Too Long?

The Dark Knight (five stars total) My wife says my blog posts are too long, which is fine by me. Some people say The Dark Knight was too long, and I'm okay with that too. Last night I rewatched it so that it will be fresh in my mind when I go see Watchmen. This former clocks in at two and a half hours and the latter is even ten minutes longer. My wife and I are of the European opinion that no movie REALLY needs to go over 90 minutes, but I understand that we live in America where two hours is the average and people here are ready and willing to shell out for extended edition director's cut DVDs on top of that. Truth be told, I don't agree that The Dark Knight was too long, but in order to streamline it with the two-hour average, I watched last night for a half hour's worth of scenes that could be cut without affecting the plot. There are ten main characters that all have scenes where they meet or follow-up with each other, so those are necessary for character development (the numbers below are for the DVD chapters, in the order that the characters first appear):

The Joker with Gordon (22), Batman (13), Harvey (29), Rachel (13), Lau and the Mob (6)
Gordon with Ramirez (2), Batman (3), Harvey (4), Lau and the Mob (10)
Ramirez with Batman (2), Harvey (32) and Rachel (22?)
Batman with Alfred (3), Harvey (7), Rachel (13), Fox (4), Lau (9) and the Mob (17)
Alfred with Harvey and Rachel (5)
Rachel with the Mob (4) and Lau (10)
Harvey with Rachel and the Mob (4), Lau (20?)

In chronological order, those character development scenes would be 2-7, 10, 13, 17, 20, 22, 29, and 32, but that doesn't mean that all the other scenes are expendable. At two to five minutes each, you would only need to come up with six to eight scenes to cut to bring the movie down to two hours and there's 25 chapters left on the DVD to choose from. There's some redundancy in the "why so serious?" scene (8) because the Joker's already met with the Mob and then he meets with them again in the "better class of criminal" scene (27), but at least that one resolves the conflict there. As much as I like the "your plan is blackmail?" scene (15), the Reese character is not essential to the overall storyline, and editing him out takes care of another scene too (28). I think the car chase sequence is perfectly tense throughout, but it does take Batman a while to show up, so the "trip to county" scene (20) could be trimmed. Lastly, I understand the political points the filmmakers were trying to make with the "too much power" (31) and "ferry scary" (33, 35) scenes, but plot-wise, those were just distractions from the Two-Face arc and could be trimmed in favor of a shorter (but less meaningful) Joker diversion.

I heard a lot of people say the Two-Face subplot felt tacked-on and unessential, but upon watching The Dark Knight for this third time, I realized that the title refers not just to one of Batman's many nicknames, but to the contrast between Gotham City's "shining knight" in Harvey/Two-Face, and "the hero that the city deserves," which is Batman, innocently taking the blame for five deaths. Therefore, the unedited Two-Face plot is absolutely essential to the very title of the movie, and the Joker's bomb threats on the hospitals and the boats are merely peripheral to his character's primary plot contribution, which is bringing down Harvey to bring down Gotham City (and inadvertently creating Two-Face). This leads to what I consider the most meaningful theme of the movie: the different "faces of evil" (which is concurrently a big event in Batman's comic book series). There are at least five types of criminals to compare and contrast, each with their own motives, effects, and influences:

The Mob - parasites; working outside the system but dependent on it; lawful evil (to borrow a term from D&D)
Lau - legitimate crooks; bankers, lawyers, and politicians working within the system; neutral evil
The Joker - terrorists; intentionally working against the system; chaotic evil
Harvey/Two-Face - apostates and fallen heroes; actually doing the most damage to the system
Batman - yes, even Batman, the titular character, is a criminal because he works outside the law