Batman carries on beginning in ... The Dark Knight

Short version =

Brilliant.

Although not without fault.

Basically a remake of Heat with the family drama sucked out and some mental health hijinks / explosions / costumed psychos thrown in.

Long version (HERE BE SPOILERS) =

I'd read spoilers. Initially by accident but then curiosity got the better of me and I read a full-on synopsis (I wanted to know how they got to Hong Kong, basically). I'd read spoilers and a detailed synopsis and it still made me flinch and gulp and put my hands in front of my eyes. And it did that with less than 200ml of fake blood, one shot of exposed flesh (Bruce's bruised back, briefly) and exactly no profanity. Em had not read any spoilers or synopses, but did suspect that Rachel was going to die (because I asked her if she wanted to know who dies, and she took my question as meaning Maggie's character, because she loves Maggie), and Em cried several times during the film. The audience, and the cinema was packed for this preview screening, was respectively silent except when it gasped or laughed. And it did laugh quite a lot. maybe this is a British thing, but I thought the film was funny, in just the right places. Best example; Joker's just psyched-out Dent in Gotham General and is sashaying down the corridor in the nurse's uniform, about to blow the place the fuck up. And he stops to wash his hands with one of those freaky dissolving handwash anti-MRSA things. I laughed really loudly at this, and I laughed first, just proper incredulity farts coming out of my mouth, and pretty much everyone else then laughed too. Because it was OK. Blowing up a hospital is an awful thing to do, but it's OK; Joker's not gonna spread any bacterial infections. Inversion of that; I knew the pencil thing was coming, and flinched; most other people laughed, in a shocked way. I wish I'd been able to be taken by surprise by it, I guess, but at the same time, I'm glad I wasn't so ambushed by it's swift, grotesque brutality that I laughed at a man's brain being destroyed by wood and graphite.

Ledger was awesome, this is a truism bordering on cliche at this stage. Best moment; the silent, slow-motion shot of him leaning out of the speeding cop car window as he escapes, which I took as a tribute to Ledger: both moving in the context of a tribute to a fine actor who died pathetically young, and also a revealing shot of the Joker's mental state. He's fucked-up. I don't know why, but he's so fucked-up, so monumentally fucked-up that he wants to die. Every single person that he kills is actually a misdirected suicide attempt. He hates himself and wants escape but due to... whatever trauma that caused those scars, and whatever else he's been through, thinks he can't die. He's got endurance that he wishes he didn't have. So he kills other people cos he thinks he can't die himself but he sure fucking wants to. But in the split second, leaning out of the car, he's free, and the psychosis drops away. At one stage he tells Dent "I'm a dog chasing a car; I wouldn't know what to do with it if I caught it"; at the moment he was a dog in a car, enjoying the ride. Note how many dogs are in the film. Lots of dogs. They're a plot device for something? We all know that you don't (really) get 'bad' dogs; just dogs with shitty owners. The Joker is a dog.

Two bits that jarred; massive black scar-tattooed criminal doing the morally good thing (oooh oooh inverted expectations [maybe, just maybe, he was a thief, not a murderer?]) handled possibly clumsily. Gordon's final speech was about two lines too long.

Pacing was fine; pacing was superb; I didn't even contemplate looking at my watch once. It felt very short. I'd have guessed at 100 minutes, not 150. Heat, which I love, and which this movie clearly pays homage to at several points - the truck smash on the underpass, the opening robbery (the bank manager is the bond dude from Heat!), the Batman / Joker 'exchange' (except Pacino never brutalised De Niro) - Heat seems too long at points. But it also establishes characters and motivations better. Or does it? "I have a woman" vs lies about a disfigured wife? Are they lies?

Such a shame Rachel died if ONLY because Maggie did more in ten minutes of screen time with the character than Katie could do over a TV mini-series. Gutsy; gleeful; conflicted in love; tense; moral but not moralising.

Gordon was great. Em cried when he died. She cried again when they told his family. I forgot for most of the Dent-armoured-van-catch-Batman chase that Gordon was driving; I assumed it must be a henchman. So pleasantly surprised that it was Gordon.

