War Handwavium

A map that shows who has controlled the middle east throughout history.

From http://www.mapsofwar.com/

The title should be “Cookies or Waterboarding?” but Eddie Izzard really gets credit for pointing out the assinine stupidity of those defending torture as more effective that normal interrogation techniques.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNjcuZ-LiSY

The most successful interrogation of an Al-Qaeda operative by U.S. officials required no sleep deprivation, no slapping or “walling” and no waterboarding. All it took to soften up Abu Jandal, who had been closer to Osama bin Laden than any other terrorist ever captured, was a handful of sugar-free cookies.

TIME spoke with several interrogators who have worked for the U.S. military as well as others who have recently retired from the intelligence services (the CIA and FBI turned down requests for interviews with current staffers). All agreed with Soufan: the best way to get intelligence from even the most recalcitrant subject is to apply the subtle arts of interrogation rather than the blunt instruments of torture.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/09171190149100

This is the War Handwavium score for “Shoot Em Up”, a movie released in 2007.

+384 points

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0465602/

!!!SPOILERS!!!

All times are relative from the start of the movie, as recorded by a DVR.

+3 points, 0:02, Smith kills thug with carrot

+33 points, 0:03, Smith shoots 11 thugs

+5 points, 0:04, Hertz shoots wounded thug to stop him from squirming

+2 points, 0:07, Smith knocks out thug with gun

+5 points, 0:09, Hertz shoots his own guy in rear

+2 points, 0:12, Smith beats up Secret Service guy

+3 points, 0:15, Hertz kills bystander

+12 points, 0:23, Audience is shown 4 thugs killed by Smith.

-2 points, 0:28, Smith smashes finger of “John” by accident. (poor targeting)

+129 points, 0:33, Smith kills 23 thugs as they invade. Kills another 20 rappelling down stairwell.

+3 points, 0:41, Smith kills Secret Service guy with carrot

+24 points, 0:47, Smith kills 8 guys while he’s having sex.

+2 points, 0:50, Smith spanks Mom

+66 points, 0:54, Smith kills 22 guards at Hammerson factory

+27 points, 0:59, Smith kills 9 thugs in car chase

+3 points, 1:07, Smith killls Senator

+24 points, 1:08, Smith kills 8 thugs while skydiving

+24 points, 1:09, Smith sees a total of 14 dead skydivers on ground, an additional 6 kills

-5 points, 1:12, Smith is tortured.

+12 points, 1:13, Smith escapes torture from Hertz, kills 4 thugs

+3 points, 1:17, Smith kills Hertz

+9 points, 1:18, Smith shoots three punks during holdup.

There isn’t much plot to this movie. Well, there is, and it’s all really convoluted. The short version is that the MacGuffin of the movie is a baby. Bad guys want the baby dead. Good guys want baby alive. Carnage ensues.

There are 2 “good” guys in this movie, Smith and Donna. There is basically 1 bad guy, Hertz, and a whole bunch of cannon fodder. By the end of the movie, Smith has killed 115 black hats.

It was visually interesting at times, but the plot was spaghetti and the dialogue was pretty stiff.

All War Hw Fiction Scores

Obama is the first president to suggest that he ought to be able to preventively detain anyone, for any reason, for as long as he wants, without any evidence of an actual crime, just in case that person might commit a crime in the future.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/05/22/preventive_detention/index.html

Some people with a sense of civil liberty saw this coming.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/12/09/guantanamo/

This isn’t saying we want to hold POW’s until the end of the war. POW’s are captured on a battlefield. POW’s do not include civiliians and are limited to armed combatants. And the “War On Terror” is a propaganda campaign with no end in sight. We’re still waging a “War on Drugs” decades after it started. Politicians will be waging a “War On Terror” for decades into the future.

This is Obama saying he wants to detain anyone, foreign or American, whether they committed a crime or not, whether there is evidence or not, on the grounds that maybe, perhaps, possibly, they might commit a crime in the future.

Obama is proposing America’s first Pre-Crime unit.

The reason, and I mean the only reason, anyone is proposing this is because every single detainee in Guantanamo has been tortured, and torture makes evidence inadmissable, which means none of these detainees can be convicted in any legal court of law. Not to mention that torture creates a demand that the torturers be prosecuted for torturing. Had Bush and Company not been so hot to trot to cut a man’s testicles and repeatedly bring men close to death via drowning, we wouldn’t have this problem now.

