Head Grenade Productions

I recently saw the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight, in theaters. Twice actually, but that’s not as important. I’m sure most people have already heard the great things about it, and about Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker. Yep, it’s incredible. Probably one of the best performances of, well, anything that I’ve seen, and an acting performance that delivers a wonderfully memorable and evil villain. But, that’s not what I’m here to talk about right now. Besides, other people can talk about that sort of element much better than I can, so I’ll leave it to them.

What struck me was a comment one of my friends mentioned after I had seen the movie. He said one great thing was that, unlike most movies, you couldn’t exactly see where it was going to go, and the twists were real twists. Most movies set themselves up for one great big shock, which, when they’re not as good, can be seen long before they come and ruin any surprise and suspense that they try to build with that. But here, he said, time and again something new jumped in and threw everything for a loop.

I won’t say that the story was the most original thing I’ve ever seen, but I have to say it was an amazing story. It took the standard superhero versus supervillan story and pushed it, hard, until it reached a point of becoming much more. The realism, the growing and breaking and changing and lying characters, and a constant devotion to holding itself to the same standards it’s set up have made it great. It hits us as real because, while some of the technology is is beyond us and some of the physical feats are more than we could assume possible, there’s nothing really in the movie that we stop and say “that’s not possible, ever.” Exactly what you want to see in science fiction; and, when you think about Batman, and his utility belt, as well as all the other toys he plays with, he is a science fiction superhero. The characters are like people as well, growing tired, reacting to their conscience and thoughts when they know what’s coming, or are caught off guard, and the events affect them and make them rework their opinions and lives. And never does it slip; never does the dialogue stop snapping, do the characters break from this mood, does the story let up from it’s grip on you. It’s a masterpiece of storytelling, even if it may not be deep or philosophical, which one could certainly argue — I’m just not feeling up to it right now.

What I do want to talk about, though, is that idea of multiple twists. For myself, I’ve always sort of seen stories as having that one really big twist that everyone remembers: like a mystery, the big shock is at the end when the killer/theif/rapist/bad-guy-man-person is exposed. Science fiction always uses that tactic too: remember the first time you found out Darth Vader was Luke’s father? Sure, there were other surprises in those stories, but what’s the big thing from The Empire Strikes Back or Agatha Cristie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd? It’s that big twist, and when it works, it shakes up everything. Nothing can match it. And when it fails, it leaves the story with nothing.

What made the Batman movie so interesting was just the sheer number of twists and turns. They were not twists along a single plot, really; the whole movie was a sort of war between the Joker and Batman, but each major battle could be considered it’s own story where sometimes one won, sometimes the other. Each time things whipped around and went crazy, to the point even if you could see what was happening (which, to be honest, did happen sometimes) it still felt as if there was a real surprise to it. Even if there were built around one single story or set of events, though, there were just a whole bunch of them together, and none of them overshadowed the rest. The opening was just as shocking as the end, as was the middle too.

It begs the question of wether or not one huge twist is worse than a whole handful of small ones. Sure, one big twist might have a lot more of an impact than a number of small, but powerful, ones. After all, any good story will have little bits of suspense popping in here and there instead of leaving everything to one big shocker. But the idea from the movie was take a long story, and break it up into smaller ones, which have their own major twists, and make that sort of story into a movie, watching how one ties to the next and the next. Even just trying to evenly distribute the surprises is a bit unusual when you think about stories: generally, the big twist comes close to the end, so having that be weaker, and the parts leading up be the same strength, means the story doesn’t grow more panicked, more gut-wrenching with time. One thing I disliked about The Dark Knight was the end wasn’t as strong and pointed as I had hoped. It wasn’t weaker, actually it was just as taut and engaging as the rest of the movie, but not any more engaging. Instead of getting more explosive, it stayed as explosive, and didn’t seem to hold things right that way.

Then again, maybe it’s a better way to make a story. Or maybe it was just a lucky break here, a one of a kind movie that took a different direction that can’t be emulated. It’s good for thought, though.