The Dark Knight Discussion **CONTAINS SPOILERS**

[X*Cell]

Re: The Dark Knight Discussion

I love BatBale's voice... that's one of my favorite things about the movie. My friend said it best... if you were a criminal in Gotham, you would probably be ****ting your pants if you ran into Batman.

[RoyalBoyle78]

Re: The Dark Knight Discussion

I guess Bale Dark Knight is getting to him, Bale assaulted His MOTHER AND SISTER.

http://www.optimum.net/News/AP/Article?articleId=441331

[Brandwin]

Re: The Dark Knight Discussion

WTF?

http://www.movieweb.com/news/18/29618.php

Why do so many people

When asked if he thought they should recast Ledger for the third film, or just not include the character, Gary thought it was a good idea, "I don't see why not. I mean, they did it with Katie Holmes' character. I understand that this is a different circumstance, but I think another actor could do the job. I think Heath would want another actor to do the job."

Oldman then took a moment to think about it some more, "Maybe we don't need the Joker. Because we'll have The Riddler." Yes, Oldman alluded to the fact that The Riddler may in fact be the next on-screen Batman villain.

[Blzer]

Re: The Dark Knight Discussion

I see what Oldman is getting at, but this really is a different circumstance. No, not because Ledger died. I think you guys can understand just as well that unless the other guy that is ever potentially re-casted as The Joker can't be identical looking and sounding, then it's probably not worth making a switch.

[OSUFan_88]

Re: The Dark Knight Discussion

Recasting the Joker would kill the 3rd film, and take away a lot of awesomeness from TDK.

[Lintyfresh85]

Re: The Dark Knight Discussion

Best review I've ever seen for a movie... extrememly long, but says what I'd want to say exactly... and so much more.

Well worth the read.

This is from another forum I visit.

Spoiler

Posted by: Surge

Okay, first thing. On the five people Dent killed. He didn’t shoot Salvatore, but I’m pretty sure he died in the crash after Harvey shot the driver, or I think there may have been two henchmen in the front seat. The other person would’ve been the bar owner who goes to take a leak before Harvey shoots the corrupt cop. That’s all the possibilities I saw. It wouldn’t have made sense for him to kill the cop.

Speaking of Harvey, though, I think he lived. There’s a reason I think this. He got burned, very badly, but he refused medication or any pain relief. This establishes the man as someone who can take an awful lot of pain. In this near-death condition, he then goes on a rampage, and gets himself into a car accident. He survives the accident, having taken off his seat belt in the process, and continues on a rampage. Then, they’re sure to show Batman surviving the fall. Harvey lays still, but we have to understand the symbolism here. Batman and Harvey both fall, they drop down into the darkness. Batman survives, and thusly can survive the pursuit to follow which will push him further into the darkness. However, Harvey doesn’t. Harvey can’t. Harvey died, essentially. But Two-Face didn’t. It was Two-Face born after the burning and the explosion who refused to take pain medication, and who took all that pain for himself. It was Two-Face that set up the car he was in to crash and walked out of it.

It was Two-Face that set up the closing rampage, and I think, ultimately, Two-Face is alive. Harvey, or the Harvey Dent we knew, didn’t survive that fall. Yet, everything prior to the movie suggests that at least as Two-Face, he could have. I see an instance essentially where Harvey is played for dead but is actually hidden, and they try to get him better (Arkham, or Bruce himself), but he gets loose. They try to restore him, but he isn’t himself, and we see a story play out much like in the animated series. Maybe even have the situation be with Rachel that she did survive, that Joker did have her in the separate warehouse, and have her be the only salvation for him. If you’ll remember that scene in the Two-face two parter, his love meets him in a house that is half fine, and half crumbled essentially, and he wears a mask to cover his face. If she was alive and just part of Joker’s plot to drive Harvey and the Batman down, then that could be his point of redemption. I see him not as the villain of the next film, but as a man moving towards a reverse tragic hero directory.

I think Harvey essentially gets stashed away. And Joker and Batman then have bait on each other in the third film, because Joker knows maybe where Rachel is, and Batman knows where Harvey is stowed. Some’at like that anyways. The point is, I don’t think Harvey is dead, because a lot of what precedes his fall in the film shows him surviving in crazy ****ing situations as Two-Face. I think the third film could focus highly on the possibility of redemption, and you can see what a stake both Gordon and Batman would have in Two-Face becoming Harvey Dent again. Once again, this parallels back to the animated series.

