Holy frijole, Batman!
First things first. I have not written a film review since Phil and I were in Grade 11 English class, tasked with reviewing “The Negotiator”. I got a decent mark on that one, so I feel at least somewhat justified in posting my opinions online.
Second, I felt The Dark Knight was a solid flick.
The Batman purists may not like specific things because they aren’t canon. Not being a Batman reader, I wouldn’t know what they are, but I think Harvey Dent was scarred in a somewhat different way than what plays out in the film. That’s probably the biggest one. If you’re a purist, let me know anything else I’ve missed.
In addition, there’s going to be some blowback from those who practically had a wet dream whilst watching Batman Begins. Phil makes the comment “In typical sequel fashion: it is less cool.” In my opinion, it’s not so much that The Dark Knight is necessarily a less cool film (in my opinion, it’s better), but it suffers from being over-hyped, and must bear the weight of expectation. People expected this movie to kick so much ass, and it was always going to be hard to live up to this standard.
My perception of Begins is simple. Way too slow, but with lots of cool stuff sprinkled through. Dark Knight benefits as did X-Men 2 – it got the back-story out of the way in the first movie, freeing it up for more action, which does not disappoint. The truck flipping over special effect, and the assault on Dent’s armored transport spring to mind immediately. I also got a kick out of Bale’s gravelly Batman voice, and Batman zooming around on the Batpod with his cape billowing out behind him. Call me old-fashioned, but I love all that cornball / cartoony stuff. After all, this is a movie based on a superhero comic, let’s not take ourselves too seriously. And on that note, there’s also a bit of humour about this movie, which doesn’t go astray.
There’s been a bit of bashing of Bale in terms of his performance of Bruce Wayne / Batman, but to be honest I can’t get where they are coming from. I think it could have something to do with the reviewers feeling the need to downplay Bale’s performance in order to talk up Ledger’s. I’ll take a stand and say I thought Bale did a good job.
Eckhart as Harvey Dent was also cool. I’d never really heard of him (Eckhart) before, but he did justice to the role. I believed his descent into Two-Face, and for a character that I thought I’d be bored watching (due to the over-hype about the character, and the fact he was playing the part of romantic foil) I was pleasantly surprised. Maggie Gyllenhaal was also a refreshing change from her rather wooden predecessor. Plus, she’s cute to boot!
Ledger deserves his praise. Whether it’ll be enough to win that posthumous Oscar, I don’t know, but history would not favour his chances. How friggin’ cool would it be though to see an Oscar go to someone from an action movie though! To get back to the Joker though, he stole the show, and the audience really responded to him. He was funny and scary, and you can almost tell he lived alone in a hotel room for a month perfecting the voice and mannerisms of the Clown Prince Of Crime. So yeah, Heath did a good job. The last thing I’ll say, the magic trick (with the pencil) was both cool and shocking.
Dark Knight is an awesome movie (up to three quarters of the way through), and I’d be saying that it’s damn near perfect up until that point. The story was great, and drove itself along well, with some nice twists. However, I have one major problem with this movie. The final act. I get annoyed with anti-climax, and that’s what I got out of Dark Knight. The movie should have ended with the Joker, but instead we veer off to follow Harvey Two-Face in a tacked-on afterthought plot, which doesn’t fit well with the flow of the story. They could’ve explored this plot in a whole other movie, and going into the movie, this was what I thought would be the case. But this was not to be.
Also a bit anti-climactical was Batman’s final battle with Joker. Seriously, it’s just a few punches long. And with Two-Face, it doesn’t get any better. As a superhero movie, it should’ve ended with at least one good fight.
So yeah, a near perfect movie with a petering-out ending. However, I’ll be very much looking forward to a three-quel. I don’t like this idea of not using any other villains that’ve been in past Batman movies though. I’d be itching to see what Nolan could do with Penguin, Catwoman, or Bane in a future instalment.