But now it’s Obama’s problem. And the right thing to do is to return to the rule of law, not invent laws that say there is no law. Obama wants to maintain his popularity, and Cheney and other psychopaths will howl murder if a single detainee is released from Guantanamo. And because Darth Cheney has tainted the evidence against every detainee, we cannot secure any convictions unless we submit to Darth Cheney’s notion of Rule of Law: It’s legal if I say so.

If this becomes “law”, America is doomed.

AIPAC sent a letter to Obama

http://www.aipac.org/Publications/SourceMaterialsCongressionalAction/HousePeaceLetter.pdf

It says, in summary, butt out, unless the US is going to play “Good Cop” to Israel’s “Bad Cop” routine, in which case, Good Cops use rubber bullets on Palestinians, Bad Cops use lead bullets.

Also, AIPAC makes clear that Israel is totally open to implementing a Two-State solution with Palestinians as soon as someone from Gaza slays the Nemean lion, the hydra, capture the deer of Artemis, capture the Erymantian boar, clean the Augean stables in one day, slay the Stymphalian birds, capture the Cretan bull, steal Diomedes horses, obtain the girdle of the Amazon queen, obtain cattle from Geryon, obtain Hesperides’s apples, and capture Cerberus.

And buy them a pony.

And if the Palestinians are willing to meet these reasonable demands of the Israelis, then the Israelis will happily make peace with them.

http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/05/20/worse-than-waterboarding/

Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Yvonne Bradley was the lawyer for Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian national who was arrested by the Pakistani government in April 2002 on suspicion of being a member of al Qaeda. He was then shuffled through a series of CIA “ghost prisons” before being imprisoned at Guantanamo for five years.

According to Bradley, when Mohamed was first held at a CIA prison in Morocco, they would torture him by cutting his genitals with a razor blade. During this torture, Mohamad confessed that he had attended an al Qaeda training camp and discussed plans to make a dirty bomb

But then, someone figured out that Mohamad was innocent, had no associations with terrorism, and had only confessed under duress from torture. After years of detention, he was released and returned to the United Kingdom.

Another stunning victory for torture and skipping due process.

This is the War Handwavium score for the movie “Kill Bill” 1 and 2.

total: +289 points

!!!SPOILERS!!!

+5 points, 02:21, Bill tells Kiddo “This is me at my most masochistic” just before he shoots her in head. Pointless display of evil.

+3 points, 13:33, Kiddo kills Copperhead

+3 points, 29:30, Kiddo bites trucker’s lip as he was about to rape her.

+3 points, 31:40, Kiddo kills Buck

+9 points, 36:57, Cottonmouth’s backstory, her father kills three mob thugs

-3 points, 37:34, Thug kills father

-3 points, 39:30, Mob Boss kills mother

+3 points, 41:04, Cottonmouth kills Boss

+6 points, 42:32, Cottonmouth kills 2 thugs

+3 points, 43:30, Cottonmouth first professional hit

+5 points, 01:00:20, GoGo kills patron at bar, pointless display of evil

+3 points, 01:02:57, Cottonmouth beheads boss

+3 points, 01:14:24, Kiddo cuts Sophie’s arm off

+18 points, 01:15:34, Kiddo kills first line of bodyguards, 6 dead

+3 points, 01:20:30, Kiddo kills GoGo

information, 01:22:30, Arial shot shows Kiddo surrounded by 43 bodyguards, Crazy88’s.

+222 points, 01:22:30, Kiddo kills 74 of the Crazy 88’s.

Kiddo spanks 1 and tells him to go home to his mother
+5 points, Kiddo ducks an axe and allows it to kill another Crazy 88. Lethal Rube Goldberg Machine.
Kiddo cuts one man in the mouth with sword, looks like the Joker.

+3 points, 10:36:53, Kiddo scalps, kills Cottonmouth

+10 points, 01:40:31, Kiddo tortures Sophie, gets information

Kill Bill part 2

+17 points, 14:25, Bill and others kill everyone in church, 8 dead, Kiddo in coma. Camera pulls away, distancing audience from scene.

-3 points, 26:00, Bud shoots Kiddo with rocksalt

-5 points, 37:30, Bud buries Kiddo alive

+3 points, 01:09:50, California Mountain Snake kills Bud with a real snake.

+5 points, 01:19:52, Kiddo plucks out California Mountain Snake’s eye.

