Warner Bros. latest Batman adaptation, “The Dark Knight,” is a genre bender that baffles audience classification, and may impact film ratings going forward.
Further, its comic-book-to-silver-screen arc makes it ideal for a new print graphic novel to promote the film and special clips screening in Imax theaters. But its console video game adaption was abandoned and won’t be released with its premiere, which is the custom for cinema movies based on action intellectual property (IP).
The $185 million production that is rated PG-13 is scheduled for domestic theatrical release on July 18 from Warner Bros. Pictures.
“It blew the doors off so many genres it’s hard to keep track,” Aaron Gleason wrote in “The Federalist” later. “It was a perfect comic book film, a brilliant crime movie, a stellar action flick, an amazing superhero story, a nail-biting cop drama, an intense thriller, a political commentary, a tale of terrorism, and more. It defies classification.”
“Dark Knight” pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable violence for mass-audience movies, getting a PG-13 rating in the United States despite some horrific scenes, according to a “Wall Street Journal” opinion article. “The Joker’s psychotic brutality–he impales one character on a pencil and in a shocking scene blows one of the franchise’s leading female characters to smithereens–makes a mockery of the rating system,” asserts Allen Barra.
Barra’s thesis is that this installment of Warner Bros.’ Batman film series sheds its whimsical roots and becomes hard edge reality with a political message, “crossing a line that perhaps did not need to be crossed, the fantasy-into-reality line.”
A subtle message is that good fighting evil with force is evil, and the good guys lower themselves, which the commentary says attempts to draw a parallel to today’s war on terror in the real world. If the bad guys are extremely evil, resistance is futile.
“The Batmobile is banished, replaced by an assault vehicle–a high-speed tank, really,” writes Barra. “The minimalist score by James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer evokes not exhilaration but dread.”
The new realism is very evident by comparing today’s Batman movie with Tim Burton-directed “Batman” in 1989, which was unreal with neon-ish colors, over-the-top Wagnerian music and an impish villain portrayed by Jack Nicholson.
A young boy is held in extreme jeopardy at the end of the film in a way that would have been unthinkable in anything but an R-rated film years ago. But audiences seem to accept the new audience classification standards, and the CARA ratings are designed to bend with the times.
Meanwhile, overseas film audience classification boards face a difficult task in placing “Dark Knight” in a category that satisfies everyone, given its hard edge yet underlying fantasy nature.
In the UK, the Warner Bros. release received a “12A,” which allows younger children to attend if accompanied by a parent. Critics say that this film deserves a more restrictive “15” classification.
In a letter to the “Times of London” newspaper, Iain Duncan Smith, a former leader of the conservative Tory party, wrote: “I was astonished that the board could have seen fit to allow anyone under the age of 15 to watch the film. Unlike past ‘Batman’ films, where the villains were somewhat surreal and comical figures, Heath Ledger’s Joker is a brilliantly acted but very credible psychopathic killer who extols the use of knives to kill and disfigure his victims, during a reign of urban terrorism laced with torture.”
The UK film board responds “Dark Knight” is unreal–and thus viewed as fantasy by audiences–given Batman’s acrobatics and The Joker’s seemingly unlimited capacity for physical punishment.
On the licensed movie merchandise front, there is no console video game based on blockbuster “Dark Knight,” which means film distributor Warner Bros. and a video game company missed a $100 million payday (a smaller casual mobile game did arrive).
Despite stores full of action figures, tee shirts and bobbleheads, this is the first movie in the “Batman” movie series without a major console video game, notes an Associated Press article by Derrik J. Lang. Electronic Arts held rights for a “Dark Knight” game and one was in the works, but never came out, according to the AP article.
“Speculation about the cause of the disappearing act has included missed deadlines, [Joker actor] Heath Ledger’s death, questionable quality and poor sales projections,” notes the AP article.
The AP article also cites Wedbush Morgan Securi8tes video game analyst Michael Pachter projecting a “Dark Knight” console video game release simultaneously with the movie would have sold 4 million units and banked $100 million. Of that, $70 million would have gone to the game publisher and $70 million to Warner Bros., which is the Time Warner Inc. unit as of this writing.
Warner Bros. is releasing a series of Internet shorts that put low-grade animation in comic book slides to promote feature film “The Dark Knight” and also “Watchmen,” which is based on a graphic novel. A “Watchmen” movie is scheduled for March 6, 2009 by Warner Bros. and is directed by Zach Snyder of gritty Spatan epic “300” fame.
Tied to today’s theatrical release of “Dark Knight” is the “Mad Love” series of seven episodes running three minutes each about a woman in love with The Joker who also tangles with Batman. “Watchmen” is a series of 12 episodes running 11 minutes each.
The episodes present comic book like art, but with minor movement of lips and darting eyes. The presentation also includes audio consisting of music, sound effects and character voices.
Notes a “Wall Street Journal” article, “The first episode of ‘Watchmen,’ for example, initially will be free on iTunes but will cost $1.99 starting Aug. 1. Xbox users can buy Mad Love with points they purchase from Microsoft or earn with various promotions. The cost will be the equivalent of $1.25 an episode in standard video, or $1.75 in high definition.”
The motion comics shorts will help pump life into the properties of DC Comics, which is a sister company of Warner Bros., and also generate some revenue.
The creative messaging for the “Dark Knight” theatrical campaign is turning heads too.
Warner Bros. is mounting first-wave teaser campaign built around a secondary character in a marketing effort that does not mention the film itself, says a “Los Angeles Times” article. Outdoor billboards touting “Harvey Dent for district attorney”–the secondary character–urge consumers to go online, where it’s hoped they find content for which they tell their friends, creating a snowball effect.
“By employing a variety of untraditional awareness-building maneuvers and starting the film’s promo push strategically, more than a year before the film’s release, marketers at the firm 42 Entertainment, which is subcontracted by the film’s distributor, Warner Bros., seem to have struck a chord with ‘The Dark Knight’s’ core constituency: fanboys and comic-book geeks,” notes the article by Chris Lee. “The promotional efforts — part viral marketing initiative, part ‘advertainment’ — fit into an absorbing, nascent genre-bending pastime called alternate reality gaming that have been the toast of movie and comic blogs for months.”
Related content:
- ‘The Federalist’: ‘The Dark Knight’s” Spellbinding Tale of Self-Sacrifice Erases Normal Film-genre Boundaries
- BBC News: How Do Other Countries Rate ‘Black Knight’?
- ‘San Jose Mercury News’: Why There Isn’t a Video Game for ‘The Dark Knight’?
- By the Numbers: ‘The Dark Knight’ (2008)
- ‘Los Angeles Times’: Bat Infiltration
- Business Wire PR: Audiences Treated to Opening Six-minute Prologue of ‘The Dark Knight’-Only in IMAX
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