Hammer and Tongs

I saw The Dark Knight at the Broadway Theater today. Excellent film, better than the original. Although there are a few "comic book moments" where my suspension of disbelief was strained (I mean strained beyond the acceptance of normal action movie conventions), I was entertained overall. Most likely, anything I can say about it has been said better elsewhere, but one thing in particular that I noticed about the film was its clever use of character archetypes and the way that they reinforced the film's themes.

In my interpretation, the idea behind the film was that there are three types of people in the world (well, the world of DC comics/Gotham City or whatever). There are the innocents, or at least those who do not deserve bad things to happen to them. For instance, even though he bent the rules and deceived his family, Commissioner Gordon was overall a good person, without whom the world would be a darker place.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have the Joker. He's inhuman, more like a force of nature. Hence, I suppose, the complete lack of insight regarding his origins and identity. Essentially, he vacillates between being an amoral force of nature and an utterly remorseless, utterly evil monster.

Somewhere in between lie Batman and Two-Face. Neither of them are entirely evil, of course, but for their own reasons they've more or less abandoned morality altogether. Batman won't kill, and Two-Face is determined to be utterly fair and equal. Still, they do things that most folks wouldn't exactly stand for in the name of their own rules.

Anyway, that's my two cents.

P.S. We've finished moving. Might be some pictures of that later if I'm not too lazy.