Now, the other thing I love about this movie that not many people mentioned was the tragedy of Joker. We don’t get his backstory, but we do get another point; another fall. Here’s a man convinced all the world is evil, and ugly. And then Batman delivers that line about people not being as ugly as he was. And that’s what I wanted out of this film, and I was so glad to see the idea crystallized right there. There is a purpose to Joker’s killing, and why he targets Batman specifically. He’s trying to confront and excuse his own evils, his own ways, by forcing it in everyone. The reason he can’t kill Batman isn’t because “you’re too much fun”, but rather, because Batman represents his last hope that people can be corrupted in a way. If he kills Batman, he kills a man who hasn’t been corrupted.

That means, he can never rest with himself. He can never say ‘I’m evil, but at their heart, everyone is, so I’m just human.” Joker keeps contending he’s not a monster. When those people don’t blow each other up, he’s genuinely surprised. But you see doubt in him too as he made sure to have a fall-back plan, or even an alternate main plan as it were (with Harvey). So, here’s a man who has killed and slaughtered, and caused chaos. He sees Gotham as a city of evil that restrains itself, and a series of codes as tentative as the climate. And to him, if he can force Batman to kill, then that reinforces him in not just the context of all people, but in the context of Joker himself.

The interrogation scene was my absolute favorite. You don’t see a weak Joker. You don’t see characters being used for a plot forwarding exercise. You see Joker stating his case as purely as he can. He isn’t simple. He’s not this fiend. To the extent he’s a cretin, there’s still something beautiful and altogether common about him that doesn’t speak to just an artful monstrosity, but a lower-key, a subtler villain that is mostly ever played up in any but the best crime flicks. His delivering the “you complete me” line was just an amazing reading by Ledger. Most anyone else could’ve come off delivering that as a second-rate hack for a pop-culture laughline. But not him. You also see the logic this man uses. It’s a man desperate to justify his own soul, or the state of it. He forces the choice because he figures at their base “these civilized people will eat each other”, and when they don’t, and when Batman specifically doesn’t, we see Joker’s moment of weakness. He has to re-assure himself that they just haven’t had their spirits completely broken. For the character, we know he’s planned Harvey from the get-go, and they play it up as a main plan too, but it reads almost like a life-line.

Joker looks at Gotham at the start of the movie, and he’s got to suspect. He moves through criminal circles, and kills and kills. Yet, he’s seen Batman inspire good. He’s seen Batman inspire vigilantism. He’s seen Batman inspire a city ready for someone like Harvey Dent. It’s all centered around this one figure of Batman, and what he has meant to the city. And how do you justify your soul, wretched as it is, when there is a pure one? Joker does all that he can to ‘kill the Batman’, but not in the sense of killing the actual man. He wants to kill what Batman stands for, just like he did with Harvey. He wants to destroy all the possible forces of good because they stand against the merit of him being human. Joker is a man filled with doubt justifying his existence by pushing anyone of decency to the edge, and then over. When he laughs as he tumbles down, he’s laughing because for a moment he thinks he’s won. He’s ‘killed the Batman’ in the sense of forcing him to break the rule, but Batman doesn’t. Joker hangs upside down, and he thinks of Harvey, and all he can do is continue to push. When he says they’re destined to dance forever, it’s because Joker realizes in part that this is an incorruptible man, but he has to spend his life trying to drive him over that line, or else Joker can’t justify himself. He can’t kill this image of Gotham. He can’t prove everything he felt was true about the city.

The closest thing I can think of is Kevin Spacey in Seven, when he has Brad Pitt’s wife in a box, and forces Pitt to shoot him, thus reinforcing everything he believed and everything he did. Without that shot, he’s proven wrong, and that’s what Batman denied Joker. And Joker needs it, but a part of him realizes he’ll never get it. There’s a sense that this man isn’t just a sociopath, but that he’s suffered horrors and on the basis of those horrors, decided that is the way people were, and that is the way he was, and acted upon it. He lived in the darkness of Gotham, in the time before Bruce. Something terrible happened to him and around him, and he made something terrible of himself. In a sense, just as there’s a forward tragedy with Harvey, there’s a reverse with Joker. He’s a man who is already broken finding out that he didn’t have to be, that this isn’t what he had to become at its base.

I thought Joker’s description of himself as a dog chasing a car, and even if he caught it, he wouldn’t know what to do with it was apt. If Batman reveals himself, then what? If he kills Batman, then what? It’s the chase. It’s the pursuit of something he’s not going to get but wants, that drives him. It’s such a layered character yet in such minimalism (essentially no backstory) that I am just in love with it. So was everyone else. I can’t believe he got the laugh-line after pretty much ruining Harvey’s life, dressed as a nurse in Harvey’s room. And then to wash your hands after the fact. Some of the comedy here was really golden.

