Trolling #4: The Dark Knight SUCKS!

Even though the last of Christopher Nolan’s Batman films was released just last year, it’s already taken wholly for granted that the director’s three films are the natural and accepted rulers of the comic book movie firmament. When Batman Begins was released in 2005, it was quite a gamble for the studio, proving to be a stylistic and conceptual departure from the character we had previously seen in the films of Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher. The result was a colder and more procedural approach to Batman. Batman Begins made a decent amount of money at the box office (it had a $49 million opening weekend, according to Box Office Mojo), propelling goodwill toward the character back through the same roof it was propelled through in 1989.

When the film’s sequel, The Dark Knight, was released in 2008, it was an unmitigated commercial and critical success, making a whopping $158 million its opening weekend. What’s more, it was considered the new Single Most Important Movie Ever Made according to many of its fans. These days, The Dark Knight is considered a touchstone in genre cinema, and is widely hailed as one of the best superhero films ever made.

But this is Trolling, a series of articles devoted to ripping down everything that you love. And since this is Trolling – and it’s my explicit job to be the loathsome and obnoxious contrarian that I am – I will posit the following: The Dark Knight sucks. There were a lot of things (both big and small) terribly wrong with this film. With its flaws compiled, it may prove to you that Christopher Nolan’s beloved geek property is not the Holy Grail you think it is. Let’s raise some ire.  

 

The movie is well-remembered by everyone, and nearly all the critics who saw it praised it endlessly. The Dark Knight, indeed, has become one of those assumed high water marks of the superhero genre, one that will never be surpassed. Perhaps next time you launch into a tirade about how much you like The Dark Knight, though, you should reconsider that it has perhaps, at the very least, been outstripped by its sequel, and never reached the subtle moody highs of the 1989 film.

Until next week, let the hate mail flow.  


Witney Seibold is a featured contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel, co-host of The B-Movies Podcast and co-star of The Trailer Hitch. You can read his weekly articles Trolling, Free Film School and The Series Project, and follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind. If you want to buy him a gift (and I know you do), you can visit his Amazon Wish List

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