The Octoberzine l family finally made it to the new Dark Knight movie yesterday, and yes, it's everything everyone says it is. It's dark; it's great; it's long (although it didn't feel too long, which is the main thing, and it's still short compared to a Bollywood movie); I wouldn't bring any little kids, etc. But I'm here to sing some more specific praises.
Back when I was a combo sci fi nerd/punk rock kid, watching Sid and Nancy at the Fargo Theater, I wouldn't have dreamed that the same actor who seemed born to play a Sid Vicious as real as the real thing would years later seem born to play the ultimate, perfect Commissioner Gordon. That would seem to defy probability. And yet, there's Gary Oldman, frankly looking hotter as a fairly ordinary middle-aged cop than he did in a whole career of playing psychos...and Dracula! A role that's traditionally got "sexy" built in.
Even more twistily, my husband commented that if they'd made a Dark Knight-style Batman movie twenty years ago, Oldman would have been perfect for the kind of Joker portrayed so well by Heath Ledger. Absolutely true. But I think I appreciate his talent more in the important part of the normal human being who can hold his own against both Batman and all the crazy masked villains. As in comics like The Killing Joke, Gordon is the character who sees the darkness and chaos of the world, and he resists despair. As he says in this movie, he does the best he can with what he has. Even though it doesn't always work out, that's my kind of hero.
So now, my dream for the Batman universe is a police procedural TV show about the adventures of Oldman's Jim Gordon. He can go to departmental meetings, fill out paperwork, have lunch with his wife...even solve a murder occasionally. I'm not picky.
And in your crazy factoid of the day: the EastEnders character Big Mo is played by Oldman's older sister. Sometimes the IMDB makes my head hurt!
2 comments:
YES to everything you said. Gary's grandma glasses + 80s 'stache = the shizz. He's a stud. And a friend of mine made the same observation as you did: that a younger Gary would have been the Joker, hands down.
I must say, I also found Two-Face a stud and a half. Ha ha ha... ah, that joke never gets old. Seriously though, when he takes the shot and it spills out of his jaw? Bad-ass.
If you dream about TV crime dramas, I dream of a world made of Batman films which don't actually star Batman. It would just be Gordon vs. everyone else, because really Gordon + Two-Face + the Joker made the film as awesome as it is. Silly Batman just gets in the way.
Amen to that!
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