My girlfriend and I decided to go see The Dark Knight today. We both loved Batman Begins, and the previews for The Dark Knight were exciting. So we show up at the theater, and after being advertised and previewed at for a solid 40 minutes, we finally get to the movie.

And it’s good. Really good. The Joker is a psychotic killer, but he’s an exquisitely well-done psychotic killer. Granted, it’s hard for me to reconcile this gritty Joker with the Joker of the 1966 Batman movie (Batman: “An exploding shark was pulling my leg!” Gordon: “The Joker!”).

But still. Good movie, lots of action, and definitely in keeping with Batman Begins.

Then, almost at the ending, Batman is lying on the ground, possibly unconscious and certainly hurt, while the Joker stalks toward him. One of the Joker’s henchmen (where does he get these guys?) leans over our prone hero, and reaches for his mask. There’s a spark from the mask, the henchman starts jumping back, and at that very instant, everything goes dark.

The audience sits silent for a few seconds while it sinks in. Something went wrong. The timing really was that perfect. Spark, malfunction. Then we realize that we’re likely ten minutes or so away from the end of the movie and the laughter and catcalls start.

Turns out the power went out (the whole block the movie theater was on looked to be out, although it was hard to tell since it was a gorgeous sunny day without a speck of wind; very surreal), so unfortunately my girlfriend and I have still not seen how The Dark Knight ends. Hopefully soon we’ll be able to use the free movie voucher the theater gave us. But still. You couldn’t have planned that kind of timing.

This kind of thing is why I think god probably does exist: if we can believe the Bible, he was into angry, jealous smiting to start (“Worship someone else? DIE!”), then when that didn’t work fell back to cajoling and offering bribes (“Come on, if you believe in me I’ll treat you real nice in the afterlife!”), and finally got old and tired and said the hell with it, I’m just going to fuck with them. Which describes just about every parent-turned-curmudgeon who I know.