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Normy and I saw it in IMAX. We both enjoyed it and I found it extremely intelligently made for a comic book film, but I didn't think it was the second coming that some of the more hyperbolic press has made it out to be.
MNM
__________________ MNM, coming to you live from Chateau Maine, high in the Hollywood Hills.
What people are probably saying: "Did you see Dark Knight yet? OMG it's this great new Batman film and it's all about him and the Joker and the characters are well-thought-out and the acting is terrific and it's such a shame Heath Ledger is dead..."
What I'm hearing: "Did you see Dark Knight yet? OMG it's this great new Batman whah whah whah wah waaaaaah wha whah wah..." (<-- the "Charlie Brown Teacher Sounds")
__________________ MJ
It's extraordinary to me that the United States can find $700 billion to save Wall Street and the entire G8 can't find $25 billion dollars to save 25,000 children who die every day from preventable diseases.~ Bono
The radio news stations around here continue to talk about how "dark" the movie & characters were. They bring up Ledger's death; Freeman's failed marriage and auto wreck; and the one actor that had assault charges for beating up his mom and sister.
Actually, Christian Bale didn't beat up his mom, he killed everybody who worked on the movie. For publicity. That's the way I heard it.
In any case, I thought it was quite well done. Ledger steals the film, an excellent portrayal of the Joker. It's tough for the other characters to keep up, but they do a good job trying. I thought it lost its way a bit during the boats scene by complicating things with the hostage crisis. Other than that, I thought it was well paced.
In any case, I thought it was quite well done. Ledger steals the film, an excellent portrayal of the Joker. It's tough for the other characters to keep up, but they do a good job trying. I thought it lost its way a bit during the boats scene by complicating things with the hostage crisis. Other than that, I thought it was well paced.
-JP
I agree somewhat. Personally I thought that they could just about have split the film into two movies. Really when that was the first thought that came to mind when leaving the film I guess my impression was that the pacing was off for me.
I *really* thought Ledger did a good job though.
I thought it was a shame that Ledger's character lived at the end while Two Face died given the fact that Ledger couldn't reprise his role. On the other hand, I really didn't get into the Two Face subplot.
As an oddball aside...
I was just checking out the Burton Batman film and noticed that Billy Dee Williams is credited as Harvey Dent in the film. I guess that they were perhaps working him up to be Two Face in later films but decided not to use him for whatever reason and just dropped that idea in favor of Tommy Lee Jones' oddball turn.
I caught a little bit of Burton's Batman on TV and I'd forgotten how much it sucked, but as a fan I tried to take what was good from it. I enjoyed the music.
I caught a little bit of Burton's Batman on TV and I'd forgotten how much it sucked, but as a fan I tried to take what was good from it. I enjoyed the music.
Ohhhhh... I don't know, I kinda enjoyed it to some degree. I liked the atmosphere reasonably well but Nicholson's Joker just didn't work for me at all. I think with the new one, that film really won't have aged well. Ledger's Joker was just superior. Really liked his edgy lunacy.
Really am a bit so so about the new one because of Christian Bale but did get the first new one on DVD when I had the chance (haven't actually watched it yet though and got it used in one of those 'you have to buy multiples' deals).
Ohhhhh... I don't know, I kinda enjoyed it to some degree.
I went back and looked at my rating of Batman on Netflix. Apparently, I gave it pretty high marks. 4 out of 5 stars. So I clearly liked something about it.
It had its own style; judged apart from the sequels it was stylish and fun. It's marred by its sequels and doesn't hold up in comparison to the new films, which isn't entirely fair, I guess.
I went back and looked at my rating of Batman on Netflix. Apparently, I gave it pretty high marks. 4 out of 5 stars. So I clearly liked something about it.
It had its own style; judged apart from the sequels it was stylish and fun. It's marred by its sequels and doesn't hold up in comparison to the new films, which isn't entirely fair, I guess.
-JP
See, there ya go. Like I said, I liked it to some degree personally. Decent atmosphere but Nicholson hammed it up incredibly.
