Review: The Dark Knight (2008)
July 25, 2008
I have long anticipated this sequel to Christopher Nolan’s immaculate re-imagining of the Batman franchise, Batman Begins. The original is probably the best superhero film ever made…
Or, rather, it was until The Dark Knight hit the screen.
It is a rare event when a film, particularly an adaptation, can be as powerful as this. Sure, The Dark Knight has been pathetically over-hyped in light of the death of Heath Ledger, but all of that is easy to forget once the theater goes black. I made a point of waving off all mention of Heath’s legacy left in the reel, or any other insensitive marketing scheme used by the producers and Hollywood as a whole, but I realized that there really was no need. It really does speak for itself.
Okay, time to move on from that. I’m simply sick of hearing about it, so I will cease the continuing obnoxiousity. Now I’ve said this movie’s a thing of beauty, and competes with its predecessor as the best superhero film of all time. And why is that?
1. Intelligence. Alright, some action fans may be a little confused by the legal jargon tossed about in Dark Knight’s first few scenes, but you can feel that it’s more than a contrived super-plot. Complex ranges of human emotion are addressed, delved into, torn apart, put back together, and generally scrutinized until you feel you understand humanity (particularly the mentally deranged in humanity) a little better when the lights come back on. Just as the Joker claims to be “a better class of criminal”, The Dark Knight is simply a better class of super-movie.
Christian Bale as Batman
2. Spectacle. Complex computer generated graphics. Large actions sequences. An 18 wheeler truck flipping up over itself. And lots of big bangs. No action fan will be disappointed, and that’s a promise.
3. Continuity. What? A villain from the first film is still reeking havoc? The love interest doesn’t disappear when jumping into the sequel? No. Nolan’s building a world here, albeit a world many already know and love. But that’s what makes it all so important. While whether or not Maggie Gyllenhaal meets or beats Katie Holmes’ original version of Bat-love Rachel Dawes is debatable, I for one applaud a little continuity, and it’s great to see a cameo of Cillian Murphy’s grand performance of the fear-inducing Scarecrow (my personal favorite Batman villain).
4. Performances. And here we go, the part you all wanted to hear about. Yes, Christian Bale remains a great death-metal voice of a Batman, and all those big-wigs (Morgan Freeman, Michael Cane and especially Gary Oldman as Lieutenant-turned-Commissioner Gordon) are as perfect as they’ve ever been. But the real gem of this film is… Aaron Eckhart as DA Harvey Dent.
Aaron Eckhart takes a dark turn
Expecting someone else?
Yes, Heath Ledger’s amazing, and I’ll get to that in a minute. But for me, it’s Aaron Eckhart’s golden boy, who seems a hair’s breadth from blowing the tether at any moment, who shines the brightest. His climactic final scenes (for those of you who know the mythology, yes he shows up and yes he’s perfect for it) are truly chilling, and you can’t help but stare. Want to know what I mean? You’ll have to see, I’m no spoiler.
Now, on to the actor cut down in his prime. Mark my words: Heath Ledger is not the definitive Joker. Mark Hammill, former Skywalker turned Clown Prince of Crime in Batman: The Animated Series, is the definitive Joker. Nevertheless, Heath discovered something about this legendary character that I hadn’t realized was integral to the character’s success; Ledger’s Joker is actually funny.
Ledger’s now infamous Joker
This Joker is chilling, sadistic, and hideous, of course, but the truly magical element of this interpretation is in the power not only of hi own laughter, but of the audience’s. You’ll find yourself bursting out laughing, that is until you realize that a man was just brutally murdered right in front of your eyes. That’s what the Joker really is. He’s not a stupid man with a stupid grin who paints faces on paintings (I’m looking at you, Jack Nicholson. Your Joker SUCKS!).
Comparative Joker Study: Nicholson, Hammil, and Cesar Romero (moustache included)
Heath’s Joker is a man devoid of any real humanity; he has no history, no guilt, no reality. Only a horrific sense of humor and a loose cannon approach to life. It’s not the perfect Joker, but by the end of his first scene, you simply won’t care.
In conclusion: See this movie if you know what’s good for you. Just remember that it’s a movie, not an epitaph. But still, even if he didn’t mean it to be, it’s one hell of a way to go.
***START MINOR SPOILERS***
It says speak your mind so i’m going to. I’m curious as to why you would say that Aaron Eckhart is the ‘gem’ of this film. When I saw this for the first time on Thursday I didn’t think Aaron Eckhart was that amazing. It seemed the only time he was ‘two-faced’ (hah, oh, eee, hah i thought MY jokes were bad) was when he was simply Harvey Dent. It wasn’t until the end when he was with Gordon and his family that he seemed two-faced again. When he was at the bar, he was just pissed off. When he was in the car, he was just pissed off.
It wasn’t until the second time I saw it on Friday night that I felt better about his performance. I think it was a little help from Christopher Nolan and his camera angles he does with Harvey Dent leading up to the ‘accident’ as well as hiding his burnt half of his face in the shadows during the final confrontation with Gordon and Batman that brings it out as well. I feel that he might just not seem too amazing because he’s in the same film with Heath Ledger as well as the rest of the cast.
