Dark Knight Fandom Getting Downright Ugly–Critics Targeted
Oooookay…this is one that bodes badly for all us film critics out there (what? I’m a film critic! Dude, I totally talk about movies all the time! In print! Well…in FONT, anyway.) but at the same time gives us a new marketing ploy to be possibly dubbed “bait the psychos”.
The Wall Street Journal’s film critic–apparently, the Wall Street Journal DOES in fact have a film critic–Joe Morgenstern is the newest target following his review of The Dark Knight, now on track to easily make more money than some Central American countries. Morgenstern’s review has garnered him upward of three hundred emails, filled to the brim with, as Morgenstern describes it, “..the vilest, most abusive language you could possibly imagine.”
Best quote of Morganstern’s rebuttal? “These people aren’t just discourteous. They’re insane.”
Now, I read Morganstern’s review of The Dark Knight, and while it’s definitely no love letter, Morganstern is clear on one thing–Heath Ledger may not get an Oscar but he’s definitely got the “Epic Win” award on TOTAL LOCKDOWN. In fact, reading Morganstern suggests very strongly that the entire movie was elevated from something like mundanity to its staggering heights of success due almost totally to Heath Ledger’s ultimately legendary performance. To read Morganstern, calling Ledger’s performance “powerhouse” or “spectacular” is almost an insult. It’s like chocolate-coated crack.
It’s that good.
But seriously…Morganstern really didn’t earn any ire thrown in his direction. Reading it suggests he was prepared to scoff it off as “yet another comic book movie”, and considering he writes for the Wall Street Journal he has to know that’s what most of his audience is going to think. Let’s be clear. This isn’t Ain’t It Cool or Monday Movie Mayhem.com or any other such thing. This is the WALL STREET JOURNAL. He’s writing for an audience that maybe possibly might tear themselves from CNBC or a stock ticker long enough to take the kids to catch a flick, and the fanbois are ripping him apart for it.
I understand the imperatives of fandom–every time people say that “Diary of the Dead suxxors” I get a little irked and it’s not because of the leetspeak. But there’s a limit, and a point at which restraint is due. Batman fanbois, this is that point.
Why don’t we all calm down and go play some Batman Begins trivia? You know it’s a bad sign when I’m the one advocating restraint, right?
Popularity: 3% [?]
I’m betting 99% of the hate mail was over this passage:
“(Both of those incarnations [Dent/Two-face] flip a coin fatefully in the fashion of Javier Bardem’s monster in “No Country For Old Men,” except that this coin has two heads, so what’s the point?)”
Well you see, while Dent is “making his own luck” with the double-headed coin, the scarring of one of the coin’s sides and its subsequent flipping demonstrate his fall to nihilism, and…
Eh, never mind.
He’s right that without Ledger this movie would only be okay. But it does have Ledger, and is AWESOME.
From what I can tell–and I actually shot an email in Morganstern’s direction trying to get an interview (he passed)–much of the email wasn’t coherent enough to notice details like that, Matt.
I like how everyone’s acting like the coin-flip was somehow a ripoff of No Country, which was written in 2005, vs. Detective Comics #66, which was published in 1942. HMMMM.
So he made a wrong call on the coin flip. Is that the going rate for three hundred pieces of vicious hate-mail?
There is nothing in this article that doesn’t suggest to me that Joe Morgenstern is a horrible, horrible human being.