If you’ve been waiting for the proper time to start the Dark Knight backlash, then we’ve got some good news for you.
Last night The Dark Knight swept the People’s Choice Awards – the most white-bread, gonkishly populist, helmet-wearing awards show in the world. In other words, The Dark Knight is the film that fans of Kid Rock, Kate Hudson and Two And A Half Men like best.
In essence, this makes The Dark Knight the new Pirates Of The Caribbean – good news for anyone who wanted Batman 3 to feature three hours of Christian Bale running around pulling self-consciously barmy faces all the time.
Do you hear that sound? That’s the sound of The Dark Knight‘s Oscar hopes packing their suitcases and leaving town. It’s impossible for The Dark Knight to win any Oscars now. It has to be. Because the law quite clearly states you can either win People’s Choice Awards or Oscars, and The Dark Knight has just won five People’s Choice Awards.
Why can’t you win both? Simple – the Oscars are voted for by people who want to prove how deep they are, which is why they’re always won by serious films about Catholic paedophilia and the Holocaust that people never watch. Meanwhile the People’s Choice Awards are voted for by people, who we all know are universally stupid.
That’s why, at last night’s People’s Choice Awards, Ellen DeGeneres was voted better than David Letterman, Adam Sandler was voted better than Steve Carell and Two And A Half Men won a category that 30 Rock wasn’t even nominated for.
The biggest winner of the night, though, was The Dark Knight – the film that started off as a moody, complex, morally ambiguous thriller and ended up as the film that every moron on Earth quotes to one another at the office because they went to see it 17 times in a row. AP reports:
“The Dark Knight” soared away with every trophy it was nominated for Wednesday at the 35th annual fan-favorite CBS ceremony. The caped crusader flick won five awards, including favorite cast, superhero, action movie and on-screen matchup for Christian Bale’s Batman and the late Heath Ledger’s Joker. “On behalf of all of the cast from the movie, thank you very much to the fans,” said Bale. “Here’s to Heath.”
Of course, just because The Dark Knight won a lot of People’s Choice Awards, that doesn’t make it a bad film – just a film that gained an unexpectedly populist audience. It’s a bit of a worry, actually – how is Christopher Nolan expected to keep his crown as a bravely visionary director when his movies get embraced by the dribbling public so easily? At this rate the only way he’ll be able to hang on to his credibility is to make Batman 3 a 15-hour-long slowed-down single shot of a disturbed old lady cutting away at her clothes with a pair of kitchen scissors.
Or maybe – just maybe – we’re reading too much into this. After all, everybody knows that the People’s Choice Awards lost all their credibility when they dropped the Nice ‘N Easy Fans Favourite Hair prize.
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Ian says
Hmmm, with Oscar hopes slipping expect to see Christian Bale top himself to get more hype for the movie. Just a few pills and the Oscar will be in the bag.
Stabby McGee says
+10 points for use of the word ‘gonkishly’. How can anyone unironically vote for Two And A Half Men to win anything is beyond me.
What’s that? A big pile of money, you say? Well, consider my previous comment well and truly retracted, then!
mikey says
They dropped the “Nice ‘N Easy Fans Favourite Hair Prize”!?
Regardless of whether or not I am a fan of Nice ‘N Easy (is that what that means!?) and regardless of the fact I have never seen (and would quite happilly live the rest of my days without seeing!) Twilight, I would like to nominate that boy that all the emo girls love’s hair. But I can’t. Oh woe is me.
Where is my “My Chemical Romance” CD, I need comfort!