The Aurora, Colorado shooting that took place during a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises is obviously the most notable thing to talk about when discussing the movie. Once one real person (let alone twelve) gets murdered in a screening of a movie, the import of the actual film is immediately shifted. However, there will be enough forthcoming commentary from better writers and pundits than us to more than adequately cover the emotions and meaning of the massacre. We don’t want to use our upcoming podcast on The Dark Knight Rises to discuss the murders, because we are not a news podcast, nor are we qualified to comment on emerging news stories. We could perhaps do so adequately, but not any better than even the most mediocre of newscasts. Our thing is film criticism, and that’s what we’ll do on our upcoming podcast. But it would be callous and disrespectful to the victims to completely ignore what happened on Thursday night, particularly since the victims were all people exactly like us: staying up late because they wouldn’t be able to sleep knowing there was a new Batman film out in the world for them.
Our podcast on The Dark Knight Rises will be up soon enough, and it makes no mention of what happened in Aurora. That is not because we don’t care about what happened; it’s because it’s simply not our place to comment on it.
