Hi, I'm Eric Voss, and every time a new superhero movie comes out that we really
like, inevitably the discussion always turns to... well it was good, but it
obviously wasn't as good as the Dark Knight. Like Wonder Woman: best DC movie...
since the Dark Knight. Or even if you thought Logan was better than the Dark
Knight, the Dark Knight is still the gold standard that you compare it to. So
why is that? In the past nine years since the movie came out, we've heard countless
love letters on why the Dark Knight is amazing. Will we ever consider any new
superhero movie to be better than The Dark Knight? Is it even possible? Yes, I
think it is. It's just going to be really hard. So I'm going to give us some deeper
reasons why exactly The Dark Knight holds this near unreachable status. And
as I see it, once we look past all the normal great qualities about the movie,
there are four big reasons why people still look up to it as the best
superhero movie. The first is that the Dark Knight is not a superhero movie.
This is pretty annoying, I know. Like you may have read this as some clever think
piece headline online and thought - shut up, of course it's a superhero movie, it's
got Batman in the Joker in it. Like, what else do you need? And yes, you're right,
but when you analyze the genre of The Dark Knight, it has way less in common with
movies like the Spider-man and X-men films that preceded it in the 2000s, and the
first Ironman, which came out the same summer, than it does with modern crime
dramas like Michael Mann's Heat. In fact, Christopher Nolan mentioned Heat as a
major influence. Both movies open with explosive heist sequences and build-up
to intense first encounters between the hero and villain at the midpoint,
debating morality as they sit across the table from each other. Now compare this
to the superhero movie sub-genre as defined so well by Marvel Studios: fun,
mostly light-hearted movies built around amazing visual effects and action
set-pieces, Nowadays, actually DC movies have pivoted to fit into that overall
genre more and more. So when we compare all these subsequent superhero movies to
the Dark Knight, we're comparing apples to oranges. Or comparing apples to other
apples that are shot through an orange lens, that taste a lot like oranges. And
just because it tastes like oranges doesn't necessarily mean it's better. I
actually love the superhero movie as a genre. That said, the genre of crime drama
allows the filmmaker to explore themes like moral code
in the criminal mind, themes that most people think make a film more resonant
and meaningful in the long run. Now to be fair, Christopher Nolan was only able to
take Batman in that direction because the character was already pretty far
along in its cinematic evolution. Remember before Nolan, so many versions
of Batman had been established on the big screen: the films of Tim Burton and
Joel Schumacher, and long before that, the Adam West take on the character.
(r.i.p Adam West). Basically, there was already a standard for Nolan to respond
to and to reinvent. Meanwhil,e Marvel is still way younger in its characters'
evolution. There's only been one Ironman, one Captain America, one guardians of the
galaxy. Marvel isn't reinventing yet, they're still inventing, expanding the
successful business model with more heroes that could all plausibly be in a
movie together at some point. So I think it's gonna be really hard for us to look
at a new Thor movie and praise it as a radical reinvention of the genre like
The Dark Knight was. It's just not a fair comparison. Now some people have said
that Deadpool is an exception to this trend. Like it was a reinvention of a
previous version of the character and its tone and sense of humor were way
more subversive than we're used to seeing in the superhero movie. But
despite its parody elements the genre of Deadpool is still all superhero. There's
an origin story, a super-powered villain, a damsel in distress
and a fireworks finale. And the fact that we bought into this and cared so much
about these story beats makes Deadpool part of this superhero genre. Really, I
think the recent exception to this trend is Logan. Unlike all the X-men movies
that preceded it, Logan is a pure Western. It's an off type genre that uses
superheroes like The Dark Knight does, but it's still at Western. Logan is light
on spectacle and visual effects, it gets very little joy out of its characters
using their powers, and it's finale is not at all simple or clean. The movie is
about the physical and emotional toll that being a hero takes on the
individual. And sure, even though Hugh Jackman has been the only actor to play
Wolverine, his movies have gone through a similar evolution on screen as Batman,
sometimes coming off as a joke and bordering on exhaustion. So a
transformation into a new genre feels earned. So the arguments that Logan might
be the first film about a superhero to be as good as the Dark Knight might be
justified. But there are still a few other key reasons that the Dark Knight
is just going to be really hard to top. The second reason I see is the setting.
