The Dark Knight - Grading & Discussion

[captcalhoun]

saw it today at a 12:30 showing, my review...

i loved it. Everyone's acting their socks off, although Maggie Gyllenhaal as Rachel is not really any better than Katie Holmes was.

Ledger is amazing as a truly psycho-clown who cheeerfully kills his own henchmen as well as innocents and i think he may well get that Oscar... I know some have questioned whether he'd be getting the plaudits if he hadn't died, but I personally think that's an idiotic thing to say. Good acting's good whether the guy's alive to get the plaudits or not.

Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent is good as well. He's a good DA-on-a-mission t o clean up Gotham, but he is also a good psycho after the acid hits the face, to paraphrase and he becomes Two-Face. I don't for one second believe his fate is as depicted.

Bale growls and snarls more than ever as the Darkest Knight, he is simply The. Best. Batman. Ever.

Once again, though, Michael Caine nearly steals the scenes from under him as the most wise-cracking butler ever seen.

Oldman is marvvellous as Lt. Gordon, doing his level best to help clean up a corrupt police force.

I did wonder if his number 2 woman was Renee Montoya from the comics, but when she was revealed as a bent copper, I was glad she wasn't...

11/10


i did wonder if the detonators would blow up the same boat, not the opposite one...

i loved the 'pencil trick' and the Joker smacking the detonator at the hospital when it didn't completely blow up.

and WTF was up with the Bat-pod? I swear it rolled when he burst out of the alley and when it went up the wall and span! Cool as Fuck!

it was a bit reminiscent of the 'Bat-blade' in Batman Returns the way it 'seperated' out of the Tumber...

 

[cultcross]

saw it today at a 12:30 showing, my review...

13.00 for me

i loved it. Everyone's acting their socks off, although Maggie Gyllenhaal as Rachel is not really any better than Katie Holmes was.

Ledger is amazing as a truly psycho-clown who cheeerfully kills his own henchmen as well as innocents and i think he may well get that Oscar... I know some have questioned whether he'd be getting the plaudits if he hadn't died, but I personally think that's an idiotic thing to say. Good acting's good whether the guy's alive to get the plaudits or not.

Totally agree on all points - particularly in The Joker's scene with the pencil and in the interrogation scene with Batman, absolutely fantastic work, a true Hannibal villain. Ledger deserves every bit of the praise that's been sent his way, and his passing has nothing to do with that. This movie is his, and I daresay the character is now his.
Gyllenhaal was the acting disappoitnmetn of the film, for me - she wasn't bad, and she was less simperingly annoying than Holmes, but she didn't blow me away. The party scene in particular was weak, I felt.

Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent is good as well. He's a good DA-on-a-mission t o clean up Gotham, but he is also a good psycho after the acid hits the face, to paraphrase and he becomes Two-Face. I don't for one second believe his fate is as depicted.

I'm tempted to say, based on Nolan's history, that he probably is dead. And In many ways, despite loving the character, I hope he is - the whole dramatic arc of the film is heavily undermined if he's not.

Speaking of his death, Batman's final sacrifice was fantastic, his most heroic moment in the whole film when he realises what Alfred's been saying to him all along. He's been trying to be Gotham's white knight, a figure to be loved and imitated, and in that moment willingly became its dark knight, his real calling. Loved it.

Bale growls and snarls more than ever as the Darkest Knight, he is simply The. Best. Batman. Ever.

Have to say, the 'gravel' voice was irritating in some parts - realistic, Batman needs to have a different voice to Wayne, but notably less scary in the harsh white of the interrogation room than the rain soaked streets of the "Swear to ME!!" scene from Begins. Maybe, of course, that was the point.

i did wonder if the detonators would blow up the same boat, not the opposite one...

I was thinking exactly the same. I bet they did, if either one had pushed them.

A random tech question: Is this the first time in the new franchise that something is referred to as the Bat-item? I don't think we've ever had the Batmobile, Batsuit or the Batarangs named on screen, so is the 'Bat-pod' the first?

Speaking of tech, I loved that someone at Wayne Enterprises finally figured it out. And Fox's response was hilarious!


Wanna know how I got these scars?

 

[Derishton]

So Both Burton and Nolan's Batman strive to be about Gotham's dark and noble hero. Burton's Batman beats you over the head with this, the last image being a dramatic shot of Batman perched heroically atop a high-rise, staring at the bat-signal. Contrast this to Nolan's ending where a wounded Batman hobbles through warehouse stacks, hounded by both the police and their dogs, as Gordon takes an ax to the bat-signal while declaring a citywide man-hunt on Batman. When the hero faces more than just comic hijinks and celebrity acting, and must pick himself up in the face of devastating tragedies, there is a desperation and humanity that can only be described heroic. This is Nolan's Dark Knight.

Excellent review.

The sheer darkness of this film impresses me. It seems to be entirely about the hero, not just the Batman/Dent/Gordon troika but the criminal on the boat who does what nobody else can do ... but it doesn't descend into the cloying annoyance of the bridge scene in the first Spiderman because these heroes arise from a world where everyone else is a rank coward. How many people on that boat voted to blow the other boat up? Three quarters? How quickly do the people of Gotham turn on Batman because the Joker has scared them?

It's this dismal view of humanity in the 21st century that elevates this film beyond the average superhero movie. The message seems to be that we get the society we deserve, and any relief from that sentence is because a handful of individuals step up to take responsibility. Agree with that moral or not, the fact that the film takes a moral stance and is willing to explore from pretty big issues is really quite impressive.

