The Dark Knight - Grading & Discussion

Meh. It was okay.

 

The only review that matters to me. I will wait for the DVD.




Actually I am seeing it the first showing tomorrow. Well Noon not midnight I mean! Which reminds me I should get to bed....

 

Saw it again. It was better the second time around actually. Some of the stuff Batman and Joker discussed really takes to life in additional viewing. It's like the first time seeing it was like zooming/panning through a huge paiting on the wall. Second time was like stepping back and really admiring the whole thing.

A couple of the problems I had were resolved. Though, some weren't. going to say 9/10. There is a 10/10 hiding in there somewhere with about 1 minute of dialogue removed, 30 minutes of plot restored, and no mpaa rating.

Will see it 2 more times in theater. Will probably finally buy a blu-ray drive just for this release.

[overreaction]I may write my congressman concerning a July 18th national Batman holiday and statue.[\overreaction]

 

SPOILERS AHOY!


I liked that they didn't kill any of the villains. In fact, I loved it as I hate it when the villain is killed in nearly every comic book movie (Magneto and Luthor being the two major exceptions).

The weaknesses of Batman Begins where done away with (as interesting as the backstory is, it was too long) while the everything it did right was amped up.

Not sure who is better, Ledger or Hamill, but they both nailed it perfectly.

Now I need to get some sleep for work... today.

 

Well, that was really quite extraordinary. Perhaps the best Batman story ever told - it manages to be completely faithful to the spirit and sensibility of the very best Batman stories from the comics, taking bits and pieces from them and weaving them into something that at once totally transcends the genre and is still truly in and of what great superhero stories are all about. The risks it takes leave you on the edge of your seat until the very last moment, and the ending then completely trumps it all. Yet no twist is out of left field - the entire movie builds to the moment that you find just who and what Batman is capable of being.

On top of its perfection at being a Batman story, it takes on contemporary issues and explores them relentlessly, while keeping everything grounded in the characters. To say this movie is not about Bruce Wayne is bizarre. It's not about screen time - this story is about his evolution and while many notes are (rightly for a comic book movie) very on the nose (notably Joker's discussion with Harvey in his hospital bed, and Gordon's closing lines), that evolution is brought forth entirely through action. It is in every one of Bruce's choices that who he is comes to be revealed. And he is discovering it all just as the audience is.

Grand themes of justice, terrorism, power, surveillance, good and evil, morality and self-preservation, civilization and barbarism are acted out along with extremely personal issues of sacrifice, familial and romantic love, and, of course, heroism.

Is it a masterpiece of cinema? Maybe not, but it's close. Is it a masterpiece of superhero films? Without a doubt. Nothing touches it. Others have used grand themes as plot devices - Iron Man and contemporary war and weapons, for example. This flick isn't playing. When I left the theater and got in my car, there was a news program on about our government's dancing around using legalese to excuse torture. No matter how surreal this movie spins out chaos and insanity, the real world is worse. That's why this is what superhero stories have always promised to be and rarely, if ever, manage to reach. This one reaches it - to see those last shots of Joker, hanging upside down and the camera rolling to make him rightside up, that single image captures how insane things have become right here, right now, for real. To imagine a hero who, as Gordon says, can take it - it is quite a vision.

 

I can't see them re-casting the part a la Gylenhaal. I think they should just do some sort of shadowy vocal cameo. Have a siloette of a guy in a cell in Arkham, you can't see him, but you hear the laugh. Elude to his being alive, but leave him as Heath. But that's just me.

 

Wow, a movie loved by critics that'll also make an ungodly amount of money. Man, how often does that happen?

Plan on hitting a 9:30AM showing after work on Saturday. Hopefully there'll still be a good crowd, but without so many annoying teenages talking and texting during the movie.

 

Wussy. My bed hit the pillow at 3AM and My alarm went off at 7AM. Actually, I need to get ready now.

 

Now that I got some sleep a few random thoughts about the movie:

Heath Ledger will win an Oscar for his role as the Joker. His performance alone made it 80-90% likely he would win, but the sympathy vote will make it 100% certain.

You really need to see this movie a couple of times. The pace is frantic and relentless. I feel like I missed a lot in my first viewing and I never left my seat in the theater.

Spoiler: Coments about the fate of a character

I felt no loss from the death of Rachel. Even from the first movie I never brought the relationship between her and Bruce Wayne. Now that she "betrays" Bruce her character seems even more pointless.

 

That's more like it!

 

I plan to see it today and I'm gonna stay until the end of the closing credits. I want to see Brandon Routh's cameo where he shows up as Clark Kent and tells Bruce that he's putting together a team.

Spoiler: what I just said.

I kid.

 

Also, as a note so no one has to stay to the end, there is nothing at the end of the credits. Great music throughout, but no tidbit at the end.

 

Yeah, in the wake of Ironman, everyone is staying until the credits end just in case. LOL. I did, but just because I didn't feel like fighting the whordes of fleeing teenagers.

