Batman carries on beginning in ... The Dark Knight

maybe. batman rox.

Yeah, I'm not really including Batman kicking ass. Go ahead, punch away, and have a big wet thwack sound to go with it, that's cool. I'm thinking more like the stitching-up scene in Pan's Labyrinth. OMG so disgusting, so fetishistic. Like daria said, you can't un-see shit like that.

I'm not a big horror movie buff, if'n you can't tell.

It seems a shame when a movie has a point view and a moral and a purpose, and years later you think back on it and only remember that one really gruesome scene.

an excellent point. it's like that saying: you can be shooting a love scene but the moment there is nudity you are making a documentary.

not if there's a lot of fancy lighting and shadow

to be serious though, i love fantasy/horror violence.

if i'm ever bothered by violence in films it's usually realistic beatings or potrayals of domestic abuse that get me.

otm, that's why it's hard for me to forgive Scorsese for all the "surprise you're dead" stuff in The Departed (like someone mentioned upthread), because he also made Raging Bull and Taxi Driver, so I know he knows the difference.

bah i've been thinking and writing about this fkn movie why because it intersting. this is deep into ain't it cool/livejournal territory, but thx for you patience...

Taking back what I said before, I think there was some subtext, but it’s buried beneath both the violent flashiness and “rhetorical” flashiness – the love triangle plot has more to do with what’s going on than anything, but it was given less weight in the edit room it seems. What was Cilian Murphy even doing in this movie? The movie is cut around the Joker, it’s true.

The foreground is that Bruce Wayne is sick of the Batman act, because of what it cost him (Rachel), plus it’s physically punishing, and it has somewhat backfired. The city is no safer: since he owns the night, crime has moved into broad daylight, and other amateur vigiliantes are out there hurting people and getting hurt. He wanted inspiration, not imitation. He was hoping it wouldn’t take that long for Gotham to reach a tipping point of security, if everyone would just believe!, but it hasn’t happened. He’s on a treadmill.

Enter Harvey, who can solidify Batman’s gains legitimately, and, in doing so, allow him to quit being both Batman and “Bruce Wayne” the fuckup playboy (Bale is really great as this third version of himself, immediately slurring his lines, clueless). Wayne pushes Harvey too hard and too fast, but Harvey is more than willing to go just as far. A true believer, this Harvey, with more than a touch of self-delusion about him, and willing to “go vigilante” himself (the detainee torture comment comes here – but of course his game of chance with other people’s lives is rigged, until he becomes Two-Face).

The writers give Rachel a hint of a complaint that Wayne-as-Batman may get Harvey killed, and not just to save the city (as Harvey believes) but to win her away. It’s no wonder Wayne saves Dent, he’s been careless and duplicitous with him most of all. Besides, we have to believe that if he saved Rachel and let Dent die, she would never have him anyway.

The movie is concerned with how people communicate about themselves, what they try to get others to believe, both individually, and as a mass. It would have been better, I guess, if the movie had less about boatfuls of people blowing each other up (or not) and more about how all these characters have to tend to their own fictions in order to function. The Joker lying as a matter of routine, unexplained, about his “origin” was a great touch – he doesn’t really lie about anything else. But as an Iago figure, he wasn’t given enough of the talent to see through people’s bullshit. I though maybe it would be obvious to him, at some point, who Batman was.

The Joker keeps taunting Batman that they are the same kind, a pair of freaks, but everyone knows this is not true, it’s kind of an ineffective taunt. Unfortunately, Rachel agrees with the Joker on this point: what Bruce has done to his life is bonkers; the fact that he’s really good at it only counts against him. She has chosen to give herself finally to Harvey, a fact that Alfred keeps concealed, knowing that Wayne’s self-conception has to be carefully managed as well. Wayne chooses Dent and the City over love, which Dent never fully understands. This also proves Rachel right, in a way: it is crazy, but also worthy. Everyone has to be lied to, about something. (This gets garbled and lost, in the conclusion, I think. All the stuff about “responsibility” was weak).

Both Rachel and Harvey (ultimately) die, and Bruce lives on, without knowing the full story they were a part of, maybe this is what seems sadistic about the movie. That, or all the cops shot in the face. The Batman-Dent plan to save Gotham instantly shifts to a Batman-Gordon PR offensive about Dent, post-mortem. This is cynical stuff; do they have that little faith in Gothamites to live with the truth? Is a white knight that important? Do they judge “the soul of Gotham” – the key to all the politics of the film – completely wrong? Maybe this is why Armond White called the movie’s “ideology” disgusting.

(i realize there's some controversy over who Batman intended to save...)

Batman wanted to ride Dent hard

Oh my gosh goole you have made this movie sound like an episode of House M.D.! Very nice.

Wayne chooses Dent and the City over love

Are you talking specifically about who Batman decided to rescue? Because I thought that Batman had every intention of going to Rachel, and the Joker swapped the addresses so that whichever one Batman wanted to get to would be the one he left behind.

okay nm xpost didn't see your followup.

I will be seeing the movie again this weekend so I will try to pay close attention during the scene. However from what I remember didn't Batman clearly yell "RACHEL" to Gordon?

yeah you're probably right, lol oh well!

another funny thing - bruce wayne gives an actually serious speech about how dent is the one who can fix gotham, and immediately rachel is like "i know you, you're making fun of him"

WTF did the joker say to dent in the hospital anyway? I can't remember.

Goole: very interesting; re. your insightful Joker, I think he *does* suggest that he knows that Batman is BW, while Bats is beating up on him in the cell - which makes Bats angrier and beat up on him more.

Aaron Eckhart thinks that the film asks pertinent political questions:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/jul/23/dark.knight

I don't think Joker necessarily knew he was Bruce Wayne...he was referring to the fact that he thought maybe Batman tore after Dawes when he threw her out the window, but that doesn't necessarily mean he knew it was Wayne as opposed to just knowing it wasn't Dent.

Maybe, maybe not!

All the Joker knows at that point is that Batman has the hots for Rachel, which is enough for him to set up the "choose one to die" trap.

All the Joker knows at that point is that Batman has the hots for Rachel, which is enough for him to set up the "choose one to die" trap.

Exactly.

Someone should start a "let me explain movie narratives to you" thread.

Batman jumped out a window to save Rachel. Joker noticed this.

WTF did the joker say to dent in the hospital anyway? I can't remember.

"Sorry about all this; it wasn't personal. Hell, it wasn't even MY plan! I don't plan anything, I just let stuff happen. If you want to take someone out, go after the people who let me off the leash and let all of this happen..." etc etc boom goes hospital

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.

i thought that the dude in the cop uniform that dent was beating up for information was cilian at first, and i was confused.

i've got quibbles with it, but i did like monsieur k-punk's riffing on the first nolan batman:

http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/005757.html

i think it probably influenced what i was looking for in the second one.

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.

iirc the production of the dark knight started right around the time of the Great Tom Cruise Sc1ent0l0gy Freakout and Whirlwind Romance Roadshow and they said no thanks. plus she was bad!

http://www.saasta.fi/saasta/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/0007ey4t1.jpeg

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