I'd rather not live in a world where we make movies rated-R ffor "distubing themes" only and for the implications of violence; and if the dad story scene made you cringe/hide your face.... *sigh*
The Dark Knight - Grading & Discussion
- Thread starter Agent Richard07
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I'd rather not live in a world where we make movies rated-R ffor "distubing themes" only and for the implications of violence; and if the dad story scene made you cringe/hide your face.... *sigh*
I'm honestly not sure. He could've pulled the knife *really* hard and made it go through not just the cheek but also into the back of the head as well...^I thought it was just a music crash, no sound effect.
I remember in that scene I was like, "He's not gonna do it. He's just freaking the guy out. He's not really gonna--Oh..."
Yeah that's what I meant, a music crash. So did Joker stab the guy in the head or something? His body dropped like a rock, which I wouldn't expect from having your face sliced open.
I'd rather not think about it too much, if it's all the same to you!
I think I am not getting through with my message here... I really don't care about the rating. Some R movies are (imo) perfectly fine for kids to see. However, (I believe) that a PG-13 pretty much means anything that has some violence included and won't give most parents any pause. What might make them check (some of them...) is an R-rating. Is it for violence, language or nudity (that's the kind of questions a parent might have). In that case, it might help somebody who doesn't know about Bats being this dark psycho-drama ("it's a comic book superhero movie! Of course it's okay for the kids to go see it").
Re - the story about the Dad - it's not the story itself - tho' it's graphic enough. It's what's happening. The Joker is waving that knife very very very close to the guys mouth. At that point, Chris Nolan is telegraphing what the Joker is going to do (slice the guy up to give him a "grin"). That's what makes it cringe-inducing - the sheer anticipation of what's going to happen. As evidenced by S. Gomez expressing an unwillingness in imagining what really happened in the post directly above this one.
I saw the movie a second time in IMAX, but it wasn't a massive IMAX theatre, so the viewing experience wasn't any different than in a regular theatre. I did notice the aspect ratio changing every now and then though. It wasn't distracting, but it was there. I also couldn't believe how crowded the multiplex was for a weekday. It was like that yesterday too when I tried to get in and found that it was sold out. There was even a lineup outside the door for the next show as I was leaving. I can't wait to see how well this movie does. As for reactions in the crowd I was with, there were a few...
- There was a lot of surprise and laughter when the Joker did his pencil trick. This was probably the biggest reaction from the crowd.
- When we saw that Gordon was still alive after he put the gun to Joker's head, a woman two seats behind me said "He's still alive!"
- There was a lot of laughter when the Joker was dressed as a nurse and said "Hiiii!!!" to a bed-ridden Harvey.
- There was some clapping when the movie was over.
The one thing I noticed this time around was that this movie is filled with a lot of story and details. It was hard to pick up everything. Here are a few of the things I missed...
- I wasn't totally clear on how Bruce/Batman's plan to capture Lau was put together or exectuted. He hired a plane. Okay. Who was it again? And seeing as how it was a Batman mission, how was it kept secret?
- I was confused about the cellphone left behind in the building by Fox. He left a phone and had a phone and showed it to the guard? What happened exactly?
- I didn't get the ballistics test.
- I'd love to see more on Harvey Dent's journey from hero to madman on my next viewing which will have to wait until the movie is out on DVD.
Here are a few other thoughts, questions and observations...
- The Joker is pretty clever and perceptive if he could figure out that Rachel was special to Batman. How did he know that she wasn't just another life he had to save whe she fell off the building?
- How did Batman and Rachel land without injury anyway? I didn't see anything slow or break their fall. That happened twice in the movie. Three if you want to count the short fall with Harvey.
- Despite the Joker giving his little speech about chaos and not having a plan, it's pretty clear that he does have plans. Pretty much all of his acts of terror required considerable work and resources to put together. This was brought up already, but this time I could watch with all this in mind.
- Okay, the Joker has plans, so what really sets him apart? I think he goes with the flow a lot more than the average person does. He lets himself go and just goes with it. The end result is that he comes off as a carefree individual. Also, he can spontaneously take advantage of little moments and opportunities that most people would miss because they aren't as open to them.
- Being clever, perceptive and going with the flow = pencil trick.
- As mentioned already, I saw no indication that Reese knew that Bruce Wayne was Batman, just that he knew that Fox/Wayne Enterprises was supplying him with equipment. Fox basically confessed that Bruce was Batman.
- For that matter, why hasn't anyone else recognized the tumbler? I'm sure that more than one person was responsible for designing it and putting it together.
- I wonder what Bruce was thinking when Reese was going to expose him on the air. The whole thing was downplayed quite a bit.
