Dark Knight lite

There's some heavy subject matter here -- nightmare-inducing clown-faced villains, destruction and disfigurement. And that's just the movie. There's also the untimely death of one of the young stars, Heath Ledger, whose performance is inspiring talk of a posthumous Oscar nod.

So, how did a couple of marketing partners for "The Dark Knight" come up with TV commercials that sorta tickle the funny bone? Not like they had a wealth of sunny material to draw on or anything.

We caught the Dominos and Comcast spots last night that link pepperoni pizza and cable service to the brooding, intense and critically slobbered upon superhero flick. And each kind of gave us a chuckle. They're not LOL, mind you, but clever enough to be smile worthy.

The Dominos ad (watch it here on The YouTubes) has a pizza delivery chick navigating the mean streets, and speeding away from armed bad guys who crash into her and rip off her door, to get the pepperoni pie to a couple of clown faces. "Tell the Joker he owes me a car," she quips.

The masked dudes get their Gotham City Pizza but don't appear to tip. Evil and cheap.

The Comcast spot similarly riffs on the idea of Gotham City as a den of inequity that's made bearable, in this case, by cable TV. Yes, it's a parody.

Go ahead with the arguments about commercial intrusion, rampant tie-ins, selling out. Blah, blah, blah. Heard it all before. Don't necessarily agree. And at any rate, this happens to be a couple of instances where the advertisers got it right -- blending their message with the movie without bastardizing either.

And no, this post was not sponsored.

Comments

[Mike]

Meet THE DARK KNIGHT soundtrack composers!!
HANS ZIMMER and JAMES NEWTON HOWARD
Where: Times Square Virgin Megastore
1540 Broadway
NYC
When: Tuesday July 15 @ 7PM