There’s no contact information for the article, unclear who wrote it, so could someone out there somewhere PLEASE find a way to contact that writer or the AP or even Yahoo’s Entertainment News & Gossip section and point them here?  If not successful with Yahoo, possibly the Associated Press at www.ap.org.

At the showing I went to for “The Dark Knight”, the theater I was in was packed.  Clearly everyone there was hoping to see a great movie, whether fans of the character, comic, hype, actors, director, whatever.  Whatever the case, it was packed.  So if it was so good of a movie as claimed by the majority of people with Internet access and a desire to share their opinion, why was there practically no audience cheering or clapping that I observed?

I’ve heard from many people this was their same experience.

Movie ands and its… “clap…[pause]…clap…[long pause]… …. clap” and then silence and everyone starts getting up barely before the credits start to role, and start walking out.  Pretty much everyone has a deadpan look on their face, and nobody (literally nobody) has a look on their face that they just saw “the best movie ever”.  Rather, the opposite look like “WTF? Was I supposed to have liked that?”  This wasnt a surprise – it completely matched my own perception.

During the movie, there were only 2 or perhaps 3 moments where even just a few members of the audience reacted to what happened on screen with clapping or hooting.  One was when Gordon showed up behind The Joker pointing a shotgun at him (indicating he was alive the whole time).  About 5 or 6 people clapped and that was it.  The second was that stupid idealistic prisoner moment with Tiny Lister (Debo)… same 5-6 person clap.  I don’t recall if there was any other clapping or reactions which would indicate more than a few people were enjoying the movie.

In contrast, when I went to see “Iron Man” earlier in the Summer, the audience enjoyment was significantly more apparent.  This was in the SAME theater, SAME night of the week, SAME midnight style showing, and same packed theater.  During “Iron Man”, the audience was fantastically engaged – laughing when things on screen were actually funny, cheering when particularly action-filled moments were taking place, clapping fairly regularly when it seemed pretty appropriate, and at the end a roar of applause.

Now, do I think “Iron Man” is the greatest movie ever?  No, it was cool, entertaining, and well-made, and clearly deserved the kind of audience reaction it got.  Had it been lauded online as some kind of flawless piece of cinematic art, I would consider that bizarre but could shrug it off as an oddity and temporary insanity of the masses.  The reaction to it in the media and online pretty much matched the reality I observed.

“The Dark Knight”, on the other hand, had the poor audience reaction, yet somehow online and by critics is being lauded as some kind of masterpiece.  This contradicts common sense and it’s a wonder what is really going on here… that perhaps the Internet hype marketing machine for the movie is still going on and people’s opinions are still being influenced by others, by brand, by media, but not by the true opinion of the masses.  Sure, it got a huge opening box office and held steam, but that could only mean a “follow the crowd” behavior, especially during economic times where other forms of entertainment are far more expensive.

So… what was YOUR theater experience and observation?  Did your audience cheer, hoot, and clap or did they just sit there like lumps on a log?  Was there a massive applause at the end or did people just silently scuffle out of their seats to go home?  Did they have happy and entertained looks on their faces when walking out or did they look like they were on their way to work on a Monday morning?

The general premise of the movie is that an average man from 2005 who’s put in deep freeze in a U.S. Army experiment is forgotten about — then gets revived 500 years later.  The world he re-enters is a future that predicts what would happen if present-day society (whose culture is becoming more and more fixated on corporate brands, celebrity, sex, money, and superficial trivializations) is taken to it’s most extreme.  It’s by no means a Shakespearean effort, but the many moments of comedic commentary are truly brilliant.

The people of the future are so stupid that the lead character effectively becomes the smartest man alive. If you don’t mind spoilers, a full description is at Wikipedia.  For anyone who hasn’t seen the movie, this article might not make complete sense, but at least the general point will probably still be clear.

“The Dark Knight” marketing in many ways was pretty effective at what it intended to do: Indoctrinate the masses into believing that the movie would be amazing by immersing them into it before it premiered.  A large number of viral websites were launched that gave peeks into the background of the movie’s storyline.  Further, the actor playing the role of the lead villain passed away tragically 2 months after production was completed and his death became a pseudo-marketing vehicle in and of itself. People who otherwise would not have had an interest in seeing the movie in a theater were now fixated on it.  When the movie finally premiered, the conditioning that all the marketing and hype induced caused the vast majority of people who saw it to believe it truly was an amazing movie and not just a mediocre run-of-the-mill action movie.  So many people invested themselves in the belief that it would be amazing, that dissonance kicked in and caused them to believe it was, even though it wasn’t – because to believe otherwise would mean that they would have to contradict their own consistency.

In the future presented in “Idiocracy”, one of the running gags is there’s a drink called “Brawndo: The Thirst Mutilator” and apparently the company that markets it, Brawndo Corporation, apparently buys up so many government agencies that it can go unhindered when marketing (and institutionalizing) Brawndo for everything imaginable, including crop irrigation, and water is only used in toilets.  The tagline for the drink is that “it’s rich in electrolytes”, although nobody knows what that means, everyone accepts it because “it’s what people crave”.  Why is it used to irrigate crops?  “Because it’s what plants crave.”  Which of course results in massive crop issues, and nobody knows why, because everyone is too stupid to figure it out.

Also in the future, the most popular movie is called “Ass” and it’s entirely just a movie of someone’s ass (just doing nothing, occasionally farting, etc).  The most popular TV show is “Ow My Balls” which is about (and only about) a guy who constantly gets his balls smashed, banged, hit, whacked, etc and yells “ow my balls”.

The mass of people who proclaim “The Dark Knight” remind me of the sad citizens of this future.  They don’t know why they think TDK is “awesome”, they just know it is, because everyone else thinks it is.  “Because it’s got electrolytes.”  The hoopla over TDK is a hint at what’s happening in society now.  For example, the Internet’s existence, instead of helping people get smarter (by making access to information easier) is just causing them to become dumber.  Just look at any random MySpace page or peruse the kind of moronic questions people ask on “Yahoo! Answers“.  Take a look at the current US President – is he a representative of the people?

The sad thing is, I’m pretty sure that only a small number of people visiting this site or reading this will ever comprehend the irony of what’s happening in society, and the majority of others are just reading this and thinking “you fag!” and will never know exactly how far into the depths of “Idiocracy” the world is actually spinning.  That’s because for those who the movie makes fun of, they will never actually comprehend that it’s a parody of them and a satire of where society is going because of their consumerist behavior.  If that’s you, then you probably found this article hard to follow, difficult to understand, and one of the few things running through your mind is “what a fag”.  If so, go back to ‘batin.