On Friday night, Lindsay, Matt and I took in The Dark Knight. For two and a half hours, I don’t think I blinked once. Here’s my thoughts. I’ll try to avoid any gratuitous spoilers, but no promises, so SPOILERS THROUGHOUT.
I know I’m biased, but I agree with Kevin Smith. The Dark Knight is the greatest superhero movie ever made. Without question. The movie is a sprawling epic with twists and turns galore, multiple themes and motifs cross over each other. The concept of a white knight (Harvey Dent), and a black knight (Batman). Order and chaos (Batman and the Joker). Faith lost and faith renewed or rewarded (Gordon and Lucius Fox). There’s a lot going on with this movie. The story is dense, but not overwhelmingly so.
A lot of little details that only occur to you later, or upon repeated viewings, add extra emotional depth. Harvey Dent and Batman each think the other is the most important symbol of hope for the people of Gotham. That difference costs them much in the long run. Late in the film, a truly grotesque Two-Face screams at Batman and Gordon that he was the only one who lost anything. But Dent was Batman’s hope to someday end his mission against crime, and by this point of the film, Batman has lost as much as anyone. The best part about this is, he doesn’t say any of this, but you can read it clearly on his face, impressive considering most of his head is covered with a mask.
Dent is a classic tragic hero. He’s a good man who’s only crime at the start of the movie is an abundance of ambition. By the end of the film, that ambition costs him everything. Whether it was his arrogance (taking on the mob, one would be well aware of the potential consequences) that caused his downfall is irrelevant to Dent. Terrible things happen to Dent here, and it’s all just chance. Maybe he spent too much time “making his own luck,” and it was karma putting a thumb on the scales to balance the score. As the battle with the mob and the Joker escalates, Dent’s becomes reckless making bolder and bolder moves that all lead to his own downfall. Unlike some previous versions of Two-Face, Eckhart’s Dent clearly is a man who’s path from hero to villain is the cause of more than just monstrous facial scarring.
As expected most of the attention on “entertainment news”* programs and the internet message board community is Heath Ledger’s Joker. Believe the hype kids. Heath Ledger just disappears into the role and his performance delivers in the best possible way. In the first part of the movie, the audience laughs at The Joker’s antics, being wowed by the “pencil trick” or his various odd inflections stops laughing by the climax. As is desperately needed, by the end of the film, it doesn’t matter how showy and darkly funny he is, the audience wants to see him get what’s coming to him. The audience can’t identify with The Joker. You might be able to relate to some of the things he says (on anarchy: “when the chips are down, these people will eat each other,”), but you can’t identify with his goals. He’s not Dr. Octopus or The Green Goblin or even Harvey Dent (good men who fell from grace). He’s as close to pure evil as you can get without getting into a religious discussion.
I was expecting to be impressed with Ledger’s Joker, but even my lofty expectations were exceeded. I wasn’t expecting Ledger to outdo Mark Hamil’s voice work on the Batman animated series, but he did just that. Ledger’s very physical performance is manic and unrestrained, but just up to the line of being so out there as to loose the sinister edge. “Does Gotham really seem like a better place because of the Batman?” he asks from off camera to a Batman imitator who’s torture he’s video taping. His tone is taunting, playful even. Out of nowhere, he explodes “LOOK AT ME!” terrifying both the hockey-pad Batman and the audience. That he can run the gamut from trickster clown to psychotic killer as quickly as he does, and still be believable, is what seals the deal on Ledger’s performance, in my books. On the other end of the spectrum is the scene where the Joker, disguised as a nurse, sits down by Dent’s hospital bed, and says “Hi” with the delivery and facial expression of a high school girlfriend trying to get back a guy she had cheated on.
It’s not all roses. While Harvey Dent’s arc is beautiful and tells a wonderful story of pride going before a fall, Two-Face is almost “Venomed” if you know what I mean (though there are some members of the online community who have different ideas on this). The “Batsonar” is overused in the climax. Batman Begins’ much hated “If it gets underneath Wayne Tower, this thing is gonna blow!” guy get’s a spiritual cousin in “That’s not good!” guy. And while Maggie Gyllenhall’s turn as Rachel Dawes is way better than that of Katie Holmes, it’s still the weakest performance in the film.
These complaints are really nothing more than nitpicks, though. This is easily the best movie I’ve seen in years, and that includes Batman Begins. When people used to ask me about Batman Begins, my standard line to emphasize how good I thought the movie was always “about halfway through the movie, I realized it was already better than all the previous Batman movies put together, and he hadn’t even put on the costume on yet.” A parallel moment occurs in The Dark Knight where The Joker introduces himself to the mobs by way of the aforementioned “pencil trick,” and you immediately know that this is going to be something really special.
It looks like most people agree with me, since the movie seems to be on its way to setting a record for breaking records. Nonetheless, the movie lived up to the unbelievable hype that was applied to it (by myself, amongst others), and I am very happy with the results. It was well worth the three year wait, and I’ll gladly wait another three for one more from Nolan. As I said to Matt later on in the night after first seeing that movie, the only real problem I see with Dark Knight is that it’s about 23 hours too short.