+5 points, 01:58:40, Kiddo kills Bill with 5 point palm exploding heart technique, Bill doesn’t die right away, distancing audience.

Summary:

I’m surprised “Kill Bill” got this low of a score. It appears that the Crazy 88’s were indeed meant to be composed of 88 people. 88 kills times 3 points a kill is 264 points, which gives “Kill Bill” quite a bump in the score. But it turns out that is also the biggest part of the carnage. Compared to “300″, which shows armies getting slaughtered, “Kill Bill” is relatively tame. “Kill Bill” also didn’t “other” the way “300″ did. In “300″, the bad guys were freaks and weirdos and nonhuman. In “Killl Bill”, the bad guys were just people who looked like anyone else. The “Kill Bill” 1 had nearly a hundred deaths on screen. “Kill Bill” 2 had 2 on-screen deaths: Bud and Bill. (It had a replay of the church massacre, but it was a replay, and the camera backed off and didn’t actually show the deaths). Which is probably why most people have the experience of “Kill Bill” that they love the first one or the second one, but they hate the other film. Few people, apparently like both films. The first one has 100 deaths on screen and is mostly a violent action film. The second one has 2 deaths on screen and while violent, spends far more time explaining people’s motivations and exploring the consequences.

There is something about Tarantino movies that comes off as voyeuristic towards violence. The movie starts off with a fake “Feature Presentation” intro clip from the 70’s. And when people bleed, they gush blood like a high pressure hose. Apparently Tarantino did this as an homage to the martial arts movies he was paying homage to. But the effect as a member of the audience is to be reminded that you’re a member of the audience, not part of the movie. When I think of Tarantino and violence, I keep thinking of Chauncey Gardner in “Being There” saying “I like to watch”.

That said, I enjoyed “Kill Bill”. I preferred the second over the first, but the two movies are really two parts of a single story, and as a whole, I enjoyed them.

I think one thing I appreciated about “Kill Bill” was the fact that it took place in our world, with our rules. “Kill Bill” isn’t out to show you that violence is superior to social structures. It shows you violent people operating under and outside of social structures. “Kill Bill” isn’t out to show us that Kiddo had to take matters into her own hands and become a vigilante to achieve “justice”. Kiddo was always a killer. Bill was always a murdering bastard. And when Bill tried to kill Kiddo, Kiddo killed Bill.

Some movies like to tell you the story of the frog and the scorpion, (scorpion asks frog for a ride across the river, halfway across, the scorpion stings the frog. Frog says “you fool, now we’ll both drown”. Scorpion says “It was my nature to sting”.) with the moral of the story being that we’re frogs and we can’t be nice to the scorpions of the world. And when the scorpion stings our spouse, our parents, our friend, whatever, the moral is we must become like scorpions (vigilantes) to fight the scorpions. This is the moral behind many high scoring war handwavium stories.

But “Kill Bill” doesn’t tell that story. “Kill Bill” tells the story of two scorpions who try to kill each other. And they don’t bother the frogs or the rest of the world. And for that, I was able to watch “Kill Bill” without the turn off of being told violence is superior to social structures, or the turnoff of being told that the world can’t handle the truth, and so on. It is a violent movie, no doubt about that. In a few hours of screen time, we see Kiddo kill about 100 people. But it isn’t trying to tell us that we’re frogs in a world of scorpions.

I preferred the second part to the first part, but really, it’s a single movie. And overall, I’d say it’s worth the price of an evening ticket at the movie theater. I also purchased the DVD to add it to my collection.

As for some oddities in the movie, I cannot for the life of me understand why the people are using swords when they have on occaission shown themselves willing to use firearms. When Bill and the rest kill everyone at the church, they’re using automatic rifles. When we’re shown the backstory for Copperhead, we’re shown her acting as an assassin, using a sniper rifle to kill a general in a motorcade. But when Kiddo confronts Copperhead, none of Copperhead’s bodyguards have guns. When Kiddo confronts Bill, Bill has a gun but uses to shoot a piece of fruit. In both cases, Copperhead and Bill fight Kiddo with swords. It was a weird inconsistency. I would have rather Bill and company killed everyone at the church using swords and shown Copperhead taking her first professional hit in hand-to-hand. With the assumption being that somehow super martial arts are better than firerarms. Then at least it would have been consistent.

All War Hw Fiction Scores

Just saw “Star Trek” (reboot), rev 2009. These are my initial impressions of the war handwavium score for the movie. I’ll do the exact math when I get it on DVD.

