Aces Wild

I was going to my usual Starbucks when I was asked if I had seen the latest Batman movie. Who hadn't, right? It's been in theaters since Thursday evening (really Friday morning), and it was Monday morning? The movie drew in huge numbers.

But I hadn't seen it.

It was instructive to tell what happened next. Another customer comes in, and he says he wants to see it too, but he still has to work in watching Hancock and Hellboy. Now, I have to tell you that Starbucks has transcended the latte sipping, book reading, art loving, hippie generation crowd, and crossed over into mainstream America. Red-state, pickup truck, Bush voting, pro-military America. Heck, the American dream is to have a little wealth. What better way than to have expensive coffee? This is the 21st century version of hanging out at the barber's to talk.

And then I came to work, with folks trying to repair the elevator, holding large copper tubes, and while they didn't mention the movie by name, you knew it was Batman. One claimed the weekend take was 155 million dollars.

So how does this action movie generate so much buzz? First, the critics have loved it. This attracts a certain group of people that actually listen to critics and find their opinions valuable. A lot of so-called liberal elite, the kind that likes shopping at farmer's markets, Whole Foods, believes in recycling, and most importantly, uses the Internet to make informed decisions. These folks often look at what critics say and watch it. Thus, Pan's Labyrinth, which should have been an obscure Spanish/Mexican fantasy film, was a bit of a crossover hit (and lead del Toro to a gig with Hellboy 2).

But, it also appeals to the less discriminating folks merely because it's a superhero action movie in a summer filled with them. And all things considered, Hellboy 2 has a pedigree by virtue of its director, del Toro, and Dark Knight is directed by former indie director, Christopher Nolan, who's previous film of note was the brainy thriller, Memento. Who knew he had the directorial chops to create the gothic look of Batman?

Only Hancock, the Will Smith action vehicle, has tanked with the critics, and even then, it will draw a crowd because it's Will Smith, and because it's action. Will Smith has essentially taken the Denzel Washington role. African American lead actors realize their core audience are African American males who finally get to see a powerful African American male play lead, and there's enough crossover appeal that whitie and brownie will both watch in numbers. I recall, a while back, in this godawful movie Romeo Must Die which starred Hong Kong action hero, Jet Li, that the local African American radio station had a talk about the movie, and didn't even mention Jet Li. Instead, the remaining African Americans were mentioned: Aaliyah, DMZ, Delroy Lindo, and so forth.

The Dark Knight crosses through all that much like a Shakespearean play, that appeals to high-brow and low-brow alike, mixing action with good acting.

Oh yeah, you know what?

Heath Ledger.

It doesn't hurt a film when one of the leads has died, and he's been lauded for this role. Too bad, because Ledger was starting to become an actor of note, branching away from pretty boy roles to take roles that were more interesting, and casting a bit against type. With stints in Brothers Grimm and Brokeback Mountain, few doubted he had the acting acumen to pull off this character.

Tabloids had detailed his death, first thought of as a Kurt Cobain suicide or River Phoenix drug overdose, when the result was some odd combination of everything, that an actor like Ledger would suffer from anxiety, and needs meds to control that. This kept it interesting for the Hollywood tabloid readers who followed this with morbid curiosity.

This produced a kind of perfect storm of fans watching the film, from arty type, to action type, to women that were curious about Ledger's role especially in a (kind of) posthumous role.

Nolan rolled the dice, and it came up jokers (to mix metaphors and gambling terminology as bad as Homer Simpson).