Why Is The Dark Knight So Awesome?

The Dark Knight is awesome. It is so awesome. I think you and I can agree on that, assuming you are one of the 5,999,999,983 people who have seen it, and not one of the 17 Nepalese monks who are waiting for it to come out on Blue-Ray. Even the monks would have seen it by now, if they could get a decent BitTorrent connection up in the Himalayas. Damn, spotty wi-fi.

So, why is it awesome? What is the essence of its awesomeness? How can we (you and I, writer and reader) distill its awesomeness down to its constituent parts? Let's get deconstructionist!

There are varying opinions on why The Dark Knight is so awesome (make that, so awesome.) At last count, there were 5,999,999,984 opinions on The Dark Knight's awesomeness (somebody had two opinions, and can't make up his mind. You know who you are.) Was it Heath Ledger? Aaron Eckhart? The brilliant story? The stunning IMAX cinematography? The disappearing-pencil trick? Oh, ye of narrow mind. The way I see it, there are only two possible reasons for The Dark Knight's so-awesomeness, and they are as follows:

1. Courtesy of an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal-- Batman is George W. Bush.

Read that again.

Did your brain just explode? Let me walk you through it. Hold my hand, we'll get through this together.

Batman is a force of morality in a corrupt, immoral world. Gotham City is overrun with bad guys, the insidious criminal element who live to terrorize the good-hearted working men and women of the world. The police, the mayor, they're all useless in the face of such a powerful adversary. Only Batman, acting unilaterally and unequivicably, can hope to topple Gotham's seedy underbelly, chaning its regime and being celebrated as a liberator from terror and tyranny. Only Batman can be trusted to break the law, risk people's lives, violate their privacy, and keep his actions secret from the public, all in the name of security and prosperity. Batman is the hero we need, to justly decide what liberties we can do without in order to ensure our safety.

Batman is George W. Bush. No wonder we love The Dark Knight.

So, how can you argue with that? Well, I'll tell you how. George W. Bush has an approval rating of about 25%, and keep in mind that 5% of the US population is functionally retarded. While no polling exists on Batman's popularity, I think we can assume from the Box Office grosses that more than one quarter of Americans would be a fan (mentally handicapped included.) So, if Batman is GWB, why the disparity? Do people just not get the connection? I mean, it was in the Wall Street Journal, a News. Corp. publication, so it has to be true. Right? Rupert Murdoch has spoken, and we must obey.

Well, no. And that leads to theory number two...

2. The Dark Knight is so awesome because Batman is Barack H. Obama.

I know what you're going to say: Now you're just being contrarian, you snippy little liberal lapdog. Why don't you go throw flowers at a Vietnam vet, hippie.

And of course, you're absolutely right. Except for the flowers part; it's very hard to throw a flower at anything. They tend to just flutter a bit, then fall to the ground.

But to my point: Batman is a crusader for justice. He believes in the inherent goodness of people. He trusts you not to blow up a ferry full of convicts, just because some namby-pamby businessman with a comb-over wants you to. He understands the corruption inherent in the system, and he wants to root it out by elevating the forces of good (Harvey Dent, "Four-Eyes" Gordon.) He seeks not to kill the sources of chaos, but to bring them to justice. He does not kill the Joker in the end; he just beats him up a little, then proves him wrong. Oh, btw, spoiler alert.

In the end, Batman sacrifices his reputation in order to make the world a better place. Kind of like a certain high-minded, optimistic fellow I know who has allowed his funny name to be dragged through the mud, just for a shot at changing the game from the inside.

So, theory number two, that's the one I'm going with. I think I've beat you over the head with enough analogy, so I'll close by saying this. A vote for Obama in '08 is a vote for Batman. And that would be so awesome.