Going back to the interrogation scene for a second, I cite that because I saw that as the main link between the actor and the character. I see in that Ledger. There’s just a constant humanity to the actor that undermines what would otherwise be done to a character like Joker and it’s in that scene.

The more action-sliced things that impressed me and everyone else: the magic trick. I thought, pick up a pencil, and pierce it through a guy’s head. The way it went down, though, with the head smashing onto the pencil, was phenomenal. It was part and parcel with the general fix of the film. It pushes against what you are looking for it to do. The other big part was the truck flipping which impressed the **** out of everyone in the theatre, but immediately after that, the biggest point of applause (closely followed by Gordon turning up alive) was the Batpod going off the wall. That was ****ing amazing. The entire crowd was like ‘yes, mother****er.’ It was an affirmation of the skill of this film.

To the reviewers who said it wasn’t coherent (David Denby, et al). You’re ****ing ********. If you couldn’t follow the action, you were following the wrong parts. I wasn’t lost at any point. If you missed anything, see the film a second time. You’ll catch whatever it was you were looking for.

Bale was fantastic. I heard some ****-talk about him from a few folks. The only flaw with the performance is in Batman’s ability to deliver lines that Bale could’ve delivered more meaningfully. In part, they were dealing with platitudes, but Bale himself had the ability to hold them up in his initial meeting with Harvey and then him explaining to Rachel what he saw in Harvey. (sidenote: I liked that both Joker and Bruce entered the galla in the same way: with a colorful crowd saying “where is Harvey dent?”)

Bale’s initial scenes with Alfred and Harvey are super-strong. We see in him what was lacked by previous Batmans. Some nutjob reviewers tried to say he was the weak-link. If his performance was remotely weak, he would’ve been crushed by the Joker. It’s a testament to Ledger and Bale that everything Batman ****ing did got applause, even with such a compelling villain. Bale is the only Batman worth mentioning, but beyond that, he’s the best Bruce Wayne ever. I heard some reviewers actually complain that we don’t see a comtemplative batman, that we see a complaining billionare and that it lost the detective mark. They’ve missed the point. Wayne is largely an act. Dawes think he’s a bitter man jealous of Harvey and undercutting him for her affections, but he’s not. When Harvey talks about the Romans and his faith in Batman, and you see Bale looking on, you buy that, instantly. And Bruce makes Dawes believe too, but we see what a stretch it is for him because Dawes knows about the disparity between the playboy and the real Bruce.

Bale was excellent. He prevents Batman from being overshadowed in a way Michael Keaton couldn’t and really most actors, even those worth their salt, couldn’t. Cast against someone as big as Joker, Batman was still the hero.

Michael Caine was excellent as Alfred. What I think doesn’t get mentioned is that this is actually quite a different reading of Alfred than you normally get from Batman films. We get hints of his past, but it’s usually glossed over. Here, his past is instrumental. He’s a travelled man, and he’s essentially a consigliere. His line delivery also puts forward lines that would’ve been awkward in their placement by weaker men or even previous Alfred’s. We would’ve looked at them and gone ‘wait a minute, this doesn’t quite fit.’ But with the way he plays Alfred, it does. He’s not a throwaway character. Same for Morgan Freeman. Fox seems to be a character that is in many ways able to be overturned, but the script utilizes him immensely. There’s the board meeting. The meeting with Lau. His worries with Wayne. His push back with the spying. It’s a fully drawn character that Freeman enters into in what could’ve easily been a one-note character that gets sets to the side and forgotten.

Gary Oldman is the ****ing man. Gordon is too. What’s essential with Gordon, I think, is that he is very much the constant hero of this. He never comes close to breaking. He sees the reality around him. What makes him distinct from Batman, though, is that family. He’s got that to lose. That they manage with just a few scenes to establish the bonds that hold Gordon is incredible. Oldman’s delivery of the film, stating why Batman is the Dark Knight also lends it massive credibility. He builds a character we see as a constant hero. He reminds me of Pacino in Heat, Dinero in Copland. This cop who deals inside the system. Who is realistic, because of his bonds.

Eckhart perhaps had the biggest issue. He had to create a duality that wasn’t there, that developed. Batman always had the duality. Gordon didn’t really have duality. He just knew the sides and compromised within them. Joker had it, but it was almost a quirk, and it was established, not developed. Yet, Eckhart has this man, who has a series of incidents that establishes Two-Face eventually. The first scene, in the courtroom, where he knocks the mobster out, he starts establishing it, but we don’t see what it means. It just gives him a rough edge, but we figure that’s what separates him from the previous spineless DA’s. When he has that schizophrenic though, we start seeing it more. He flips the coin, but it’s still double-headed. Batman catches his arm, but I think at that point, that’s the last we see of Harvey Dent. We see him at his limit then. What’s he going to do? Flip heads forever? Batman in that moment prevents us from seeing a clear weakness to Dent that bonds him with Batman. He’s not outright ruthless. He still has the humanity.

