The Dark Knight (and the Watchmen trailer)
I've taken a week and a half now to digest this movie, to try and separate the hype and the anticipation from the substance. I've seen it twice now, once at the Art and once at an IMAX theatre up in Chicago, and I feel like I've been able to take a step back and judge the film on its merits.
I suspect most people are not going to be surprised to hear that I liked the movie (and so does every other critic, it seems, from the film's 95% score at rottentomatoes), but there's a lot more to this than simply a popcorn flick. It is a seriously dark and emotionally complicated film, and it is significantly elevated even over its predecessor, which was an excellent film in its own right. It's definitely the best movie I've seen this year, probably in several years.
Before I get into that too much though, a few words about the Watchmen trailer. I got to see this on the IMAX screen last night, and now I'm really excited about seeing this next year. A bit late to the party, I read the graphic novel for the first time a couple years ago, and while it wasn't quite so earthshattering twenty years after the original release, it was just as good as people claimed. And now, from everything I've seen, from the production stills to the trailer, I'm considerably less worried about the movie not standing up to the graphic novel. The movie uses a much more modernized aesthetic (Ozymandias, for instance, does not have his bright purple and gold costume), but I don't see that being as much of a problem; audiences today expect those things from a "modern" superhero, despite the fact that the movie still takes place in 1985. The original Minutemen, however, still have the look they had before, as you can see from this photo. The trailer, to me, managed to capture the dark, doomed tone of the novel, and if the movie can do the same, and back it up with good performances, I'll be very happy, so long as they keep the storyline at least mostly intact.
Back to The Dark Knight. This is definitely a movie that needs to be seen as free of preconceptions and spoilers as possible; I noticed a distinct change in my reactions to many of the movie's twists and turns on a second viewing, just because I knew what to expect. I'll discuss exactly what those are behind the cut, but there's plenty more to say before we get to that point.
I don't think there's any part of this movie that isn't expertly done. The sets and cinematography are amazing, with great detail -- not quite Blade Runner levels (someone I know mentioned the fact that they can't seem to decided if the police are "GPD" or "GCPD", both of which appear many times in different places), but there are a lot of other things you can catch; I noticed last night that there are a lot of Gotham-specific things on Harvey Dent's desk in one scene, including a Gotham phone book, for instance. The action scenes drop you into the middle of things in a visceral way (especially in IMAX), and it seemed like the shakycam Greengrass-style shooting of the fight scenes had been dialed back considerably, making it much easier to follow the action.
But even that doesn't stand up to the true strength of this movie, which is the writing and acting. While Heath Ledger's performance is every bit as good as it has been hyped to be, the frightening portrayal of his Joker owes as much to the excellent script as it does to his acting. This is not the Joker that Jack Nicholson portrayed -- that Joker was kuh-raaaaazy! and goofy, and it's probably fair to say that a lot of it was just Nicholson playing Nicholson. While his performance was appropriate to the Burton-aesthetic of the 1989 Batman, it wouldn't have fit with the style set up by Batman Begins.
Ledger's Joker is not goofy...he is fucking insane. His "jokes" are twisted and sadistic, his motivations are far deeper than simple amusement, and he is utterly frightening, one thing that I think was deeply lacking from Nicholson's portrayal. He has a few moments of levity (the "magic trick" he does early on brought out some nervous laughter, though it made a lot more people squirm), but for the most part, the only one that finds his antics funny is himself. He also does a great laugh that seems to be a more sinister version of Mark Hamill's voice acting.
The only problem with Ledger's portrayal is that it overshadows some other performances that are worthy of note. While Christian Bale does a good job, as do the other returning actors from the first movie (plus Maggie Gyllenhaal), but really, Aaron Eckhart's Harvey Dent is also worthy of special praise. I won't go into it too much, since it will go a bit too close to spoiler territory, but he does an admirable job with Dent's descent into Two-Face and brings across the change from one to the other.
One note on Bale's "Batman voice" -- I know a lot of people give him crap over this, but I don't think it is as bad as they claim. I think Michael Keaton did it a bit better, but Bale doesn't do too bad when his lines are kept to short sentences rather than long soliloquies, something that this movie failed on a bit. Of course, the person who has done this better than all of them is Kevin Conroy -- but then, it perhaps shouldn't be surprising that a trained voice actor manages to convey the difference between Batman and Bruce Wayne (sorry, couldn't find a good example) the best.
For me, the biggest measure of how different this movie was from all the other movies I've seen this summer, and even how different it was from its predecessor, was how emotionally wrecked I felt when I left the theatre the first time I saw it. It was blunted the second time, but I still felt like someone had punched me in the gut at the end, and I remember squeezing Marc's hand pretty hard. This is not a "fun" movie, like Iron Man; it is extremely dark and it will push you around emotionally if you let it. I compared the experience to that of something like The Godfather or Platoon; leaving aside whether it is as good a film as those for a moment, I think that kind of experience is most like what I took out of The Dark Knight. There are very few moments of levity, even less so than in Batman Begins; I can probably count them all on the fingers of one hand.
To cut a long story short (too late!), this is an excellent movie; I have to concur with Todd Alcott's assessment that it elevates itself from a "good superhero movie" to simply "a good film" in the same way that The Godfather elevated itself above preconceptions of gangster movies at the time. It is well worth seeing, especially if you can see it on an IMAX screen. You won't regret it.