- After the car crash, Gordon says... "You don't watch the news much do you Mr. Wayne?" Well, the story was less than an hour old wasn't it?
- Why did Anthony Michael Hall's part in the movie have to be kept secret? Did anyone ever answer that?
- Christian Bale slurred a bit when he did his Batman voice. It also looked like he was gonna spray a bit. I fear that someday he might. Better keep a hanky in your shirt pocket Commissioner.
- I think this is the first time I've seen a Batman where it wasn't immediately obvious who it was eventhough the lower face was exposed.
- I still don't see Bale as the quinessential Batman/Bruce Wayne, but the character in this movie still has a lot of depth, is true to the source material and is played very well.
That's all for now. This was almost like a whole other review.
If anyone is interested, here's an interesting article...
- There was a lot of surprise and laughter when the Joker did his pencil trick. This was probably the biggest reaction from the crowd.
- When we saw that Gordon was still alive after he put the gun to Joker's head, a woman two seats behind me said "He's still alive!"
- There was a lot of laughter when the Joker was dressed as a nurse and said "Hiiii!!!" to a bed-ridden Harvey.
- There was some clapping when the movie was over.
The one thing I noticed this time around was that this movie is filled with a lot of story and details. It was hard to pick up everything. Here are a few of the things I missed...
- I wasn't totally clear on how Bruce/Batman's plan to capture Lau was put together or exectuted. He hired a plane. Okay. Who was it again? And seeing as how it was a Batman mission, how was it kept secret?
- I was confused about the cellphone left behind in the building by Fox. He left a phone and had a phone and showed it to the guard? What happened exactly?
- I didn't get the ballistics test.
- I'd love to see more on Harvey Dent's journey from hero to madman on my next viewing which will have to wait until the movie is out on DVD.
Here are a few other thoughts, questions and observations...
- The Joker is pretty clever and perceptive if he could figure out that Rachel was special to Batman. How did he know that she wasn't just another life he had to save whe she fell off the building?
- How did Batman and Rachel land without injury anyway? I didn't see anything slow or break their fall. That happened twice in the movie. Three if you want to count the short fall with Harvey.
- Despite the Joker giving his little speech about chaos and not having a plan, it's pretty clear that he does have plans. Pretty much all of his acts of terror required considerable work and resources to put together. This was brought up already, but this time I could watch with all this in mind.
- Okay, the Joker has plans, so what really sets him apart? I think he goes with the flow a lot more than the average person does. He lets himself go and just goes with it. The end result is that he comes off as a carefree individual. Also, he can spontaneously take advantage of little moments and opportunities that most people would miss because they aren't as open to them.
- Being clever, perceptive and going with the flow = pencil trick.
- As mentioned already, I saw no indication that Reese knew that Bruce Wayne was Batman, just that he knew that Fox/Wayne Enterprises was supplying him with equipment. Fox basically confessed that Bruce was Batman.
- For that matter, why hasn't anyone else recognized the tumbler? I'm sure that more than one person was responsible for designing it and putting it together.
- I wonder what Bruce was thinking when Reese was going to expose him on the air. The whole thing was downplayed quite a bit.
- After the car crash, Gordon says... "You don't watch the news much do you Mr. Wayne?" Well, the story was less than an hour old wasn't it?
- Why did Anthony Michael Hall's part in the movie have to be kept secret? Did anyone ever answer that?
- Christian Bale slurred a bit when he did his Batman voice. It also looked like he was gonna spray a bit. I fear that someday he might. Better keep a hanky in your shirt pocket Commissioner.
- I think this is the first time I've seen a Batman where it wasn't immediately obvious who it was eventhough the lower face was exposed.
- I still don't see Bale as the quinessential Batman/Bruce Wayne, but the character in this movie still has a lot of depth, is true to the source material and is played very well.
That's all for now. This was almost like a whole other review.
If anyone is interested, here's an interesting article...
Read the rest here.
When Bruce is talking to Lucius - there is some mention of the Koreans - plane from N. Korea perhaps? I didn't catch the full dialog.
The cellphone that's left behind generates some kind of emp-pulse that shuts down power in the building. The phone that goes with Lucius upstairs creates a sonar image of Lau's quarters so that Bats knows where everything is when fighting in the dark.
Somehow (and I'm not quite sure how - CSI tech?), he recreates an image of the bullet with the fingerprint of the guy who would have loaded the bullet into the chamber.
I know what the phones did, I was just confused about this... He dropped off a phone going in, then he left and showed them that he had his phone, but there was a phone in the drawer... So he had two phones, one he left and one he had all along. But didn't the security guards notice that he left a phone with them but still had one as well? Sorry, I'm still trying to put it togehter. Were the guards simply not paying attention?
