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Author Topic: THE DARK KNIGHT.... and here we go.  (Read 55004 times)

Osprey

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Re: THE DARK KNIGHT.... and here we go.
« Reply #20 on: July 18, 2008, 09:39:17 PM »
As for the 3rd movie- what about basing it on The Dark Knight Returns?  It would be a good summing up story...

gateway

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Re: THE DARK KNIGHT.... and here we go.
« Reply #21 on: July 18, 2008, 10:26:35 PM »

I totally agree with your point about believability and I know it isn't a cool thing to invoke in a comic book movie but Nolan goes to such great lengths to ground the movie in the real world that when he does stuff like have an entire hospital rigged with explosives just when he needs it to be, I can't help but get jarred out of things. I spent alot of the movie thinking, "How would this character know that that character would think this and go there and do that at just the right time?" And for the record, I am not that guy that goes to movies and complains about stuff like "Well, that model car was not released yet in the time period that the movie is set in." or "That gun model can't have a silencer put on it." I am not a nitpicker but Nolan tries to have it both ways- he wants this level of realism plus the kind of shortcuts that push the conflict along in comic books and that stuff distracted me a bit.

My friends and I brought this up as an issue as we were leaving the movie. While we mostly just let it slide during the course of the film, at the end it really brings up a nagging question that we are very unlikely to see the answer to: if the Joker has managed to pull off such intricate feats as blowing up an entire hospital, assassinating the police commissioner and a high profile judge, and escaping from prison once ALREADY, won't he just break out of jail again after the movie is over? While we agreed that it would be out of character for Wayne to kill the Joker, we did think that since the villain feasibly can't return for the sequel (they would be insane to recast the role after Heath Ledger's masterful performance) they really should have killed off the character in some way, either with the Joker cutting the cord holding him and falling to his death, or an overzealous/vengeful SWAT member shooting him.
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CHW

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Re: THE DARK KNIGHT.... and here we go.
« Reply #22 on: July 19, 2008, 12:16:32 AM »
Oh, God, what a letdown.  I'm so disappointed I want to cry.  I'm not even being contrarian, I was really looking forward to this.

A capsule review I wrote:

Quote
The Dark Knight is a real mess. After opening with a thrilling introduction to the Joker, the film plunges headfirst into an incoherent jumble of characters, factions, and relationships without ever taking the time to explain what the hell is happening. For instance, the movie introduces us to Harvey Dent, a character whose trajectory largely becomes the focus of the film, but it never really establishes who he is and why he suddenly becomes so significant to the fate of Gotham City.

Then there's Ledger's Joker, whose performance is weird and entertainingly over-the-top, though he ends up being more of elemental entity than a believable, human character with real motivations and emotions. I don't know what kind of a role the Joker plays in the original comics, but here, he's a frustrating, unstoppable farce of nature, thanks to seemingly limitless resources and a pile of fortuitous plot developments. The rest of the cast doesn't make much of an impact, unfortunately – even Bale, who pretty much just acts smarmy when he's not growling under a cowl. In Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne undergoes a physical and psychological transformation from spoiled rich kid to caped crusader. Here, his progression amounts to acquiring a handful of new gadgets.

Not only does The Dark Knight's grim tone and brutal violence effectively dampen its sense of fun, the film is also surprisingly self-indulgent in its pretensions. Characters spend inordinate amounts of time pontificating about choice, heroism, chance, and other vague, abstract themes without really saying anything, and the film's climax is a ridiculous, contrived attempt to make a point about human nature. The film's action hasn't changed from the previous film – that's to say, it's still loud, choppy and unsatisfying – and watching an invincible hero demolish faceless goons is much less interesting the second time around. (TWO out of five)

arcnyc

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Re: THE DARK KNIGHT.... and here we go.
« Reply #23 on: July 19, 2008, 12:35:08 AM »
THIS is what action movies, not just superhero movies but ALL action films, should be.  Every last one.  Wouldn't change a thing.  The highs are so high that the very VERY few lows don't even register.  I pity anyone who looks at movies in such a way that they don't have a blast with it. 

5/5

Osprey

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Re: THE DARK KNIGHT.... and here we go.
« Reply #24 on: July 19, 2008, 12:50:45 AM »
From the movie, I'd say Harvey Dent is a crusading, pretty boy DA who is running roughshod over the mob, but isn't and hasn't ever been particularly well liked by his own side even as he turns the tide of crime in Gotham.  I thought Nolan handled Dent's character extremely well.  I liked the Two Face transformation as well, as Dent was clearly cracking earlier in the film, with the whole Russian Roulette interrogation scene. 