!!!SPOILERS!!!

So, the best part of the movie? On the way out of the theater, I was singing “Spock and Uhura, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g!” That was an interesting and original twist. It also makes me wonder if the two were supposed to be “involved” during the old TV series. And if so, why didn’t Spock get jealous when Kirk kissed Uhura during that interracial kiss?

Otherwise: meh.

It was entertaining to see the new characters reintroduced. At one point, it started to drag a bit. Try to imagine a TV series wtih a large cast, say Brady Bunch, and suddenly they make a movie of what happens after they’ve all grown up. Every main character has to get an intro, have a backstory, yada, yada, yada. Yeah, we get it, Chekov can’t pronounce “v”s. Can we get the movie going now?

The bad guy was no Khan Noonien Singh, that’s for sure. He isn’t even Hans Gruber. He’s just a mad, mad guy, and he happens to have a big ass starship 150 years ahead of its time. Yeah, there’s time travel, more on that in a bit.

First of all, a scenario for the audience out there: You’re at work. Your house catches on fire. Someone calls the fire department, but before they get there, the fire reaches the gas line, and your house blows up, killing your wife and son.

Question: Do you spend the next 25 years of your life hunting down the firemen to kill them? And their families? And the planet they live on?

If your answer is yes, why would anyone put you, an admitted psychopath, in charge of a big ass spaceship with massive, planet destroying weapons on it?

That’s the main problem with Star Trek/Reboot. The bad guy doesn’t make any sense. So, apparently what happens is there’s this big supernova thingy and it’s about to blow up and it’s threatening Romulous, and Spock (who is a 175 year old Vulcan ambassador at this point) gets on a ship in Vulcan, takes some “red matter” which will turn the supernova into a black hole, and rushes to save the galaxy.

Except, before Spock can get there, the star goes supernova and Romulus is destroyed, killing everyone on it, including the wife and child of our villian, Nero. But apparently, no other planets are harmed, so I’m not sure why Vulcan was required to save Romulus.

Nero apparently is somewhere near Romulus. Near enough that when Spock shows up to create the black hole, Nero attacks him. The two ships fall into the black hole and end up a century or so back in time. How he was near enough to attack Spock, but not near enough to rescue his wife and child on Romulus, I don’t know.

They had enough time to know the supernova was a threat to BUILD A SHIP for spock, but they didn’t have enough time to evacuate Romulus?

Anyone who is considering writing a story with time travel in it should take this advice: don’t. Odds are you’ll screw it up.

So, Nero and this big honking ship is thrown 150 years back in time. And what does he do with this unbelievable opportunity? Does he go to the local Western Union office and write his wife a letter to get off the planet, to be delivered a week or so before she would have died? No. Apparently he never saw “Back to the Future 3″.

Does he take his advanced weaponry and attempt to help romulons win their war against the federation starting 150 years earlier? No. Apparently he never saw “The Final Countdown”.

What does our brilliant supervillian do? He hangs out near where the blackhole occurred and waits for Spock to show up, doing nothing else. HE WAITS FOR 25 YEARS. When he first arrives back in time, he destroyes a federation ship, and kills Kirk’s father. But then he disappears for 25 years to allow baby Jim Kirk to be born, grow up, steal a car, drive it off a cliff (apparently Kirk has seen “Thelma and Louise” and knew to jump before he drove the car off the cliff. Why did he drive the car off the cliff? I have no idea. Why is there a big ass cliff in flatland Iowa? I have no idea. But I digress.) Then when Kirk is all grown up, that’s when Future-Spock comes back in time, Nero captures him and puts him on a planet, and then blows up planet Vulcan. Then, and only then, does Nero decide that he ought to blow up the other federation planets while he’s there. Except since he’s waited 25 years, young Jim Kirk is all grown up and can kick Nero’s ass for killing Jim’s father.

If you’re a psychopath bent on vengeance, why would you wait 25 years to blow up Vulcan, and only then go after the other federation planets? Why would you make only one known contact with the federation, klingon, and romuluns (the destruction of the USS Kelvin and the death of Kirk’s father) and then hide 25 years? Why wait till you have captured future spock before you blow up vulcan and earth?

