The final tragedy of Harvey Dent in Miller and Janson's "The Dark Knight Returns"

[about_faces]

When people talk about some of the greatest Batman comics of all time, Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns is usually listed as number one.

I used to agree, but the older I get, the more I find TDKR to be unbearably ugly. Conversely, I find that Miller and David Mazzucchelli's Batman: Year One gets more powerful and humane with each passing

Comments

[box_in_the_box]

The fatalism that taints so much of Miller and Moore's work in the '80s makes it harder and harder to take in retrospect. At least Alan has looked back on his own self-proclaimed "bad mood" back then and called it out for what it was, but I think Frank himself wound up learning even more wrong lessons from his own work than even the most misguided of his fans did. There's a difference between telling a fatalistic story and contriving so fully to create a bad fate that it comes close to breaking even one's own narrative rules. As Jhonen Vasquez once said, it's the difference between complaining of diarrhea and force-feeding yourself laxatives to prolong your own agony. Looking back on it, as important and well-executed as a lot of The Dark Knight Returns is, it strikes me as the first step toward Frank Miller becoming a storyteller much like the director of Funny Games.

[prof_pig]

Uuuuggghhh... I hated that movie...

[prof_pig]

This does make an interesting Question though. Frank Miller's take aside, what WILL happen to Harvey Dent in the end? As we see here, it probably wont be happy outcome(even though darnit I want it to be!). With your expansive knowledge of the character, his history, and his motivations, what do YOU think will happen to him in the end of things, About Faces?

[thehefner]

Well, considering that Wolper--his only advocate--is killed off by the Joker (his next prize patient), it's doubtful that Harvey would have gotten officially released from Arkham again. The only person he had left in his life to extend a helping hand was Bruce, and Bruce by this point was far too involved in his war, and the cops' war on him. So you have to figure that he probably had nothing left to do but to try and kill himself. That is, unless his inner heroism was awakened during the post-nuclear blackout, with all the riots going on. I certainly like to think that the chaos provided Harvey with the impetus to step up and be a hero again, especially considering that it's better than the alternatives.

[greedyslayer]

That is, unless his inner heroism was awakened during the post-nuclear blackout, with all the riots going on. I certainly like to think that the chaos provided Harvey with the impetus to step up and be a hero again, especially considering that it's better than the alternatives.

I think a lot of the times I feel strangely optimistic about Harvey, so I <3 this scenario. :D Like, seriously, for his "hypothetical-never-gonna-happen-due-to-the-nature-of-his-comics-franchise" ending, I want Harvey to have somewhat of a nice finish, redemption, finding balance, etc.

[box_in_the_box]

It was merely trite and self-impressed and mildly ugly by modern movie standards, UNTIL the moment with the remote. For as much as the character of Paul insists that everyone else play by the rules, that was the moment when I realized that the filmmaker was willing to break his OWN rules just to get away with inflicting further torture on the characters.

[thehefner]

At that point, it becomes the biggest FUCK YOU I'd ever seen a filmmaker direct to his own audience for daring to watch his film.

[box_in_the_box]

The original German version - written and directed by the same guy, who damn near did a shot-for-shot remake with the American version - is apparently even more direct in explicitly, literally saying to the audience, "You thought there was any chance I was going to let these characters live? Of course not."

Paul's smug little smile at the end is merely the icing on the shit-cake. The film itself actually ENDORSES the sociopathic worldview of Paul, because reality itself bends to suit his whims.

And yet, everyone from the AV Club to Stephen King praised it as being one of the most brilliant films they'd ever seen. I try not to think about what this might say about their own worldviews.

[thehefner]

I've only seen the original German version (because I was intrigued by the remake's trailer, haha me). I can't bring myself to watch his remake.

I think the generally excepted view of the film is that it's a condemnation against people who watch and support violent films that wants to punish their voyeurism by giving them what they "want" but not giving them the release. Which strikes me as an incredibly flawed hypothesis from the start, because that release is really what people WANT and NEED in the first place. Most people don't want to watch snuff films, but the filmmaker treated those audience members as if that's all they wanted out of violent films.

If so, it's a hell of an ugly way to pass along judgmental moral superiority. Maybe that's what critics liked about it, because it was so unrelentingly ugly and didn't "sexy" up the violence or some such shit.

[box_in_the_box]

Once you start playing with fourth-wall-breaking tricks like giving one of the characters Adam Sandler's Click remote and having the lead killer start talking (and smirking) directly into the camera like Ferris Fucking Bueller, you've lost any claims you might have had re: making any sort of DEglamorization of violence. The ONLY ugly violence-porn film that I've ever seen which had a semi-legitimate claim toward deglamorizing violence was I Spit On Your Grave, which was horrible and virtually unwatchable, but arguably for the right reasons, if that makes any sense (it is also a film I will never, ever watch again).

[thehefner]

And if I've learned a lesson from Funny Games, it's that I know enough about I Spit On Your Grave to know that I have no reason to ever, ever, ever watch that film.

Y'know, thinking back on what I was saying before, I have to imagine there are people who DO enjoy watching Funny Games as a snuff film, just as there were those who got perverse pleasure out of watching ISOYG. Did you read Ebert's review from 1980? Chilling stuff. I'd like to know if any of those people felt a goddamn shred of shame when they walked out of that theater.

[box_in_the_box]

I Spit On Your Grave is one of those films that leaves me deeply conflicted. On the one hand, it's hard for me to disagree with a lot of Ebert's review, especially since I'm not enough of a mind-reader to know if Meir Zarchi had genuinely good intentions behind his low-budget ugliness, or if he was simply out to exploit rape all along. On the other, the only reason I ever saw this film was because no less than a dozen female friends, all rape survivors themselves, had recommended it to me during our college years, precisely because it didn't "sexy" up the rape in any way. As much as you and I are using the "snuff film" pejorative in this discussion, I Spit On Your Grave is so grainy and handheld and unflinchingly raw that it could almost pass for crime scene evidence.

[thehefner]

I think that's why I love Miller's Year One and Daredevil: Born Again more than any of his other works, because for all their darkness and grittiness, they actually end on hopeful, optimistic notes. I love stories that wade through the darkness only to somehow, against all odds, find the light in a way that's earned and authentic. Miller actually found that at one point, and I think Mazzucchelli certainly helped.

[box_in_the_box]

What strikes me about "Born Again" is that, in virtually every discussion I've seen of it online, virtually all of the focus is on the destruction of Matt Murdock's life, and only the most grudging of acknowledgment is given to the rebuilding that occurs at the end. For fuck's sake, I've read it and I couldn't give you more than a sentence or two about anything other than Matt's life circling the drain. THAT'S what everyone remembers, so when they try to imitate it, THAT'S the story they choose to tell.