Yes, I said it. Raiders is a tribute to adventure serials of the 30's. It's a hell of a lot of fun. It's perfectly cast, acted, and directed. But it has ZERO depth. And I don't know why you'd call it a landmark, because it didn't exactly usher in a slew of knockoffs or break any kind of cinematic ground--conversely, it's actually a pastiche of films that had been done over and over again for the last 40 years. How does it stand apart from Jaws, for instance, as a blockbuster or an adventure film?
i think one difference is that, while Raiders is a revisitation of the past, it is an original story. Batman is a very well known, very well established, total franchise with built in B.O. even a steaming pile of crap like "Batman and Robin" is going to make $100m at the box office. and i do disagree very much about Raiders not inspiring knock offs. i think every action/adventure film that has happened since 1981 has tried to measure up to Raiders. you have, say, the awful "King Solomon's Mines," "Romancing the Stone," and the whole "Mummy" series. and that's just off the top of my head.
i'd say it stands apart from jaws in that it is better directed and more thrilling -- Jaws is more of a horror film, i'd say -- and it created a timeless character who's himself an icon. i'm a fan of Chief Brody, Quinn, and Matt Hooper, but they're hardly heroic icons (Bruce the shark, maybe).
On the flipside, The Dark Knight is also perfectly cast, and while not directed as well (or consistently as well), has set pieces that are up there with ANYTHING in modern action films, and raises some very serious moral and ethical questions. Not anything that hasn't been probed deeper in other films, but for something as big and pop as this, it's a major achievement. It also reflects things in our current (read: pre-Obama) political situation without beating you over the head. There's SO much to take away from it, and I don't think it will lessen its appeal over time, either.
i do absolutely agree that TDK has much more political depth than Raiders, and than any comic book action movie, and it has more in common with "Heat." and the Mumbai attacks, for me, reinforced this -- how do you deal with people who only want to watch the world burn? who are not afraid of dying? of people who will line you up, take your passport, stuff it in your mouth, and then shoot you in the head? that's what, i think, Ledger was on about, and perhaps he got a glimpse of something, some Heart of Darkness, that made him go a bit crazy. it wouldn't surprise me if the role gave him PTSD.
In my opinion, when they've already nominated genre fare like Star Wars, Jaws, Raiders, Close Encounters, The Fugitive, Silence of the Lambs, etc. for Best Picture, the argument that TDK doesn't fit is ludicrous. It's not as shallow as any of those, and wouldn't be an embarrassment to the Academy in the slightest.
on this we agree. i think it deserves a BP nomination.