 

On a spur of the moment whim I went to a Midnight showing of this last night, it was a fun theater experience. More of a mad house and not quite the "pleasant" and community experience I've had at other late-night/special showings of movies (at one point I actually jumped up on a bench, yelled at the crowd of people pushing toward the door because the theater girl had positioned herself there as if she was going to open the rope. I yelled at the crowd and ordered them to re-form the "line" we had and told the theater girl to check tickets as people walk in as a form of "crowd"/rush control.) But I did chat with a nice guy in the seat next to me inside about many things. It was a nice time, but not the "best theater experience" I had. It was a mad house, really once everyone was inside and rushing around. But I've often had problems at that theater they're not good at managing things, often being staffed by a bunch of teenagers. But, anyway, that's neither here nor there.

(Batman) The Dark Knight

Much has been built up and discussed about this movie in the past few months. It has been hyped up to extraordinary levels, more than any movie since I'd probably say the Star Wars PT -possibly as far back as TPM and usually when a movie gets this hyped up it's hard for it to live up to such expectations as it invariably ends up as a disappointment (Star Wars PT, again, I look at you) well, TDK goes right up to those expectations, beats it up, stuffs a grenade in its mouth, kicks it again and keeps on going.

Ok... that's probably a bit much. But it certainly lives up to those expectations, whether it exceeds them is probably personal choice. I had not such powerful expectations. I expected a very good movie but not the second Coming that some put this up there as.

As I've said elsewhere this has been a fantastic Summer for movies, a look at my signature tells you what I've thought of every movie I've seen this Summer (it's worth pointing out that I've a very forgiving grading scale. Many of you may know how I feel about last year's Transformers and even that scored an "impressive" C or C- for me) and TDK continues this trend that will likely continue through X-Files and The Mummy.

The Dark Knight may be one of the best comic-to-film movies to come around in a long, long, time if not THE best. It's as much a "movie" as it is a "comic-book movie." There's a couple niggling little problems I had with it (I still don't like it when Bale forces his "Batman voice" and there's a couple little head scratching moments that I have that I'll get into late in the thread) but neither were enough to really fully take me out of this movie.

Everything you've heard about Ledger's performance doesn't do him justice. This Joker is menacing, unstable, chaotic, and a whole thesaurus of words for "criminally fucking insane." This is a guy who'd have Charles Manson looking at him and saying, "Dude! How many birds are on THIS guy's antenna?"

He steals the show, and for the most part the movie focus a lot on him. Best Supporting Actor? In this movie such a nomination would be a better fit for Christian Bale. This is Ledger's/Joker's movie and he delivers .

Forget Jack. Forget Cesar Romero. Heath Ledger is THE JOKER. The might as well never use the Joker again in any other Batman project because NO ONE can play him again and do it justice.

Aaron Eckhart is great as Harvey Dent/Two-Face. I actually smiled and clapped when he pulled out his one-sided coin to make a fate-based decision and the CGI/Make-up work on him when he finally does become Two-Face is awesome, frightening, and makes Tommy Lee Jones' make-up look like a kid's mask. Fantastic stuff!

And this brings us to Maggie Gyllenhhal (or whatever) as Rachael Dawes. I've made no secret about how much I love this woman as an actress and on a physical level and she's no slouch here. She does a wonderful job, is a much better fit in her role in the "love triangle" and a better match for Eckhart and Bale. Katie Holmes would NOT have worked here.

The other secondary cast, Caine (Alfred), Freeman (Fox) and Oldman (Gordon) all do very good jobs and I also smiled and clapped a bit when Oldman's character met his destiny.

The action scenes are very well done, choreographed and paced and I'm not sure what more there is to say. This is a fantastic, fantastic, awesome movie.

It knocks Iron Man off my top spot for the summer, but only slightly, and receives an A+ from me. (A 98.9% A+ to Iron Man's 97.9% A+).

If you can tickets go see this sucker as soon as you can.

At least see it before The Rapture occurs.



Oh, and there's no post-credits bit either so unless you want to watch the credits there's no need to sit through them. I was disappointed, though, that Ledger's dedication doesn't appear until "deep" into the credits rather in the front of the movie or in front of the credits.

 

For me, Rachel was much more of a weak spot in this movie than in Begins. Honestly, I thnk Holmes did a better job with the character, bringing a little underlying intensity to her and her passion for her work that Gyllenhaal lacked. Rachel was far more underwritten in this story, but the dynamic between her and Bruce is underlined I think in her line, "Don't make me your one hope for normal life." While it's obvious in both stories that Bruce loves her, there's a sense that he's trying very hard to be in love with her, to believe that he's capable of such a thing, that he has a reason to lay down the mask - something to live for besides Batman. But it's not real, because he doesn't believe in anything as much. There's nothing, even Rachel, that he's willing to go as far for. This is one of the strengths of TDK that all this material subtext and part of Bale's incredibly nuanced and subtle portrayal.