The sequels... Well... Catwoman was hot, the rest of that film wasn't. (Catwoman the film was awful, awful, awful though) The third wasn't memorable and Batman and Robin totally sunk the series. I saw Batman and Robin on a date--she liked it, I didn't and things didn't go any further really. Nothing particularly argumentative--it just made me aware that we weren't coming from the same space.
Spoiler alert. For the whole dang post. Seriously.
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Considered completely without the sequels, as is only fair, Batman is a good, entertaining movie. Nickleson makes a good Joker.
Dark Knight, on the other hand, is an amazing, jarring, terrifying exploration of the consequences* of stepping sideways to the rules that bind a society together. Batman and the Joker both have chosen to circumvent the rules, and everything in the movie falls out as a consequence* to this. People die, people get hurt, people get pushed around and have their lives completely uprooted because two men have decided that their "vision" is more important than the needs of the many. Good people, bad people, indifferent people... nobody is safe from the consequences* of the decisions these two people make.
The central theme of the movie is "does Gotham NEED Batman?" The disturbing thing is that, while the movie celebrates Batman's vision, honor, integrity, commitment, passion, and toys, ultimately, the answer is "no." Gotham doesn't need Batman. This is what the story lines about the "prisoner's dilemma" on the boats, and the accountant who knows Batman's identity are there to show... that when backed against the wall by extraordinary circumstances, ordinary human beings are quite capable of extraordinary courage, love and kindness all by themselves. And Batman himself fails the test, twice... at the most critical moments. First, rather than choosing to save Dent, he chooses to save Rebbecca. Rebecca's a nice girl and all, but Harvey Dent is presented in the story as Gotham's best opportunity to redeem itself on its own terms. His second failure is abandoning Harvey emotionally on discovering that Rebbecca has in fact died and Harvey lives in her place. He succumbs to his own, understandable, grief at Rebecca's death, and allows Harvey to drive himself so insane that ultimately, death is the only end to Harvey's part of the story.
As to the question of why Harvey dies and the Joker doesn't... I can't answer that yet. I have ideas, theories, but I think I want to watch the movie again a couple more times before committing.
*Do you maybe notice I'm using the word CONSEQUENCES a lot? It's because the super hero genre, beginning as it did in a serial medium, has LONG been plagued by the complete and utter absence of consequences. Comics without projected and planned for ends end up deteriorating as quickly as sitcoms. Every time the status quo gets reset at the end of the story line, a little bit of credibility is lost. Do it too often, and there's nothing to tell a story about anymore. Fortunately, the people who really want to tell stories using the comic book (or "sequential art," if you want to be la-di-da about it), have figured this out. Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, J. Michael Straczynski... the masters have figured it out, and they're putting the product out there (hell, Straczynski's so good, he went and showed the people producing TV shows how to do it, and THEN he came to help clean up comics.)
Sequential fiction has its pitfalls. The superhero genre has its pitfalls. The medium and the genre are not intrinsically bad because there are some bad examples of how they have been used.
__________________ Axis of Evil (You know you want to join)
Emergency Backup Curmudgeon
"Wow, sometimes violence is the OPPOSITE of helpful" ~~ Pete Abrams
Not sure if you can double tag things but hey, since you wanted the tags here...
Quote:
eris esoteric said
Spoiler alert. For the whole dang post. Seriously.
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Considered completely without the sequels, as is only fair, Batman is a good, entertaining movie. Nickleson makes a good Joker.
Dark Knight, on the other hand, is an amazing, jarring, terrifying exploration of the consequences* of stepping sideways to the rules that bind a society together. Batman and the Joker both have chosen to circumvent the rules, and everything in the movie falls out as a consequence* to this. People die, people get hurt, people get pushed around and have their lives completely uprooted because two men have decided that their "vision" is more important than the needs of the many. Good people, bad people, indifferent people... nobody is safe from the consequences* of the decisions these two people make.
