Still working on a couple of books, but I’ve got two more onto the read pile, so we’re getting there. In the meantime, let’s talk movies.

2008 was a pretty decent year for movies– we got some great new super-hero fare, we got another Star Wars, another Narnia, another Pixar, another Indy. For someone like me, that’s a pretty full load. Still, when all is said and done, three of the year’s movies easily stood out for me. Let’s run through the ones that didn’t make the cut.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I’ll be honest– I did enjoy this one. It was not a classic Indiana Jones movie, but it’s one I’d watch over Temple of Doom any day of the week. I liked what they did to Indy’s character, having him settle into his role in life. For perhaps the first time, we saw Indy as a man at peace, comfortable in his own skin. But the film lacked the weight of the Biblical ones and interdimensional aliens can’t compete with the Ark of the Covenant or the cup of Christ. So, in the end, Indy didn’t make the cut.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, likewise, didn’t make the cut. I missed it in theaters, but caught the DVD. On the whole I enjoyed the movie– while I wasn’t livid about the changes, I did notice them. Still, it was a good movie with a good message. It just lacked that extra “oomph” that the first one had.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars misses the mark for many of the reasons I got into last October. It’s an okay romp, but lacks most of the Star Wars magic that was in play in the proper films. It, sadly, never quite elevated itself beyond an “also ran”.

So let’s get to my top 3 movies of 2008. Counting down this time…

3) Iron Man

Iron Man was just plain fun, start to finish. Shockingly, I have to attribute this to one man and one man only– Robert Downey, Jr. Shocked the hell out of me. I’ve never been a big Downey fan, I’d be hard-pressed to name another role of his I particularly enjoyed, but from start to finish, he just stepped into Tony Stark’s skin and made the character come alive. My only regret is that we didn’t get to see more of disinterested Tony at the beginning.

Just as surprising is the fact that, while I’ve collected Iron Man comics on two separate occasions (from issue #300 for about a year, then Kurt Busiek’s run… finally jumped ship after Quesada came around), I’ve never been a die-hard Iron Man fan. I know the character, I know his enemies, but I’m more at home around his appearances in Avengers than anything else. So, with Iron Man coming up, I mostly wrote it off as another Fantastic Four, a movie I’d catch on cable but wasn’t dying to see.

Boy, did that change.

It was probably with the first trailer. Again, Downey’s outstanding performance was evidenced even in that. This was a movie that took the source material and sang with it. The only movie to do it better with a Marvel property is Spider-Man 2, and even then Spidey doesn’t have a performance to match Downey’s.

And what comic fan didn’t break out into a huge grin when Samuel L. Jackson showed up in the epilogue as Nick Fury? The model for The Ultimates version gets the role, how apropos.

Iron Man has easily broken into my list of top 5 super-hero movies ever. I think it’s here to stay, and that’s why it’s #3.

2) Wall*E

It’s no secret that Pixar has the midas touch and Wall*E is no exception. Actually, confession time. I didn’t get around to seeing Wall*E until last week. I kept meaning to get into the theater, but just never made it. Somehow, though, I managed to go in knowing only the bare minimum about the plot. I didn’t know what the central conflict was, who the villains were, or how it all ended up. In the purest sense possible, I simply went along for the ride.

What I found was a touching movie with a likable main character who could barely even speak– but whose words could elicit such an emotional response from the viewer. It was a movie about making the best of the bad situation and still finding enough in life to carry on. More than that, we also find commentary on human society and our willingness to let machines do more and more for us. The fat slobs humans have turned into is shocking, but leaves me going, “Well, yeah…” But the beauty of the universe stands revealed in all its glory as soon as the monitor is turned off and these people find themselves fascinated by what they’d never noticed before. “I didn’t know we had a pool!”

Wall*E is a story about heart and about doing things for yourself. It was just a quality movie, through and through. Pixar does it again. Bring on Up.

Now, as for #1…

1) The Dark Knight

I was incredibly curious as to how Nolan & Goyer were going to follow-up Batman Begins, which was the finest live-action representation of Batman to date, and how they were going to incorporate the Joker and Two-Face into the same movie. Double teaming villains left a bad, Burton/Schumacher taste in my mouth and Spider-Man 3‘s triple-teaming was disastrous. So, imagine my surprise when not only were they able to pull it off, but pull it off in spectacular fashion.

The Joker gets the most attention, and rightfully so. Ledger’s performance was incredible and the best live-action depiction of the Joker to date. A whirling force of chaos with a twisted sense of humor. Any time Joker was on screen, the movie was electrified and when he got to interact with Bale or Oldman, he was on fire. You bought that this man could bring a city to its knees. And another point in the movie’s favor, it didn’t let the Joker die– it sent him off to Arkham. Tired villain deaths at the end of super-hero movies are cheap, go against the source material, and often cause them to betray the core principles that made them heroes in the first place, “Thou shalt not kill”. (Kingdom Come is the best comic on why that’s such an important principle to adhere to.) In The Dark Knight, Batman stops the Joker and he’ll be there to stop the Joker again– as it should be. One of the many tragedies of Heath Ledger’s death is that there can be no rematch.

But Harvey Dent was another shining point of the movie, too. Now, I’m a big Two-Face fan. You could go so far as to say he’s my favorite Bat-villain. Burton’s choice of Lando Calriss– I mean, Billy Dee Williams as Harvey never rang true. Tommy Lee Jones in Batman Forever could have worked, but the man played it so over the top that for millions of people, Two-Face was forever a joke. Furthermore, you never quite bought that this was someone who was a friend to both Batman and Jim Gordon. The Dark Knight delivered that in spades. The triumvirate alliance between the three men is in full force here and it makes Harvey’s eventual fall all the more tragic. For the first time, Two-Face carries cinematic weight and the audience actually cares– which was the great strength of the Animated Series’ portrayal.

His importance as Gotham’s White Knight, while a little overblown, also fit the overall theme of the movie and allowed for one final victory over the Joker, by denying his assassination of Gotham City’s spirit. By the time you get to the end, when little Jim Gordon, Jr. asks his dad, “Why’s Batman running? He didn’t do anything wrong.” and papa Gordon replies, “Because we have to chase him. Because he can take it.” there are chills running down my spine. Despite my general preference for Batman and the GCPD to be on the same side, the scene rings so true that I can’t fault it much.

And all of this glosses over the other elements of Batman brought to life– a gangster escapes to Hong Kong, so Batman raids their office and extradites him by force. That’s the kind of thing Batman does that’s never been used in movies before and it made for an impressive sequence.

In short, The Dark Knight hits on all cylinders and is easily the movie of 2008. Can’t wait to see what they do for an encore.

Either TV or comics is on tap next. Books will be last.