Dark Knight' mob attacks defenseless film critic

Not that it matters of course, when it comes to a pop-culture tsunami like "The Dark Knight," but so far most of America's much-maligned film critics have embraced the Christopher Nolan-directed film, which is due to set all sorts of obscure box-office records this weekend. (Is there, for example, a record for biggest July opening during a presidential campaign year?) But there's always a skunk at every wedding. When it comes to "Dark Knight" fans, the skunk is New York magazine critic David Edelstein, who had the temerity to slag off the new Batman film, calling it "noisy, jumbled and sadistic."

And that was just the beginning: Edelstein hooted at the action scenes ("spectacularly incoherent"), the director ("Nolan appears to have no clue how to stage or shoot action") and the movie in general ("it's all fits and starts, fitfully suspenseful, fitfully scary... with jolts of brutality to keep you revved up"). "Dark Knight" loyalists did not take this lying down. Edelstein has been bombarded with so much e-mail abuse since his review posted that he felt obligated to respond to the vitriol. (The New Yorker's David Denby didn't like the movie much either, but he's somehow escaped being tarred and feathered by the angry mob, perhaps because everyone was more enraged by the Obama cartoon on the cover of this week's magazine.)

I'm not going to get in the middle of this maelstrom, since sadly, I'm such a cultural slacker that I haven't seen the movie yet. But I feel a pang of sympathy for Edelstein, who notes that the Batman fanboys seem to want to have it both ways--calling him a snob for taking the movie seriously, then mocking his pretentiousness for offering more than a "Wow!" as a critical response. The ranting and name-calling all takes us back to the primal question of today's moviegoing age: Do critics still matter?

You should read Edelstein's entire response, but here, in a nutshell, is his argument, which is worth pondering:

"There has been a lot of chatter in the last few years that criticism is a dying profession, having been supplanted by the democratic voices of the Web. Not to get all Lee Siegel on you, but the Internet has a mob mentality that can overwhelm serious criticism. There is superb writing in blogs and discussion groups ... but there are also thousands of semi-literate tirades that actually reinforce the Hollywood status quo, that say: 'If you do not like "The Dark Knight,'" you should be fired because you do not speak for the people.' Well, the people don't need to be spoken for. And a critic's job is not only to steer you to movies you might not have heard of or that died at the box-office. It's also to bring a different, much-needed perspective on blockbusters like 'The Dark Knight.' " 

Photo of Christian Bale as Batman in "The Dark Knight" from Warner Bros.

Comments

[nunzio bagliere]

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[Xian]

Armond White of the New York Press (he's a listed as a Rotten Tomatoes critic, but not "top critics") is getting it much, much worse than David Edelstein (who I usually agree with, but certainly not on "The Dark Knight") or even Stephanie Zacharek and a few others who have given DK a negative review (it's their right, their opinion, but I gather that beyond the hype and the initial rush of seeing this film, history will prove them to be quite wrong). The vitriol (somewhat racist mind you) that Mr. White is getting on his opinion of the film is staggering... fan boys and cineasts seem to be out for his blood on this one. Rarely have I seen so much ardent anger and umbrage given to film critics over what amounts to a movie (no matter how shockingly good it is). Edelstein may be right in his assessment of the critic's role in the web-driven world, but then many in traditional print and other media have serious issues with the democratization of journalism in general.

[Jack]

What the mob won't admit to is that their primary interest is to see Mr. Ledger's performance to determine if he was on drugs during the shoot. That is the lurid whispering campaign happening outside of the film's primary marketing machine. All of it gets bodies into the seats, in the end that's all that will matter to the distributor. Hooray for Hollywood!

[Jeff R]

I don't know who writes the headlines here, but it seems a bit much to say that a "defenseless" person was "attack[ed" by a "mob." Apparently the author of a critical review received some critical (and none too articulate) e-mails and comments. Not quite the same thing.

[Roger]

Hmmmm --interesting thought. What IF Heath Ledger was seriously on drugs during all of his on-camera acting as The Joker. Would his performance be truly his own? If Ray Milland was completely drunk during The Lost Weekend (he wasn't) would he have deserved his Oscar? The Joker character is certainly mad --drug induced?? If so, how far should method acting go? Thoughts???

