seriousfic

Taking this point by point instead of the squeeplosion here (and, hey, spoilers)…

The Joker – I know people have been saying that he has more of a “rise to power” than a character arc, but I think he has a bit of a trajectory. He starts off as just a fucked-up bank robber and ends up as the clown prince of crime. This really is sort of a love story, albeit a one-sided one, between Joker and Batman (that thankfully manages to be more “EWW! HOMICIDAL MANIAC!” than “EWW! GAY PERSON!”). Joker first meets Batman at the party and notices that he has feelings for Rachel, then he’s even further beguiled by the fact Batman lets people die rather than taking off his mask (not your typical boy scout hero). Joker even points out his character development, TWICE, first when he tells Batman that “you complete me” and then when he explicitly says he no longer wants to kill Batman… he just wants to “bat him around” as Black Cat might say.

As signaled by burning his half of the mob’s life savings (which makes the entire Lao subplot a bit of a red herring… wouldn’t a better alternative be to explain that he can now use all that money to buy explosives and bribes enough to plant all the bombs he uses in the third act?), Joker has transcended the petty motivations of a common criminal and is now all about chaos, to the point where he’ll risk his own life to corrupt Harvey Dent --notably, this shows Joker’s literally incredible grasp of the human psyche. He knows that Dent is so fanatical that Two-Face will let him go if the coin goes up right. That’s a far cry from the cowering bank robber in the first scene. In fact, I believe that Joker is initially planning to take his half of the money for killing Batman… it’s after he meets Batman that he realizes material wealth is unsatisfying. He needs to break Batman, even if it results in his own death. Batman’s rebuttal to this, while dramatically necessary, kinda doesn’t work after his pragmatic dismissal of Ra’s in the first movie. “I’ll never kill you, Joker! I’ll just wait until you’re put in circumstances in which you might be killed, then leave you to your fate. I’M BATMAN!”

Of course, I like both, since we know both that Ra’s was too dangerous to let live and we have no reason to believe that Joker won’t stay locked up in Arkham. Now, when it’s Batman 55 and the Joker’s escaped a couple dozen times, then I’ll want to know why Batman doesn’t just “accidentally” let the Joker slip off a rooftop.

In his first meeting with the Mob, the Joker is neurotic and fidgety, even doing the classic stammering bit he did as a failed stand-up comedian in Killing Joke. By the end of the movie, he’s completely confident and overpowering in his interactions with the Chechen. So even though they held off on a lot of his “tricks” (especially Smilex gas), I believe we see the birth of the kind of character who would use things like exploding cigars and hand buzzers to kill people.

Two-Face – Yes, he was rushed. But Two-Face’s power is basically that he’s a guy with a really bad scar (you’d think that would make him less of a threat than your average mook, since Batman could just throw some alcohol on his bad side and BAM, he’s done). His gold status comes from the fact that he used to be a good guy. Comic writers realize that and amp up his good-guy status, to the point where he used to be the Bat-BFF (I myself gave him a military background, but making him more ‘electable’ and more of a credible threat to Bats).

Here, he’s not Bruce’s friend (although Bruce admires him in a very “guy love” kind of way… if you’d told me that JOKER would end up the big Bruce-squeeze in fandom a week ago, I’d’ve laughed in your face) so much as a symbol for hope; thus, his villainous power comes from that symbol being tarnished. So although rushed, he gets to go as Two-Face as the Nolanverse can allow without doing clichéd things like dialing 1-800-HIRE-A-THUG and saying things like “You’re two late, Batman!” as he robs the Second National Bank on Twenty-Two Street.

What’s really interesting is that, for all the criticism of his heel turn as just “No Rachel and no face make Harvey something-something” “Go crazy?” “DON’T MIND IF I DO!”

…that was long…

For all that criticism, it’s explicitly his zeal for justice -- perfectly represented as he explains his scheme to jail half the city’s criminals… he gazes off into the middle distance with Barack Obama utopianism, not hearing Mayor Eyeliner over the sound of how awesome Harvey Dent is -- that’s twisted into his evil vigilantism. Joker is the kind of guy who would easily be found not guilty by reason of insanity, so Harvey lets him go scot-free. He can’t cope with the idea that his philosophy of life is inadequate, that bad things happen to good people, that Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer keep making movies, so he dove-tails into a fanatical obsession with “fairness.” From his perspective, Batman and Gordon saved him because he was Gotham’s white knight (and if there’s a third movie, they really need a climax where Bruce/Batman explains all that to talk Harvey down), so he needs to punish them by becoming a monster.

As much as there’s a clamor for Two-Face as the villain of Batman III (I’m partial to the idea of David Tennant as the Riddler myself), it’d be hard to see where the character can go without turning him into a ridiculous gimmick. In small doses, his coin thing is pretty cool, but for an entire movie it’d have to be both consistent, dramatically interesting, and grow organically out of his portrayal in TDK. Tough order.

