The Dark Knight

[Trekker4747]

You'd think the whole "Batman killed cops" thing would've struck people as odd and out of character for the vigilante who worked to "help" the police for a year.

The final montage-like scene over the end of the movie is one of my favorite moments. Gordon's V.O. intercut with Dent's public funeral service, Batman fleeing the police, the aforementioned scene with the spot-light. It's very well done and it'll be interesting to see how in the next movie Batman gets back in Gotham's good graces.

But there was just something about that scene with setting Batman up as the "Dark Knight" was just powerful and awesome.

 

[suarezguy]

I didn't like the film very much, starting with Gotham looking too modern and sleek rather than otherworldly or grim.
Batman hoping to be able to retire after a year made him feel too young and he often felt like a supporting character (a charge often made against Batman Returns, and here the villains weren't interesting enough to make up for it).
The Joker was alright but not as good as he was hyped up to be; he could have used more dark humor to be more unique.
Batman taking responsibility for Dent's crimes was a good example of how short-thinking he was. There could be another public hero later but in order to preserve the image of one who died (I disagree that the truth, or at least ambiguity, would be so devastating to people), he gets the cops against him rather than continue to use their help. He also risks the public accepting murderous vigilantism if they accept him by making that part of his image.

I enjoyed Batman Returns, Batman Begins and Spider-Man 2 more, I thought they had better mood, character development and action.

 

[Admiral_Young]

The Joker wasn't unique enough? Wow. I thought this might have been the most unique take on the character in years aside from the Brian Azzerello version which he claims wasn't based on 'The Dark Knight' character. As for dark humor, I thought there was plenty myself. My favorite scene is when he is walking away from the hospital and is waiting for the explosion and when it doesn't happen right away starts to wonder if he fucked up or not. Great Joker moment.

 

[Trekker4747]

The "Joker Moment" that really sold me on Ledger's take is when he first meets with the mob bosses in (what looks like) the cafeteria kitchen. He comes in with a bit of a forced, stammering, "Joker laugh", he's wearing a fairly classic-looking Joker outfit (a purple suit), he does the "magic trick" with the mob guy's body gaurd, he sums up the state of the mob in the intervening time between the first and current movie, he predicts the next plot point (Lao's betrayal once caught), he presents his plan and then leaves. And along the way there's nice scenes of Joker's "insanity" like his "card" being a Joker from a deck of playing cards and then having the suit-coat filled with gernades tethered to his hand as an "escape plan."

The best part is when one of the mob guys asks if the Joker really thinks he can come in there, extort all of Gotham's various crime syndicates out of 50% of their massed earnings and then just be allowed to walk out the door. Joker says, simply, "Yes."

Other nice touches in there like when the Joker says to someone, pointedly, that he's non insane and other great moments. That whole scene was just The Joker, to me, all the way and sold Ledger's version of the character. Yeah, it's a bit disappointing it was more "The Joker's movie" than Batman's but Ledger's performance as the Joker was just so awesome that I didn't mind.

I just wish, again, that Eckhart's Two-Face could've been a similar grand treatment in the third movie because Two-Face is one of few others in Batman's rogues gallery who could carry a movie by himself.

 

[Tulaberry whine]

I think the particular kind of badness in Dark Knight is shown most clearly in the ferry scene. No one on the ferries has any good reason to believe the Joker is a man of his word. But everyone is written as believing perfect nonsense so the movie can pose a fake dramatic choice, supposedly with existential implications, no less!

I agree. You know going into a superhero movie you're going to have to suspend disbelief - but this plot point (in fact, the entire last act) was ridiculous on too many levels.

 

[Trekker4747]

Since it's implied the mob heavily controlled Gotham and by the final act The Joker pretty much controlled the mob it's "possible" that they had enough control to pull of everything that would've needed to be done for the final act to work. Which, yeah, was silly. But I'll take it over the far sillier (and more comic-booky) ending of the first movie. (Which involved a combination of a powerful hallucinogenic and a magical "microwave device" that could super-heat the water in nearby pipes, designed to destroy the central pumping station of Gotham's water supply yet at the same time this microwave device didn't cause the people in the city (made 70-80% out of water) to boil and explode.)

 

[Admiral_Young]

Yep I love the Joker's interruption of the mob boss meeting. He is mock laughing, it's pretty clear when he trails off suddenly. You can tell he's mock laughing because it doesn't match his true sadistic laughter he uses later in the film.

 

[Kegg]

I buy the ferry scene mostly because you can either take the Joker at his word or die for sure.

I mean does anyone really doubt a psycho killer might kill you anyway? Maybe if you play his game you survive, maybe not, but if you ignore his rules you'll die for sure.

The logical problem is more the logistics of the ferry bombing and the hosptial bombing and so on. Maybe that makes sense, maybe not, I don't greatly care.

Thus the qualifier in the parenthetical. Otherwise we'd have to start talking about AMERICAN SPLENDOR, which I think is terrific, amongst a number of other comic book movies outside the superhero genre.

True, but 'twas mainly rather then exclusively.

You'd think the whole "Batman killed cops" thing would've struck people as odd and out of character for the vigilante who worked to "help" the police for a year.

Maybe it did. I mean, public reaction to the end of The Dark Knight is doubtless going to play some sort of element in The Dark Knight Rises. We may get people challenging the story.

But whether or not the public buy the story is irrelevant. It's the official narrative and it's what has formally unleashed the hounds on the Bat.

 

[Goliath]

I buy the ferry scene mostly because you can either take the Joker at his word or die for sure.

I mean does anyone really doubt a psycho killer might kill you anyway? Maybe if you play his game you survive, maybe not, but if you ignore his rules you'll die for sure.