Now, in the hospital bed. That’s where it’s gone, where the duality starts to overtake. Someone mentioned earlier the Joker’s growl in the video, where he goes “LOOK AT ME” and suddenly the jokes subside. When Eckhart yells, when he essentially growls as Two-Face talking to Gordon, that was it. He was going to the same thing. In that moment, Eckhart established a full competency to the character and turn of Two-Face. We see he’s lost his limit. He’s become in part that animal, that dog that Joker contends, and it fights with the last remnants of his humanity till Harvey Dent, or what we know of him is dead.

Eric Roberts also deserves a mention for not destroying what could easily have been a token mobster and the last remnant of lowliness from previous Batmans. He’s aided there by the writing.

By the way, the writing is ****ing awesome all around. There’s some parts where it fails (they give too many potent lines to Batman which are difficult to the deliver because of part of the act Wayne has to keep up to be Batman). However, everywhere else, it’s ****ing phenomenal. It is layered, and deeply mindful of establishing and following through on symbols. The ending monologue by Gordon was probably the strongest writing (I cite it as the strongest writing because so much of the rest pended amazing delivery and true grit of actors, and here, while Oldman brought it, it was in part inherent.) It just goes to counter every previous treatment of Batman and superheroes in general as these guys who HAVE to win, who HAVE to have it all clear. The film was the better for it. There wasn’t that clarity. It was this vision that twisted our sense of what a hero-film ought to be. It went against it, and it made the figure of Batman himself and all the characters in that world much more credible for it. “The Dark Knight” monologue was just beautiful.

The action was much improved from the first film. I was watching Batman begins today, and I recalled the dizzy feeling I had watching it originally, particularly in the train scene with the back and forth fighting. Nolan isn’t afraid to put the action up here. It’s not dizzying. I follow it, and it was really done immensely. It’s rare that you get shots that genuinely surprise people. From the magic trick, to the truck flip, to Batman doing a wheelie onto the wall and spinning back around, it was just immense.

This is now my favorite film. The director’s cut, I imagine, will be a hint improved, but this is it. My last favorite film was LA Confidential with Heat and Copland behind it. This is better. It’s definitely better than Whale Rider which strangely touches me and makes me weep every time I watch it. There are no throwaway characters and no throwaway plots. This movie is a whole. Imagine a movie where nearly everything was essential to the plot; where every character was utilized and given depth; where every scene presents a new opportunity to curve a concept. That’s what The Dark Knight is. It’s the best Batman film ever, and by far. Batman and Batman Returns don’t come close. It’s the best crime film for the last decade at least. I mean, when the only things that touch you in terms of quality are some of the best films ever made in a genre, that says more than anything else.

This is the movie I love now, and I will watch it, over and over and over as I did with LA Confidential (which I saw like a thousand times) and which I would do with Heat and Copland if I could only remember to ****ing buy them. It could’ve been an opportunity to play kissy-face tomorrow, but I will set the woman aside, again, and let her experience the greatness that is this film.

I mean, if anything, this movie shows how bad the Spiderman series actually is, or rather, how short-sighted it is. This is a movie that speaks to the soul on the state of people, and it is in a sense wholly American in its sentiments and its struggle. It pushes beyond where No Country went, I think. It brings truth and weight to hope, to lights in the darkness. It makes No Country feel deficient to me, in its inability to take that stand as the film and the novel.

The other scene I want to mention is the silence as Joker sticks his head out of the window. No words, just the score. It’s the spirit of this moment that separates itself from other comic films. It’s art. It’s the purpose of the medium to communicate. It speaks.

It makes hope the truth, the last honest sentiment and refuge of people in troubled times. And it never dismisses it. It just covers it in the darkness of the established world, and lets it fend.

[OSUFan_88]

Re: The Dark Knight Discussion

Best review I've ever seen for a movie... extrememly long, but says what I'd want to say exactly... and so much more.

Well worth the read.

This is from another forum I visit.

Spoiler

Posted by: Surge

Okay, first thing. On the five people Dent killed. He didn’t shoot Salvatore, but I’m pretty sure he died in the crash after Harvey shot the driver, or I think there may have been two henchmen in the front seat. The other person would’ve been the bar owner who goes to take a leak before Harvey shoots the corrupt cop. That’s all the possibilities I saw. It wouldn’t have made sense for him to kill the cop.

