Batman carries on beginning in ... The Dark Knight

haha re Prince: i honestly wanted Ledger to do a Joker version of his performance of "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" from 10 Things I Hate About You.

Gary Oldman was aces and Gordon easily my favourite character from both movies. I love the subtle change in his character between the two movies - the weary idealist cop now newly-energized and given a purpose. The old Gordon could never have jumped to the Mayor's defense the way he did, dude could barely operate a Batmobile.

I took that look as being what happened to his suit after the car crash when he took out Eric Roberts' driver. A tasteful distressing, at least.

oh, ok, that's pretty good

I took it as being the fact that he put on the same suit as he'd been wearing when HALF HIS HEAD WAS ON FIRE and that thusly it had got a bit charred around the lapel at the same time as his flesh melted off.

Cosmo Landesman's error-strewn, liberal-baiting review in The Sunday Times makes interesting reading - http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/film_reviews/article4386375.ece

Please see movie again and give your review , I think you haven't seen movie yet. I think it is best movie from all batman's.

patel, london, uk

did feel like it was a bit of a leap in logic to go "I need to take the blame for all this and become a pretend villain", when the Joker was obviously more to blame for the Dent killings than Batman, but I must just've been lost to the subtleties after 150 minutes of Intensity

Revealing Harvey as being the person behind the side rampage would deal a major blow to the legitimacy of his crusade to clean up Gotham. The Joker was rather visibly shown tied directly to the ferry nonsense, all of which was a big distraction to allow Harvey to go on his vendetta and pull the fangs from his crusade.

Isn't critiquing TDK for not being a serious 9/11 analogy a bit disingenuous? I don't remember any super explicit 9/11 references. So unless calling someone a terrorist is now keyword Twin Towers, it isn't necessarily an analogy for anti-Western World terror. And I know that lots of critics keep calling it a 9/11 reference, but if you don't feel the same way (as a critique), that doesn't lesson the flick. That just means you disagree with other critiques. (This is really pointed at that Landesman review, but I saw another critique write that he refuses to see the flick because he doesn't like that film critiques are treating it like a serious film and not a silly blockbuster. He then confirmed that he had no issue with the flick, just with its coverage.)

Another critic*. I love that que, apparently.

I hate that I feel like I need to defend this flick against bad reviews. After all, as much as I liked it, I don't think it was the best film ever. And I think a lot of the criticisms of it (especially in this thread - about it's humorlessness and relentlessness) are valid. But it really does feel like a lot of the MSM reviewers didn't bother watching the film, but just read The Week film section.

I don't see how anyone could possibly call this movie humorless.

I can see how certain parts of the film - like the Batman voice - seem pretty humorless.

Yeah, but that's certain parts, not the whole thing! Calling the movie flat-out humorless is ridiculous -- calling it relentless as a negative is personal taste at play but I take it as far more of a positive. (Obviously not blaming you, Mordy.)

Yeah. I'm just saying, some of those comments actually have *some* validity. Unlike stuff like, "This was a bad 9/11 analogy!" or "Critics like this movie too much, so I don't!" or "Batman is a justification for the Bush Administration." None of which, ya know, have any basis in reality.

"....hi", potato peeler, pencil trick*, "I believe in Harvey Dent" sticker, nurse uniformed Joker clumsily mashing buttons on detonator and staggering round outside hospital before it explodes, Asshole Wayne shrugging off his heroic prevention of vehicular homicide as him just trying to beat the traffic light = all funny

*this gag is the spiritual heir to that Homer vs Smithers fight where Smithers unlocks a safe while laughing evilly, and uses the door to hit Homer in the head when he leans in to see why he's doing it, and is therefore massively funny despite the idea of a human brain being destroyed by wood and graphite being disturbing

hahahahaha

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2yv8aT0UFc

I like that. Saw it the other day.

lol wait a minute this really has the guy from suddenly susan in it????

You mean the guy from the live-action Tick series and Lost! Paradigm shift!

The second half was good, after Maggie G got blown-up. I don't mean it to sound like I enjoyed Maggie G getting blown-up, it's just that seemed to be the pivotal moment and it didn't drag so much after that.

How did it drag before that????

Dunno, it just seemed to.

I probably went too early in the morning.

i might as well say it again cause it's fun - I love BATMANUEL in this.

"....hi", potato peeler, pencil trick*, "I believe in Harvey Dent" sticker, nurse uniformed Joker clumsily mashing buttons on detonator and staggering round outside hospital before it explodes, Asshole Wayne shrugging off his heroic prevention of vehicular homicide as him just trying to beat the traffic light = all funny

yeah, it definitely wasnt humorless, but most of the humor was dark & centered around the joker (the biggest laughs at the showing i went to came when he blew up the hospital) - i also got more than a few laughs from bale's wayne/bateman persona

A follow-up blog post.

it's not humourless if you want to be pedantic about the definition of the word but it was a bit monolithic. I enjoyed it but it didn't deal with anything in any kind of subtle way, just sort of bludgeoned through. so it was a summer blockbuster, what do you expect, but it didn't really make me think, not much anyway.

just because it wasn't cringe inducingly stupid like so many other summer blockbusters, because it was too serious and intense to be stupid, that doesn't make it an amazing film.

eg if I'm thinking of relentless the bourne films had me far far more hyped and physically tired at the end than this.

