Property of Warner Brothers.
Yesterday, I walked out of the theater at a loss for words. I hated the film I had waited four years to see. It was a travesty, an ugly over-blown, Michael Bay-esqe, one-toned pile without the beautiful spectacle. And after what happened in Aurora, Colorado, I hate the film even more. I hate it for what it is going to cause: reactionaries on the left who will use it as capital to clamp down on firearms, neo-idiots on the right who will say it happened because of too much violence in movies, TV, and video games (uh oh, looks like Holmes liked role playing games too), and a government which is going to require more security in malls and theaters after this massacre. Salman Rushdie, his fingers sore after spewing bile on Twitter about America's gun laws, seems to have forgotten Norway just last year, a place famous for its gun control which also suffered a major national calamity.
But why did this happen in the first place? Nolan's version of Batman has hit a chord with people around the world. He represents hope, a vigilante authority who strives to protect us against the agents of chaos. But in our society, it is perhaps the ataxia, the discord, that is more appealing. We can see it in the quiet works of Werner Herzog, specifically Grizzly Man, or Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. People are simply fed up with this place and are seeking a way out. They want to embrace the chaos. It attracts them like an addictive drug, a charming rogue, or Satan at the crossroads himself. Perhaps the better question isn't how many laws we should pass on gun ownership and manufacture, how our entertainment is affecting our children's mind, or what kind of naked body scanners we should place in our cities, but what is wrong with our society that it caused a promising young neuroscience student, one who had received a $26,000 federal grant from the National Institutes of Health, a part of the Department of Health and Human Services, to go on a shooting spree at the biggest movie opening of the year? A movie that specifically brings up themes of control and freedom.
Bale's Batman. Property of Warner Brothers.
The first two movies had already rung true with so many audiences. They played off our society's desires and angst. Chaos. Fear. Death.
Death is not only a theme in this franchise, but a specter that swirls around it like so many bats on the movies' logos. Heath Ledger's performance in The Dark Knight hit a new macabre high. Not only because of his grungy, hilarious, terrifying, and sexy performance, but also because we were watching a dead man. The spirit of chaos, the trickster spirit, had performed his greatest joke. He had killed off the soul who had communed with him so closely, making the world awe at Ledger's walking corpse. It is a Faustian fable. When a person strolls too close to perfection, he is going to get burned.
Ledger's Joker was the perfect representation of sexy madness. Like the Bacchanalia in ancient Greece, he was a spirit to be communed with, begging you to let go of society's made-up rules and embrace the insanity within. He taunted the 'rule-makers', pleading with Gotham's citizens to opt out of their constructed game, and did this by pointing out the absurdity of it all, a theme epitomized in the Joker's talk with Dent in the hospital. "I'm like a dog chasing its tail," he said, "I don't know what I would do if I caught it!" It is this thirst for new order from unorder that is also symbolized with the likes of Tyler Durden and "Breaking Bad"'s Walter White. White, for his part, shows us another man literally sick to death of the modern world. Eventually, his evil acts spread like a disease, poisoning the whole community. One wonders if Nolan's Batman series hasn't had a similar result. Several actors and workers involved with the movies' production were accidentally killed violently, and it was around the time of the second film's launch that Bale was arrested for attacking his mother and sister. And now this.
About 20 minutes into TDKR's midnight showing in Aurora, Colorado, a man opened fire. He was armed with AR-15 assault rifle, a Remington 870 shotgun, two .40-caliber Glock handguns and covered in a suit of armor many had assumed was cosplay. It was the worst mass shooting in the United States' history. Children, teenagers, and even a baby were feared among the casualties. 12 dead. 58 wounded. Many others reported irritated eyes because of the tear gas he had opened his assault with. The man, James Holmes, was from San Diego and attending school in Denver for a PHD in neuroscience. He surrendered willfully to the police when they arrived on the scene. When asked his name, he replied, "The Joker, enemy of Batman."
The Joker...
Police rushed to his Aurora home. Descending up the stairs wearing protective gear, the shooter had rigged his 850-square-foot, third-floor apartment with chemicals and explosives. An official later noted that Holmes' death-trap "seemed to mirror a chaotic state of mind." Waist-high trip wires were set up across the living room, one strategically placed against the front door. If a visitor had accidentally set the trap off, 30 live grenades would have exploded under their feet. Holmes' had improvised these particular bombs, filling empty jars with "explosive liquids and .223-and-.40-caliber bullets" which were connected to "'control box' in the kitchen" (LA Times).