For the Joker, I think you just have to suspend your disbelief.  He is a force of nature.  I am glad Nolan did not feel the need to do the tired Joker origin story with the chemical plant yadda yaddda yadda like in the Burton Batman.  In fact, I'd say that was the point of the fake origin stories- the whole "why so serious" stories about his smile... it doesn't really matter, does it?


Oh, God, what a letdown.  I'm so disappointed I want to cry.  I'm not even being contrarian, I was really looking forward to this.

A capsule review I wrote:

Quote
The Dark Knight is a real mess. After opening with a thrilling introduction to the Joker, the film plunges headfirst into an incoherent jumble of characters, factions, and relationships without ever taking the time to explain what the hell is happening. For instance, the movie introduces us to Harvey Dent, a character whose trajectory largely becomes the focus of the film, but it never really establishes who he is and why he suddenly becomes so significant to the fate of Gotham City.

Then there's Ledger's Joker, whose performance is weird and entertainingly over-the-top, though he ends up being more of elemental entity than a believable, human character with real motivations and emotions. I don't know what kind of a role the Joker plays in the original comics, but here, he's a frustrating, unstoppable farce of nature, thanks to seemingly limitless resources and a pile of fortuitous plot developments. The rest of the cast doesn't make much of an impact, unfortunately – even Bale, who pretty much just acts smarmy when he's not growling under a cowl. In Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne undergoes a physical and psychological transformation from spoiled rich kid to caped crusader. Here, his progression amounts to acquiring a handful of new gadgets.

Not only does The Dark Knight's grim tone and brutal violence effectively dampen its sense of fun, the film is also surprisingly self-indulgent in its pretensions. Characters spend inordinate amounts of time pontificating about choice, heroism, chance, and other vague, abstract themes without really saying anything, and the film's climax is a ridiculous, contrived attempt to make a point about human nature. The film's action hasn't changed from the previous film – that's to say, it's still loud, choppy and unsatisfying – and watching an invincible hero demolish faceless goons is much less interesting the second time around. (TWO out of five)

philip918

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Re: THE DARK KNIGHT.... and here we go.
« Reply #25 on: July 19, 2008, 02:42:52 AM »
Oh, God, what a letdown.  I'm so disappointed I want to cry.  I'm not even being contrarian, I was really looking forward to this.

A capsule review I wrote:

Quote
The Dark Knight is a real mess. After opening with a thrilling introduction to the Joker, the film plunges headfirst into an incoherent jumble of characters, factions, and relationships without ever taking the time to explain what the hell is happening. For instance, the movie introduces us to Harvey Dent, a character whose trajectory largely becomes the focus of the film, but it never really establishes who he is and why he suddenly becomes so significant to the fate of Gotham City.

Then there's Ledger's Joker, whose performance is weird and entertainingly over-the-top, though he ends up being more of elemental entity than a believable, human character with real motivations and emotions. I don't know what kind of a role the Joker plays in the original comics, but here, he's a frustrating, unstoppable farce of nature, thanks to seemingly limitless resources and a pile of fortuitous plot developments. The rest of the cast doesn't make much of an impact, unfortunately – even Bale, who pretty much just acts smarmy when he's not growling under a cowl. In Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne undergoes a physical and psychological transformation from spoiled rich kid to caped crusader. Here, his progression amounts to acquiring a handful of new gadgets.

Not only does The Dark Knight's grim tone and brutal violence effectively dampen its sense of fun, the film is also surprisingly self-indulgent in its pretensions. Characters spend inordinate amounts of time pontificating about choice, heroism, chance, and other vague, abstract themes without really saying anything, and the film's climax is a ridiculous, contrived attempt to make a point about human nature. The film's action hasn't changed from the previous film – that's to say, it's still loud, choppy and unsatisfying – and watching an invincible hero demolish faceless goons is much less interesting the second time around. (TWO out of five)

It this movie is "still loud, choppy and unsatisfying" why are you "so disappointed you want to cry"?  Sounds like you didn't like the first one at all so why would you have such high hopes for this one?

