The Dark Knight - Grading & Discussion

Yep. His name is Tony Lister. He also played The President in The Fifth Element starring Gordon himself, Gary Oldman.

 

Thought it was "Tiny" Lester...

 

Count me as one of the many pleased that not only did the Scarecrow come back but they got Murphy back to play him. When he first appeared, I thought he sounded different and I was afraid that it wasn't going to be him. But then Batman unmasked him and we got a great look at ol' creepy eyes himself.

Unless.... they can get the guy from Pushing Daisies to make a cameo!

Oh, it's great acting but it's also a very inhuman performance. That's not the kind of acting that the Academy tends to recognize. Andy Serkis deserved a nomination for The Lord of the Rings but never got it. Ledger's death has given the performance an extra "legitimacy" that it wouldn't otherwise have had, IMO.

BTW, the only negative side effect of this movie making as much money as it is is that it leads to headlines like, "Batman gets massive B.O.!"

 

Thiis is cool...Kevin Smith talking about the film:

http://www.slashfilm.com/2008/07/22/filmcast-ep-9-the-dark-knight-guest-kevin-smith/

 

Scarecrow's cameo was OK but I was disappointed that he didn't reappear; for "escalation", let alone chaos, it didn't feel too chaotic, occasionally tense or grim but not much.

 

Banks were robbed, hospitals were destroyed, nearly half the city was evacuated, the National Guard were ordered, people/cops were murdered, threats were made ... it was the brewing chaos that The Joker insisted on.

 

You're correct. His real first name is Tommy, but I can see the confusion.

That explains why I vaguely recognized him. I knew him from The Fifth Element, but it's been years since I've seen it and I only saw it once.

 

Tony, Tiny, Tommy...

All the same to me.

 

Yeah I was kinda disappointed that Scarecrow was presented as really nothing more than a small-time drug dealer in this movie. He was SUCH a great presence in the first movie (much more so than R'as, I thought) that I think he should have gotten a little more attention and respect here.

 

After the events of the first movie it doesn't surprise me that he's trying to fly under Batman's radar by only being a small time drug dealer. Of course once he was captured by Batman (and I assume arrested by the police) I never expected him to return, I'm sure he was sent to the maximum security wing at Arkham.

 

Umm, I hate to be rude, but this will be the second time I pointed this out: he was never captured by Batman! Or sent to Arkham! I don't know why people don't get this. At the end of Batman Begins, Rachel tasered him and he went riding off into The Narrows on a horse.

Later, when Batman & Gordon are on the rooftop of Gotham's Police Headquarters, Gordon specifically mentions that they haven't captured "Crane or half the inmates of Arkham that he freed", to which Batman responds, "We will. We can bring Gotham back."

I don't know why people fail to get that. Again, I don't mean to be rude, I just thought after Batman Begins it was common sense and made clear that The Scarecrow was on the loose by the end of that film. So when Batman captures him, I actually thought his limited presence was acceptable because it was really trying to reintroduce Batman in an action sequence and complete a story arc established in Begins by capturing Scarecrow, all in the same scene.

The great thing about The Dark Knight (or one of the great things) is how there was plenty of plot in the action sequences.

P.S. And it would also explain why The Scarecrow would be a one-time drug dealer because he was trying to build himself up again after Begins. The novelization explains that after The Narrows he moved in with a former patient and ended up using that patient's home to re-develop his fear toxin. And when you think about it, The Scarecrow is higher in his game than he was in Batman Begins, when he was working under Ra's al Ghul. Here, in The Dark Knight, he was working for himself.

 

I think Kaijufan was referring to Scarecrow being caught by Batman and probably arrested in the beginning of TDK and not the end of BB.

 

Yeah you're right jbny67, I was referring to the Scarecrow cameo in TDK. I'm not sure how JacksonArcher missed that, especially after I said "After the events of the first movie".

 

My bad. That part came at the beginning of your post, and I thus assumed when you mentioned Scarecrow being captured, you were referring to Batman Begins and not segueing into The Dark Knight.

But you're right, Scarecrow was most assuredly captured by the police and sent to Arkham. Which would be a nice case of irony since in Begins Crane ran Arkham, and now he is a prisoner. A part of me would love to see Arkham used in a third Batman movie with him eventually breaking out of Arkham.

 

Yeah I can kind of see that, but still, the guy used to be a respected doctor at Arkham and now... he's driving around in a van and doing business with drug dealers in a parking structure. Somehow it just seemed a little beneath him.

 

That's the life of a criminal for ya.

 

I disagree-- a little. Both of Nolan's films are fairly grounded in realism, but that grounding can only go so far. In the end, these are films about a man who dresses up in a suit to look like a bat and fights crime. The films do, however, attempt to ground this outlandish idea amidst realistic concepts. The Batmoblie, for example, becomes an experimental military vehicle. Batman's extreme fighting ability becomes intensive training in a variety of martial arts. The joker, too, is an outlandish figure. In Nolan's version, his face paint becomes "war paint," and the Joker himself a sociopath. Yes, he's gifted the improbable ability to carry out complicated plans without being caught, but I can live with that, because in the end, he's a villain in a superhero movie.

Where Nolan's film stumble a bit is in the more extreme technical concepts, which are probably the same "confused and ridiculous tech" you reference. Batman Begins' microwave generator isn't preposterous, but the way it selectively vaporizes water in the movie certainly is. The Dark Knight's massive cell phone listening device is believable, but turning it into a massive, city-wide sonar? Ridiculous. Begins’ bat-attracting device is probably impossible as well, although I don't profess to know enough about bats to make that judgment, and the pseudoscience behind the device is probably enough for a movie like this.

I don’t see any reason to punish Nolan for any reviews his film has received. They are the fault of the reviewers and the reviewers alone. As other discussions on this very board suggest, this movie is certainly deep enough to inspire reasoned debate on a number of issues. As to whether it’s adult—well, I think it’s about as adult as a superhero movie can be.

It’s over exaggeration in the extreme, however, to equivocate The Dark Knight with any of the Godfather films. I imagine this is the result of so much mediocrity, formulaic predictability, or just outright cinematic failure in the superhero genre as of late.

As another poster noted, you’ve missed the sentiment Alfred expresses in this scene—regret over burning the forest.

 

I have seen several people express issue with this microwave device. We are all accustomed to the little box that boils water, heats our chicken and pops popcorn. This is not that device.

The consumer microwave oven operates over a broad range of frequencies. In contrast, the microwave emitter of BB would have the capability to operate on a single frequency. This single frequency would be the one that boils water (or in the case of BB, the single frequency would be the one that boils water laden with toxin) and not one that boils a saline solution (a different frequency).

 

I wish it had been explained as such in the film, but thanks for this. I don't suppose there's a webpage out there that explains microwaves in laymen's terms, is there?