And how did he know that he’d eventually capture spock? Spock might have ended up 25 years BEFORE Nero for all Nero knew, and would forever avoid Nero’s capture, or even put in a crafty plan to defend vulcan, eath, and even romulus from nero and supernova catastrophes. (All he’d have to do is find a Western Union office, really.) If Future Spock got thrown a century back in time, he could have been like the naval officer in The Final Countdown who uses his knowledge of the future to secretly nudge the US in teh right direction. But no. None of that.

Nero is just mad. Really mad. So mad he can’t think about anything for 25 years mad. His crew is either really subservient to their captain, or they’re really mad too. I don’t know about you, but if I found myself on a ship, 150 years in the past, and all we did for 25 years was search for the white whale and remain hidden as we did it, I might think about transferring off the ship.

Which means, the movie has plot holes big enough to drive Jack Burton’s “Pork Chop Express” right through it.

But war handwavium wise, it’s not too bad. When kirk is about to go into combat as a federation officer for the very first time, he’s with Sulu and a red shirt, and the red shirt dies. It’s kind of funny, in a “fruit cart” sort of way. See a guy in a red shirt, shout “red shirt!” and then shout “Red shirt down!” when he dies.

Then Kirk and Sulu kill two cardboard characters. And then no combat happens for a while as the whole time-travel thing is explained. They did get one thing right. When the plot makes no sense, try to gloss over the explanation as quickly as possible. And then we’re back to dealing with Nero. And at that point, spock and kirk beam into nero’s ship and kill maybe a dozen cardboard characters. the rescue Captain Pike, and then spock blows up Nero and his ship.

Overall, the war handwavium score is very, very low. It’s the plot that’s the problem.

Personally, I found the movie was fairly entertaining. It’s flashy and moves fast and so on, so I’d probably say it’s worth a matinee just to see the effects on teh big screen. It’s not a fancy dinner followed by a full-evening-price movie. It’s a grab a burger and some cotton candy at the concession stand matinee kind of movie.

This is the War Handwavium Score for “The Matrix”

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/

!!!SPOILERS!!!

Total: 113 Points

Note all times are from Bluray Disc, absolute times from beginning of movie.

+12 points, 03:02, Trinity kills 4 cops, cardboard targets

+5 points, 20:34, Agents “melt” Mr. Anderson’s mouth. Pointless display of evil.

+5 points, 57:10, Morpheus gives speech to Neo telling him its OK to kill people in the Matrix. Distancing effects of killing civilians.

-3 points, 01:19:56, Mouse killed by SWAT

+9 points, 01:23:31, Apoc @ Switch kill 3 SWAT

-1 point, 01:24:03, Morpheus and Smith fight, Morpheus taken prisoner.

-3 points, 01:26:38, Cypher kills Dozer

-3 points, 01:29:10, Cypher kills Apoc

-3 points, 01:29:39, Cypher kills Switch

+3 points, 01:30:46, Tank kills Cypher

+45 points, 01:41:31, Neo & Trinity rescue mission in lobby kill 5 cops, 10 soldiers

+21 points, 01:46:18, Neo & Trinity rescue mission on roof kill 7 soldiers.

+3 point, 01:46:54: Trinity kills Agent

+9 points, 01:47:59, Neo kills 3 agents with minigun

-1 point, 01:49:26, Morpheus shot and wounded in leg

+5 points, 01:58:28, Neo and Smith fight in subway. Neo kills Smith with train. Lethal Rube Goldberg Machine

-3 points, 02:02:39, Smith shoots Neo, killing him.

+10 points, Trinity brings Neo back to life with a kiss. Good guys don’t die.

+3 points, 02:06:38, Neo kills Smith

“The Matrix” is broken up into a few parts. It starts out with Trinity committing some violence. Then there’s the mystery of what Morpheus wants with Neo. Then there’s the wakeup call when Neo takes the blue pill. Then there’s the training and acclimation to Neo’s new world. Then there’s the trip to the oracle that ends with the betrayal by cypher. Morpheus is captured. The big finale comes when Neo and Trinity rescue Morpheus.

The first four minutes have 4 points when Trinity takes out the cops.

Then no additional War Handwavium points occur for the next hour.

Then Cypher betrays the group, killing several main white-hat characters, racking up a negative point count.

The rescue mission near the end racks up 22 kills of black hat cardboard characters in about 5 minutes.

Then Smith kills Neo, Trinity kisses Neo back to life, and Neo kills Smith. The end.

