And oh yes: Dark Knight

[annathepiper]

Lest I forget to mention: solarbird, spazzkat, and I went to go see The Dark Knight this past Friday. Picoreview: dark dark darkity dark, with a heaping helping of dark on top, and would you like some dark with that?


As expected, Heath Ledger pretty much owns the movie. Of the incarnations of the Joker with which I am familiar (read: Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson, Mark Hamill's excellent animated Joker, and now this one), I think this one creeps me out the most. Sure, the Joker in general is a psychopath, but Mark Hamill's Joker in general seems to have a bit more of the Funny going on, whereas Ledger's has way more emphasis going on the Creepy. I particularly liked how he changed the story of how he got his scars each time he told it. And that constant licking his lips... brr. Coming out of the hospital in the nurse's outfit and whacking his detonator remote to trigger off that one last explosion... also brr!

Aaron Eckhart is excellent as Harvey Dent, and in his way is almost as creepy as the Joker as he spirals down into becoming Two-Face. He was particularly effective when Batman busts in to rescue him in that warehouse and he's screaming in anguish about why he's there to rescue him instead of going to Rachel.

Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, and Morgan Freeman are all solid. Maggie Gyllenhaal did a decent job though she didn't actually make much of a dent in my awareness. I had a bit of a hard time buying Bruce and Rachel still having any chemistry--though I suppose that was really part of the point, neh? One of the subtler bits I really liked was Bruce, with a dull ache in his voice, telling Alfred that Rachel had been going to come back to him--and Alfred, who has of course already read Rachel's "Dear Bruce" dump note, takes it back before Bruce can see it.

drglam has pointed out that the guy who played the Mayor of Gotham is actually the same actor who played Batmanuel in the live-action version of The Tick. Which amuses me greatly. Dara and I both thought that he looked vaguely familiar, but we couldn't place him at the time!

I quite liked that Gordon got promoted up to Commissioner in this movie, though the Joker's assassinations bringing that about was pretty grim.

I loved the subplot with the little weaselly guy figuring out who Batman is, and coming to Lucius to deliver his blackmail threat. Lucius' response is pure gold: "Let me get this straight. You think that your employer, one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the world, is spending his nights running around the city beating criminals to a pulp with his bare hands. And your plan is to blackmail this person? Good luck."

And the followup to this, when Bruce deliberately crashes his Lamborghini to save Weaselly Guy's life--and Weaselly Guy KNOWS what just happened there--beautiful.

The bit with the cellphones bothered me. As it should have. I was at least pleased that Lucius put his foot down at Bruce about the system existing. And that the machine self-destructed at the end after Lucius typed in that last password.

The standoff with the ferries... also very effective and one of the few things counteracting the almost unremitting darkity dark of the movie. I was totally expecting one or the other of the ferries to go up.

And that last standoff between Batman and the Joker... yow. "I think you and I are destined to do this forever," indeed. I was intrigued to note that the Joker is not in fact killed off... and, for that matter, that it's ambiguous about whether Two-Face dies. I read this morning that Aaron Eckhart said he'd totally return to the role if called upon to do so, which would suggest that they didn't really kill him off.

And man, the bit at the end where Batman is clearly about to keel over from exhaustion, and yet he pulls it together enough to tell Gordon to set Harvey Dent up as a hero and to accuse him of the five deaths... and then to run like hell.

Yow.

Very solid movie all around. I think I slightly prefer the first one just because of a little less overwhelming darkity dark, yet I can't think of anywhere in this plot where you could cut back a bit on said dark and have it be as effective a plot.

It'll be real interesting to see what they do with a third film. Because there will be one. $300 mil in ten days pretty much guarantees it. ;)

Comments

[hubbit.livejournal.com]

Gary Oldman plays Sirius Black in the Harry Potter movies.

[annathepiper]

Oh right, duh. Hee! :)