Now this often gets overlooked, but Nolan's Dark Knight movies are really
about one central character, the city of Gotham. Yes, I'm using the term character
loosely here, obviously Bruce Wayne and Alfred and Gordon and Rachel Dawes are
all key characters. But at the end of the day, each of these three movies and
mostly the Dark Knight are about saving the soul of Gotham. For example, the
finale of The Dark Knight isn't so much a fistfight between Batman and the Joker;
it's the debate of ideals between the figures over whether the people of
Gotham will, when given the option, prove themselves to be heroes or cowards. In
this way, Nolan was able to use Gotham as a microcosm for Humanity, where
instead of a battle for human lives and safety, it became more of a specific
battle for human decency, a different take on humanity. And Nolan reinforces
the importance of this environment by showing us so many interesting angles of
Gotham City. It starts with the shiny vertical skyscrapers, but it also shows
the pedestrian street level and then going even deeper, the seedy criminal
underbelly. Now Nolan didn't invent this idea of Gotham as a symbol. Batman
actually has a long history in the comics of a relationship with his home
streets, but the fact is not many other superheroes that we see in the movies
share this kind of thematic connection with their setting. Now, I guess
Spiderman is very much a New York superhero, which was definitely a part of
the fun of those first two movies. And then on the Marvel / Netflix side of
things, Daredevil's roots in Hell's kitchen is absolutely a big part of that
series. But recently, really other than the Avengers battling to save New York, I
can't think of another superhero movie where the environment was so crucial to
the story. Now not that super movies always have to have that, but it's one
device used in the Dark Knight to help elevate it over the rest. Now another key
reason for the Dark Knight's status which you cannot avoid when you're talking
about the Dark Knight, is the villain - Heath Ledger's The Joker. Now Nolan
dared to allow this villain to overtake the story at the risk of outshining the
hero and risking the overall franchise. The Joker is the driving force of this
whole narrative. He completely hijacks the story, sweeping up Harvey Dent into
his campaign of Anarchy, using him as his ace in a hole in the third act. Now this
was a ballsy move by Nolan. Two-face is definitely one of the more well-known
villains of the Batman universe, but rather than saving him for a future film,
like leaving a scarred Harvey Dent in a hospital bed,
who wakes up and tears off his gauze in a post-credits scene, Nolan instead
just left it all out there for this movie, keeping Dent a smaller character
within the Joker's story. And the ultimate effect of that is it makes
Joker an even more lethal threat, with his lawlessness persisting as a sort of
pandemic throughout the world, even when he's still in captivity. Now, it's been
said that other superhero movies suffer from a lack of a compelling villain, at
least in the way that the Joker was, and I guess you could say this because most
superhero movies these days are structured as lower stakes chapters
within a cinematic universe leading up to one later larger event, but really, I
think it's just because it's very very challenging in screenwriting to create
an engaging villain who doesn't become more likeable than the hero, which of
course could ruin the story, because then we don't care if the hero succeeds. Now I
would say the Dark Knight pulled off this balance and really only a handful
of other movies in cinematic history have done the same. But let's revisit
Logan for a second. Villains Donald Pierce and Xander Rice are functional to
the story, but they don't present nearly as big of a threat to Logan as the main
villain of the story, himself. His own body and powers are failing him, and then
by the end of the movie - brief spoiler alert if you haven't seen Logan - this
conflict is literalized when he has to fight a clone version of himself, x24.
And yes, that is a thoughtful, interesting way to manifest
Logan's obstacles in the movie. Unfortunately, this type of villainy
doesn't have a transcendent face set and identity that is seared into our
collective memories the way the Joker is. I think you can also look at Wonder Woman
this way. Now Wonder Woman is a fine film that drew inspiration from another
superhero classic that people look at as a gold standard, Richard Donner's Superman
in 1978. Wonder woman even makes a lot of the same moves The Dark Knight made - it
explores the characters relationships and humanity as a whole, and it totally
embraces its period piece genre. But when it comes to the villain, or villains
I should say, they aren't really game changers when it comes to challenging
the hero in any meaningful way. Now on the other hand, you could argue that
movies like Wonder Woman and Logan don't need to be about their villains, and the
real reason that people like these movies is because, like The Dark Knight,
they're actually part of a larger narrative. And that brings me to my final
reason that I think the Dark Knight is considered a gold standard. The movie's
existence and success is itself seen as heroic. Like I
mentioned earlier, when Nolan took over the Batman franchise, the character had
become kind of a joke in the movies. Like seriously, Batman and Robin was so bad
that Joel Schumacher recently apologized for it. So when Nolan reimagined the
character as a darker, more thoughtful, morally complex hero in the style the
comics like Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, Nolan was praised as a
hero who saved the franchise. See in this case, Batman needed that gritty turn
because the movies needed it, and it was true to who the character is in the
comics. The same can be said for James Mangold with Logan. After early successes
with the first two x-men movies, the Last Stand and X-Men Origins weren't
exactly steps forward for Wolverine as a character, until he too eventually turned
into a bit of a joke. But then James Mangold arrived and proved that he could
take the character to interesting places with the Wolverine, and then his
follow-up film Logan was the perfect expression of what he wanted to do with
the character. And not only was that gritty turn something fans wanted, like
Batman, it's true to the character in the comics. In fact, the Old Man Logan comic
that Logan was inspired by is way more violent than what we saw in the movie.
This is a big reason why it feels a little weird when Studios make a
superhero dark and gritty just for the sake of making him or her dark or gritty.
I think they're learning the wrong lessons from The Dark Knight. Nolan went
dark because that's who Batman is and it's what the franchise needed at that
time. it was the darkness we deserved, and the darkness we needed. Now Wonder Woman
wasn't particularly violent or gritty, but like Logan in the Dark Knight, the
movie itself has this heroic nature. Like after decades without wonder woman on
the big screen, and the property going through development hell, Patty
Jenkins finally delivered a really good film that satisfied fans. Other superhero
movies may have had better structured films with better action and better
jokes, but unless you walk out of the movie feeling like the movie fulfilled
some desire or fixed some nagging frustration with the franchise, we're not
going to hold it up as the best superhero movie of all time. Look, I don't
know if I personally will ever be able to see any superhero film as better than
the Dark Knight, it came out during my formative years. Like, I feel like the
first of these flesh whiskers popped out during the Joker's magic trick scene
with the pencil, and I think for a lot of us, nostalgia just tends to glorify films
that we grew up with over new films that come along. But I think films like Logan
have shown that if you follow the Dark Knight's footsteps in the right way,
you can at least be part of the conversation. After that, it's just a
matter of amazing action, a great script, a great director, a perfect cast, and one
of the best villains of all time, but really is the number one spot that
important? Do you think any superhero movie has topped The Dark Knight?
If so, which one? Or it's not topped, has any super movie gotten close in your eyes?
And what about the Dark Knight do you think makes it the exceptional case
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dun dun dun dun dun dun... this tunnel's long!