You can almost see the three-part story play out in War Handwavium points. Part 1 is an hour long and only gets a few points. Part 2 is Cypher’s betrayal and racks up a bunch of negative points. Part 3 is the big comeback and Neo and Trinity rack up an even bigger body count.

Personally, I liked “The Matrix”. I liked the idea of it showing us Plato’s Cave in a way that people could relate to now. I didn’t realize Neo’s world was nothing but shadow until Neo took the Blue Pill. I didn’t see Cypher’s betrayal coming until it happened, but it made complete sense when it did happen. And I liked the way the Oracle told Neo what he needed to hear to become “The One” by telling him he wasn’t “The One”. When she told him that, I wasn’t sure how it would play out, but when Neo finally became “The One”, it all fit.

What didn’t make sense was how the machines violated the laws of thermodynamics to extract energy from a human body when they have to supply all the energy and chemicals to sustain it. The physics didn’t add up. And just assuming the physics did add up, then why didn’t the machines wipe out the humans and use something like cattle or sheep as their power source, and not have to worry about the cattle fighting back. A simple simulation of a grassy hill would be all you need.

The answer, of course, is “Because there wouldn’t be a movie”. Which is fine.

The only thing that turned me off a bit was 22 bodies in about 5 minutes during the rescue mission. That’s a pretty high body count. I also thought the sunglasses and trenchcoat was kind of silly macho stuff. And what simply made no sense and was clearly War Handwavium was Neo and Trinity walking into an assault with 20 different weapons on them, rather than 2 weapons and a bunch of magazines with ammo. I suppose it’s cooler to toss a weapon when its empty and pull out a new one, than it is to simply change magazines. That part annoyed me.

But overall, a good movie. I’d say it was worth the full evening price of admission.

All War Hw Fiction Scores

This is the War Handwavium score for “The Dark Knight” movie.

Total score: 85 points

!!!!!SPOILERS!!!!!

All times are given in absolute time from the beginning of the movie as marked by the blue-ray disc.

+5 points, 2:45, Joker Henchman kills a Joker Henchmen. violent display of evil

+3 point, 3:15, Bank Manager kills Joker Henchman. black hat cardboard character killed.

+3 point, 3:50, Bank Manager kills Joker Henchman. black hat cardboard character killed.

-2 point, 3:54, Joker shoots and wounds Bank Manager, white hat cardboard character wounded

+5 points, 4:20, Joker Henchman kills a Joker Henchmen. violent display of evil

+5 points, 4:55, Joker Henchman kills a Joker Henchmen (with bus). violent display of evil

+5 points, 5:30, Bank Manager monologues about the “good ol days” when criminals believed in honor, respect. whitewashing.

-2 point, 6:05, Joker gasses Bank Manager, whitehat cardboard character

-2 point, 8:40, Copycat Batman attacked by dogs, cardboard character

-2 point, 8:43, Copycat Batman gassed by Scarecrow, cardboard character

-2 point 9:15, Batman slugs copycat Batman, cardboard character

+6 points, 9:20, Batman beats up 3 thugs, cardboard character

-2 points, 9:29, Copycat Batman attacked by dogs, cardboard character

+2 point, 9:35, Batman kills a dog, cardboard character (reduced points for animal)

-2 point, 9:40, Scarecrow hits Batman with a van and drives him into a wall

+3 point, 23:35, Joker kills mobster with a pencil through eye, cardboard character.

+3 point, 31:10, Joker kills another mobster, cardboard character.

+4 points, 36:02, Batman beats up 2 thugs, cardboard characters

+6 points, 36:30, Batman beats up 3 thugs.

-3 point, 41:50, Joker kills copycat Batman, cardboard character

-3 point, 43:35, Joker kills copycat Batman, cardboard character

-3 point, 48:45, Judge blown up by Joker’s men, secondary character

-3 point, 48:48, Commissioner of Police poisoned by Joker’s men, secondary character.

+2 points, 51:54, Rachael hits Joker,

+10 points, 52:01, Batman beats up 5 thugs, cardboard character.

-2 point, 52:15, Joker stabs Batman

+6 points, 52:23, Batman hits Joker and 2 thugs

-2 point, 52:35, Joker throws Rachael off building

+2 point, 53:00, Batman saves Rachael

+16 points, 1:04:10, Batman beats up 8 thugs

+10 points, 1:05:51, Batman throws mobster off fire escape to break his legs, torture.

