The blogathon's theme is pretty much what you'd expect: Pick a film that "everyone" loves (at least 75% on Rotten Tomatoes) that you hate, and a film that "everyone" hates (at most 35% on Rotten Tomatoes) that you love. Then say why.
This was far more difficult to do than I thought it would be, but the fact is: Since time is (unfortunately) a finite resource, I tend to only see films that I know I'm going to like, and there are very few cases in which I saw something despite terrible reviews. I almost didn't find films that fit the criteria Dell set up! Except in the case of a film that "everyone" loves but I hate. I kept trying to find another one, but I just couldn't do it.
BUT.
The Dark Knight is two-and-a half hours of relentless darkness, with a murky, byzantine plot that on repeat viewings only shows more and more holes. It is a punishing film, not just because that amount of cynicism and darkness over that length of time would make anything a tough sit (and the film is far too long to sustain the mood effectively), but because there's not a single moment of levity in the whole damn thing. Heath Ledger gives a great performance as the Joker, no doubt about it, but he's not funny in a fun, belly-laugh way - he's funny in a queasy, sick-to-your-stomach way. He's insane, and he renders Bruce Wayne/Batman the biggest idiot in the world with his mere presence. The man was trained by the freaking League of Shadows... AND THEN BEAT THEM, and yet he's not smart enough to figure out that the freaking Joker is not exactly a man you can trust to tell any part of the truth. AND, despite their admirable ultimate choice in the ferry boat standoff, the citizens of Gotham are proven to be the ultimate sheep, blindly following whatever voice screams at them the loudest in the moment, blaming Batman for the Joker's reign of terror instead of the police, the federal government/policing agencies, or, ya know, the clearly crazy Joker himself (they get even worse in The Dark Knight Rises, BTW). Which wouldn't necessarily be a problem, except that it begs the question: These are the people Bruce Wayne is so intent on saving?
And despite the strength of the film's cinematography, the editing is all over the place, often resulting in action sequences that are very nearly incoherent. And if you haven't yet done so, I urge you to take a look at the video below, which goes into detail on this very topic.
But my biggest problem with The Dark Knight, the one that completely outweighs all my other problems with it as a film in its own right, is that it's basically the film that was responsible for the cult surrounding Christopher Nolan, a group of people who think that every thing he does is an instant work of genius solely because he deigned to touch it, and that the man himself is infallible. Nolan is clearly very talented, and I've been a fan since Memento, but after The Dark Knight, a film wholly unworthy of being called his best, he was put on a pedestal as The Greatest EVER by a squadron of comic book fanboys, and it has become impossible to get a word in edgewise or have even a slightly negative view of Nolan or any one of his films without getting ripped to shreds.
But hold off on the ripping of me to shreds for just a little bit, because...
...WAIT FOR IT...
