Friday
Jul182008
Friday, July 18, 2008 at 2:57PM Open Forum: Discuss 'The Dark Knight' (Spoiler Warning!)
No more hype. Now it's time to discuss the biggest movie
of the year, and some contend the best movie of the year, as well. You've heard plenty from
me on the subject, but what did you think of
The Dark Knight?
Have fun.
Reader Comments (58)
The thing that bothered me the most, what I thought was the film's most significant "flaw," was the character arc of Harvey Dent. Am I alone in thinking that his story, for the purposes of this film, should end with the scene in the bar? Just get a hint of what's to come? Otherwise, The Joker's greatest trick lasts for about 20 minutes in the life of the story, one scene in the movie.
Yeah, I know, Batman says, "The Joker can't win." But if you turn the incorruptible good guy into an unreasoning bad guy and it only lasts one night, who cares? All of this plays into my year-old theory that too many villains are a bad thing. If you've got the Joker, he's your villain. Save Two-Face for another time. And, given how good Eckhart was in the role, I'm sorry to see him dead (if he's really dead...)
I think the climax is with The Joker. Now, having said that, I didn't much care for the final confrontation between Batman and The Joker, either. That sonar was the silliest bunch of bullshit in Christopher Nolan's filmography. It looked bad, didn't help the audience, and was completely unnecessary.
But I am glad we got to see the Heath Ledger performance we hoped for, and in fact, it was a lot more than what I had hoped for. I'm usually very good at predicting early Oscar nominees, so I'm not wavering: He'll get an Academy Award nomination for this.
I love Eckhart-- still think he was brutally robbed an Oscar nom for Thank You For Smoking. In fact, I dig his work so much that I just rented the lackluster straight-to-DVD release Meet Bill. Hey-- you take the good with the bad but as predicted, he's actually good in it.
However, I have to agree with you on Dent-- I'm not entirely sure he's dead and tried hinting about his fate in my review without coming right out and naming names.
Ledger probably will receive a nomination and he was brilliant but my choice so far this year is still Colin Farrell for either In Bruges or Cassandra's Dream. Re: Ledger's Joker-- he elevated the material very well (love his musical voice, especially in Casanova) but it was an underwritten role.
This was especially apparent having viewed Burton's original '89 movie on Wednesday night, two days after seeing the newest Joker when I started to realize how much better Nicholson's insane dialogue was. Examples: "Antoine got a little hot under the collar." "Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?" "Where does he get those wonderful toys?" And--as a woman-- my personal favorite occurs when he admires himself in the mirror and Palance's bimbo he's cheating with tells him, "You look fine, Jack." In response, Jack turns, gives her a dead stare and states, "I didn't ask."
Okay, but back to The Dark Knight:
Was anyone else as bothered as I was with the scene between Dent and The Joker in the hospital? It's almost as though something was left on the cutting room floor. Let's recap: they chat, there's a coin toss, and if I remember accurately, the next thing we see is The Joker using the hand sanitizer! Some of the editing was sloppy but that may have been to try and prevent the film from becoming even longer. Any other ideas?
However, this being said-- wow, those action scenes-- and the one in particular on the street with helicopters, trucks, SWAT teams, etc! So in-freaking-credible that it made me want to see the whole thing again... but this time in IMAX. Somebody fire up the Batmobile...
dent's purpose in TDK was as simple as flipping a coin. for joker's flip, it determined whether joker would live or not. win or lose, dent believed in 50/50. batman didn't. that's why, at the end, dent himself became the coin, falling to his death and landing bad-face up. batman turning him over to the good-face symbolizes his belief against anarchic justice, and his own resolve to return to his dark image for the sake of preserving dent's healthier legacy. to drag dent on would be too tiresome- in TDK he was merely joker's wildcard, and the coinflip between good and evil.
Great use of symbolism there, Jim!
I agree with the symbolism, but I don't think there was enough exploration of the character; I was hoping he'd be in the third film, especially because Eckhart nailed both sides of the role.
10/10, this movie is nearly perfect! The only thing is that it felt tooo short, even at 2 1/2 hours. So I agree with Colin in some respect. I think this really should've been 2 different movie allowing for more character development, ending where Rachel dies because they really didn't show Batman mourning and didn't express his sadness in the best way (to shorten runtime).
I agree with Jen, Heath's role was underwritten, so much so that I was left wanting more! But I don't agree with Jen's opinion about Nicholson being a better Joker, there is no comparison. They were playing 2 different characters, Nolan tried to do something different with the Joker, a darker more fiendishly evil character. But I liked Nolan's character better and if either of these actors had played it it would've been great (20 years ago for Nicholson :P).
That leave's the arc open for the next sequel, why exploiting two characters if you can use one an introduce the next on the line.
I wrote some things down at McDonalds but can't seem to find that napkin, I'll give you guys my thoughts tomorrow.
But how is anyone going to follow up Heath's joker? And how will they explain the change of character?
I didn't mind changing Rachel, Maggie is an immediate improvement from Katie, Katie was lame in the last one. But if they change Joker we will need an explanation! And they better have 2 face too, he wasn't badass enough, he has to become darker and more maniacal.