‘Dark Knight’ fan boys rip the head off another critic

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OK, let’s get one thing out of the way right up front. I am not a ‘Dark Knight’ detractor. Chris Nolan is a really gifted filmmaker and he’s made a film that has the intensity of heavy-metal cinema--it works on a hundred different levels, whether you find it totally involving or an assault on the senses. My problem is with the film’s Bat Fan Boys who’ve been deluging film critics who abusive e-mail simply because they didn’t join the crowd (or maybe we should call it the mob) and embrace the movie.

The first critic to take the hit was New York magazine’s David Edelstein, who, as we wrote last week, was pummeled by unhappy Bat boys after calling the film ‘noisy, jumbled and sadistic.’ Edelstein took offense, writing a spirited defense of his position, noting--tellingly--that 99% of his attackers hadn’t even seen the movie yet. But now ‘Dark Knight’ fans have a new punching bag--the Wall Street Journal’s eminence grise, Joe Morgenstern. The veteran critic didn’t like the film, but his reaction was hardly knee-jerk dismissal. His review treats the film as serious but muddled art, calling it ‘a social experiment on a global scale, an ambitious, lavish attempt to see if audiences will turn out for a comic book epic that goes beyond darkness into Stygian bleakness, grim paradox, endless betrayals and pervasive corruption.’

The reaction? As Morgenstern told me last night, while he was waiting for a plane in Chicago: ‘I’ve gotten 250 or 300 e-mails, almost all with the vilest, most abusive language you could possibly imagine. I was stunned. These people aren’t just discourteous. They’re insane.’ So what’s going here? Are critics wrong to expect their readers to show civilized manners? Or have fan boys turned into droogs, the nasty gang of brutes who run wild in Kubrick’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’? Is it time some people got a life?

I confess to being a bit baffled. On the one hand, I’m so used to reading the usual round of trash-talking on message boards that when I scrolled through the comments about Morgenstern’s review on Rotten Tomatoes I was hardly fazed. I’ve read far worse, much of it directed at me. E-mail seems to be the perfect format for blowing off a head of steam. Readers questioned Morgenstern’s manhood (‘What an old queen!’), taunted him (‘Prepare to be roasted!!!’) and hooted at his bad taste (‘ ‘Mamma Mia’ over ‘TDK’? Seriously? Wow, what a tool’). But when a guy whose e-mail handle is Super Nazi Moses blows you off, saying, ‘You are a moron ... Burn in Hell,’ you really have to consider the source. After all, what you would expect Super Nazi Moses to say?

But the soccer hooligan-style ferocity of the response really disturbed Morgenstern. ‘Suddenly we live in a new world full of trolls,’ he said. ‘I write for an educated readership and usually the responses to my reviews are courteous and collegial. But this was really ugly. It did feel like a mob. There’s obviously a lot of anti-intellectualism at work, with some subtle undertones of anti-Semitism too. The roar of scorn was pretty unnerving. I’ve heard this language before--I’ve used it myself--but only when someone hit my car.’

Morgenstern sensed that the response had the air of ‘Dark Knight’ loyalists protecting their turf. ‘They’re policing their comic book mythology from anyone who doesn’t appreciate it sufficiently. Look, I know I’m critical. That’s what I get paid for. But who likes to be brutalized--and brutalized over a comic-book movie?’

My suspicion is that a whole lot of fans feel just as protective of ‘Dark Knight’ as critics feel of their favorite Oscar film. Both sides believe they are defending something under attack, even though ‘Dark Knight’ has been such a pop culture blitzkrieg that it’s hard to imagine it could possibly be threatened by a few nattering nabob-style critics. But rightly or wrongly, critics today are viewed as cultural snobs--it’s hardly a coincidence that much of the Rotten Tomatoes comment traffic focused on Morgenstern being an elitist New Yorker, even though he’s resided for years in Los Angeles.

So I ask you the question: What is crude and what is rude and what is nasty, by your standards? Is Morgenstern wrong to expect a more elevated discussion about his take on ‘Dark Knight’? At The Times, the paper’s policy is to reject abusive comments or ones with vulgar language. But if you can make your case, PG-13 style, I’d love to hear where you draw the line when it comes to venting your spleen.