Speaking of Harvey, though, I think he lived. There’s a reason I think this. He got burned, very badly, but he refused medication or any pain relief. This establishes the man as someone who can take an awful lot of pain. In this near-death condition, he then goes on a rampage, and gets himself into a car accident. He survives the accident, having taken off his seat belt in the process, and continues on a rampage. Then, they’re sure to show Batman surviving the fall. Harvey lays still, but we have to understand the symbolism here. Batman and Harvey both fall, they drop down into the darkness. Batman survives, and thusly can survive the pursuit to follow which will push him further into the darkness. However, Harvey doesn’t. Harvey can’t. Harvey died, essentially. But Two-Face didn’t. It was Two-Face born after the burning and the explosion who refused to take pain medication, and who took all that pain for himself. It was Two-Face that set up the car he was in to crash and walked out of it.

It was Two-Face that set up the closing rampage, and I think, ultimately, Two-Face is alive. Harvey, or the Harvey Dent we knew, didn’t survive that fall. Yet, everything prior to the movie suggests that at least as Two-Face, he could have. I see an instance essentially where Harvey is played for dead but is actually hidden, and they try to get him better (Arkham, or Bruce himself), but he gets loose. They try to restore him, but he isn’t himself, and we see a story play out much like in the animated series. Maybe even have the situation be with Rachel that she did survive, that Joker did have her in the separate warehouse, and have her be the only salvation for him. If you’ll remember that scene in the Two-face two parter, his love meets him in a house that is half fine, and half crumbled essentially, and he wears a mask to cover his face. If she was alive and just part of Joker’s plot to drive Harvey and the Batman down, then that could be his point of redemption. I see him not as the villain of the next film, but as a man moving towards a reverse tragic hero directory.

I think Harvey essentially gets stashed away. And Joker and Batman then have bait on each other in the third film, because Joker knows maybe where Rachel is, and Batman knows where Harvey is stowed. Some’at like that anyways. The point is, I don’t think Harvey is dead, because a lot of what precedes his fall in the film shows him surviving in crazy ****ing situations as Two-Face. I think the third film could focus highly on the possibility of redemption, and you can see what a stake both Gordon and Batman would have in Two-Face becoming Harvey Dent again. Once again, this parallels back to the animated series.

Now, the other thing I love about this movie that not many people mentioned was the tragedy of Joker. We don’t get his backstory, but we do get another point; another fall. Here’s a man convinced all the world is evil, and ugly. And then Batman delivers that line about people not being as ugly as he was. And that’s what I wanted out of this film, and I was so glad to see the idea crystallized right there. There is a purpose to Joker’s killing, and why he targets Batman specifically. He’s trying to confront and excuse his own evils, his own ways, by forcing it in everyone. The reason he can’t kill Batman isn’t because “you’re too much fun”, but rather, because Batman represents his last hope that people can be corrupted in a way. If he kills Batman, he kills a man who hasn’t been corrupted.

That means, he can never rest with himself. He can never say ‘I’m evil, but at their heart, everyone is, so I’m just human.” Joker keeps contending he’s not a monster. When those people don’t blow each other up, he’s genuinely surprised. But you see doubt in him too as he made sure to have a fall-back plan, or even an alternate main plan as it were (with Harvey). So, here’s a man who has killed and slaughtered, and caused chaos. He sees Gotham as a city of evil that restrains itself, and a series of codes as tentative as the climate. And to him, if he can force Batman to kill, then that reinforces him in not just the context of all people, but in the context of Joker himself.

The interrogation scene was my absolute favorite. You don’t see a weak Joker. You don’t see characters being used for a plot forwarding exercise. You see Joker stating his case as purely as he can. He isn’t simple. He’s not this fiend. To the extent he’s a cretin, there’s still something beautiful and altogether common about him that doesn’t speak to just an artful monstrosity, but a lower-key, a subtler villain that is mostly ever played up in any but the best crime flicks. His delivering the “you complete me” line was just an amazing reading by Ledger. Most anyone else could’ve come off delivering that as a second-rate hack for a pop-culture laughline. But not him. You also see the logic this man uses. It’s a man desperate to justify his own soul, or the state of it. He forces the choice because he figures at their base “these civilized people will eat each other”, and when they don’t, and when Batman specifically doesn’t, we see Joker’s moment of weakness. He has to re-assure himself that they just haven’t had their spirits completely broken. For the character, we know he’s planned Harvey from the get-go, and they play it up as a main plan too, but it reads almost like a life-line.