+10 points, 1:06:36, Harvey Dent plays Russian Roulette with one of Joker’s thugs, torture.

-3 points, 1:14:47, Joker kills a cop

-6 points, 1:15:31, Joker rams 3 cop cars.

-2 point, 1:16:51, Joker RPG’s cop car

+2, 1:17:06, Batman rams Joker’s truck.

-9 point, 1:20:09, Joker’s men take down helicopter, killing all on board.

+2 point, 1:21:27, Batman uses a cable to flip Joker’s truck.

+5 points, 1:27:15, Joker is in prison, Batman tortures him for information

-10 points, 1:34:40, Cop tries to beat up Joker (torture), but Joker escapes. Except we’re distanced from seeing it, so half points.

-6 points, 1:34:40, One of Joker’s thugs has cellphone explosive planted in his abdomen, which blows up, killing a cop and 2 medics. cardboard characters, +1 black hat and -3 white hat

-5 points, 1:35:56, Rachael dies

-5 points, 1:35:56, Harvey’s face is burned off.

+3 point, 1:43:28, Joker burns his money with accountant on top of burning pile.

-3 point, 1:47:11, Joker kills cop at hospital

-5 point, 1:50:56, Two-Face flips coin to see if Joker lives, torture (but Two Face is black hat, so counting it as negative points)

+5 points, 1:52:41, Joker blows up hospital, pointless display of evil.

-3 point, 1:55:40, Two-Face kills dirty cop at bar (two face is black hat showing white hat has fallen, so negative point)

+10 points, 1:56:19, Lucious discover’s Batman’s super-surveillance device. It works in finding the Joker, and it isn’t abused or misused by any whitehats.

-5 points 1:59:18, Two-Face flips coin to let mobster live and to kill his chauffeur.

+3 points, 02:06:28, Batman trips 3 hostages, saves them from police sniper

+1 point, 02:06:47, Batman saves two hostages from possible police harm

+6 points, 02:06:54, Batman beats up 3 thugs

+10 points, 02:07:10, Batman beats up 3 cops to save 2 hostages (violence superior to social structures)

+2 points, 02:09:05, cops take down one of Joker’s thugs

+1 points, 02:09:21, Batman beats up a dog

+6 points, 02:09:31, Cops beat up 3 thugs

-10 points, Two-Face kidnaps Gordon’s wife adn two kids and threatens to execute them. (white hat character shown fallen from grace)

+5 points, Two-Face explains back-story that his family had been killed by dirty cops, that Harvey Dent had tried to warn the police that cops were dirty, and that the police didn’t listen, resulting in his family being murdered. Bureaucratic government shown to cause deaths of innocents.

-2 point, 02:19:09, Two-Face shoots Batman

+10 points, 02:22:15, Batman takes the blame for Two-Face’s murders. Lies better than truth. The world can’t handle the truth.

+10 points, entire movie, Batman operates above the law without due process, but never attacks an innocent person by mistake. Violence superior to social structures.

+10 points, entire movie, Joker racks up the “othering” score. He’s scarred, he’s insane, he’s got a maniacal laugh. Total evil overlord.

Summary:

“The Dark Knight” doesn’t have a lot of killing in it. Joker henchmen kill each other at the beginning, But mostly Batman beats up the bad guys without killing them, so fewer point for beating a cardboard character rather than killing one. One of the white hats, Rachael, is killed, but her role is that of a “woman in a refrigerator” which is nothing more than a relatively cheap way for the protagonist to have a reason for vengeance. Harvey Dent falls from grace and turns into Two-Face. His fall counts as negative points since every time he does a bad thing, it isn’t something the audience cheers for.

But the Dark Knight has a number of strong War Handwavium themes going through it. (1) Vigilantism works. Batman never uses force against an innocent person. (2) Torture works, Batman beats up Joker in custody to find out where Rachael and Harvey are. (3) super surveillance tools work. The cell-phone-radar gizmo gave Batman the location of the Joker. And he designed it to self destruct when the job was finished, rather than have it be abused or misused. And lastly, (4) civilians can’t handle the truth. Aparently, Gotham’s success in its war on crime must be bouyed in part by lying to the population about what Harvey Dent ended up doing as Two-Face. The civilians can’t handle that truth, so the powers that be must hide the truth from them. This is Dick Cheney’s wet dream.

My initial observations of the movie are here:
http://www.warhw.com/2008/07/22/the-dark-knight-movie-observations/

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