The Dark Knight is not Horrible enough

written by Dan
In the last week I’ve seen two superhero films. I loved one and hated the other. One of these films was ’The Dark Knight’ and I really didn’t enjoy it.

"What?", I hear you yell, "Heath Ledger’s greatest role ever? You unpatriotic fiend".

Well you know what? I thought Heath was better in ’Two Hands’. Christ, I thought he was better in ’10 things I hate about you’. What is the point of extended a film out to three frigging hours when the only reason for doing so is to squeeze half a dozen storylines in?

Maybe I’ve been spoiled with great stories from Steven Moffat in Doctor Who. Maybe I feel that having one good story spanks the pants off having a bunch of them that don’t really wrap up properly. Maybe there’s a reason that most good main characters are likeable. Because then you empathise with them. You worry for them. You don’t want them to get hurt.

In this film I never had any tension because I just didn’t care.

There were a couple of good bits,.. but that doesn’t make a film, that makes a show-reel.


The other film I watched was ’Dr Horrible’s Sing Along Blog’. I’m usually quite vocal on my lack of interest in the work of Joss Whedon. Once again it’s story related. He’s great at dialogue and characters but when it comes to ideas and wrapping up a story he’ll more often than not whip out a ’deus ex machina’. Not too big a problem if you didn’t have to invest yourself for a season at a time in order to get the most out of it.

’Dr Horrible’ is only forty minutes long. It doesn’t have time to go off track. It’s got one story and it takes forty minutes to tell it (with songs). The songs are okay, the singing is incredible. The characters are likeable and I was immediately invested in them.

Neil Patrick Harris was superb as Dr Horrible. His performance just shone.

There’s been a lot of talk about Heath Ledger getting an Oscar for his performance in ’The Dark Knight’. After seeing Dr Horrible, I don’t think Ledger even deserves a ’Golden Raspberry’.

posted at 1:46 am Thursday August 14 2008