Dark Knight Review

Christopher Nolan’s vision of the iconic Comicbook Hero is almost as mesmerising as Heath Ledgers performance as the grungy Clown Prince of Crime, the Joker. I realise that it’s fashionable to make references to the “Emperor’s New Batcape” but that’s… that’s… just wrong in so many ways.

This production gives Batman / Bruce Wayne added layers to deal with, utilising Wayne’s desire to use a character as an avatar to save Gotham from itself, whilst dumbing his own true self down so as not to give the game away.

Truthfully, Batman Begins wasted the opportunity of bringing to the big screen the Scarecrow, one of my personal favourite characters from the Comics; but Dark Knight doesn’t waste the Joker, turning Jack Nicolson’s signature portrayal of Jack Nicolson The Joker in Batman (1989) into a creepy, sardonic, homicidal social pioneer in Ledger’s performance. Small piece of trivia, according to Popbitch, Heath Ledger had a notebook of things he thought that the Joker would find funny. Top of the list? Aids.

Typically, Hollywood (all of it) gets fuzzy when it comes to stuff like the “laws of physics” and DK is no different. The grappling hook which shoots up to the top of buildings and / or into concrete? Impossible under current technology. But that’s just me being a geek about Hollywood physics.

The reason why so many people have flocked to see Dark Knight is because the ideas behind it have more venom. Batman isn’t a hero, he’s “whatever Gotham needs me to be”. Which is incredibly admirable by Hollywood standards. Normally the main protagonist just shoots the bad guy (eventually) and shags whichever blonde / brunette / redhead he happens upon that episodes. DK is more complicated than that.

What’s interesting, is that so many of our big heroes aren’t heroes, but Anti-heroes and almost Byronic Heroes in some ways. Take yourself back to Braveheart, or read Nigel Tranter’s The Wallace to witness some genuine antiheroic moments. No, I’m not comparing Batman to the Wallace, I’m suggesting that we don’t believe in heroes any more, not in the classic sense. Let’s quote some anonymous bod on Wikipedia: “The brooding vigilante or ‘noble criminal’ archetype seen in characters like Batman is slowly becoming part of the popular conception of heroic valor rather than being characteristics that are deemed un-heroic.”

And this is one of the flaws in the movie. By the end, I was not so much “rooting” for Commissionaire Gordon (played flawlessly by Gary Oldman) but wanting the Joker as Heath Ledger’s zombie corpse to reanimate for Batman 3 so he could swedge Jim Gordon a few more times… But let’s not let my lack of moral compass sway you. (I called Batman a cunt under my breath when I thought he was about to let the Joker fall from a building).

And it was at that very moment, (well, in the bus home afterwards if I’m being honest) that I started thinking about Tommy Sheridan and Alan McCoombes. Not that I want to see either of THEM in a Bat-cape (what Tommy gets up to Casa Sheridano…) No, I started thinking about public perception of Sheridan after his famous scandal. The working classes, in my experience, didn’t give a rat’s ass about what Tommy did. He could’ve had fourteen activists dressed as cheerleaders, snorted cocaine and gotten home back in time to do another anti-war rally and people wouldn’t have bothered. Alan McCoombes famously (apparently) told TS: “People will forgive what you’ve done, but they won’t forgive you lying to them.” (approx).

If you segue from that to the falling levels of voting at election, and the growing public disaffection with modern politics it’s curious when you think about the concurrent rise in obsession with celebrity culture. I’m a morally bankrupt 30 something now, but back when I was 14, I was a clean living, Jesus-worshipping, god-fearing attendee at church. Back then, my 14 year old self would’ve looked at Hello, the Sun, the News of the World and saw a litany of depravity. Now we all gleefully flick past Amy Winehouse’s addictions, Britney’s revolving-door panties and demand vigilante justice be inflicted upon… well just about whoever is collectively pissing us all off that week.

I forced myself to watch Ricky Lake today. I did so, after seeing that the show was about congratulating this girl (whose name I can’t spell) who worked all the hours she could to both get into college and to get money for her family. Ricky was going to congratulate her with a visit from her favourite band, Salt ‘n’ Pepa. I clicked past, probably muttered: “Oh… crap.” I switched over to E Entertainment and was about to watch Denise Richards in something (she looks like a pretty version of my ex-fiancee – three / four years ago, long story). Considering the Ricky Lake girls inspiring story, I felt suitably guilt-ridden enough to force myself to watch the one and only episode of Ricky Lake I’ve ever seen. Motto of this digression: occasionally one has to recognise and act upon one’s own moral depravity.