The impending blast would have probably also ignited 10 gallons of gasoline which were nearby. At least that's what appears was Holmes' intention. "Overall," the official noted, "[...] if the devices [...] had gone off, the fireball alone would have blown up and consumed the entire third floor of the apartment building." Five buildings were soon evacuated. Many Batman-related paraphernalia decorated Holmes' flat. A Batman poster and mask were discovered on the scene. More booby traps were placed in another room, and connected to a lethal combination of acids. Because of the danger, evidence such as a computer and chemical compounds were carefully taken away. People wishing to collect their belongings from the evacuated area were told to hold off until the grounds could be fully secured.
This attack was reminiscent of the chaos The Joker championed in The Dark Knight, especially his followers' killing of Rachel Dawes and mutilation of Harvey Dent.
However, there was a strange inconsistency in Holmes: why did he warn the police that his home was booby trapped? Why did he so easily surrender? If Holmes' goal was the total over-running of senses through death and destruction, he apparently had had a last minute change of heart.
Holmes' face was covered in a red towel as he was led into the Arapahoe Detention Center. His hair and clothing were already red. It was clothing which had been hidden from the movie goers under a suit of ballistic gear. His legs were shackled. His hands were cuffed behind him. "He's spitting at everything," one of the inmates later told a reporter. "He was spitting at the door and spitting at the guards. [...] Dude was acting crazy." Holmes was locked in solitary confinement and put on suicide watch. His actions had off-put some of the prisoners, to say the least. Many talked of killing him. Holmes ate his meal in the morning, however, a breakfast of grits and sausage. His windows were blocked with tape. "Let’s just say he hasn’t shown any remorse," one of the jail's employees reported, "He thinks he's acting in a movie."
And madness was sweeping across the nation. A Maine man turned himself in a day after seeing the The Dark Knight Rises, telling the authorities that he was on his way to kill a former employer. After searching his car, police found an "AK-47 assault weapon, four handguns, ammunition and news clippings about the mass shooting that left 12 people dead early Friday" (Yahoo News). In New Jersey, 100 were evacuated from the Edgewater Multiplex after an emergency exist was opened. A man had stood up, walked outside through the door and spoke to another person, then went back in. After the authorities arrived and the opener refused to step forward, the showing was ended. Another was canceled in Norwalk, California when a male raised his cell phone up and shouted, "Does anyone have a gun? [...] I should go off like in Colorado." Shots were heard outside another theater in Florida. There were no casualties in the incident.
The country was going crazy.
The famous director Peter Bogdanovich blamed modern entertainment, writing that "violence on the screen has increased tenfold. It's almost pornographic. In fact, it is pornographic. Video games are violent, too. It's all out of control. I can see where it would drive somebody crazy," and America's gun laws, "Anytime there's a massacre, which is almost yearly now, we say, 'Well, it's not the guns. Guns don't kill people. People kill people' and all that bullshit from the NRA. Politicians are afraid to touch it because of the right wing. And nothing ever changes. We're living in the Wild West." The shooting has sparked an increase in gun sales across the nation. Buyers claimed, when prompted, that it was for protection from future shootings. Meanwhile, unrest in Anaheim has gone, for the most part, unreported by the press. Echoes of the Joker's speech from TDK about 'everything going as planned' comes to mind.
During his first court appearance the Monday after the shooting, Holmes looked despondant. Off-color humor was attempted in the press, many writing how the "Joker wasn't laughing now," but other observers noted his creepy appearance. Holmes stared down with tired eyes. He never said a word, his droopy head falling back and forth when spoken to. An appearance of remorse sometimes fluttered across his troubled face. However, it would quickly return to indifference, as if he didn't know what he had done. Later in the week, Holmes would ask a guard how the movie ended. A witness told a reporter of the event, "He was trying to look like he was sincerely curious. Like he had no idea why there was anything wrong with what he was saying. It was sick ... I think he’s trying real hard to act crazy.”
Smirking face of James Holmes, taken years earlier.
The Joker is an agent of chaos, and perhaps, if you peruse my older blogs on the magic of story-telling, a dangerous spirit who has the ability to possess people. I say this not as a lunatic, but as one who understands the power fictional characters have over people. When something really resonates, it becomes greater than just one person ever could be. Holmes was a kid perceptible to this possession. I know this because he did what he did.
Now the film franchise will have the ever-lasting burden of not only Ledger's death, but also the murder of the poor people inside that Colorado movie theater, and because of Holmes, we will never be able to look at the Joker the same way again either. This is not a symptom of the character's potency, but our society's attraction to him. We admire the Joker because there is something about him that we wish we could be. Leonard Shlain would make the link between the left brain's controlling ego and the need in society for a balancing madness. The more controlled the ego, the more uncontrolled the id. Thus, there is not something wrong with the Joker for existing, there is something wrong with us, our society. The people who paid for it with their lives were the people who loved him the most.