The ending... very 24. A lot of it was very 24.

The infinite-sonar thing does two things; one it shows the iconography of Batman with white eyes like in most comics, which no other film or TV has done (bar animated, which can, of course); two it shows that Batman's a(n accidental) fascist. Ends justify the means. VERY Frank Miller.

Alfred and Lucius both good; weighty relief. "Let me get this straight; you're saying that your client, who is one of the richest and most powerful men in the world, spends his evenings brutalising criminals with his bare fists, and you are intending to blackmail him...?" LOL. Nolan brings the funny, again and again. Often through shock but also through dramatic irony.

Gadgets and explosions; flipping a truck over with a bit of wire is fucking WAY COOL. Flipping your Bat-Pod round on a wall is fucking WAY COOL. All the base-jumping+gliding+through+windows_ninja-ing people is fucking WAY COOL. Joker's make-up is fucking WAY COOL, the only non-hammy take on it so far. Opening heist is fucking WAY COOL, especially the escape. Yes it's ridiculous but this is a film and it is meant to be ridiculous. Which school bus is the one with the criminal one? Is it the one covered in mortar dust and detritus and with no kids aboard?! The whole film was way fucking cool. I loved it. I'll be seeing it again pretty soon.

RespectFULLY not respectively.

basically a remake of heat if heat was a movie that guzzled balls and was really ugly and boring

xtian bale sux at acting, needed to be a lot shorter and also have more eric roberts and batmanuel, fichtner cameo was pimp

jackie the jokeman martling's stunning performance as the joker was of course mesmerizing~

Two bits that jarred; massive black scar-tattooed criminal doing the morally good thing (oooh oooh inverted expectations [maybe, just maybe, he was a thief, not a murderer?]) handled possibly clumsily.

that part was awesome cuz it was ZEUS aka the dude from friday

as much as I liked TKD (and loved certain scenes) it was almost torpedoed by the music. After nearly two full hours of that intense, two-chord main theme, all the tension and dread turned into fatigue and exhaustion. Music = sledgehammer, basically. Right around the hospital sequence I just started to get a little numb to the whole thing. Some inspired and sporadic brilliance in the final 30 minutes, but such a shame really.

loved the Joker (especially his voice). it's interesting that most memorably terrifying villains of late represent drama (TKD, No Country), not horror genre. prolly because most horror directors are too stupid to realized the more backstory they give their monsters the less interesting the monsters become. also, both these films had way too much speechifying at the end.

Can't say the music bothered me at all; I liked it, and thought it worked well. But that's just down to taste and aesthetics, I guess.

I also don't think the film was anywhere near as brutal and sadistic as people made it out to be; yes moments were horrific and made me flinch, but... there was no blood, no gratuitous horror amputations, etc, no gore. Except Harvey's face - and even that... it didn't bleed. It was like a Jim Lee illustration - anatomically fascinating but very very obviously unreal. Compared to Heat, when the driver guy is found in his apartment and he's... glued to the floor with his own blood and pus after taking the beating to end all beating... that's gruesome. The pearling spunks of blood parabola-ing out of the guy's neck in Cache by Haneke are gruesome. The crushed bird and menstrual blood and anal-rape-with-a-pitchfork in Anatomy of Hell are gruesome. This film is nothing compared to Monica Belluci's face being literally kicked off, after she's been anally-raped half to death, in Irreversible.

fichtner cameo

Ooh!

If anyone wants a 3D lenticular poster with Batman, Joker, and Harvey dent on it, I have one for sale on ebay.

Oh, sold.

Too dark. 6/10

Will try it again next week on IMAX.

Dark in what way? Visual or metaphorical? It made me laugh.

Just no fun and thrills. Felt too deliberately restrained for too long. I didn't feel the import of whatever was in fun's place (which I did with Batman Begins). But I think it might be my odd state of mind this morning. I think I'm low on blood sugar or blood pressure or something. I couldn't even follow what was happening towards the end.

I think it might be like There Will Be Blood, where I really have to see it twice.

