The Dark Knight Deserves a Jousting Lance to the Throat

I have been told that writing that Heath Ledger is lucky that he died before he ever had to sit through his last movie is too “offensive,” so I won’t. Suffice to say that had Ledger lived long enough to watch the 152 minutes of torture that is his last film, it’s likely we would be mourning his death anyway, because it’s practically impossible to sit through The Dark Knight without choking to death on your own tongue. If I had a superpower, it would be the ability to punch Christopher Nolan in the face until he realized that Batman is the most ridiculous superhero ever, and trying to take him seriously is the equivalent of making a holocaust film starring the teletubbies. Nolan apparently just figured out this really cool trick where you spin the camera in circles really fast and decided to use it in every scene, giving me yet another reason to feel like I was going to throw up while watching The Dark Knight.

"I'd rather die than do another one of these movies!"

Watching Christian Bale stumble around like an idiot for two and a half hours, half of the time the world’s foremost asshole and the other half inexplicably with a sore throat, helped me realize that there has never been a superhero that I have wanted to disembowel as much as him. I’m not sure how exactly Heath Ledger died, but it might have been from a helium overdose. He sounds like Tweety Bird, rambles incoherently, and is as intimidating a figure as Barney. Aaron Eckhart can shout as much as he wants, but it doesn’t change the fact that he has the emotional range of a toaster strudel. And unless you pay close attention, you might not have noticed that Maggie Gyllenhaal was even in this movie. Actually, Maggie Gyllenhaal might not have noticed either. As the anti-climactic action scenes piled up, I felt tempted to take up the Joker’s suggestion to chew on razor blades, just as a distraction from the excrement on screen. But as blissful as the temporary relief would be, feeling the scars on the insides of my cheeks for the rest of my life would serve as a reminder of the two and a half hours I wasted on this terrible movie.