The Dark Knight: Community Review #11
July 18th, 2008 by Justin
Bale is opposed by Ledger in the next Batman film
Go ahead and enjoy this knowing that I won’t be able to for at least a month. Try not to spoil it for me in your review, okay?
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6 Responses to “The Dark Knight: Community Review #11”
I’m not going to say anything.
Justin, DO NOT spoil this movie for yourself. Don’t read spoilers. Just let it hit you like a ton of bricks. Yeah it’s probably still a GREAT movie even if you know all the details — the performances are great.
But let it hit you like a brick wall with you as in the dark about it all as you can.
Just my opinion…
Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight faces Milton’s dilemma in Paradise Lost: the villain is more captivating than the hero.
Heath Ledger is tremendous and tragic, and, to reverse what everyone else suggests, let me say the role disappears into him. He has all the best lines and delivers them with serpentine, sibilant salaciousness. He succeeds in being villainous but not sanctimonious, no mean feat–all the moreso because he exudes utter chaos, and chaos has no place for honor. He never tells his own origin story the same way twice (“Do you know how I got these scars?”) He “has,” he says, “no plan.” Scarier still. Because Batman apparently doesn’t either. There is heroism, desperation, wantonness: where does it lead?
I will stop there and we can discuss more later.
The experience of the movie itself: we saw it in a really good DLP theatre in Findlay with good sound and a respectful audience of, i would say, mostly adults. The film itself has a mesmerizing quality with shades of blackness, and, since I don’t know This Batman and its story culture, there were plot innovations for me that were satisfying. . . I think Mike says it best when he says this is Nolan’s Empire Strikes Back.
Nobody should miss this movie; but can’t imagine anyone seeing it twice. It is unrelentlently dark, dark, dark. It mirrors the experience of chaos and therefore leaves you limp and exhausted, and you exit with a sense of incoherence. But it earns every one of the $100m it cost to make.
There have been numerous laudatory, positive reviews for this film. There have been precious few negative ones.
People compare this to The Godfather. I can see plenty of reasons to do so. I won’t name them, though.
I saw this film on IMAX at Navy Pier in Chicago, the ‘Gotham’ of the film. Seeing the actual filming locations and landmarks right after I walked out of the movie was pretty awesome. Seeing the film (in which there are scenes involving Navy Pier, itself) four stories high and 2.5 hours long… was pure whimsy (dark whimsy) and marvelous in every way.
I think Bruce’s notion that the Joker “disappears into” Heath Ledger is a great way of describing it. There aren’t many actors who could’ve pulled off what he did… but he did. And man… did he.
People here are talking about it a lot… so it’s hard to avoid spoilers in conversation. If you haven’t yet seen it, I’ll just echo Mike’s comment and advise you to pretend the movie doesn’t exist until you’ve bought your ticket, found your seat, and watched the lights go dim before your eyes. And dim they go…
The Knight is darkest before the dawn. Is the dawn coming?
Being Justin cautious:
The movie met my expectations, Heath Ledger: great job, same for the rest of the cast, I’m glad Katie Holmes was not in this one, I’m glad cheezy Scarecrow illusion animations weren’t in this. Nothing was overdone, as far as comic book movies go. I could take this movie very seriously.
At times it felt like a Die Hard movie, just because of its raw, freakin awesome ballziness (translation: it was sweet)
That’s all I’ll say for now. I’m planning on seeing it at least two more times. Go see it!
Nothing profound to say that hasn’t been said a month ago already. I was just happy to catch it at all.
The Village Market theaters can’t handle bassy sounds (explosions, music) and their speakers were very crackly and pretty annoying throughout.
The first few minutes had the wrong aspect ratio, too, really tall and skinny everyone for the Guy From Prison Break in the bank scene.
Heath was awesome. But let me sing the praises of Aaron Eckhart. He certainly carried his own. I loved the effects/makeup as Two-Face.
The thing with a super hero movie series now is that once the hero is established, he doesn’t have much to do as a character – the villains become centerpiece because they are new and they are getting their own “origin” which is a more engaging process to an audience compared to seeing someone who is super awesome at fighting bad guys continue to just be super awesome at fighting bad guys.
But it’s not like Bale did a bad job either, though.
I felt different watching Morgan Freeman hearing that he was divorcing his wife of over 20 years since this came out. For some reason I kept thinking Lucius Fox was divorcing his wife, too, probably from working too much in that cell phone sonor lab.
What’s with the cop-out wrapping up of Scarecrow in 42 seconds? That was like a big cliffhanger of the first one, “He’s still out there…” I understand but it was just a snap. I didn’t expect him to be around, b/c then it would have gotten way too crowded, something that Spider-man 3 was HORRIBLE for.
No, the Nolan’s know how to write, know how to balance character and screen time. I think The Prestige was a perfect example of a balanced script in regards to having more than just one “main character” – and this Dark Knight arguably had 5 main characters if you throw in Commissioner Gordon and the always adorable Maggie Gyllenhaal that I would like to meet some day.
I want to rent it and pause on the parade shootout scene to see Heath Joker without the makeup on – it was like a super fast cut and I didn’t realize it was him.
How sad to have lost him.
On moral dilemmas:
Nothing quite reveals a character so much as making them make a moral decision. It reveals more about what motivates them than anything else they could do.
****SPOILERS****
Such as, Batman choosing Gotham City’s future over a girl.
Or Boat of convicts Big Guy choosing to toss detonator and leave life and death decisions, in essence, up to God. That convict has 2 minutes on screen and we know more about him than 2 hours with most characters in other movies.
****END****
That is why I think Gone Baby Gone was so good. The stakes were so high b/c of those moral questions.
And villains who pose such dilemmas and jeopardy (and are allowed to go through with it) become that much more real.
****SPOILER****
Was there a version of this script where Maggie G. survives in some miraculous last second rescue, also? No way. It would have taken away from the Joker and Batman’s development/revealing of character. Not to mention of course being the key to breaking Harvey Dent. The Nolan’s knew what they had to do.
****END****
And that’s the key – movies with guys who kill people have moral dilemmas thrown around all the time. It’s the Nolan writing (and David Goyer) that do it so well, and it probably doesn’t hurt to be the director come production time to make sure what’s on the page comes through how you meant it on the page.
Jeopardy is another emotional investment inducing component, especially putting children in could-die situations. Still to this day there are very very few movies that put a kid in jeopardy and go through with it, however. Thats a crossed line that audiences will go, ” NO WAY. do not see this movie, they kill kids!” But it certainly raises tension, as kids are a sacred innocent, and to threaten them is to go as far as one could go. (Hence, Two-Face stooping to that level)
I just finished OSC’s Characters & Viewpoints and he talks about Poltergeist and how his wife absolutely refuses to see that movie no matter how good it is (to OSC). She cannot handle kid jeopardy, and that whole movie is 2 hours of ghosts and kid jeopardy and torturing scenes of children in danger. It’s an intense thing to call upon in a story.
Okay that’s all for now.