 

[captcalhoun]

the thing i also think is worth noting (dunno if anyone else did, not read all 31 pages...) is that this does a better job of defining Bruce/Batman's heroic status than that crappy ass saving both Chase and Robin scene did in Batman Forever.

(which, y'know was an aweful lot like the bridge scene in Spider-Man...)

 

[Ethros]

saw it today at a 12:30 showing, my review...

13.00 for me

10.30 for me

 

[cultcross]

the thing i also think is worth noting (dunno if anyone else did, not read all 31 pages...) is that this does a better job of defining Bruce/Batman's heroic status than that crappy ass saving both Chase and Robin scene did in Batman Forever.

I agree - this film is about the fact that heroism isn't about sweeping in to win the girl and save the day, it's about doing the right thing, the thing that helps others, even when they have no idea or even hate you for it. The film opens with Batman being the traditional caped crusader - storm in, beat up the bad guys, tie them up in a line for the cops, and disappear into the night while the city looks gratefully at the bat-signal. It ends with Batman more heroic than he's ever been - but the people have turned completely against him.
He took what Dent said to heart - Dent lived long enough to become the villain, but Batman allowed him to die the hero. An act of self sacrifice I felt oddly moving, even coming from a man in black rubber.

saw it today at a 12:30 showing, my review...

13.00 for me

10.30 for me

git

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Oh, and Batman's gravelly voice got a bit silly at times. Give that man a lozenge!

The way he's gasping at the end of the movie, it reminds me of Napoleon Dynamite's cameo at the end of "Tankman Begins." "This show...is going to be...incredible."

 

[cultcross]

Oh, and Batman's gravelly voice got a bit silly at times. Give that man a lozenge!

The way he's gasping at the end of the movie, it reminds me of Napoleon Dynamite's cameo at the end of "Tankman Begins." "This show...is going to be...incredible."

After the movie we went to grab some food (i'd missed lunch for this film, that's a big commitment), And we all ordered in Batman Voice. I was very impressed that the guy serving us guessed exactly what we were doing almost straight away. And we'd just come form the first showing. That's marketing

 

[biotech]

I saw it at 10AM btw.

 

[biotech]

BTW, how does a normal man grab a gun barrel and bend it down?

 

[PsychoPere]

BTW, how does a normal man grab a gun barrel and bend it down?

He's clearly shown putting a device away that he used to augment his strength and cause it to bend, presumably the same device he attempts to use to open the Scarecrow's van like a can.

 

[cultcross]

BTW, how does a normal man grab a gun barrel and bend it down?

He's clearly shown putting a device away that he used to augment his strength and cause it to bend, presumably the same device he attempts to use to open the Scarecrow's van like a can.

I'm glad I read people saying this - I totally missed this, I thought it was way too Superman. They shoudl have made more of the hydraulic arm thingy in that shot, i feel.

 

[PsychoPere]

BTW, how does a normal man grab a gun barrel and bend it down?

He's clearly shown putting a device away that he used to augment his strength and cause it to bend, presumably the same device he attempts to use to open the Scarecrow's van like a can.

I'm glad I read people saying this - I totally missed this, I thought it was way too Superman. They shoudl have made more of the hydraulic arm thingy in that shot, i feel.

"Clearly shown" may have been overstating things a bit, I'll grant. I've seen the film three times (3.5, but that's another story...), but I understood what happened with the gun the first time I saw it. The device probably could've been in the shot a bit more, but there was the definitely clear hydraulic sound.

 

[biotech]

If it were that clearly shown I wouldn't have asked the question.

 

[Trekker4747]

There was a clear hydraulic/mechanical sound when he bent the barrel and then there was him ditching (changing the head) the device when/after he started cutting into the side of the van. It was obvious to me on the first showing.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

There was a clear hydraulic/mechanical sound when he bent the barrel and then there was him ditching (changing the head) the device when/after he started cutting into the side of the van. It was obvious to me on the first showing.

Same here. I thought it was pretty obvious, till I saw some people here were confused about it.

Personally, I loved it. Sure there was a couple of niggles, but overall it was fantastic. Heath Ledger really deserves the praise, but Eckhart, Bale, and Oldman were great too.

 

[cultcross]

There was a clear hydraulic/mechanical sound when he bent the barrel and then there was him ditching (changing the head) the device when/after he started cutting into the side of the van. It was obvious to me on the first showing.

I saw it on the van sequence, obviously. Hard to miss there - but to be honest, a lot of sound subtlety was lost on me in this film simply due to the music volume. Any sound I heard I must have assumed was the gun bending. Definitely didn't spot the hand device in that move.

 

[Nerroth]

Outstanding movie.


Sadly ironic that they (most likely) kill off the character who could be kept around for future movies, yet keep alove the character that, arguably, would take a lot for anyone to even want to see show up again (given that it's hard to find anyone who could follow a performance like Ledger's).


A little bit of a waste about Scarecrow at the start - I guess it was only meant to be a cameo, but it still seemed like a bit of a waste (not least since he wasn't, well, actually scaring anyone) - but that's more of a nitpick than anything.


I still hope that Ra's - and Talia! - can find their way into a future movie, though...

 

[Trekker4747]

Any sound I heard I must have assumed was the gun bending. Definitely didn't spot the hand device in that move.

How many bending gun barrels sounds like a mechanical whirr?

 

[archeryguy1701]

Was that definately Scarecrow at the beginning? Also, wasn't the guy that Dent was torturing Scarecrow? I wasn't positive, especially since he left the first Scarecrow with the mock-Batmen, and while the second one looked very similar, he should have been in jail already (twice!).