What do you consider this film's self-indulgent pretensions?  Just the pontificating? (which amounted to maybe four or five minutes of the film's two and a half hours, so I guess "inordinate amount of time" is subjective).  Personally, I thought the film did a fine job of laying out its themes and then letting the action develop them.

I've been posting on these boards for almost two years and still think arguing over movies is pretty silly, but I think you simply missed the externalization of Wayne's/Batman's inner struggles.  This film is about the consequences Batman's existence has on society and his struggle to deal with the sacrifices other people will have to make because of his actions.

I thought this was a vast improvement over Batman Begins, which I thought was half excellent and half poorly-executed action film pandering.

Think_Long

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Re: THE DARK KNIGHT.... and here we go.
« Reply #26 on: July 19, 2008, 12:49:00 PM »

Not only does The Dark Knight's grim tone and brutal violence effectively dampen its sense of fun,

uhhh, did you see batman begins?

sdedalus

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Re: THE DARK KNIGHT.... and here we go.
« Reply #27 on: July 19, 2008, 05:32:22 PM »
Dave Kehr has questions:

Quote
“The reactionary . . . is likely to start from a profound conviction of the evil of the natural man.  Instead of worrying because people do not get enough freedom, he is obsessed by the need for police — authority, discipline, order.  How else can you keep the Devil under control?”

Edmund Wilson on Joseph de Maistre, 1932

“The Dark Knight” is “Dirty Harry” stripped of Don Siegel’s ambivalence and ambiguity.  Here again, one madman (Christian Bale’s Batman/Clint Eastwood’s Harry) is posited as the only effective way of combating another (Heath Ledger’s Joker/Andy Robinson’s Scorpio).  The two figures are identified as morally equivalent (”You complete me,” says Ledger to Bale, nastily referencing the late actor’s most popular role, as the romantic cowboy of “Brokeback Mountain”), but where Siegel’s camera literally recoils in horror at the moment Harry leaps into madness (when he steps on Scorpio’s wound in the football stadium), Nolan seems to embrace, and even romanticize, his hero’s obsessive, abusive behavior.  Is the Dark Knight just George Bush with a better outfit, demanding that he be allowed all of the available “tools” to combat terrorism, even if they include torture and eavesdropping?   Like Bush, Batman has his own warantless wiretapping program, but Nolan is kind enough to assure us that, once his goal is accomplished, the superhero will blow it up.  Is he suggesting that we can count on the Dark President to do the same?
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Osprey

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Re: THE DARK KNIGHT.... and here we go.
« Reply #28 on: July 19, 2008, 05:55:49 PM »
He doesn't really tackle the issue of why the Batman won't kill the Joker.
... and then kills Two Face.  Things that make you go hmmmm....
Dave Kehr has questions:

Quote
“The reactionary . . . is likely to start from a profound conviction of the evil of the natural man.  Instead of worrying because people do not get enough freedom, he is obsessed by the need for police — authority, discipline, order.  How else can you keep the Devil under control?”

Edmund Wilson on Joseph de Maistre, 1932

“The Dark Knight” is “Dirty Harry” stripped of Don Siegel’s ambivalence and ambiguity.  Here again, one madman (Christian Bale’s Batman/Clint Eastwood’s Harry) is posited as the only effective way of combating another (Heath Ledger’s Joker/Andy Robinson’s Scorpio).  The two figures are identified as morally equivalent (”You complete me,” says Ledger to Bale, nastily referencing the late actor’s most popular role, as the romantic cowboy of “Brokeback Mountain”), but where Siegel’s camera literally recoils in horror at the moment Harry leaps into madness (when he steps on Scorpio’s wound in the football stadium), Nolan seems to embrace, and even romanticize, his hero’s obsessive, abusive behavior.  Is the Dark Knight just George Bush with a better outfit, demanding that he be allowed all of the available “tools” to combat terrorism, even if they include torture and eavesdropping?   Like Bush, Batman has his own warantless wiretapping program, but Nolan is kind enough to assure us that, once his goal is accomplished, the superhero will blow it up.  Is he suggesting that we can count on the Dark President to do the same?

sdedalus

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Re: THE DARK KNIGHT.... and here we go.
« Reply #29 on: July 19, 2008, 06:16:57 PM »
Keith Uhlich has answers, but not the ones most people want to hear.  He makes a compelling case against the film.  Though I don't think I agree with him, I do believe a lot of air needs to be taken out of the hype.
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