Interesting; I found it really fun and with lots of thrills. Will be interested to hear what you think if you watch again.

I was talking to Em over lunch and we both agreed that the atmosphere of seeing it last night, at a preview screening with a handful of people wearing Batman t-shirts (and one guy in full Ledger-as-Joker make-up!) was really special; the audience was really hushed and reverent, and it felt like a real shared cultural experience, the like of which I've not experienced at the cinema since the LOTR films.

Oh, it was superfun when the Joker did that thing with the pencil near the beginning. I can't deny that.

And yeah, the audience at the 10am show this morning was amazingly quiet and attentive. Complete contrast to Wall-E last night, which I had to leave because of the bloody racket.

It really IS odd how little Cilian Murphy is in this picture, considering that N. was talking about his contribution in summer 2006, for crying out loud.

-- the pinefox, Wednesday, July 23, 2008 4:08 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

Actually, given the time and events between then and now, it';s not odd at all - Ledger dying probably changed how they went about editing the film quite a bit, which may well have resulted in scenes with Murphy ending up on the cutting room floor - he can, after all, come back for a third film.

ladies and gentlemen when i say i'm a batman, u will agree~

oh and dude still cant direct a fight scene, but maybe that's a symptom of the batsuit bein so clunky and bulky lookin like he's in one of those olde tymey armored diving suits (except less cool)

i haven't been completely following this thread but can someone tell me what they mean when they say Nolan can't shoot an action sequence?

He tends to shoot a tad too close, I'll give you that but I thoroughly enjoyed all the action sequences in this. Hong Kong sequence? Yes. Helicopter crashing into building? Yes. Truck overturning? WHOA.

And the fact that they shot this with minimal CGI (except for Dent's face)... It's just so rare now to see that quality in movies this size. I dunno, I guess I like that objects look and feel heavy in this. That's my big issue with the Spidey movies - everything moves really fast but looks so flat and depth-less. Works well in cinema but on TV, the thrilling bits seem oddly muted.

They mean "I don't like the way Nolan directs/shoots action sequences/fight scenes".

Yeah, I love Nolan's action sequences, thoroughly enjoyed every one of them. In the first film I grant you they were super dark and fast and confusing but no one knew who Batman was then (in terms of the characters / goons he was pasting) and hence it was all about their confusion and terror at this nameless, shapeless thing ninja-ing fuck out of them from the shadows. The fight in his Penthouse in this seemed fine; excellent - it's like it was the POV of a guest there, confused and turning around and not quite seeing exactly who is hitting who clearly but being aware that yes, there's Batman, and yes, there's some goons, and Batman is battering the goons.

yeah exactly. and I honestly think it was the only way to shoot that - if the camera had pulled any further back, it'll be all lol @ guy in batsuit in the middle of posh party.

in other words this i guess >> oh and dude still cant direct a fight scene, but maybe that's a symptom of the batsuit bein so clunky and bulky lookin

bale's head looked like it was getting squeeezed

when i first saw deebo on the boat, i was like: is that BANE? but he's not anyone, just a prisoner, right?

i thought this was totally great! one problem though: the final action scene where batman was trying to get to the joker and had to deal with hostages dressed as joker minions and joker minions dressed as doctors or something while batman is trying to find them all via that cell phone sonar? pretty incoherent. so i guess it wasn't "totally" great, but close to it.

couldn't batman have used his batphone or something to radio the swat guys about the switcheroo with the joker costumes?

Does anyone know if/why Katie Holmes wasn't in this one, and Maggie was? I found myself wondering if the "You complete me" line in the movie pissed off Tom, who then made Katie bow out? Or maybe not. Maybe they even threw that in to bug them because she wouldn't play.. *shrug* Just found it a funny coincidence.

-- Finefinemusic, Wednesday, July 23, 2008 5:02 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Link

http://www.newsweek.com/id/145508/page/2

Everyone from the first movie is back except Katie Holmes. Maggie Gyllenhaal has taken over her role as Bruce's love interest. Isn't it disruptive to have a new actor playing an old character, with no explanation?
Well, it's not ideal. But this character is an integral part of the story. So when Katie didn't want to do it, I had no choice.