Joker looks at Gotham at the start of the movie, and he’s got to suspect. He moves through criminal circles, and kills and kills. Yet, he’s seen Batman inspire good. He’s seen Batman inspire vigilantism. He’s seen Batman inspire a city ready for someone like Harvey Dent. It’s all centered around this one figure of Batman, and what he has meant to the city. And how do you justify your soul, wretched as it is, when there is a pure one? Joker does all that he can to ‘kill the Batman’, but not in the sense of killing the actual man. He wants to kill what Batman stands for, just like he did with Harvey. He wants to destroy all the possible forces of good because they stand against the merit of him being human. Joker is a man filled with doubt justifying his existence by pushing anyone of decency to the edge, and then over. When he laughs as he tumbles down, he’s laughing because for a moment he thinks he’s won. He’s ‘killed the Batman’ in the sense of forcing him to break the rule, but Batman doesn’t. Joker hangs upside down, and he thinks of Harvey, and all he can do is continue to push. When he says they’re destined to dance forever, it’s because Joker realizes in part that this is an incorruptible man, but he has to spend his life trying to drive him over that line, or else Joker can’t justify himself. He can’t kill this image of Gotham. He can’t prove everything he felt was true about the city.

The closest thing I can think of is Kevin Spacey in Seven, when he has Brad Pitt’s wife in a box, and forces Pitt to shoot him, thus reinforcing everything he believed and everything he did. Without that shot, he’s proven wrong, and that’s what Batman denied Joker. And Joker needs it, but a part of him realizes he’ll never get it. There’s a sense that this man isn’t just a sociopath, but that he’s suffered horrors and on the basis of those horrors, decided that is the way people were, and that is the way he was, and acted upon it. He lived in the darkness of Gotham, in the time before Bruce. Something terrible happened to him and around him, and he made something terrible of himself. In a sense, just as there’s a forward tragedy with Harvey, there’s a reverse with Joker. He’s a man who is already broken finding out that he didn’t have to be, that this isn’t what he had to become at its base.

I thought Joker’s description of himself as a dog chasing a car, and even if he caught it, he wouldn’t know what to do with it was apt. If Batman reveals himself, then what? If he kills Batman, then what? It’s the chase. It’s the pursuit of something he’s not going to get but wants, that drives him. It’s such a layered character yet in such minimalism (essentially no backstory) that I am just in love with it. So was everyone else. I can’t believe he got the laugh-line after pretty much ruining Harvey’s life, dressed as a nurse in Harvey’s room. And then to wash your hands after the fact. Some of the comedy here was really golden.

Going back to the interrogation scene for a second, I cite that because I saw that as the main link between the actor and the character. I see in that Ledger. There’s just a constant humanity to the actor that undermines what would otherwise be done to a character like Joker and it’s in that scene.

The more action-sliced things that impressed me and everyone else: the magic trick. I thought, pick up a pencil, and pierce it through a guy’s head. The way it went down, though, with the head smashing onto the pencil, was phenomenal. It was part and parcel with the general fix of the film. It pushes against what you are looking for it to do. The other big part was the truck flipping which impressed the **** out of everyone in the theatre, but immediately after that, the biggest point of applause (closely followed by Gordon turning up alive) was the Batpod going off the wall. That was ****ing amazing. The entire crowd was like ‘yes, mother****er.’ It was an affirmation of the skill of this film.

To the reviewers who said it wasn’t coherent (David Denby, et al). You’re ****ing ********. If you couldn’t follow the action, you were following the wrong parts. I wasn’t lost at any point. If you missed anything, see the film a second time. You’ll catch whatever it was you were looking for.

Bale was fantastic. I heard some ****-talk about him from a few folks. The only flaw with the performance is in Batman’s ability to deliver lines that Bale could’ve delivered more meaningfully. In part, they were dealing with platitudes, but Bale himself had the ability to hold them up in his initial meeting with Harvey and then him explaining to Rachel what he saw in Harvey. (sidenote: I liked that both Joker and Bruce entered the galla in the same way: with a colorful crowd saying “where is Harvey dent?”)

Bale’s initial scenes with Alfred and Harvey are super-strong. We see in him what was lacked by previous Batmans. Some nutjob reviewers tried to say he was the weak-link. If his performance was remotely weak, he would’ve been crushed by the Joker. It’s a testament to Ledger and Bale that everything Batman ****ing did got applause, even with such a compelling villain. Bale is the only Batman worth mentioning, but beyond that, he’s the best Bruce Wayne ever. I heard some reviewers actually complain that we don’t see a comtemplative batman, that we see a complaining billionare and that it lost the detective mark. They’ve missed the point. Wayne is largely an act. Dawes think he’s a bitter man jealous of Harvey and undercutting him for her affections, but he’s not. When Harvey talks about the Romans and his faith in Batman, and you see Bale looking on, you buy that, instantly. And Bruce makes Dawes believe too, but we see what a stretch it is for him because Dawes knows about the disparity between the playboy and the real Bruce.

