A few years ago, I thought we might be headed for a cultural bottoming out when I read that Steven Speilberg really doesn't read -- all his movies were inspired by other movies. (I haven't been able to find the quote since, so maybe I dreamed it, or maybe it was George Lucas). I think the bottom is either here or very close. The top two opening weekends in movie history, and three of the top five, now belong to films inspired by comic books. (And one of the others is based on a theme ride.)
The critics are ecstatic, of course:
The Dark Knight” is not a simplistic tale of good and evil. Batman is good, yes, The Joker is evil, yes. But Batman poses a more complex puzzle than usual: The citizens of Gotham City are in an uproar, calling him a vigilante and blaming him for the deaths of policemen and others. And the Joker is more than a villain. He's a Mephistopheles whose actions are fiendishly designed to pose moral dilemmas for his enemies.
Batman is good, but complex. The Joker is more than a villain. That such an analysis would be made in all seriousness says something important about the United States, but I'm not sure what -- it's been years since I read comics, after all. Maybe we'd better brush up. With Obama in the Middle East and foreign policy questions now ascendant in the presidential contest, we will need as sophisticated an understanding of good and evil as possible.
TODAY'S BONUS: Figuring out the No. 1 movie of all time can be tricky, because what the industry counts -- gross revenue -- is subject to inflation and other factors. If you go by number of tickets sold and try to adjust for inflation, what's the top hit in American history? Hint: It's been seen by far people more on TV than it even was in the movie theaters.