Plus, it seems to me that, to a certain extent, the Joker is a man of his word. At the very least, the evidence is ambiguous.

Throughout the whole movie, we see him taking sadistic pleasure in pitting people against each other, tempting them into betraying and killing each other, and forcing them to choose who lives and who dies. He delights in degradation.

Sometimes he lets people live after he's degraded them, and sometimes he doesn't. He kills all his accomplices in the bank robbery--but it's implied that the gangster who survives the "tryouts" with the splintered pool cue will, in fact, be allowed to join the Joker's gang. And he does tell Batman and the police where Dent and Dawes are being held--he just doesn't give them enough time to save both of them.

I could see him allowing one shipful of people to live, after they blow up the other shipful. Then again, I could also see him killing all of them. It would all depend on whether or not he felt the survivors had sufficiently degraded themselves by their own actions.

That's a slim chance, but enough of a chance for some people to grasp at. As you say, any chance is better than none.

 

[Shazam!]

But I'll take it over the far sillier (and more comic-booky) ending of the first movie

Yeah, we can't have comic booky endings in comic book movies...

 

[Landed]

I took my father to see it in the theater after having seen it myself on opening day. My father, who has to make an effort to speak above a whisper, exclaimed "Wow! What a movie!!!" when the lights came on.

 

[Admiral_Young]

I was told that when my friends went to see it both times in the theater each time the audience gave it a standing ovation. I will admit that like "Batman Begins" there are things in "The Dark Knight" that bug me but not to the extent where I think these two aren't brilliant Batman movies. There are some creative decisions made here for cinematic purposes but I think those changes work within the context of the world that Nolan created.

 

[Trekker4747]

The biggest thing that bothered me was how much Gotham changed between movies. In the first movie Wayne Enterprises is a large, central, Empire State Building-looking building that's not only a central hub for the El-Trains but also for the city's water reclamation. There were other things in "BB" that made Gotham look like it's own city while still keeping it in the mundane and not going over-the-top gothic looking like the Burton/Schumacher films did. But in TDK now only is the Wayne building vastly different looking (though, I guess, it could just be a branch or secondary building or something) but the city as a whole looks very different and doesn't even try to not look like Chicago.

(The ferry scene stands out, hugely, as looking like Chi-town.)

 

[Admiral_Young]

I kind of looked at those changes as being part of the clean up of the city that transpired between "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight". I've never noticed any significant changes of the Wayne building though, will have to take another look.

 

[Aragorn]

They used a different building. You could always explain it away by saying Bruce didn't want the water and the train going through Wayne Enterprises after the events of Batman Begins and moved.

 

[Manticore]

Not to mention the fact that a train crashed through the bottom of the original Wayne Tower, taking out a ton of structural supports.

 

[Icemizer]

Ah the Joker the guy who doesnt make any plans, umm wait... he plans out things in such intricate detail and with such preperation as to make a moon landing look simple. I still find this movie to be dull over much of its overly long running time. The Joker while well acted was poorly thought out and lets not even start on all the missed opportunities he had as a character in this movie.

 

[Lapis Exilis]

The biggest thing that bothered me was how much Gotham changed between movies. In the first movie Wayne Enterprises is a large, central, Empire State Building-looking building that's not only a central hub for the El-Trains but also for the city's water reclamation. There were other things in "BB" that made Gotham look like it's own city while still keeping it in the mundane and not going over-the-top gothic looking like the Burton/Schumacher films did. But in TDK now only is the Wayne building vastly different looking (though, I guess, it could just be a branch or secondary building or something) but the city as a whole looks very different and doesn't even try to not look like Chicago.

(The ferry scene stands out, hugely, as looking like Chi-town.)

Not as much as the confrontation on the street with Joker when he's standing in front of a well-known sweet shop on LaSalle Street, prominently named "Sweet Home Chicago". Great candy there, though.

The Dark Knight is an extremely enjoyable movie with the usual amount of unbelievability that are part and parcel of all superhero stories. This clashes somewhat with the generally naturalistic style of the film so that contrast feels pretty stark. The movie also suffers from the same thing all Nolan films suffer from - a kind of breathless pacing through the fairly complicated exposition, followed by sometimes ponderous pacing through the payoff (compare the whole Lau set up and the ferry scenes with Inception's introduction of Ariadne to dream architecting and the ice-level action sequences), as well as kind of remoteness that can make it difficult to feel the emotional trauma of the main characters. Again compare Bruce's grieving for Rachel scene with Inception's final reveal of how Cobb knows the act of inception is possible - these should both be heart-breaking scenes, but they feel cold and intellectual rather than emotional.

Dark Knight is an interesting movie, however, just like most of Nolan's other films. It's ballsy for a superhero movie and it's a postmodern delight, mixing genres with careful calculation. I'd agree with whoever said it seems to be something without actually achieving any thematic coherence - but it's far more "about something" than most superhero movies because at least it tries to get into some issues about what heroism and villainy are in a complicated world, while at the same time being a satisfying superhero movie - even if it's not completely successful at saying anything profound.

As Batman movies go, it's hard to say if it's good or bad because people are very split on what a good Batman movie means, depending on which version of the character you like. I've always been fond of the particular version that seems to have inspired Nolan, so it really works for me, but I can see where others would find it unsatisfying on that score.

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

Seeing the merit of other points of view?

Madam, are you unfamiliar with the Internet?

 

[Trekker4747]

One thing about Inception, and I think I mentioned this in my review of the movie, is that the whole movie was set-up for the climax. The whole movie is designed to explain to us what Dream Walking is, how it works, setting up the various characters (specifically Cobb) and it was all build-up to the "drama" abd action of the final act in the Scarecrow's dream.

Inception does remain, however, one of my more favorite movies.