The Dark Knight

It has really been awhile, I think, since I did something fun just by myself and for myself. I work a lot of hours to pay the bills and to allow Melody to be able to stay home with our dear children. When I'm not at my full-time job or my part-time job, I'm home with my family or, occasionally, doing church stuff.

But today was really slow at work and I had a bunch of paid time off available. So... I went to see The Dark Knight!

I have been a huge Batman fan since I was a kid. I used to keep a large collection of Batman comics well into my college years, even into my first decade of marriage. Some of my best friends through the years were Batman fans, too. I have a collage of small pictures of the people in my life. There are hundreds of pictures there and my heroes figure prominently. First, my Dad. Then historical heroes like George Washington and Stonewall Jackson. then there are fictional heroes like Indiana Jones and Batman. I remember many times as a young Christian feeling guilty for reading Batman when I knew I should have been reading Bible.

But over the past ten years I guess I finally grew out of Batmania. It has been years since I even wanted to read a Batman comic.

But the hype over the newest Batman movie was too much for me to resist. I had to see it. And I wasn't disappointed. I thought it was great. Here then are some thoughts on the movie. Don't worry, I won't give anything away.

The Batcycle is the coolest motorized vehicle ever!

This representation of Batman was the closest to my idea of Batman ever. Christian Bale looks exactly like my idea of Bruce Wayne. Yes, I've heard of the actor's bad boy behavior - his recent arrest, etc. - but he really was a great Batman.

No Batman in the movies has ever had better gear. I loved it when he jumped of a skyscraper and "flew" down to get the bad guys.

I read that the movie was an allegorical slam on President Bush, but it wasn't obtrusively so. One scene toward the end, maybe, and I took a quick run to the bathroom during it (the movie is 2 hours and 40 minutes long).

Despite the hype, I wasn't that impressed with Heath Ledger as The Joker. Great make-up, great costume, average acting. Actually his Joker voice was a little irritating - kind of whiney. But the writers, the creators of this Joker were dead on. This was a psychopath. I never liked Jack Nicholson's Joker. He wasn't scary. He was just a clown.

Speaking of voices, the speech therapist in me was also bothered by Batman's deep, rough voice. Obviously he doesn't want to sound like Bruce Wayne. But I kept thinking the actor must have been close to damaging his vocal chords with that McGruff the Crime Dog thing he was doing.

Great choreography of fight scenes. Great pyrotechnics.

The Harvey Dent character was excellent. Great make-up at the end. But his transformation later in the movie wasn't well developed, seemed a little contrived.

The Commisioner Gordon actor was also perfectly cast.

Why is Morgan Freeman in everything? Hollywood would shut down if he took a year off. They ripped his character off of the James Bond movies - I never saw this guy in the Batman comics. It's like they said, "the movie's pretty good, but we need to try to work Morgan Freeman into it somehow".

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Again, I really needed to give myself this treat. I want to do this kind of thing more often. It was a good stress reliever for me to just go do something fun. After I called Melody and told her what I was going to do, and after I cleared the time off with my boss - I briefly thought that maybe I should go for a long prayer walk with the Lord instead. I have so much I need to be praying over and His nearness is always so soothing. But then I felt the release to go on to the movie. It's kind of like how sometimes you need to go to bed early and catch up on sleep. That's always good for me. My time off from work and family obligations today was similar. I needed to get away and decompress.

So, strangely, I found myself walking out of this dark, violence-filled movie (in which good defeats evil), saying, "thank you, Lord".

Amen.