Leaguepodcast Presents: The Alfred Letters - Vol. 1, Part 4

Clay and I have been writing some letters about one of my favorite topics: The Dark Knight, without even knowing that it just turned 15! It’s almost old enough to drive!

You can check out Clay’s letters to me on his Substack, and you should seriously think about subscribing while you’re there. Click this!

I Think This Is Great! with Clay N. Ferno

You can read my response to his first letter here. But I hope you did that already. We’re posting sooooo many links about this. Anyway, here is my latest go round. Let us know what you think, and if you like our wit and wisdom, you can listen to our podcast. We’ve been doing it for over a decade, so we hopefully have it down.

And now, on with the lettah…

Dearest Clay Namaste Ferno,

(I always wondered what the “N” stood for. Interesting.)

Now it is I who stand corrected, as you are indeed more tolerant of non-Apple product users than I previously gave you credit for. To quote Doc Holliday in Tombstone, “You’re an oak.”

Unfortunately, the very mention of the term “multiverse” these days causes my mind to drift into another reality where I don’t have to hear about multiverses. I don’t mean to poo-poo the idea completely, but it has become a story-telling crutch all too often in my entertainment lately. It’s fine when it is done well, but too much can definitely water down the concept (even more than the afore-mentioned Starbucks iced tea), and I must say, it takes away some of the drama. Sure, The Joker blew up Rachel Dawes in the Nolanverse, but are there a million other universes where she and Bruce Wayne are living happily ever after? Perhaps, unless that was considered a touchstone moment, or wherever Michael Keaton called them in The Flash. 

See? The mind reels…

But to concentrate on this universe, I agree that it is good practice to examine how a story makes us feel, and if The Dark Knight Trilogy, and The Dark Knight, specifically, harkens us back to certain comics from our younger days. Strangely enough, as a Marvel Guy, I basically started reading Batman comics regularly about 12 years ago, and I still consider myself a rookie when it comes to Bat lore. I cannot point to one specific issue that these movies bring to the forefront of my memory. And I see that as a good thing. In fact, I don’t see Heath Ledger’s Joker as necessarily being inspired by any previous version of the character. As you pointed out, his version is now the one that all others will be compared to. I’m sure Ledger read Dark Knight Returns, The Killing Joke, and certainly The Man Who Laughs, and took what he felt he could use and put it in his toolbox. To me, that is what makes this more than just a “comic book movie.” It is a great movie (even Variety thinks so), but also a measuring stick for all Batman movies that will be made from now on. As The Joker points out in my favorite interrogation scene, “You’ve changed things, forever.” Maybe that line was intentionally put in there by Nolan or his brother because they knew that they were making something special. Is that the right way to look at things? Should all Batman stories be able to exist on their own? Maybe. But before you start that debate, go watch Jared Leto fumble around as The Joker and tell me that he’s not a hundred times worse than Heath Ledger. (I know, I know. Studio intervention, blah, blah, blah. But he sucked.)

As you point out, this isn’t just about The Joker (even though it’s hard for me to not talk about him), and this version of Bruce Wayne does suffer the most, physically and emotionally. The first time we see him out of costume in the movie, he is stitching himself up after being attacked by dogs (“really big dogs.”) He is still trying to figure out the whole Batman thing himself, and yet, he has copycats in hockey pads going around trying to stop crime, so he has changed things. And then when Joker figures out that there’s something between Batman and Dent’s “little bunny,” Rachel, that’s when Batman gets mauled emotionally. And yet, he finishes the job of saving the people of Gotham, stopping The Joker and Two-Face, and even taking the blame for the latter’s crimes, and it is only in the next movie when we learn how much Rachel’s death really fucked him up. And while most sequels would have the hero rise from the ashes in the first act, Dark Knight Rises shows how insufficient a Batman with no cartilage in his knees can be. It isn’t until the third act when he defeats Bane, and even then he needs a lot of help. 

The good thing is, with all the trauma that Bruce Wayne goes through, the death of his parents is brought up the least in this trilogy when compared to almost any other Batman project. I’m sure it bothers Bruce Wayne on a daily basis, but the audience doesn’t have to hear about it. It’s a very “comic book thing” to have the origin of the hero repeated ad nauseum, but in the story that Nolan was telling, we didn’t need to know what Thomas Wayne got up to. The guy has been dead for almost 30 years in this universe. The audience wants to know about the here and now.

I could go on about this movie for pages and pages, about the helplessness of Jim Gordon as he tries to always do the right thing in the face of rampant police corruption, about the great Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox actually helping Batman capture the mob accountant instead of just giving him his wonderful toys, and of course, the fall of Harvey Dent, Gotham’s white knight, which not only describes the character but gives the title more meaning, rather than it being just a Batman nickname. There is so much going on in this movie, but at no point did I feel like it was too much. There are rumors that the idea was to make this a much different story, and have Joker come back in the next part of the trilogy, and have Two-Face be the main villain, and even having it split, like they do with so many movies these days, into Dark Knight Rises Parts 1 and 2. Obviously, Ledger’s untimely death played some part in the decision not to do that, but in a way, this is the movie we got, and this is the movie Gotham, and all of us, deserves. If I knew someone who had never seen a Batman movie and had no knowledge of who he was, I feel like I could show them The Dark Knight and whether they liked it or not, I would be secure in the knowledge that I showed them the best one, and also a great piece of cinema. But come on, if they didn’t like it, then they’re an idiot.

That’s about all I have, but if you like, we can certainly carry on what The Joker would call the “Good Cop-Bad Cop Routine.” I’m just going to need an iced tea. No water.

--D--