If the demonic spirit of the Joker is alive, surfing the paranoia and desires of our collective unconscious, he is getting his greatest laugh. Not only are the masses still knee-slapping and getting a thrill out of his dead puppet, Ledger, but now they are literally dying at his amphitheater alter. See them line up and perish in the name of pop chaos! In this regard, it may interest you what the mad author of one of the Joker's most iconic stories, "The Killing Joke", has to say on magic. In another example, Moore writes that "the way that people immerse themselves in alcohol, in drugs, in television, in any of the addictions that our culture throws up, can be seen as a deliberate attempt to destroy any connection between themselves and the responsibility of accepting and owning a higher Self and then having to maintain it.” The trickster is cackling in the night, making children afraid of the glow of the movie screen. He beckons them to him. He tempts them with anarchy, destruction, anonymousness. Yes, he is the 'man' that wants to watch the world burn.
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But before any of this entered by radar, I already hated the film.
Living on Guam gifted me the opportunity to see it a day earlier than I would have in the States. I excitedly got out of bed Friday morning and looked for movie times. It was Liberation Day tomorrow, so I knew every nerd and ding-bat alike was going to try and get in the theater. Luckily, a 2:45 showing was starting just down the street. After calling my friend Rob, I left in my borrowed vehicle. The anticipation was killing me. This was the movie I had been wanting to see all year, even when The Avengers, Spider-Man, and Prometheus opened. My heart started beating faster-- in Nolan, I trusted. After we arrived, Rob bought the tickets and I bought the food. The theater was cool, the sound system was working fine, and I was surrounded by a group of eager Chamorros and Haolies. I couldn't get the damn smile off my face.
The film opens with a thrilling plane action sequence that upped my high expectations even further. Bane's raspy voice sent chills down my spine, and I knew immediately who he was: Lord Humongous from Road Warrior. So, I thought at the time, Nolan is showing his cards early. He is finally going to go all out on his themes of order/anarchy. Mad Max, Batman style! The thing was, I knew something was off.
His vision is... the way he films scenes that should leave you in awe of the spectacle, of the architecture, of the image... it feels so small, so ashamed of its comic book origins. It was a feeling I got when Bruce goes to a masquerade party in an opulent house, full of fabulously dressed women and men. He should have shown it all. Pulled out, really let us see how decadent the place was. Give us a reason to hate the rich and root for the poor (an underclass never shown in the film). Instead, we get glimpses of it. Little snapshots of a cake, of a few people dancing. Why didn't he relish the image? Why couldn't he hold a camera shot for more than a few seconds? Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News, a man who can grate on me, said it best in a video for the Nerdist channel:
This was before he saw the film. His review after was scathing but is one of the few times I agree with Harry. I have never seen Fritz Lang's Metropolis, but I have watched the anime remake by Rintaro. I love that film because it shows the disgusting opulence of the elite, as well as the poor folks who live underground. The director does this not by telling but by showing. He lets the images linger, lets you absorb them through osmosis, not by screaming a message at you. It makes me wonder if the perfect director for a film like this would have been Alfonso Cuarón. His Children of Men is truly a revelation and plays with similar themes.
Nolan also suffers from not being able to change his tone. As a result, his characters fail to function as living, breathing people. They work well as symbols (possibly why his Joker is so embraced), but end up like chess pieces with confusing motivations. Nolan's films are in constant perma-climax mode. It's a tense experience. He cuts scenes up, chop, chop, making The Dark Knight Rises feel forced from the beginning. Films need to flow, weaving in and out of tense and calm scenes, to character building to action--without the the downs, the ups mean less. I can see parts of The Dark Knight Rises' script that would have afforded Nolan this opportunity, but he fails to realize them. Instead TDKR keeps going in high gear. This causes the movie to lose momentum. And many of the character beats end up feeling unearned, especially ones dealing with new characters (Miranda Tate, I am looking at you... figuratively). Others should have been left on the cutting room floor-- Anne Hathaway's Selina Kyle gave the film much needed levity, but her character was completely unnecessary for the plot. I was also confused by Gordon-Levitt's Blake. I like the actor but he added just one more moving piece that bogged down the movie's flow.