The central theme of the movie is "does Gotham NEED Batman?" The disturbing thing is that, while the movie celebrates Batman's vision, honor, integrity, commitment, passion, and toys, ultimately, the answer is "no." Gotham doesn't need Batman. This is what the story lines about the "prisoner's dilemma" on the boats, and the accountant who knows Batman's identity are there to show... that when backed against the wall by extraordinary circumstances, ordinary human beings are quite capable of extraordinary courage, love and kindness all by themselves. And Batman himself fails the test, twice... at the most critical moments. First, rather than choosing to save Dent, he chooses to save Rebbecca. Rebecca's a nice girl and all, but Harvey Dent is presented in the story as Gotham's best opportunity to redeem itself on its own terms. His second failure is abandoning Harvey emotionally on discovering that Rebbecca has in fact died and Harvey lives in her place. He succumbs to his own, understandable, grief at Rebecca's death, and allows Harvey to drive himself so insane that ultimately, death is the only end to Harvey's part of the story.
As to the question of why Harvey dies and the Joker doesn't... I can't answer that yet. I have ideas, theories, but I think I want to watch the movie again a couple more times before committing.
*Do you maybe notice I'm using the word CONSEQUENCES a lot? It's because the super hero genre, beginning as it did in a serial medium, has LONG been plagued by the complete and utter absence of consequences. Comics without projected and planned for ends end up deteriorating as quickly as sitcoms. Every time the status quo gets reset at the end of the story line, a little bit of credibility is lost. Do it too often, and there's nothing to tell a story about anymore. Fortunately, the people who really want to tell stories using the comic book (or "sequential art," if you want to be la-di-da about it), have figured this out. Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, J. Michael Straczynski... the masters have figured it out, and they're putting the product out there (hell, Straczynski's so good, he went and showed the people producing TV shows how to do it, and THEN he came to help clean up comics.)
Sequential fiction has its pitfalls. The superhero genre has its pitfalls. The medium and the genre are not intrinsically bad because there are some bad examples of how they have been used.
Awwwww, what the heck. I'll spoil this thing out too.
Actually it depends on which comics you read. If you are familiar with Spider-Man, in the very first story Spidey loses his Uncle Ben to the consequences of using his powers frivolously. Sure they did a takesies in the latest movie (but that was bs anyhow) but it all essentially started with consequences. In general Marvel has traditionally been better about that whole thing than DC and has been known to kill characters off sometimes. Note though that I'm not really considering the last thirteen years with this and probably a few years before that.
A big problem that I had with the new Batman film was that it didn't sell the romance/love portion of the story with me. I'm not blaming it on Maggie Gyllenhal but rather with the story itself. It felt (and played out) like Bruce/Batman was treating her more as an ideal than a real person and so it kinda clunked along for me.
Another problem I had was that I didn't really, seriously buy the idea that Harvey Dent was really, effectively cleaning up the city without Batman or that Batman was causing these things himself.
Another odd problem about the film was naming "Two Face". Why would Harvey's colleagues call him that? He seemed like a do-gooder and the term has pretty negative connotations...
If you take things seriously.... I'm fairly sure that the whole storyline was around during the Dark Knight period of the Batman comics. Never actually read them myself (wasn't interested in it at the time). Soooooooooo... It all happened in the storyline (albeit over a longer period).
On the other hand... The end of the film finds both Joker and Batman running free. The Joker though is much happier about the whole thing.
I know about spoiler tags, but I always feel silly using them to hide an entire post.
I agree that Marvel was better than DC about consequences for a while, but they have also fallen into the status quo spiral trap more than once. Again, if you're doing a work of serial fiction, and you don't have a beginning, middle and end plotted out at least in general from the get-go, you're going to run into problems in the long run. On the other hand, DC gets MAJOR huge points for its Vertigo imprint, which produced some of the best "sequential art stories" anyone's managed to put out yet.
I agree that the "Two Face" thing came completely out of the blue. On the other hand, I really think the movie was long enough. I really, really do. I mean, that was a LONG time for me to go without blinking.
And superhero comics are always going to have to deal with the concept of whether the hero creates the villain or vice versa. As far as Batman/no Batman... choosing not to dress up as a bat does not mean choosing to let Gotham burn itself down. It would be entirely within his means for Bruce Wayne to make a significant difference financially... but doing so would mean relying on others to do good. Bruce, in my observation, is at least a little bit of a control freak.