*Entertainment News programs are neither entertaining, nor news.
on August 7th, 2008 at 9:04 pm #
Allright, I finally saw it. Finally. It ended not just 30 minutes ago and I raced home to finally read this spoiler-laden blog post (I had been avoiding for so long).
It is really interesting to read your thoughts on how Joker is truly an unlikeable character. The “Pencil trick” and his clumsy, goofiness at first struck me as a likeable character - a badguy you can root for. But walking out of the theatre, I had to say - “Man, Joker is a real jerk!“. I’m glad they really made his character dispicable by the end.
I think the best part of the movie was when he said “Kill this dude in 60 minutes or else I blow up a hospital.” That’s what really did in the Joker character for me. He is just insidious!
I thought Twoface was a bit of an annoying character - the CG was masterfully done to make him truly terrifying, but I couldn’t get behind him. He seemed a bit too suave, too two-dimensional. Where the Watchmen had depth and all other superheros did not, it was refreshing to see a more human, Miller-esque batman on screen. Similar with Joker. But Twoface was a textbook villain with really no depth at all.
I now have a boner for Ledger even bigger than Johnny Depp. It is too bad I can only fawn over his grave, but I am making it my mission to watch each of his previous movies for some semblance of nostalgia. The only thing that outdid his acting was his pure masterful capturing of Jokers voice. It’s so easy to do a haunting laugh or sound intimidating, but he had that perfect pitch - that shade of clown that is just the perfect blend of creepy.
I am so impressed by this movie. So very impressed. And I am convinced that if another Batman film comes out, he’s going to be one bitter, grizzled man that’s going to start kicking ass and taking names.
A true Miller film, I’d wager.
on August 30th, 2008 at 9:55 pm #
Ok, here’s my prediction. I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that Robin will show up in the next movie. Hopefully not in costume, but Dick Grayson will show up, I believe.
I mean, when you get right down to it, The Joker won in Dark Knight. He destroyed Dent and, to paraphrase another Batman movie, tainted Batman with compromise and deceit. Rachel is gone, and though Gotham may still have hope, Batman may not have any himself.
Deeply depressed, he starts taking it out on criminals. I’m talking about, as you say, Miller style Batman, but in the extreme. Breaking arms and legs left and right, just really punishing them. In the end though, he takes in Robin who helps him heal and lets him ensure that someday when he can’t do it anymore, there’ll be someone ready. I don’t think we’ll see him fight, much less in a costume, but I figure he’ll be training in the batcave at the end of the movie.
A lot of people hate Robin outright, but I’ve read enough really good interpretations of the character (those of Jeph Loeb spring to mind first, particularly Dark Victory) to know that if handled correctly, he would make perfect sense.
Usually, that’s the biggest complaint against Robin: he makes no sense for being such a bright character in contrast to Batman, as well as the question of why Batman would knowingly endanger the kid’s life. As I would envision it, we don’t see that. We don’t see a costume, we don’t see him on patrol, we just see Batman training Robin, as he was trained in Begins.
You see, I hope that Christopher Nolan will make another Batman movie, though I’m pretty sure he’ll be done after that. But with the right director taking over, Bale et al might stay on for more movies. Hell, after we’re a couple of movies removed, I wouldn’t mind seeing an appropriately talented actor reprise the Joker (I’m thinking Daniel Day Lewis these days, but who knows).
But whether Bale, Nolan or anybody stays on, I’m sure Warner Brothers will have more movies continuing this story and this continuity of Batman. I just hope that they give enough control to entice the current crew to make as many as they want.
Also, on my 4th and 5th viewings of Dark Knight, it really struck me how awesome the score is. It compliments the movie so well. I’ve spoken with some folks who were confused by Joker tricking Batman (giving the wrong addresses for Rachel and Harvey). The score helps you figure it out though, because when Bats runs in on Dent, the “Joker tone” sound from the opening of the movie plays, a subtle audio hint that the Joker has just done some serious shit.
on November 17th, 2008 at 6:00 pm #
I would agree with almost everything you two have said, I particularly liked all the lip-licking that the Joker did mid-sentence. Very creepy.
The only thing I didn’t like about the movie was the bullshit sci-fi superhero stuff. I’m thinking particularly of the drive-up-a-wall 180 that he does on the batcycle and the constant batsonar during the climax that Hawkeye mentioned.
That’s a very small portion of the movie and I was obviously a big fan on the whole, but it occurs to me that that’s what it’s supposed to be about. It’s a superhero movie. Obviously the drama and the plotline were more important than the special effects, but whenever christian bale was out of costume, I found myself just imagining that it was a regular grime drama where the villain wears makeup.
If it had just been a story about bruce, harvey, gordon, etc instead of “batman,” “two-face,” and “the joker,” I think I would have liked it even more. There’s no denying a great script and great acting when you see it, but as it turns out, I’m not a huge fan of guys in capes and tights.
on January 20th, 2009 at 6:02 pm #
I think the most important thing is that it was the right movie for the character. Warner Brothers, apparently, is now pursuing “dark” adaptations of all their characters, trying to follow TDK’s success. Really stupid move. Do we really need a dark and tortured journey into the mind of Plastic Man?