this fault in The Dark Knight at first, for two reasons.

First, the "first" film in this franchise -- by which I mean Batman Begins -- also had two villains, Ra's Al Ghul and Scarecrow. But that movie "got it right" by basically making one totally subservient to the other. It was like the way the "real" bad guys of The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker hired Jaws to be their "man in the field"; Scarecrow wasn't out doing his own weird thing, he was serving the one plot of the film.

Second... well, hang on a moment. It's possible that if you're fairly ignorant of the Batman universe, or have managed to avoid any gossip about the movie, then what I'm going to say in the rest of this review might constitute a spoiler. Maybe. So...

SPOILER ALERT ????

Okay, second, the Dark Knight does a pretty damn good job in its first 90 minutes or so of juggling all the stories and avoiding the appearance of "villain creep." The story is about the mob in Gotham City (just like the first film) and how one crazy nutjob threatens them (the Joker, in this case). Running parallel to that story is the tale of Harvey Dent, the "white knight" who's going to clean up Gotham once and for all.

But ultimately Dent transforms into Two-Face and then becomes a second villain running around in the plot. He has his own agenda, is making his own chaos, and isn't really tied into the Joker/mob plot we've been following anymore. It all becomes too much, and it takes way too much screen time to resolve it.

The conundrum is, I don't know quite what I'd wish to be pulled out. The Harvey Dent storyline is the actual emotional thrust of the whole affair. Really, it's his movie, a tale of his rise and fall. And yet, chalk it up to writing, acting, or just plain lack of time, when the fall actually does come and Harvey Dent becomes Two-Face, he stops being interesting. I found myself not believing the transformation. Yes, he'd been through a trauma... but why again was he blaming Gordon and not the Joker for this? Pure insanity? Then how about giving us any hints before the transformation that he's prone to such a thing?

Then there's the Joker storyline. Sadly, I think when you get right down to it, this is the meaningless storyline of this movie. The Joker spreads chaos as a means of ultimately setting up the Harvey Dent transformation. But I think there could have been a one-villain movie around Dent where the mob was solely responsible for what happens to him, thus cleaning up the clutter.

And yet, I kind of don't want to see that movie either, because Heath Ledger's performance as The Joker is the best thing about the movie. Every scene he's in is electric. "Watch me make this pencil disappear" is probably the single best villain moment I've ever seen in a movie. Whenever he's off-screen, you're impatiently waiting for him to return. Whenever he's on-screen, you're legitimately tense most of the time, believing he really could be capable of anything.

So ultimately, you've got a pretty tasty stew with too many ingredients. And they crowd out other material too, as a result -- for example, there weren't nearly as many strong moments between Bruce Wayne and Alfred in this film as there were in the first.

Having now gone on this long, and mostly negatively, about the movie, you'd probably expect a really bad mark. But the thing is, if you can get past the bloated length of the movie, and ignore the fact that all the pieces don't quite hang together right, those pieces themselves are outstanding.

As I said, Heath Ledger is beyond incredible. The rest of the cast is great as well. Gary Oldman in particular steps up from an already ace performance the first time around. And Maggie Gyllenhaal shines in taking over the Katie Holmes role from the first film, basically shoring up the only "weak link" in the stellar recurring cast of this series.

Nearly all the action sequences work great and get the blood racing. (I'd say only an unnecessary "Batman vs. a SWAT Team" beat near the end fails, and that only due to logic -- wouldn't a simple radio/phone call have gotten the job done?)

So, lots to praise. But ultimately, I can't simply ignore the overcrowded nature of this tale, and I end up rating it a B. (This puts it just a peg below the B+ I gave the first one.)

Though as someone suggested today, if I rate a "comic book movie" a B, then any comic book fan is probably going to frakking love it.