[Kelly]

I have to say I appreciate the irony.

The critic bristles that the mob doesn't believe in criticism. He knows this because off the criticism he receives.

[asdf]

Criticizing the critics's critics's critics.

I'm going to go stab myself with a yoga ball.

[joec]

i love batman

[Tim]

118 good reviews. 9 bad. i think that speaks for itself why he's conjured such animosity toward his review. if the movie is everything he says it is then why don't more critics fall in line behind his opinion. early negative reviews for spiderman 3 were greeted the same way until it became obvious from the sheer large number of negative reviews that spiderman 3 would disappoint. not the case with the dark knight. the overwhelming majority is praising this film, and this guy is saying they are all wrong and he's right. i seriously doubt it.

[Gmoney]

Sniff sniff.. boo hoo hoo... for critics. It's part of your job to take criticism just as much as to give it. Unless the mob ends up at your office or lurking behind you on your ride home, what does a few sentences really matter. If anything Edelstein should be happy that so many subscribers have seriously read his article, and so many more might start reading him even more. One does have a choice with emails and blog comments, to just not read them and to easily just delete them if it tickles your fancy. The position of a critic will never die out, jobs just re-invent themselves, theres always a name and a face or more so now an addy.

[Jim]

Edelstein is just jealous because Gotham City, which is technically New York City, now looks like Chicago in The Dark Knight. And the 'mob' is just jealous because Edelstein got to see The Dark Knight first. Batmania is alive and kicking!

[Anton]

The problem with critics is that there are so many bad critics. Critics that are jaded and overly hard to please, and ones that see movies through the lens of a art snob. Then there are the myriad of jump-on-the-bandwagon critics that just parrot everything that other critics have said already. It is critics like these that can destroy movie's revenues. Consider "Speed Racer" which has a favourable crowd response (those who bravely saw it despite terrible reviews), compared to a horrific critic response. How do we rationalise this? The message is we cant. Obviously critics are judging movies according to different standards than the people they are trying to "help." They are like the product you realise is worthless once you buy it. In this day of widespread information, I think the critic, if not dead, should die.

[Thomas]

How can anyone but critics really say whether it's good or not if it hasn't been released? Has EVERYONE somehow managed to see it early? I plan to see it and think it will be alright, but I don't expect it to be the best movie ever made, and really don't plan on it being any better than Ironman. I look forward to heath Ledger performance as the deranged Joker, but whether he's dead or not isn't going to make it any better. I wasn't really impressed with Batman Begins, so I still have mixed veiws on this one. That, and I odn't really like Christian Bale as Batman. Micheal Keaton was the best!

[David J Wilson]

If the "mob" didn't think critics important, they wouldn't attack them.

[Mark Thomas]

Vitriol is a natural human response to stupidity and/or maliciousness weaseling its way into a position of influence and then gloating about being untouchable.

[Bozzmania]

Take heart fans, the "critic's" a few years ago gave rave reviews to a total piece of crap
"Knocked Up" and thereby destroyed sales for a wonderful movie that came out at the same time ("Once").

Whaddya they knowanyway...........................

[L.J. Burgess]

Heath Ledger was a two-bit actor from the git-go anyway.

Any movie with him in top role can't be taken seriously.

[Carl]

Mobs are stupid. The movie's all hype.

[Jsens3]

Well, duh, of course what Hollywood about is money, its the American way! The much maligned critic is correct. The democratization of media has spawned a plethora of banal, pedestrian, offal. Films that are lauded to the heavens on Monday may be in the ash heap by Friday. The taste of the comsuming public is mostly in its collective mouth. Does any thinking person believe a Batman movie starring druggie Heath Ledger is going to be great film! Those who do are likely the same who thought Angels and Demons and The DaVinci Code were great literature. The observation attributed to P.T. Barnum that "there's a sucker born every minute" applies here.

[none]

No, critic don't matter. I haven't listened to them in years.

