The Dark Knight: Dark Horse?

By Rob Christopher in Arts & Entertainment on Jan 7, 2009 10:20PM

The Writer's Guild of America has announced their nominations for "outstanding achievement in TV, radio, news, promotional writing, and graphic animation," and guess which movie got a nod for Best Adapted Screenplay? Why, it would be the same one which received an ASC nomination earlier today and a Producer's Guild of America nomination a few days ago. Depending on how you look at it, these noms could be a harbinger of things to come when the Oscars roll around. Or they could just be acknowledgments that The Dark Knight made boatloads of money (in fact it was last year's highest-grossing film).

Let's talk turkey here. The Oscar nominations will be announced in about two weeks. Do we think The Dark Knight deserves a Best Picture nomination? Absolutely. Do we think it deserves to win Best Picture? Nope. Sure, it's thrilling to watch, well-crafted and certainly well-acted. But more than anything else it's a thrill-ride, an in-the-moment experience that (for us) has pretty limited emotional resonance. Nothing wrong with that (the upcoming IMAX re-release is proof enough that it's worth seeing again), but hardly deserving of the top prize. (TDK fans: please do not send us hate mail).

At any rate, we'll know soon enough; the Oscars broadcast is Sunday, February 22.