Prior to the opening of "Batman Begins," there were many published reports about dismay at Warner Brothers over the way Katie's personal life—specifically her romance with Tom Cruise—became an unwelcome distraction. Did that have anything to do with her not returning?
No, I asked Katie if she wanted to do the part, and she passed. You'd have to ask her for the exact specifics of it, but I would have been perfectly happy to have her back. And indeed, I offered her the part. But she couldn't do it, and Maggie stepped in, and she was great.

http://my.spill.com/profiles/blog/show?id=947994%3ABlogPost%3A355506

michael bay's batman

Potential spoiler alert...

Is Harvey Dent / Two-Face actually dead? I've just been talking with my friend Ben, who saw it last night, about what they might do if a third film was made re; villain, as obviously Heath is out of the game and given circumstances it's unlikely that they'd recast anyone else in the role of The Joker. And Ben pointed out that neither Batman nor Gordon actually check Dent for a pulse or anything; he's just laying there still and the assumption is that he's dead...

Finally saw this last night. A week after premiere and the line to see the 10:30 PM showing was still half-way around the NYC block.

Considering this (better than Batman Begins), Hellboy 2 (better than Hellboy), X-Men 2 ("), and Spiderman 2 ("), is there an argument to be made for skipping the Year Zero story in the movie and skipping right to the meat? It seems like the problems everyone has had with the originals that the sequels circumvent is that they spend too much time with origin stories.

XP

I don't think Harvey Dent OR Rachel are dead. If they don't show the body (and they didn't show Rachel's) than the character isn't dead. And with Harvey, it seems much more likely that they shut him in Arkham Asylum and told everyone he was dead to save face.

he's dead, she's dead.

you really think they'll bring them back in the next one?

i can see a case being made for two-face but there'd be no reason to to bring rachel back.

latebloomer, I take it you've never read a comic book before? They ALWAYS come back.

Hahaha, yeah, people always come back in comics, it's true. Good point and so obvious I can't believe it hadn't occurred before.

yeah but this an adaptation of a comic book, not an actual comic book.

i mean, they certainly could find a way to bring two-face back for a third movie, i just highly doubt they'll actually have a reason to do that.

dent's arc is over at the end of the movie.

I think it's pretty telling that neither Rachel's death nor Two-Face's death in the flick are definitive. We never see Rachel "blow up" (we see her, then we see a cut to the building exploding, but we never see her in that particular building exploding) or her body, and we never see an indication that Two-Face is definitely dead. Maybe it's too much comic book reading, but unless it's ironclad, I always assume the character can still come back. (And even ironclad -- like with Ra's al Ghul in Batman Begins -- I figure they can still bring him back.)

Yeah, but is Two-Face's?

xxp And yeah, I'm not saying that it would necessarily be a good idea cinematically to bring either character back. Just that it's very doable, and I wouldn't be surprised in the least.

xx-post.

Also, if you're looking for the film itself to be conscious of that possibility -- they killed off a character in TDK and then brought him back. So certainly "trick deaths" aren't outside the realm of Nolan's Batman universe.

My main reason for feeling this just... if they make a third, and surely after the financial success of this they have to, who do you use as a villain?

duh:

http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/marvel_dc/images/thumb/6/63/Crazy_Quilt.jpg/200px-Crazy_Quilt.jpg

http://images.google.com/url?q=http://malone.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/04/19/batmite.jpg&usg=AFQjCNF5dc-4oyijdqhEgQUpnr4eQIOQlQ

the big problem with bringing Two-Face back is that it would completely devalue the conclusion of TDK.

they could bring back Scarecrow, maybe. But he was kind of an afterthought in this one already.

xp lols.

Who was Scarecrow in this one? I noticed some guy in the opening sequence wearing the scarecrow mask, but I assumed that was just an homage. Was he actually in the flick?

Yes he was; they unmasked him at the end of the sequence and it was Murphy as per first film.

Weird.