***END SPOILERS***
And my BIG question is how could you say that Hammill’s Joker is the definitive? Yes compared to the original comics, but for this film or for today’s audience? If you placed Hammill’s Joker in the middle of this film instead of Heath’s, he’d get his ass whupped in the first scene by the bank manager. And if you made a film centralizing around Hammill’s Joker instead, it wouldn’t be anywhere near as successful as this one was.
Yes everybody has said it, and this is a BIG repeat, but I think Ledger is MORE than deserving to be nominated for an Oscar (if not win it). Yes the fall line of films haven’t come out yet, but they will, and I have yet to hear hype about any other actors in any films that are on their way out. Not even Leo or Crowe in “Body of Lies.”
It’s been over-said, but Heath (as well as his performance) deserve more talk in your review rather than comparing him to a ’so-called’ superior adaptation (Hammill), an awful adaptation (Nicholson, i agree with you 101% btw), and an adaptation that’s not even thought of anymore (Romero).
R.I.P. Heath Ledger
Also I believe Christian Bale needs a little bit more as well. It’s a little tough to act with a 3″x3″ hole around your mouth and your eyes. But Bale does a tremendous job at it. After reading a review of ‘The Dark Knight’ from The New Yorker and journalist David Denby ripping apart the fact of Bale’s voice being monotonous and raspy while he dons the trademark outfit is a little ridiculous. In the comics Batman used a voice changer in his suit to alter his voice while he wore the suit. Michael Keaton and Val Kilmer altered their voices, just not to the nth degree that Bale does (which makes Batman that much more darker as he should be)
Definitely could see this movie another time, but it takes quite a bit out of the viewer.
Let me lead off by saying that I enjoyed this movie tremendously , but even given that, I have to say your fan-boy levels of praise for it are in all ways unjustified. Were I inclined to speculate, I’d say you were either too blinded by what you like to observe things critically, or you’re just cannily praising everything because you know you’ll get back the “retort churlish”.
We return to the matter at hand: I’ll take it that by intelligence you mean the overall quality of the story-telling, and i can’t say that I was impressed. Lets start with Batman himself. his body of emotion seemed to consist of rage and not-rage. I say this, of course, partially because of my stalwart refusal at this point to regard the “oh shit i might have to get tough to fight crime!” superhero guilt-trip as a legitimate story arc anymore. It was barely feasible in Spider-Man, where the protagonist was a high-school kid, but here we’re looking here at a man who supposedly watched his parents being gunned down as a child, and then spent the next 15 or so years in sightseeing in third-world prisons. I find it hard to believe that somewhere in that time he didn’t grow up to be a little harder than that. After a manner of speaking, the whole movie had this problem. Responsibility of power, “are people basically good or evil?”, “what causes people to become villains?” etc. Even given the crazy-person twist, its all pretty standard super-hero movie stuff. I’ll agree to call it a better class of the same. But this movie certainly wasn’t in a class of its own.
Another big problem for me, and it was just as bad in the first movie, was the love story. The chemistry just never existed to make it believable, and changing the actress didn’t help. the chemistry was there in some degree between Gylenhaal and Ekhart, but that just made the love triangle aspect of the story weaker. Anyway, she’s dead now so it shouldn’t be a problem anymore. In fact, for how obviously they were setting up for a sequel, pretty much everyone’s dead: Rachel, Two-Face, Scarecrow, and the Joker(they wouldn’t dare hire another actor to step in). Just like Shakespeare. So much for your beloved continuity i guess.
I can see what you like about Eckhart. He certainly stole the stage from every one except Heath Ledger or Michael Caine, but this was the Joker’s movie. I won’t say what’s been said before about Heath Ledger’s performance, but I do believe some things need to be added. First of all, a special thanks to Heath Ledger for taking a role that otherwise would undoubtedly have gone to, and subsequently been ruined by Johnny Depp. It was more though, than just the humor that this Joker brilliant. for the first time we have a truly human supervillain. Unlike Cillian Murphy, Heath Ledger played his brand of crazy like he couldn’t help it. He makes the audience relate to his murdering psychopath in a way that I can only call Durden-esque. It reflects badly on Christian Bale that the villain is more likable than the hero, but thats not Heath’s fault, now is it? Still the real delight in this Joker for me was the way he illustrates what a simple prop can do for a role. In a movie full of gadgets and explosions, the Joker’s switchblade adds more to the movie than any other object, including Two-Face’s coin.
I have to challenge you about the action as well. As a devout fan of action movies, I was profoundly disappointed. Exploding cars are all well and good, and the bat-technology was amusing as ever, but all of the hand-to-hand sequences, which were so integral to the to the important fights, were ruined by camera work that looked like it was done by a paranoid schizophrenic. The end result was that what could have been a series of delightfully gritty and brutal fights were reduced to a lot of darkness and confusion.
I could say more, but brevity being what it is, that’s enough babble for now.
and you enjoyed this movie tremendously?
Plus Scarecrow’s not dead and I don’t think Two-Face is dead