"Should be"? No. I agree with you there. But often a dark film will get a higher rating simply because it feels worse than it is. That's just how the MPAA works. The clearest example I can think of here is the 2 different cuts of Daredevil. All of its goriest moments are already there in the Theatrical cut. The Director's cut has extended fight scenes but nothing particularly graphic about them. But because there is a higher number of punches & kicks as well as just being a darker movie, the Theatrical Cut was rated PG-13 while the Director's Cut got an R.
Lucius carried two phones expecting to be asked to check in his phone. Lucius then gives the emp-phone up to the guards. He goes up and does the sonar trick with the other phone. When walking out, the guard tries to give him back the phone he checked in, but he holds aloft the other phone. The guard shrugs and places the phones back at the reception desk (into the Lost and found section?) which is where it stays until used to trigger the emp like thing. (We all look alike to them - as one of the Chinese (?) witnesses remarked during the OJ trial. So maybe the guard thought that it was some other man who had left the phone there) The guards definitely made a mistake...
Batman's cape was acting as sort of a "drag chute" when he fell from Wayne Tower onto the car it looked like he wasn't going all that fast, couple that with "comic book/movie physics" and you've got Batman and Rachel surving a fall.
They hired the Skyhook Plane from (I think Fox said) some people of inideal moral character - Columbian Drug Smugglers. Possibly because if they tried to say anything their reputation would make whatever they said suspect.
The Joker IS clever and preceptive. Further, he said he based it on how Batman quickly dove after her.
I think Bale plays the Smug Billionare Playboy really, really well. With the smugness and such when he's putting on his "act" and as the "real" Wayne when with Fox and Alfred. I'm not a 100% sold on his Batman mostly from his growly Batman voice which many times is just far too intense.
Every hospital in the city was being evacuated under a bomb threat the city streets were likely filled with panic and chaos and every media outlet likely would've been covering the story so anyone paying cursory attention to the news would know about it. Besides, as we all know, it was just more of Wayne playing the Smug Billionare Playboy.
He had "plans" but not master, grand, plan for everything he was doing other than to cause chaos. I may have plans for what I'm doing this evening but I don't have plans for what I'm doing a month from now. As he said he was just "doing" things.
The "Hiii" got a big chuckle too, I think it was the almost saucily way he said it as he was dressed as the nurse.
It was around the beginning of the convoy chase that I realized that there were way too many Gordon scenes I had seen in previews than had been in the movie so far for them to just be cut scenes. (The bit with Gordon & the Joker in the interrogation room especially.) However, I spent a good while thinking that they actually did kill Gordon and I was prepared to hate the rest of the movie for it.
Actually, part of what made me believe that they would kill Gordon was when I saw Rachel survive being thrown off the building by the Joker. When I realized I was wrong about that, I figured I could be wrong about a lot of things.
One of my few criticisms of the movie. I wanted a more fictitious Gotham City, not a barely disguised Chicago.
Overall, I rate the movie as "Above Average." It's very well done but I wish it had more Bruce Wayne in it. What made Batman Begins so great was that it was clearly Bruce Wayne's story. The Dark Knight was a bit unfocused and all over the place.
I'm an ardant student of movie physics and even I don't buy Batman & Rachel surviving that fall without at least breaking a few bones.
It was a really big, sprawling story with a lot of characters, but it didn't feel all that unfocused to me. At least no more than any other good crime movie.
Batman Begins is Bruce Wayne's story. The Dark Knight is Bruce, Dent, Joker and Gordon's story.
Well, as I said, if you watch the scene again you'll see that Batman's cape was whipping around a lot and recall that it has "special properties" (which allows Batman to not the least of which is to hang-glide/"space jump") which slowed him down during his fall. He lands on the car fairly gently, comparatively speaking coupled with the "movie physics" that body armor protects you from almost anything. (Tony's crash/fall in Iron Man.)
It bugged me at first too he survived his falls but after repeat viewings I saw that his cape helped him out. Still don't fully understand the mob/money plot But I know how Bats and Rachel survived their fall.
So JacksonArcher...where's your review?
And no, your mock "Meh. It was okay." post doesn't count.
And no, your mock "Meh. It was okay." post doesn't count.
So JacksonArcher...where's your review?
And no, your mock "Meh. It was okay." post doesn't count.
I'm a little surprised too. For someone who talked so much about this movie when it came out, being the first to report everything, getting to watch the filming in Chicago as it happened, and just going hard core with TDK, the movie has been released and he wasn't the first to have a review. Jackson, hope it comes soon.
He's probably busy writing an epic length review that no one will read because it'll be too long.