'The Dark Knight' is Not Perfect
...and I expected it to get a 100% RT rating
Tomorrow I will be going to see The Dark Knight for the second time. I don't say this to rub it in your face, but to let you in on how much I enjoyed this film. I am seeing it in IMAX again, something I recommend all of you do if there is an IMAX screen near you. If you aren't sure if there is an IMAX near you here is the list of IMAX theaters around the country.
Tomorrow will also be the first time critics here in Seattle, that did not attend the press junket, will be able to see the film, which means I can finally talk to a few folks about it. Our Box-Office Oracle, Laremy Legel, is among them and just yesterday he pointed out to me how the film was currently 100% on RottenTomatoes. I told him, "And it's going to stay that way, the film is too good not to." My rationale here was not that the film is some masterpiece of perfection (even though I gave it an "A+"), because I know some people will not like it as much as I did and I actually spoke to a couple of fellas from UK's Channel 4 that didn't like it already. However, I didn't think a truly negative review would hit the scenes that would tip the scales and take away Batman's Teflon RT rating, but that has all changed.
New York Magazine's David Edelstein has posted the first negative review, referring to the film in his opening graph saying, "[Then] the novelty wears off and the lack of imagination, visual and otherwise, turns into a drag. The Dark Knight is noisy, jumbled, and sadistic. Even its most wondrous vision—Batman's plunges from skyscrapers, bat-wings snapping open as he glides through the night like a human kite—can't keep the movie airborne. There's an anvil attached to that cape."
Edelstein's review is a fair one, though, it doesn't seem like he is trying to be the guy that didn't like the film. He criticizes the film's villains saying, "They play as if they'd been penned by Oxford philosophy majors trying to tone up a piece of American pop—to turn it into an uncivil Shavian dialogue, Don Juan in Hell with mutilations and truck crashes."
He recognizes the massive size of the film, especially in IMAX, but then says, "The Dark Knight is all fits and starts—fitfully suspenseful, fitfully scary, one jerky episode after another with jolts of brutality to keep you revved up. When Burton's Batman came out, some prominent critics griped that the film was too violent for kids. Wait'll they get a load of this."
Then he plays a card I didn't expect, he is the first critic (that I have read) to say that Heath Ledger's death affected his opinion of Ledger's performance. "I couldn't take my eyes off him, but in truth, I found the performance painful to watch. Scarier than what the Joker does to anyone onscreen is what Ledger must have been doing to himself—trying to find the center of a character without a dream of one."
That's how he ends his review. There is no grade associated with it, but it is obviously not a favorable review, even though it has aspects that are sure to delight fans even though they didn't delight Edelstein. The film is dark, loud and intense. Ledger is phenomenal and if you don't try and play psychologist his death will not affect your viewing of the film as it did Edelstein. You can read the complete review here.
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