I have heard Michael Bay's films compared to a man screaming at you for three hours. This film is no different; however, it lacks Bay's willingness to show spectacle. He destroyed a whole city in Transformers 3 like I had never seen before (and couldn't even be beat by Whedon's The Avengers this summer).
Hardy's Bane, grabbing a policeman's hair during a riot scene. Property of Warner Brothers.
I was eager to love Tom Hardy's Bane. The reason why Lord Humongous terrified me in Mad Max was because the director allowed him to show his flamboyance. He stood before the beat-up, gas town, mocking its scared residents, calling them out, waving his hands around like he was in a Broadway play. Nolan seems to realize this. He gave both Murphy's Scarecrow and Ledger's Joker similar flares; however, I think he fails with Bane because this movie was too over-stuffed. If the plot had been cut down, Bane could have worked at least as well as the Scarecrow, but, instead, he is lost in the murk. A disappointment because what Hardy does is effective.
This film has interesting parallels with Carpenter's Escape from New York. Both have an island cordoned off from the rest of the country, taken over by thugs, and a hero who needs to break inside. Ultimately, I think that's what the film should have been about-- an opulent society that was overflowing with excess (echoed with the lines "this is peace time" but never brought through with the script), that the audience wanted to see thrown to its knees because of its vanity. The anarchist Bane then tears it apart piece by piece, and symbolically destroys order by breaking the Batman's back. The prisons are opened up. The audience gets glimpses of various war lords setting up shop around town, maybe some fan favorite villains. Thus the Joker's wish comes true and chaos reigns. It would have been a Post-Apocalytic film with a budget never before seen, featuring nerdom's favorite villains. Of course, in the end, Batman returns, saving the city from its twisted self. He takes back the various 'kingdoms' from Gotham's scum.
I can see these themes running through the film, but they are never brought to fruition. Ultimately, that's what makes Nolan's TDKR so frustrating. The pieces were in place to make this a capstone on a modern trilogy that high-lighted the failings of an age. Nolan's The Dark Knight deserved this. It was a movie which still fascinates people, as seen by the Ledger's Joker lasting relevance. As it is, TDKR is a crowded mess with a few rousing moments. It fails when it should have soared. Sony's The Amazing Spider-Man also had a wonderful opportunity to embody a group of people. Peter Parker could have been the perfect anarchic, punk-rock hero. Garfield has the look and humor, and it worked best when it was trying to be a comedy. I think a Spider-Man film should be just that, a comedy. Nolan's film, in turn, failed because it did not rise above its pedigree (heh, 'rise'). Nigel Andrews unfortunately had it right in a review for the Financial Times, saying, "The Dark Knight Rises [...] is pompous, oppressive, without humour or humans: a sort of giant plinth for which no one has remembered to make a statue." Nolan set up a massive goal for himself, a foundation was laid, and it's as if he decided to veer off in a new direction at the last moment, leaving the skeleton behind of an older film with the intentions of another.
Anne Hathaway's 'Selina Kyle'. Property of Warner Brothers.
When the final scene was over, I sat in my chair. I was overwhelmed and underwhelmed at the same time. Nolan had had an abortion on screen in front of me. It wasn't terrible, but that's almost what made it terrible. It completely failed on what it could have been. This was the most pissed I have ever been at a movie, so thanks Mr. Nolan, I cared deeply for the world you created. It seems like maybe you didn't as much I did.
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My thoughts on Nolan's new film notwithstanding, I want to warn against knee-jerk reactions to what the Aurora shooting means. I know whatever I say is going to fall on deaf ears, but I beg people that instead of pointing fingers, we should be asking intelligent questions. Why did Holmes do this? Was it because of our entertainment? I would argue that what Hollywood produces has more to do with what sells. Was it because of lax gun laws? Being a libertarian-minded person, I have to imagine that Holmes wouldn't have gotten very far if someone else had a gun with them in that theater. Is it because our security isn't strong enough at public events? There is only so much security you can have before it turns into a police state gestapo.
However, what is it about our modern society that would drive a young man to throw his life away and shoot a bunch of others? As an economics minor, I think it has to do with incentives. Our culture idolizes the rich, famous, and successful. By killing a bunch of people, Holmes could achieve something his PHD degree never could do, earn national attention. Some on the internet were calling for his identity to remain a secret as to dissuade similar massacres. This is clearly a crap-shoot. In our age, this secrecy is almost impossible. However, what if we look at it from the other end-- there is something in our society that wants to admire men like Holmes. It's a sickness, a disease, like the one Walter White suffers. What is causing that feeling in men today? It is a question we should all be asking ourselves in the face of this new tragedy. My thoughts are with the families of the victims.
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