Darwin attributed biological evolution to natural selection and adaptations to an environment. The latter proviso is most important though because of its social and physiological implications. A famous person may seem to change their outward personality to keep in line with what is popular and so on. A fictitious character that has existed in many incarnations for a long period of time may change dramatically in any number of ways, such as appearance, personality, origin, motivation, etc. This is the case with Batman and the characters that comprise his mythos. The Dark Knight is his latest incarnation and probably the most daring outside of his comic mythology.
The reason why The Dark Knight is Batman's ballsiest cinematic incarnation yet, is attributable to a numbers factors. Some of them include: Heath Ledger and Aaron Eckhart's exceptional portrayals as the prominent villains in the film, the cinematography and the production design of the film itself, the testing of morals and duties to fellow human beings and the juxtaposition of good versus evil and how blurry the line can be between the two. However, all of these reasons (and more) add up to something that may not seem immediately special or important. What The Dark Knight truly is, is an evolution of a character and his accompanying mythology that has been tuned for a very, very contemporary audience and their quick edit-tastes, like a Formula 1 race car is for a race.
This is not a Batman from the comics of the 1940's and 1950's, this is not the comical Batman of TV from the 1960's and it most certainly isn't the Batman of the 1980's and 1990's. The Dark Night is Batman on steroids. It is a conglomeration of great filmmaking that makes blatantly clear that comic book movies can be made into real movies, not just gimmicky movies. This movie felt like the look and feel of Michael Mann's Heat (which inspired the director of The Dark Knight), the action Zach Snyder's 300 and the villainy of Hannibal Lecter (with no limits, mind you) were all tossed into a blender, ground up and poured into a production that answers only to its fans. By fans, I mean the Batman fans of today, tomorrow and a few of yesterday. As I said before, this is a contemporary Batman, one that clearly demonstrates the guided evolution of a character which has been tailor-made to make current movie goers swoon.
The evolution of the modern cinematic Batman has not been, for lack of a better description, well thought out. Tim Burton's spin on the mythology of Batman was perfect for the decade it was made in. He nailed the dark aspects of the mythology and made it so interesting and so much fun, that it was comic book movie perfection. Joel Schumacher continued to make Batman fun, but had a little (or a lot, it's hard to tell) too much fun with Batman that the gimmicks became the centerpiece in his films and the mythology got left behind. The only thing the Schumacher Batman films are good for is a good romp with the perfect popcorn film. It's totally understandable why there had not been a new Batman film for so long, it was the damn nipple suits!
Christopher Nolan's vision of Batman and his universe is wholly different. The Nolan Batman is mature and conflicted and the universe he occupies is menacing, dangerous and uncertain. Nolan brought the grittiness to Batman films that the mythology required to succeed in the 21st century. He and his fellow filmmakers nursed the evolution of the character and the mythology to the point that the mythology itself, not just the Batman character alone, became one tough sonofabitch that kicks major comic book movie ass. Nolan would not have been able to create something so rich and raw had there not been extraordinary source material to tap into from the last few decades. What began in the 1960's as an attempt to make Batman grittier and less campy, efforts which later blossomed in the mid-1980's as the pinnacle Batman character development, gave Nolan plenty of material to sculpt a Batman universe for a new millennium. It is that later mythology that could possibly rival Tolkien's Middle-Earth in sheer quantity and depth. Nolan used that vast repertoire to great effect and delivered the ideal origin of Batman in Batman Begins and now he has given us the consequences of that creation in The Dark Knight.
The Dark Knight had so much hype surrounding its release that it is hard to believe that it could truly live up to it. Batman Begins gave us the true next generation of comic book films and what they should be, not just what they can be. It raised the bar very high. With The Dark Knight, the bar has been raised so high, I doubt it will be matched anytime soon. In the past few years, there has been great potential in comic book movies, but less than a handful have delivered the goods that have matched the hope and expectations of fans. V for Vendetta was one of those films for me, and it bummed me out it wasn't as good as I'd hoped. What The Dark Knight is, is what V for Vendetta should have been; a fast-paced, loud, no-holds-barred (almost) exciting event, which was and is above all, fun to experience. The Dark Knight offers one of those rare respites from reality that actually is a window into reality itself.
That last point is what great moviemaking is all about, a vacation from reality. Movies are meant take us somewhere that is not what we are used to or expecting. Movies should surprise us and make us think and analyze what is going on during the movie; and if the movie is really adept, you may leave the theatre still pondering what happened in the film. The Dark Knight has had that effect on me and this short essay is the present end result of my experience with the film. If anything truly great comes out of the Batman franchise, it is that I hope that the Nolan Batman films will be remembered as the thinking person's Batman films. The Dark Knight had enough plot twists upon its conclusion that anyone would walk out of the theater wondering any number of things. By making us think about our break from reality, we can sometimes have the opportunity to experience a clairvoyant moment that offers us a spin on our reality. That fictitious reality that movies exist in can enhance our own understanding of the reality and the world we exist in. That result is something very cool to feel and I hope that it had and will have the same effect on all those who see it.
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