This entire post has light to heavy SPOILERS for The Dark Knight
I have to agree with Jynks on several points... batman's voice is terrible, it was laughable and people weren't taking it seriously, and he speaks a lot more in this one as batman than he did in begins which makes it lousy. He should really drop it because it so nearly ruins every scene he speaks in. I didn't mind as much for it to ruin it, but I did comment about it and got the same response from every else I saw it with which frankly, I didn't find suprising.
lol @ the dog attacks, awesome... I recall him repeatedly getting mauled before, was that in Miller's comic? I liked that.
Anyway, aside from the crap voice and the overly cheesey bits which are inevitable from a comic book movie, i really enjoyed the movie and I think it was a better movie than the first; although I've just seen it really recently and there's that fuzziness that you should also be aware of when a new film comes out (and that explains why its number 1 on imdb).
I do have some cirticism beyond the cheese, I really think the editing and story at the
beginning of the movie is weak; there's a real disassociation because of the introduction of several characters and the progress the film is making. However this settles, and I really enjoyed the twists and turns you get as the film goes on and on.
For the uninitiated or uninterested, they'll probably think its shit and you have to understand, if you don't get into the whole ethos and primal vigillante thing then you will not enjoy it. If you enjoy the basic hero/villian dance then this really was a big dance, one of the most successful comic book adaptations and a decent sequel. The quality of Begins and Dark Knight is clearly above Spider-Man and other lesser creations (which in itself is pretty much my feelings of the characters, Batman is the best comic book character/hero). Whilst you might think about Superman as a reversal of a superhero, Batman is the real character... no superpowers, just a guy with a shit load of money and an utter contempt for anyone who doesn't follow his moral code. Thus far this is the best adaptation of batman, its deeper, more angst and adrenaline and more 'believable' for all its cheese and ludicrous nature. Its the first on screen batman I could see pummelling the absolute crap out of superman in a fit of rage (everyone knows superman is a dick anyway!).
Whilst I think this film has become VASTLY overrated, I do think there is one aspect of it that hasn't... Heath Ledger's performance was in a method actor's dream role and he did not screw it up. Its a role where you can push a chracter to the limits, and thanks mostly to Nolan and Frank Miller, the Joker is a far, far more violent and menacing creation than was allowed to created in, say, Jack Nicholson's role... who was limited by Burton's world and style. Similarly Mark Hamill who plays the voice of joker in most animated adaptations, although more maniacal than nicholson, just doesn't have the room that ledger had to ham it up completely to the point of completely stealing the entire film. I mean that pen bit? How awesome was that!
Or the scene where he's left dangling with that great camera turn? Yes, great performance there, one that overshadowed everything in his path. Top stuff.
So the twists and turns were excellent, as long as you buy into the whole batman otherwise it will be a bit "Lord of the Rings wrap up" scene, the nods to miller and other bits of mythos were great, heath ledger was excellent, the style and vision is the best take so far (although I have to point out again the beginning of the film was a bit loose and sporradic), its a very solid movie and arguably another one of those sequels that are better than the original....
The plot was decent, it let the characters play out some good portrayals, all the other criminals were just fodder between the joker and batman... I loved the nods to Miller's batman copy cats, who were all psychos, ex-criminals and 'wannabe-heros'. The return of the scarecrow was good, he's clearly a nutjob now which shows how Batman broke him. The twists and turns i mentioned, but the story was much better than Batman, Returns, etc. and Begins which the whole ninja thing was a tad naff (but above normal comic book calibre).
I'm not sure if i agree about the Dawes thing, dinky; i thought she was highly annoying in this film, much, much worse than in the first and this was largely performance. She's a standard, 1-dimensional character; hell she wasn't even that, she was a vessel for introducing two face and the performance she put on was lousy for the amount of screentime she now had. Now in the first one you can easily get past scenes because the performance was forgettable and her role was small... in this one i thought the performance was piis poor and she was crap in, for example, the interrogation scene of the chinese fella. It was lame infact. I'm glad they killed her off, because as a device that is supposed to spark so many emotions, the performance brought out no qualities of the weak character that explains it. So I disagree, the performance was crap. (dinky, you don't have a thing for her or something do you?
Take it from someone who doesn't, she was pretty shit... maybe it was the character's fault more than the performance, I don't know. All i can say is i was cheering inside when she blew up (infact i smiled, but that was largely due to how funny i found the conversation )! )
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I was suprised that Harvey Dent revealed himself as a villain at the end of the movie, that was almost another film but played into the whole Joker insanity story
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I liked it, i'll be getting a 1080p copy (although not paying for it, thanks to bluray not the film!), I feel like I want more but at the same time I don't, as there was signs that the third would be more a Spider-man 3 debacle than a The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.... I'd air on the side of caution, although obviously Warner Bros will be trying to do everything they can to acquire a third.
One thing is for sure; the joker performance is unforgettable and now, untouchable... at least in the nolan adaptations.
Can't wait for Sin City 2 though, that's got to be something special to claim superiority
ps. did anyone else fell that the character that was going to reveal batman's identity got a weird amount of screen time and all seemed like a over stated affair? Seemed like the kind of over emphasis that would see his return to be tortured into revealing batman's identity in the third.
by dinky on Tue Jul 22, 2008 11:25 pm 