Rachel Dawes – Come off it, fanthings, you got Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain back, you can handle the occasional female character dying. Yes, even if it’s to further the emotional arc of a (male) main character. That’s why they call them supporting characters. They even have an Oscar specifically for that. The only thing I consider sexist in TDK is that of the two corrupt cops on Harvey’s hit-list, the old white guy gets killed, while the pretty Hispanic girl (who only delivered an innocent woman to a gruesome demise to support her dying mother… I mean, JESUS CHRIST) gets a mere pistol-whipping. Who knew blind chance was so politically correct? If their fates had been reversed, it would’ve made Harvey look like far more of a psycho and give the movie that much more of an edge.

Plus, old white guy dirty cop could’ve been Bullock. Pick up the third movie with him as a private investigator and tie him into Batman’s redemption plot (because you know there has to be one).

In other words, not only did I not have a problem with a woman dying in TDK, but I wanted more women to die. Hello, Fandom Wank, I need you to come over here right now, I have an opinion that jibes with the mainstream…

Back on topic. What’s really interesting is that if you think about it, Rachel’s idea that Bruce Wayne needs to be Batman must’ve come about when she saw him as Batman fighting the Joker (presumably, the first time she saw him both in combat and while knowing that he was Bruce). A shot of Batman enjoying knocking the Joker around and Rachel reacting with horror to the Bat’s brutal fighting style would’ve been great foreshadowing for her eventual decision to leave Bruce and marry Harvey.

The really unfortunate part is that the Bruce/Rachel ship depended on Batman Begins to sell it. This worked in Spider-Man 2, where you wanted Peter and Mary-Jane to get together because you knew from the first Spider-Man that they’d be perfect together. With Bruce/Rachel as the Hong Kong knock-off of that (complete with metafictionally appropriate GweMJ death… thank God there weren’t any Joker babies), all the Bruce/Rachel stuff comes off as just tacky. Especially when Harvey and Rachel have much more chemistry. Maybe Catwoman will finally make for a compelling love interest and a strong female character. Plus, the idea of Batman having to deal with the vigilantes he’s inspired is one that’s brought up in TDK only as world-building and then never dealt with. Because once you get right down to it, as soon as you have vigilantes that are the equal of Batman and don’t place themselves above the law by killing (as you might do by carrying shotguns around), “your armor isn’t as cool as mine and you don’t have a Catmobile” stops being an effective argument.

In case you were wondering, yes, Catwoman would be a far better addition to the franchise than Robin. And not just because of hot women in catsuits and Robin only really being interesting when he gets away from Batman and joins the Teen Titans/Young Justice.

Batman – Well, if there’s a choice being having Batman being a compelling character because his villain’s weak or Batman being less showy because the villains are SO FRIKKIN’ STRONG, I’m gonna have to go with the strong villains. The Batsuit really looks weird in full light, so I’m a little bewildered by the decision to set the entire confrontation with the Joker in a brightly-lit room. Plus, his “guttural” voice hasn’t gotten any better (when I’m a millionaire, I’m going to pay Kevin Conroy to dub over the Batman parts. Yes, it’s stupid and fannish, but you’d watch it, admit it). And there’s the weird decision to make their first talky confrontation into Joker’s big speechifying, so Batman never really gets a chance to rebut Joker’s arguments until the ferries. Even then, it’s mostly “you diseased maniac, you’ll never get away with this.” As much story sense as it makes to put the Killing Joke’s corruption onto Harvey Dent, having the Joker actually win on that exchange completely invalidates the whole point of the story. Batman’s victory in TDK is much more Pyrrhic than anything else.

Criticism – Did they really need to have Batman and Rachel have A Moment while Joker was doing God knows what to a party full of Bruce’s friends?

Totally fannish peev, but shouldn’t Batman use his Batarangs once? There was so much grapple-gun action in this that they could’ve given him Spider-Man’s webshooters.

Gordon’s “death” and return were for the motherfucking win, but “I had to protect my family”? Seriously? How did Gordon faking his death protect his family? If there’d been a threat against them, even just a thirty-second scene of Gordon getting a phone call asking “How’s the family, Sarge?”, that sequence wouldn’t have been so nakedly drama for the sake of drama.

So, basically, for the third movie I want Catwoman to steal stuff and look hot while the Tenth Doctor does a Frank Gorshin impression. Although if history is any kind of teacher, Batman 3 will suck balls, with a lengthy scene where Bruce break-dances, followed by James Marsden exploding, maybe some Richard Pryor and a scene where Jim Carrey dry-humps a cane that looks like a question mark. Goddamnit, threequels...