And I think that I agree with you about the relationship between Rebbecca and Bruce. I think that may be one of the many problems in the relationship that caused them to not be having a relationship at all. Which actually made the relationship work for me... because it's kind of a symptom of how Bruce deals with everything.
__________________ Axis of Evil (You know you want to join)
Emergency Backup Curmudgeon
"Wow, sometimes violence is the OPPOSITE of helpful" ~~ Pete Abrams
I know about spoiler tags, but I always feel silly using them to hide an entire post.
I agree that Marvel was better than DC about consequences for a while, but they have also fallen into the status quo spiral trap more than once. Again, if you're doing a work of serial fiction, and you don't have a beginning, middle and end plotted out at least in general from the get-go, you're going to run into problems in the long run. On the other hand, DC gets MAJOR huge points for its Vertigo imprint, which produced some of the best "sequential art stories" anyone's managed to put out yet.
I agree that the "Two Face" thing came completely out of the blue. On the other hand, I really think the movie was long enough. I really, really do. I mean, that was a LONG time for me to go without blinking.
And superhero comics are always going to have to deal with the concept of whether the hero creates the villain or vice versa. As far as Batman/no Batman... choosing not to dress up as a bat does not mean choosing to let Gotham burn itself down. It would be entirely within his means for Bruce Wayne to make a significant difference financially... but doing so would mean relying on others to do good. Bruce, in my observation, is at least a little bit of a control freak.
And I think that I agree with you about the relationship between Rebbecca and Bruce. I think that may be one of the many problems in the relationship that caused them to not be having a relationship at all. Which actually made the relationship work for me... because it's kind of a symptom of how Bruce deals with everything.
Heh I think that the spoiler tags are kinda cute though.
Like I said earlier, I think that the film almost could have been split into two and really that aspect kinda didn't work for me. It felt like the film needed to breathe sometimes or insert a beat here and there. Like when they showed the kids in the middle of the chase scene. I could see where the aside was intended to be funny but it didn't work because they had no preamble. Even the opening weird thing about people imitating Batman didn't really work so well for me. It seemed rather odd and slightly disjointed with them bringing back Scarecrow but making him a vigilante-type almost-good-guy.
I can understand the point about them meaning to make the relationship shallow and all but I didn't really buy her relationship with Harvey Dent either. I mean I can buy that one in concept but it was only sorta onscreen for a bit.
Also. Big, odd pet peeve.
When Joker threatens to do away with people, it seems obvious to me that Harvey would have been a primo target there so why go ahead with the ball? Or at least why not have active security beefed up? I mean a standard movie reason in this sort of thing would be that it was a policeman's ball so they didn't feel the need to do it but in this case, it wasn't.
I really never read Vertigo (or Marvel's equivilent to be honest--forget the name).
Like I said also, I pretty much quit comics around '95 when I ceased to be able to afford them and when they went to crap (or a bit after they did). Generally a lot of the smaller titles worked better for me and in a lot of those you really could control things better than you can in titles where you have to keep them going for years and years. Spidey was kinda going stale at the time (or a bit earlier--I'd really been brought up on the Marvel Tales versions of older Spidey comics) and other (Marvel) comics were going the route of big thing, big thing, big thing. I've had friends gush about new storylines lately but I've checked out the trade paperbacks of them and they didn't work for me. Really though, a lot of the turn off for me in some of the off title stuff was that the art seemed so *coughcoughsorrycough* esoteric and somewhat alien for me. I generally prefer the old style comic art to the weirdscape stuff and really can't see past the art to read the story if I can't dig the art. Bleh is OK but weird doesn't work for me.
I can get where you are coming from in that comics for the most part work best when digested into storyline form. For example, the Dark Knight storyline from which (I think) the film got its name/storyline from. When you aren't worried past a certain arc, you can get a bit less worried about the characters staying the same, etc.
Love Bab5 so can't argue about Stravinski. On the other hand, British shows have always (or... Well, no clue about the time since I'm no expert) been more concerned with
I agree somewhat. Personally I thought that they could just about have split the film into two movies. Really when that was the first thought that came to mind when leaving the film I guess my impression was that the pacing was off for me. 
You do know that you can wrap magical spoiler tags around things so people can't see them unless they click them, right?