Politicians are probably slightly less interesting than they were ‘back in the day’, especially in the mainstream parties, but how do you square Celebrity Infatuation with falling interest in politics? Has society become so entrenched in its post-modernist angst that Politics is just too big to consider thinking about? Or is it just that the modern world has forced our moral and social compass to change so drastically that modern politicians haven’t caught up with the rest of society yet? Celebrity culture is often criticised, yet (and the independence movement is no exception) but people seeking it and eager to witness it through the media are still the majority. Modernity has made us a nation of hypocrites. We’re eager to tell the world just WHY Pete Doherty should remain in jail and be kneecapped for his crimes, but give people a chance to vote for it… then there’s a problem. Suddenly interest falls to an all time low. When Jamie Hoggan was arrested, it didn’t exactly cause outrage at the Independence movement, but curiosity about it, and gave rise to the odd “Free Jamie Hoggan” on whatever marches I was on that year…

We are a culture now, where I can take a news story about Maggie Thatcher being given a state funeral, and guarantee attendance at my long planned “Rave on the Grave” Soiree in Glasgow City Centre whenever the hell it happens. Yes… I can officially mock the nearly-dead with impunity. People don’t believe in God anymore, like Nietzsche proclaimed: “God is Dead” and we are the damned children of Rolling Stone magazine, addicted to the addictions of celebrities and with no interest in politics. Some of our brothers and sisters, at least.

I think we need to accept that the world we live in is different, and strategise accordingly. We needn’t restrain ourselves to merely getting out there and trying to get votes for independence. We can think darker thoughts and whilst a liberal minority will no doubt be uber-critical, it’ll do its job and get our political beliefs recognition from a people hyped-up on controversy. Fathers 4 Justice did it reasonably effectively. The ex-millies have been doing it well for years, and did it SO well they united the left in Scotland, for a brief and beautiful instant (only for it to be washed away like the first flurry of snow by the November rain).

If the “Dark Knight” movie has resonated with so many people, as it patently has done, it’s because it has exposed just how much change society’s moral compass has changed since the 1950s, when we all started rebelling against the hangover from the hypocrisy that Victoriana, in my opinion. In addition, I think society is taking a collective breather from politics after being subjected to the 1970s and 1980s. When you lose count of the amount of acronyms you use for terrorist groups agitating for political change, and you have a myriad of groups across Europe eulogising and evangelising either change or continuation of the norm, then people are going to tire. But either way, whilst we need to see the past to see ourselves, we must occasionally look at the present to see just how different things have become. I don’t believe we are in the same politics as we were back in the 1992 general election. I think we’re now smack in the middle of Scottish Politics 2.0 and need to think about things differently if we are to prosper as activists in the current climate.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Review (with Spoilers)

"Iiiinnnndeeeeee! The toorrchhh is going ooouuuuutt!!!" Karen Allen, from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

I still can’t decide if this movie was the most beautiful car-wreck I’ve ever witnessed or the weirdest brilliant movie I’ve ever seen.

Before we get to that, however, I need to explain my rating system. I don’t judge movies according to how good they are (cos the best thing you can see is a unique snowflake). I judge movies by The Rocketeer. It was the worst waste of my time, bar none. And I’ve seen a film called Les Invasions Barbares (crappy pretentious French nonsense). The reason I hate the Rocketeer so much is the helmet sequence. Snigger all you like, but it’s true. In the movie he sorts his flying ability out by ATTACHING A FIN TO HIS HEAD! Aerodynamics and oh, I don’t know, THE LAWS OF FUCKING PHYSICS had deserted this worthless pile of crapioca. So every film I’ve ever watched since then gets judged by how close it gets to how bad the Rocketeer was.

