Opinion: The Batman and the Bushman
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About a month ago, I made a bet with another member of the Times editorial board that ‘The Dark Knight’ would be the biggest movie of the summer. That, as it turned out, was way too easy. If I’d bet that it would be the biggest movie of all time, I would have looked like a genius.
The latest Batman installment is Bat-slamming its competition so badly that prognosticators are suggesting it could surpass the 1997 film ‘Titanic’ as the all-time champ at the U.S. box office. It probably won’t succeed -- ‘Titanic’ was a monster hit that grossed $601 million -- but after only three weeks in release, it’s pretty clear that ‘Knight’ will pass ‘Star Wars’ (‘Episode IV: A New Hope,’ that is) as the second highest-grossing movie ever. Which begs the question: What the hell?
‘The Dark Knight’ is a fine film, but does it really deserve to be in the running for biggest movie ever? Most puzzling is how a superhero flick appealing mainly to young men -- a powerful demographic, but a narrow one nonetheless -- could be mentioned in the same breath as a movie that appealed to virtually all demographics. ‘Titanic’ was popular with young and old, women and men, boys and girls, and people saw it over and over again.
Obviously, Heath Ledger’s amazing final performance is drawing crowds, notably women, to theaters. As somebody who writes editorials for a living, though, I like to think that the movie’s success has something to do with the way it brilliantly captures this country’s post-9/11 sensibilities (a factor that might actually limit its take overseas). Ledger’s Joker is a nihilistic terrorist who likes to release grainy videos of himself tormenting some hapless hostage. Batman, meanwhile, is confronted with profound questions about how much he’s willing to compromise his own principles to combat evil, particularly when it comes to notions of privacy and surveillance, and if that doesn’t sum up the War on Terror I don’t know what does.
Spoiler alert: Bushman... er, Batman... finally comes up with a way to catch the Joker, but to do it he has to develop a technology that allows him to spy directly on every citizen of Gotham City, a notion so odious to Batman’s gadget builder Lucius Fox (played by Morgan Freeman) that he initially refuses to use it. He agrees only when Batman gives him the ability to destroy the system once the Joker is out of the picture.
Come to think of it, Americans might be more comfortable with the Patriot Act if it included a self-destruct button to be pushed once Osama bin Laden were in custody. How about it, Bushman?
*Photo by Denis Poroy / AP