I am very upset with Hanson's review.

Anyone who has heard me ramble on and on about how well the movie maneuvers through all the interesting facets of one of the greatest comic heroes ever knows that I loved The Dark Knight. However! What is most frustrating about Mr. Le's scathing write up for the current movie of the year is that I now have to counterpoint the review instead of just going on with assuming that everyone loves the movie and being able to talk about it's tie ins to The Killing Joke and The Man Who Laughs. I was so excited to go back and reread these comics and see if even they can hold their own against this milestone epic, but alas, it is not to be as I must once again postpone more exciting endeavors to instead revisit old battlegrounds and set right this egregious error made by my roommate.

Let's start off with an easy one.

"Entire combat sequences are suffocated by series of jarring cuts, split-second angle changes and extreme, claustrophobic close-ups to the action. This tactic is usually deployed in order to mask the lack of actual hand-to-hand combat experience of actors and stuntmen, and to simulate the presence of choreography."

I will admit that if I was forced to pick out my favorite action movies ever based solely on the fightscenes, there are several others that would beat out The Dark Knight but it is hardly what I would consider second-rate. The fighting I felt improved drastically over the first movie, finally I felt that Batman was moving and fighting in the way that he would actually have to, as opposed to what he was doing the first movie, dropping down on some sort of rope and pulley system to sneak up on goons and knocking out the lights to save Nolan the hassle of shooting actual footage. Nolan's movie is rooted very heavily in realism and the first movie sometimes had him moving and fighting in ways that seemed more hassle than it would be worth. I did feel that the S.W.A.T. team scene was a bit awkward, but it was more due to the needless cuts back and forth from SONAR vision. I think if I saw that scene again and knew what to look for I would not be nearly as disoriented, and while a movie shouldn't have to be watched twice to enjoy, I never thought it was unenjoyable to begin with, merely a mediocre scene in the middle of several spectacular ones. (Note: I did indeed watch the movie again last night and the fights weren't as jarring, however, the S.W.A.T. team rope trick is still a bit out of nowhere.)

Additionally, there is a word that Hanson uses to criticize the fighting style of this movie that I find a bit interesting. He laments the movie for not properly conveying what has always been seen a bit of a "mythical" fighting style in the comic books. I think that what he forgets is how deeply rooted in realism that this movie is supposed to be. Sure they pull out some crazy plot devices like the SONAR and the fact that people supposedly wouldn't blow up each other's boats (I mean seriously, you're gonna die for some criminals? Here give me the damn remote) but beyond that the Nolan's seem pretty determined to make Batman something that could exist. They do not entirely disregard the mythical sense of the character though, they just make it something that only exists in the wild imagination of criminals and civilians alike.

MOVING ON!

"My first gripe has to do with the condensed focus on both Christian Bale’s Batman and Bruce Wayne."

This complaint is a bit odd I think mostly because Hanson spent the last few paragraphs before this statement raving, rightfully so, about the amazing performances given by both Aaron Eckhart and Heath Ledger. While I do understand the idea that the titular character in the movie should be heavily focused on and sympathized with, I feel like I do not need Christian Bale on the screen the entire time for this to occur. If someone came into this movie without having seen Batman Begins they may not be able to enjoy it as much, but as someone who has seen the first movie a few times I feel that I know Bruce Wayne well enough that I don't need to see the pain and torment he is going through first hand, I know how he will react and how he will feel without having Batman on screen telling me how sad he is. Nolan obviously took a bit of a risk by taking the limelight off of Wayne for this movie but the performances that were turned in by the other stars made the gamble pay off several times over. I should also note that before I used to think Gary Oldman was always out of place and awkward as Jim Gordan, however, after watching the movie a second time appreciated the new side he has brought to this character, he seems more vulnerable and yet somehow more resilient than ever. His monologue at the end initially comes off as a bit out of place at first, but that can be excused for the way that it ties the entire movie together so beautifully. Tell me you didn't have a "oh shit" moment when you finally pieced together the title and what it really meant.

"The biggest qualm I have with Nolan’s intentions in making a brainy (albeit ham-fisted) summer spectacle comes at the end of the film, where Batman has apparently pegged every last possible nuance of masked heroism and vigilantism in the span of four villains. Here, Batman speaks with an unrealistic amount of foresight (something which took scribes decades to flesh out and his comic book alter ego an equal amount of time to realize), and the soul of an entire mythology is breathlessly compressed into a few lines of forced dialogue."

I automatically win this argument because obviously Hanson was even paying attention to this scene well enough to notice that it was Gordon talking, not Batman, and as I said earlier, I love this monologue. His complaint about how quickly Gordon has surmised what took writers and characters decades to get to is not fair at all considering the first few decades of Batman stories had him traveling to other solar systems to meet alternate reality Batmans and time traveling to joust with the Joker. His mythos grew more in the mind of the readers at this time and was never fully explored until more ambitious writers came on board to work out what really makes the character work. I agree that Nolan did force Gordon to lay it out just a little bit too pretty for the average viewer, but I don't think that is a bad thing for a summer blockbuster where the average viewer probably wouldn't spend two seconds trying to piece together the themes unless someone gives them a little push in the right direction. Nolan has to balance keeping the average viewer informed with the ideas he is presenting while still not giving you the cliff-notes to the movie, it's a tricky thing to make a movie that people of all different types can enjoy and there has to be concessions made somewhere.

While Hanson feels that this movie layers too much on top of itself to be the best comic movie ever, I feel that if that were true, it would not be having the type of runaway success that it has been enjoying for the last two weeks. If the average summer blockbuster fan can get through such a dense and thoughtful film, then in my estimation there is not too much going on. The balance throughout the film is amazing to me, it moves organically and contains one of the longest climaxes I've ever enjoyed without ever making me feel like I was having to work for it.

All in all, it's still better than X-2. Sorry Hanson  :(