But, back to Indy. Between George Lucas and Stephen Speilberg, I think the rehabilitation of Erik von Daniken is finally starting. Bastards… Anyway. No, lets go back: Indiana Jones meets a spaceship. I can’t be the only person who will have a problem with this. And I *REALLY* can’t be the only person to look at the trans-dimensional crystal creatures and want smoke whatever Steve-o and Georgie were smoking during THAT meeting. If one wanted to, one might find coy references to all sorts of new age, David Icke / Erik Von Daniken accepting schizophrenia. If one wanted to. There were bits when I expected the Stargate SG1 team to turn in an appearance. Really…

The IJ franchise has a similar formula to James Bond: give the people an intro; then get onto the main formulaic mumbo-jumbo until Indy’s got the gold, the girl and a battering in the process. The intro in Raiders had the iconic rolling rock sequence. The intro in Temple of Doom had the blondie and the musical number. Crusades took us back to Indy’s childhood and featured a sullenly brilliant River Phoenix. Maybe GL and SS thought it was too much to top…

But this intro… The intro felt like an hour, but can only have been fifteen minutes long. And it was beneath crap. I felt sorry for all my jobbies reputations in comparison with this wanton garbage. And yes, I know it was supposed to be Ironic, but honestly when has that ever worked for America? I don’t need to go into much ABOUT the intro, suffice to say that the end of it had Indy escape a Nuclear Detonation. Let me reiterate that for you: INDIANA JONES ESCAPES A NUCLEAR BOMB GOING OFF… by hiding in a lead-lined fridge. Oh, and not just hiding, oh no, he was blown clear of the blast zone BY THE EXPLOSION ITSELF. You saw his fridge fly past some Commie cars which gets roasty-toasted in the process. It was at this very point, I grudgingly had to forgive the film its intro. Yes, the intro was so shit that started thinking fondly about The Rocketeer, but it was SO bad it’s growing on me by the hour. By nine o’clock I may have no objections whatsoever… But honestly: nuclear attack versus Indy: I’d NEVER have predicted THAT result.

But the whole Crystal Skull and Nuclear detonation gubbins is an important point, lost on us… It’s a cultural paradigm where Americans are willing to believe that anything is possible. The photography in Crystal Skull was brilliant, all wide open panoramic vistas and not just BIG landscapes, but droolingly beautiful MASSIVE landscapes. Compare this with, say Neil Gaiman and his BBC fantasy effort: Neverwhere. In it his biggest leap of imagination is that Homeless People fade out of existence until the go and live underneath London. Or China Meiville who built a city in the book Perdido Street Station by suggesting that people would live alongside midgets and sentient insects and generally mill around on Dungeons and Dragons quests for the duration of his work. The UK (and yes, as always I spit that word) is far too grudgingly domestic and empirical for my tastes. We lack the wide-eyed longing to believe that Americans have and the rip-off-your-clothes romance and passion of our European neighbours. They gave us Indiana Jones and we gave them River City and Rab C Nesbitt. Let’s all get in a congratu-circle and pat our backs for THAT one.

But this all stems from that Unionist subservience that our Clan Chiefs got themselves taught when the sold their lands to property developers and fucked off to Eton. We forgot our own primal passions and took up knitting. We swapped Claymores for Grandfather Clocks and right here, right now, I don’t think it was worth it. Not one little bit. The intention behind Jonesy (I think we’ve known each other long enough for me to call him Jonesy) was SO HUGE it deserves props. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I apparently knew more about the Nazca lines in South America than a 1940s Professor of Archeology, but I’m not about to hold that against the American movie industry. If I did, I’d have to explain why I enjoyed the Battle of Stirling Bridgeless in Braveheart…

And that’s my point, the good bits were GOOOOD. And the bad bits were so unashamedly self-mocking and cheesy that they HAD to be intended. I mean… you wouldn’t do that kind of thing on purpose, would you? And if that was the best script they’ve had in 19 years then… well… they should’ve just gone right ahead and used the first one they had. Just for the hell of it. On camcorder when Harrison Ford was out at Skywalker Ranch with Lucas and Spielberg… Get a horse, jump over some stuff… Sound rubbish? Probably. But STILL better than River City. At least Hollywood has ambition.

So lets write a big formulaic blockbuster for Scotland. Indy has what Lucas calls “McGuffin’s” (he got that idea from Hitchcock, but don’t tell the Daily Record cos I don’t think they know that based on their piss-poor review of the film). A McGuffin is a simple device used to propel what, if any, plot there actually is. So, Raiders had the Ark of the Covenant; Doom had the Sankara Stones; Crusades had the Holy Grail and Crystal Skull had… erm a Crystal Skull.