It's not really their fault...Once you become a critic you learn things about film acting, pacing, editing, etc, that you can no longer watch a movie as the rest of us do. By nature of what they do, they become detached from the normal movie going audience. It's sad, really. But, no, they often don't matter - and often they cannot predict if I will like a movie.

[Arlo Scott Kennedy]

Bravo! The author gets it EXACTLY right.

The "tyranny of the majority" does not represent sufficient cause for critical acclaim. If such were true then we should all agree that the ubiquitous Big Mac represents the height of attainment in the gustatory arts; Madonna, of course, is the greatest musician/composer of all time; and whomever does the layout on the most circulated advertising billboard is the greatest visual artist of our generation.

We've more than a sufficient supply of pop art. And we've certainly heard enough from the great globular mass of us when it comes to wisdom regarding that which we simply must consume. And, of course, We, the Collective, often get it right.

But that argument simply doesn't hold water when it comes to the sustenance of the bravest amongst us: our artists, particularly the most avante garde and outre; the sort of creators that the public is most likely to dismiss, leaving great work stillborn while the accessibly mundane sits atop an eternal throne. This is where the arts community must, in some sense, be an insular animal - a solipsistic clan obsessed with the discovery of an ever-purer creative process. Indeed, an isolation from public criticism is often the prerequisite to the generation of anything of interest at all. Would we have ever experienced a Marc Chagall, a Picasso or a Jackson Pollack absent the sort of incestuous relationship(s) that tend to mark the cross-pollination of artists, critics and patrons? We can easily assume that Bertolt Brecht, Samuel Beckett and Edward Albee would've languished in eternal obscurity were it not for the sort of theatre community that many would say no longer exists - it having been replaced by a blockbuster-obsessed Broadway (even Off-Broadway) that's so busy selling to flyover country that it long ago lost its raison d'tre.

So, we need critics. And 300 million Americans do not a patron make. Absent an arts community accountable only to itself there can be no more artists - only "product."

And, as a critic AND an artist, I've never been very fond of "product."

[Brian]

Armond White deserves any razzing he's getting.

His entire review of the film boils down to a moral criticism of the director's noir tonal choices. He hands out a 1-star review because of his moral belief that a movie like this should be about a hero who inspires hope.

Of course, anyone who knows anything about criticism or aesthetics knows that the person who approaches material this way is a philistine. Pure and simple. A rube, a hick. By the standard White proposes, Superman III is better art than Euripides' Bacchae. In just about every paragraph of White's review, he exposes himself as a hater of art and an enemy of art.

And he does so with a complete lack of self-awareness and the arrogance of a half-educated blowhard. He's too vain to realize he's a philistine and a bourgeois, and thinks that HE is the epitome of sophistication and that everyone who disagrees with him is "debased" [his word]. He has brought a knife to a critical and intellectual gunfight and deserves what he gets.

[Robert]

Saw Michael Caine on Leno the other night. He said that Ledger went through an amazing transformation in mere seconds. One second he'd be shooting a scene as the sadistic maniac that is the Joker and the next moment the two would be sharing a thoughtful conversation. So, was he on drugs? Well, Caine's comment would lead me to believe Ledger was perfectly capable of pulling off the Joker without that sort of help.

[Gene]

The man liked Hancock...so there ya go. He loved a movie that was not that good and then fell apart in the third act. Hancock was awful and The Dark Knight is an action/superhero movie masterpiece. Chris Nolan is without a doubt one of the greatest film makers alive, if you don't believe me please buy Momento and the Prestige so your dvd collection can have something other than Meet the I now pronounce you Chuck and Larry and Transformers in it.

BTW, anyone who thinks Michael Keaton was a better batman/bruce wayne and that Tim Burtons first film "got it right' have no idea what they're talking about, so please shut up, you sound like morons. Sorry, I've read that in a bunch of comments on almost every site and it really gets to me. Same for anyone who thinks Ang Lees Hulk "got it right" more than the newest film...get real.

[Brad]

Regardless of what Ledger's personal life was like, his role as Joker was genius. Its a pity we can't see him create more. I don't think they should make anymore Batman's, I don't think they can top his performance.