Ronan, I agree with you.

No one's commenting on my post anymore, thank goodness, but I've gotten emails all weekend as the film's fans watch it a second time.

(xxpost)

Dare I ask how printable they are.

"snob" is one of the politer things I was called.

Charming.

I like that one!

Hahaha! Well that's all right, then!

I think my biggest laugh went to Morgan Freeman pointing out the ludicrousness of attempting to frame Batman.

I did love that. Probably his best moment in the film.

Re: Humorless. DK had lots of jokey bits and even a few big laughs, but it's basic spirit and view of life felt humorless. It functioned in a humorless manner and took the idea of seriousness very seriously. Compare with Hellboy II, which has a humorous vision of the (in)human condition and doesn't take itself at all seriously. Biggest laugh here was Joker's pencil in the eye trick, grisly as it may have been.

Still think the exceedingly inexact "good guys = Bush admin" analogy holds water, though that seems to be a minority opinion. Alfred's story about his experience fighting the thief in the forest plays into this (especially the bit about what they did in the end). So does the characterization of Joker as a terrorist and the nature of his motivations. Batman's cell-phone-enabled sonar/spying apparatus too. Maybe more than anything else, I was struck by the film's concluding insistence that symbolism is more important than truth. That "the right thing" for governmental authorites faced with difficult situations may be to maintain secrecy while manufacturing lies that will motivate people towards ends that are ostensibly in everybody's best interest. Very Bush/Cheney-style moral there. I don't know how intentional this subtext is, but it's hard to miss, and at least worth thinking/talking about.

**SPOILER?**

Saw this today. Looked great but the total opposite of the previous film for me. This felt like Michael Mann with (even more!) ADD. Batman pretty uncompelling as a character in this one - though LOVED the shots of him flying over the city, or from building to building. I felt Eckhart was ahead of Ledger in the "portrayal of a loony" dept. I can't wait to see more of his Two-Face. Ledger as Joker fairly meh for me. Oddly the only characters I felt some real pity for here were his and Oldman's. Gyllenhaal's a wet blanket.

"his"= Eckhart's

yep, I agree Eckhart gave the best display here, but then he was also the best character.....the Joker was one dimensional, zero development, just like Batman

who the hell wants the Joker to develop?

when I saw this some guy in the front row went completely crazy in the last 5 minutes saying "it's not funny" "See he's dead. it's not funny" "You want to asskick, I'll asskick!" "I know the manager, I know the police!" It was surreal.

The Joker was the three chord punk song.
Also, awesome.

just want him to be interesting even, he just did a few violent setpieces which, like a lot of this film, were not actually that shocking/horrific.

Alfred's story about his experience fighting the thief in the forest plays into this (especially the bit about what they did in the end).

I thought the entire point of the monologue was Alfred not-so-subtly warning Bruce that, in all likelihood, Batman would have to destroy the very city he's trying to save in order to get rid of the Joker.

Pretty much everything that's being used as evidence to equate Batman to the Bush administration were the points in the movie where other characters were explicitly saying, "Okay Batman, at this point you are fucking up royally." The propaganda thing with Harvey at the end is a criticism you can level at either political party; it rings truer with the Republicans because they've had the figurehead in office for the past 8 years but don't think for a second that those types of shenanigans haven't applied to every single President we've had.

The Joker was reasonably multidimensional; it's just that none of his dimensions were particularly laudable. I think the self-loathing analysis is almost completely OTM; where it falls down is that I think he hates everyone else just a little bit more than he hates himself, ergo his need to pull everyone around him down to his level.

You guys know WAY too much about my extracurricular activities.

ok, batman suffering from LIBERAL guilt???

if anything the movie is a giant conservative apologetic

i think the movie goes to great lengths to call into question Batman's methods and motives...if anything i guess the great sin of the movie is that our moral outrage is so numbed in the current cultural climate that batman pointlessly beating a suspect or spying on the general populace, or lying to them "for their own good" that these things are not OBVIOUSLY seen as bad anymore...which says more about the fact that the film is misreading the cultural climate than the politics of the film itself (which are liberal to my mind but ambiguous at best).

god that was garbled, hope the point is not lost.

Loved the Joker and Lucius talking to the blackmailer. The rest was kind of eh.

it's probably wrong to think that Batman is wrongly pursued at the end of the movie...on some level he deserves it....his lack of faith in the people of gotham provokes it. (and his lack of faith is probably wrong...they dont blow each other up, for example)