For a Scottish Blockbuster, the McGuffin HAS to be the REAL Stone of Destiny. It’s black, carved and shiny and can be ascribed magic powers I, as the writer, don’t have to quantify outside of the film… Our hero has to be someone who either HAS a sexy job, or someone whose job can be sexed up a bit for effect. So Tax Accountant is out. Let’s make our hero an Abseiling Instructor caught in a web of intrigue surrounding the whereabouts of the real, mystical Stone of Destiny. There needs to be baddies: I’d suggest the Royal Family. It’s hard to imagine Jug-ears as anything other than a baddie, so he’ll do. And the plot needs something to get the hero from his sexy Abseiling Job to the secret group protecting the Stone of Destiny. I’m going to go with the Lewis Carroll inspired “Rabbit Hole.” This is a concept in fiction where something small propels the protagonist inevitably towards the story, but makes the audience feel as if he is genuinely being drawn in (thus drawing the AUDIENCE in with him). So… Abseiling guy is giving lessons to some gorgeous model type from Edinburgh (we’re using Hollywood rules here, remember) who is mysteriously kidnapped at gunpoint from the Log Cabin she is renting in Glencoe (for the panoramic sequences). Abseiling guy reports this to the police, but they don’t believe him (the guy renting OUT the log cabin mysteriously doesn’t remember hotblondie…) Abseiling guy investigates to satiate his own conscience (he’s a decent guy, he’d do that kind of thing). And between his original inquiry to the fight sequence in the Cave with the Royal Family member, he has a rip-roaring adventure bookmarking ALL tourist trails and panoramic landscapes that Scotland has. And we HAVE A LOT.

That’s my point, though. If, on a crappy internet blog, you can get a formulaic idea which IS STILL better than what you get on BBC1 Scotland, then our TV license money is not being spent well enough. My advice is to rip up your TV License, cancel your Direct Debits and send the fucking paper back to them.

Back to Indy for a bit though: one of the most genius things that Steven Speilberg / George Lucas Inc did right was to bring back Karen Allen in all her smouldering, hot glory. Marion Ravenwood (love interest in Raiders, and love interest in Crystal Skull) was a BIG LOSS to the other two Indy Films (presumably to make Indy a “ladies man” like a certain Jimmy Bond). She is THE ONLY actress ever to have to had genuine sexual chemistry with Harrison Ford (unless you count Carrie Fisher, which I don’t, cos she has Sexual Chemistry with EVERYONE in Star Wars – including that wee Ewok in Return of the Jedi). Karen Allen makes it okay to fancy women in their 50s. That’s how good she is in this film. Karen Allen was so good, I haven’t even mentioned Cate Blanchett (woodener than Mahogany, sorry).

This is one of the few films to treat old age with the respect and contempt it deserves. The line that I think of doesn’t come from Indy; it comes from Vila from Blakes 7 who once said: “I’ll live forever or die in the attempt.” That’s Indy right there. And that’s what we’ve lost, I think: our cantankerous fighting spirit. And not in a “lets draw dirks” way, but our ability, as Scots, to endure problems. Instead of persevering, or holding out relentlessly we seem to want the cheap, quick way out. We lack the admirable qualities of the people we watch at the cinema, and instead celebrate the mediocrities of the non-entities we are force-fed every fucking night of the week in soap-opera-land.

And bear in mind, Indiana Jones HAD to be as self-mocking as it has turned out to have been. In the 19 years since the last one, we’ve had uber-unreality in the likes of NYPD Blue, 24, Battlestar Galactica, Friends… Entertainment has evolved because of films like Indiana Jones. My favourite moment in 24 is when Jack Bauer threatens to torture someone by force-feeding them a towel. (Now there’s a scary thought for you…) Indy can’t do that. And unless there’s a bit of tongue in cheek, the film couldn’t have worked unless they were so big, and so far over the top.

It’s just a shame that Scotland seems so content to live in such mediocre and bland fictions as it does. We invented EVERYTHING. In the real world, we rock! In the real world we’ve invented, protested and changed things. In our art, we’ve become staid, bland and feeble. We tell the world nothing. We don’t challenge the stereotypes, we put them on and wear them to Scotland games and try to “take the joke.” But it’s not a joke. We are for not trying to do better. America takes big ideas and turns them into theme parks. We take big ideas and water them down until they’re inoffensive enough for everyone to watch. There’s something wrong with that. There’s something VERY wrong with that.