Honestly, the scene featuring Joker and the dogs in the building with the heat vision? I'm one of the seven viewers who was not overwhelmed by Speed Racer and I found this scene fucking confusing.
One scene does not a bad director make, it's just a continuing trend in his career, for me. A lot of what I've tried to pick out and criticize here have been screenwriting decisions, and that's largely what I have a problem with in The Dark Knight. Neither of us know the extent to which he was involved in the writing process for any of his movies, since WGA are notorious liars, but we're safely assuming here that he has final say. My main criticism, outside of that mishandled scene, is the jumbled mess the movie seems to be; overstuffed, and not thematically cohesive.
But yeah, let's go into stuff you said.
See, this is the point, Nolan knows exactly what the context needs. That's why blunt metaphors like the burning of Wayne Manor work, this was a blockbuster that needed the bangs and drama of these tactics as it just suits the source's style.
That's a pretty interesting point. Contextualized into a comic book blockbuster, then this kind of ham-fisted metaphor might be really effective, no doubt. I don't think it's even a terrible metaphor. The problem for me, outside of the obviousness of it, was just that it is presented as another action beat. My main criticism at that point in writing was that he is not mature; I would say that the way this scene is presented does not bring together the metaphor and the action beat, but instead shows us an action beat that seems outside the story. Most of the things I was trying to point out was how uncohesive I found his philosophical musings with his need to make a bankable action movie. We've seen twist endings before, and we've seen dark films. What he does more interesting and almost seemed to push against with The Dark Knight for me, was the structure of Memento or the era and feel of The Prestige. Like, the best twist in Memento comes in to the film ten minutes when you realize you are watching a backwards film. The Dark Knight was loaded with cool characters and action beats and 'suspense' but I don't think it had a lot of an intelligent background and outside of duality, I can't pin out a theme or a motif that caught me about the film. Granted, by saying outside of duality I'm eliminating a large portion of what the film is about, but I feel that Nolan made us try and grasp at that theme rather than presenting it to us.
I'm not too sure why you think everything I listed as a failure as a strength. I do not find a reliance on twist endings to be a strength. And I feel like, even with Batman, a lot of what kept me from being disappointed at the end of that movie was the Joker Card. And with The Dark Knight, I was supremely disappointed with the ending, because that scene had so little to do with a movie that was already so large. The last scene is legitimately akin to advertising for another movie. It seems to me like Chris Nolan can't end a movie without trying too hard to be surprising. It's the kind of thing that makes my mother really like a movie (She owns The Butterfly Effect on Bluray) but doesn't do a whole lot for me outside of cheapening the experience.
I didn't actually state that Nolan was the first to do anything, merely that he undid the damage that Forever and Robin caused.
Fair enough, my bad. Many associate The Dark Knight with not just the first dark comic book movie ever made, but the DARKEST THING EVER PRINTED TO FILM. You are not they.
The first film he was blundering, careless, sloppy, and there's not really any real finesse to any of it.
That's awesome if it's intentional, but it's never alluded to in either film. I don't see a legit transformation between the two films outside of "more pissy because even more responsible". I feel like a mature filmmaker might have made that more evident; I found the Batman in film one to be less careless and blundering and more genuinely "awesome".
I'm not sure how you missed the detective work in TDK, though, the marked bank bills he gave to Gorden to put into circulation, the reconstruction of the bullet, the use of the sonar system to monitor cell phones to pinpoint the Joker. Hardly the efforts of a meat-head fool.
I'll admit that I overlooked two of those things but that my point still stands. Any rich person could do this. I continue to believe that we've yet to see an intelligent Batman, much less a detective Batman. It often seems like Alfred is the smarter of the two among them. That sort of dichotomy exists in the comics or the Timm cartoon but it's often because Bruce does not understand the limits of the human body. So, while he might be doing detective work in this film, it's more like CSI and less like Sam Spade.
And before you get stuck in, remember this is a comic book adaptation and, even in the source material, its larger than life and fantastical in places.
Not sure entirely what that was brought up in regards to, but I realize that it's larger than life. I'm no stickler for realism.
Batman was never intended for children and graphic novels are not intended for adults. Please don't use such silly absolutes to further your point, it's pretty cheap.
I find it a little bit ludicrous if you are going to argue that /superhero comic books/ are intended for adults. Detective Comics always found it's audience in young teens. I bet if you tracked who purchased Batman comics throughout the last century you would see a vast, vast majority of people below the age of eighteen. Anyway, I might have used absolutes, so I'll try and clarify. Graphic novels tend to be, in modernity, collections of comic books OR larger stories usually targeted at older audiences. That's because it is easier to sell a more expensive product to people with their own disposable income. Which isn't to say that exclusively adults buy them, but certainly if you look at the graphic novels released by DC, whom I prefer to Marvel, you'll see, under the DC Comics imprint, tons of omnibus' and collections of comic book runs and virtually zero original stories whereas when you look under the Vertigo imprint you have a large number of never before printed original stories. Graphic novels become traditionally adult because comic publishers are hesitant to release something significant to the comic book world exclusively in a format that many could not afford to purchase as opposed to relatively cheaper comic books. In the realm of a comic book line obsessed with continuity, single format issues anyone can buy are king.
So, that is a lengthy explanation of why I said that graphic novels are more adult and comic books tend to be for children. We got into an argument over Bob Kane's intentions with Batman in the Dark Knight thread. I'm not saying there is not a darkness to the original Batman, but I would say quite definitively that the burden of proof falls on you to prove, maybe from a Kane or Finger quote, that Batman was not created to entertain children and teens. (I would also argue that the original darkness of the comic does not translate into the modern dark Batman stories.)
And if it is not a darkness thing that you find so mature about Batman, what is it? I find that the only thing Nolan's really done in his Batman series to make the movies really serious. Is this what you are saying is maturity? I apologize for accusing you of mistaking darkness for maturity, but maturity is a very difficult quality to define in a film. I would say that Toy Story 3 is as mature a piece of filmmaking as Margot at the Wedding, but only one of them has a scene where a Ken doll tries on outfits for us.
It's much more in keeping with Cameron than it is with Bay, and I consider his work on TDK in terms of action shooting to be amongst the best on offer in Hollywood history.
That last bit is rather bold, but anyway, I don't consider Cameron and Bay the two opposite ends of the spectrum of action filmmaking. I would say that Micheal Bay, in spite of the fact that he's a stupid guy who isn't big on themes or characters, is a pretty wonderful -director-, not writer, but -director-. His action sequences, in spite of their increasingly large scope, continue to impress me and be visual, clear and fantastic. Granted, he over-relies on CGI, but I think he has a good eye for it. I feel the same way about Cameron, although I don't believe he is as strong a -director- as Bay. And I don't think that Nolan is in league with either of them. Not that some of his filmmaking isn't good, but if you could point me to an action scene from TDK that you find particularly good, I'll take a look at it.
Also, I hate to bring better non-action directors into this shit, but I think there are quite a few directors that have shot better action sequences in the last ten years than any of those three. Since we are talking about comic books, Raimi comes to mind rather strongly.