Bale was excellent. He prevents Batman from being overshadowed in a way Michael Keaton couldn’t and really most actors, even those worth their salt, couldn’t. Cast against someone as big as Joker, Batman was still the hero.

Michael Caine was excellent as Alfred. What I think doesn’t get mentioned is that this is actually quite a different reading of Alfred than you normally get from Batman films. We get hints of his past, but it’s usually glossed over. Here, his past is instrumental. He’s a travelled man, and he’s essentially a consigliere. His line delivery also puts forward lines that would’ve been awkward in their placement by weaker men or even previous Alfred’s. We would’ve looked at them and gone ‘wait a minute, this doesn’t quite fit.’ But with the way he plays Alfred, it does. He’s not a throwaway character. Same for Morgan Freeman. Fox seems to be a character that is in many ways able to be overturned, but the script utilizes him immensely. There’s the board meeting. The meeting with Lau. His worries with Wayne. His push back with the spying. It’s a fully drawn character that Freeman enters into in what could’ve easily been a one-note character that gets sets to the side and forgotten.

Gary Oldman is the ****ing man. Gordon is too. What’s essential with Gordon, I think, is that he is very much the constant hero of this. He never comes close to breaking. He sees the reality around him. What makes him distinct from Batman, though, is that family. He’s got that to lose. That they manage with just a few scenes to establish the bonds that hold Gordon is incredible. Oldman’s delivery of the film, stating why Batman is the Dark Knight also lends it massive credibility. He builds a character we see as a constant hero. He reminds me of Pacino in Heat, Dinero in Copland. This cop who deals inside the system. Who is realistic, because of his bonds.

Eckhart perhaps had the biggest issue. He had to create a duality that wasn’t there, that developed. Batman always had the duality. Gordon didn’t really have duality. He just knew the sides and compromised within them. Joker had it, but it was almost a quirk, and it was established, not developed. Yet, Eckhart has this man, who has a series of incidents that establishes Two-Face eventually. The first scene, in the courtroom, where he knocks the mobster out, he starts establishing it, but we don’t see what it means. It just gives him a rough edge, but we figure that’s what separates him from the previous spineless DA’s. When he has that schizophrenic though, we start seeing it more. He flips the coin, but it’s still double-headed. Batman catches his arm, but I think at that point, that’s the last we see of Harvey Dent. We see him at his limit then. What’s he going to do? Flip heads forever? Batman in that moment prevents us from seeing a clear weakness to Dent that bonds him with Batman. He’s not outright ruthless. He still has the humanity.

Now, in the hospital bed. That’s where it’s gone, where the duality starts to overtake. Someone mentioned earlier the Joker’s growl in the video, where he goes “LOOK AT ME” and suddenly the jokes subside. When Eckhart yells, when he essentially growls as Two-Face talking to Gordon, that was it. He was going to the same thing. In that moment, Eckhart established a full competency to the character and turn of Two-Face. We see he’s lost his limit. He’s become in part that animal, that dog that Joker contends, and it fights with the last remnants of his humanity till Harvey Dent, or what we know of him is dead.

Eric Roberts also deserves a mention for not destroying what could easily have been a token mobster and the last remnant of lowliness from previous Batmans. He’s aided there by the writing.

By the way, the writing is ****ing awesome all around. There’s some parts where it fails (they give too many potent lines to Batman which are difficult to the deliver because of part of the act Wayne has to keep up to be Batman). However, everywhere else, it’s ****ing phenomenal. It is layered, and deeply mindful of establishing and following through on symbols. The ending monologue by Gordon was probably the strongest writing (I cite it as the strongest writing because so much of the rest pended amazing delivery and true grit of actors, and here, while Oldman brought it, it was in part inherent.) It just goes to counter every previous treatment of Batman and superheroes in general as these guys who HAVE to win, who HAVE to have it all clear. The film was the better for it. There wasn’t that clarity. It was this vision that twisted our sense of what a hero-film ought to be. It went against it, and it made the figure of Batman himself and all the characters in that world much more credible for it. “The Dark Knight” monologue was just beautiful.

The action was much improved from the first film. I was watching Batman begins today, and I recalled the dizzy feeling I had watching it originally, particularly in the train scene with the back and forth fighting. Nolan isn’t afraid to put the action up here. It’s not dizzying. I follow it, and it was really done immensely. It’s rare that you get shots that genuinely surprise people. From the magic trick, to the truck flip, to Batman doing a wheelie onto the wall and spinning back around, it was just immense.

