Wanted vs. Dark Knight

So I saw The Dark Knight.

Amid the admittedly somewhat atypical summer popcorn fair (read- WANTED) I was positive it would stand out in the minds of box office groupies like myself this summer. It was a good summer for the biz. A lot of blue chip efforts made big splashes, but I'm not sure The Dark Knight (TDK) was among them. Did any of us doubt its potential?

Not me. I doubt you did either.

Turns out, we were right, or the US government has found a clever way to disguise roughly $518 million of Iraq war expenses.

In either case, I, like most film geeks, was utterly thrilled and overwhelmed by the film as well as its beyond impressive box office performance. Yes, I am one of those guys.

I was excited. Most of my friends were too. It was understandable considering Batman had been one of my favorite characters since before I read my first novel (and long after).

"Are you kidding?," a friend asked. "Wanted was way better than Dark Knight!"

I know. I was thinking the same thing. So... where do we go from here? Well, as it turns out, against the odds, I attempted to take pity on him and sway him to the Dark side, so to speak.

According to Friend X, Wanted was just more "entertaining".

Maybe. In his defense, I'm not sure I can argue that TDK entertained him more.

The fact is that even with a film as undeniably good as TDK there will always be room for rebuttal. No matter how many Spiderman 3 fans offer it.

I began this article with the intent of writing about the merits of TDK as an Oscar contender, but I suppose that's apparent. Or maybe for a later post.

I guess the question now is not how good a film The Dark Knight was. Rather, more to the point how much better is it than anything else in its class?

I guess I am biased, but I considered it a work of art that transcended the traditionally stifling stigma of comic book fandom and transformed the genre as a whole.

Simply put it was phenomenal. It broke rules and set records. To paraphrase one of my new favorite screen villains, it lives in "a world without rules."

By the way, the film earned nearly 3 times its production budget. And my first novel was Batman.