This is now my favorite film. The director’s cut, I imagine, will be a hint improved, but this is it. My last favorite film was LA Confidential with Heat and Copland behind it. This is better. It’s definitely better than Whale Rider which strangely touches me and makes me weep every time I watch it. There are no throwaway characters and no throwaway plots. This movie is a whole. Imagine a movie where nearly everything was essential to the plot; where every character was utilized and given depth; where every scene presents a new opportunity to curve a concept. That’s what The Dark Knight is. It’s the best Batman film ever, and by far. Batman and Batman Returns don’t come close. It’s the best crime film for the last decade at least. I mean, when the only things that touch you in terms of quality are some of the best films ever made in a genre, that says more than anything else.

This is the movie I love now, and I will watch it, over and over and over as I did with LA Confidential (which I saw like a thousand times) and which I would do with Heat and Copland if I could only remember to ****ing buy them. It could’ve been an opportunity to play kissy-face tomorrow, but I will set the woman aside, again, and let her experience the greatness that is this film.

I mean, if anything, this movie shows how bad the Spiderman series actually is, or rather, how short-sighted it is. This is a movie that speaks to the soul on the state of people, and it is in a sense wholly American in its sentiments and its struggle. It pushes beyond where No Country went, I think. It brings truth and weight to hope, to lights in the darkness. It makes No Country feel deficient to me, in its inability to take that stand as the film and the novel.

The other scene I want to mention is the silence as Joker sticks his head out of the window. No words, just the score. It’s the spirit of this moment that separates itself from other comic films. It’s art. It’s the purpose of the medium to communicate. It speaks.

It makes hope the truth, the last honest sentiment and refuge of people in troubled times. And it never dismisses it. It just covers it in the darkness of the established world, and lets it fend.

That was a perfect review.

[Beantown]

Re: The Dark Knight Discussion

The only thing I don't agree with in that entire review is:

Spoiler

The theory on Rachel. She's dead...they showed the explosion in her warehouse to make sure that no one thought she was alive.

[faster]

Re: The Dark Knight Discussion

As for Rachel.... well... what happened NEEDED to happen. She was never a real character in the Batman series... movie or comic. She was a Nolan creation.

[ZB9]

Re: The Dark Knight Discussion

Bale assaulted His MOTHER AND SISTER.




http://www.optimum.net/News/AP/Article?articleId=441331

I wouldnt be so quick to assume that he actually assaulted his mother and sister just because you read it somewhere, or even if he was actually investigated for it. Personally, I wouldnt come to conclusions so quickly without knowing facts.

anyway, he was probably just trying to return some videotapes

[ZB9]

Re: The Dark Knight Discussion

As for Rachel.... well... what happened NEEDED to happen. She was never a real character in the Batman series... movie or comic. She was a Nolan creation.

spoiler tags?

i wonder if Vicky Vale will appear in the third one. After all, there has to be a love interest in these kind of movies.

...or maybe Batman and Catwoman will hook up.

[ILLCHILL]

Re: The Dark Knight Discussion

Ha, the two things that jumped out at me from that kids review above was

- weeping every time watching Whale Rider (does his 'woman' know this?)

- and how can it be the "the best crime drama of the decade at least" if it's the "best movie ever"? Doesn't that just encompass the whole thing?

I do totally agree however that this movie showed the incredible short-sightedness in films like Spider-Man.

[jmood88]

Re: The Dark Knight Discussion

I love BatBale's voice... that's one of my favorite things about the movie. My friend said it best... if you were a criminal in Gotham, you would probably be ****ting your pants if you ran into Batman.

That voice would have me falling on the ground laughing if I heard someone speak that way in real life. Everything else about Bale is perfect but he really needs to fix that voice.

[Skerik]

Re: The Dark Knight Discussion

That voice would have me falling on the ground laughing if I heard someone speak that way in real life. Everything else about Bale is perfect but he really needs to fix that voice.

I'd probably also fall on the ground laughing if I ever saw a grown man dressed up as a bat in real life. But anyway, how would you like him to speak? He talks like that to disguise his identity.

[ManiacMatt1782]

Re: The Dark Knight Discussion

The only thing I don't agree with in that entire review is:

Spoiler

The theory on Rachel. She's dead...they showed the explosion in her warehouse to make sure that no one thought she was alive.

Spoiler

After the explosion, when Joker is on top of the mountain of money, there was a girl with him, who was that because at first i thought may the crooked cops that the mob had brought rachel to the joker?

also a theory on why Two face survived. after batman tackles him and they both fall, the coin he flipped to see whether he would live or die, landed shiny, or life side up.