For more specific comments, read on...
I suspect most people are not going to be surprised to hear that I liked the movie (and so does every other critic, it seems, from the film's 95% score at rottentomatoes), but there's a lot more to this than simply a popcorn flick. It is a seriously dark and emotionally complicated film, and it is significantly elevated even over its predecessor, which was an excellent film in its own right. It's definitely the best movie I've seen this year, probably in several years.
Before I get into that too much though, a few words about the Watchmen trailer. I got to see this on the IMAX screen last night, and now I'm really excited about seeing this next year. A bit late to the party, I read the graphic novel for the first time a couple years ago, and while it wasn't quite so earthshattering twenty years after the original release, it was just as good as people claimed. And now, from everything I've seen, from the production stills to the trailer, I'm considerably less worried about the movie not standing up to the graphic novel. The movie uses a much more modernized aesthetic (Ozymandias, for instance, does not have his bright purple and gold costume), but I don't see that being as much of a problem; audiences today expect those things from a "modern" superhero, despite the fact that the movie still takes place in 1985. The original Minutemen, however, still have the look they had before, as you can see from this photo. The trailer, to me, managed to capture the dark, doomed tone of the novel, and if the movie can do the same, and back it up with good performances, I'll be very happy, so long as they keep the storyline at least mostly intact.
Back to The Dark Knight. This is definitely a movie that needs to be seen as free of preconceptions and spoilers as possible; I noticed a distinct change in my reactions to many of the movie's twists and turns on a second viewing, just because I knew what to expect. I'll discuss exactly what those are behind the cut, but there's plenty more to say before we get to that point.
I don't think there's any part of this movie that isn't expertly done. The sets and cinematography are amazing, with great detail -- not quite Blade Runner levels (someone I know mentioned the fact that they can't seem to decided if the police are "GPD" or "GCPD", both of which appear many times in different places), but there are a lot of other things you can catch; I noticed last night that there are a lot of Gotham-specific things on Harvey Dent's desk in one scene, including a Gotham phone book, for instance. The action scenes drop you into the middle of things in a visceral way (especially in IMAX), and it seemed like the shakycam Greengrass-style shooting of the fight scenes had been dialed back considerably, making it much easier to follow the action.
But even that doesn't stand up to the true strength of this movie, which is the writing and acting. While Heath Ledger's performance is every bit as good as it has been hyped to be, the frightening portrayal of his Joker owes as much to the excellent script as it does to his acting. This is not the Joker that Jack Nicholson portrayed -- that Joker was kuh-raaaaazy! and goofy, and it's probably fair to say that a lot of it was just Nicholson playing Nicholson. While his performance was appropriate to the Burton-aesthetic of the 1989 Batman, it wouldn't have fit with the style set up by Batman Begins.
Ledger's Joker is not goofy...he is fucking insane. His "jokes" are twisted and sadistic, his motivations are far deeper than simple amusement, and he is utterly frightening, one thing that I think was deeply lacking from Nicholson's portrayal. He has a few moments of levity (the "magic trick" he does early on brought out some nervous laughter, though it made a lot more people squirm), but for the most part, the only one that finds his antics funny is himself. He also does a great laugh that seems to be a more sinister version of Mark Hamill's voice acting.
The only problem with Ledger's portrayal is that it overshadows some other performances that are worthy of note. While Christian Bale does a good job, as do the other returning actors from the first movie (plus Maggie Gyllenhaal), but really, Aaron Eckhart's Harvey Dent is also worthy of special praise. I won't go into it too much, since it will go a bit too close to spoiler territory, but he does an admirable job with Dent's descent into Two-Face and brings across the change from one to the other.
One note on Bale's "Batman voice" -- I know a lot of people give him crap over this, but I don't think it is as bad as they claim. I think Michael Keaton did it a bit better, but Bale doesn't do too bad when his lines are kept to short sentences rather than long soliloquies, something that this movie failed on a bit. Of course, the person who has done this better than all of them is Kevin Conroy -- but then, it perhaps shouldn't be surprising that a trained voice actor manages to convey the difference between Batman and Bruce Wayne (sorry, couldn't find a good example) the best.
For me, the biggest measure of how different this movie was from all the other movies I've seen this summer, and even how different it was from its predecessor, was how emotionally wrecked I felt when I left the theatre the first time I saw it. It was blunted the second time, but I still felt like someone had punched me in the gut at the end, and I remember squeezing Marc's hand pretty hard. This is not a "fun" movie, like Iron Man; it is extremely dark and it will push you around emotionally if you let it. I compared the experience to that of something like The Godfather or Platoon; leaving aside whether it is as good a film as those for a moment, I think that kind of experience is most like what I took out of The Dark Knight. There are very few moments of levity, even less so than in Batman Begins; I can probably count them all on the fingers of one hand.
To cut a long story short (too late!), this is an excellent movie; I have to concur with Todd Alcott's assessment that it elevates itself from a "good superhero movie" to simply "a good film" in the same way that The Godfather elevated itself above preconceptions of gangster movies at the time. It is well worth seeing, especially if you can see it on an IMAX screen. You won't regret it.
For more specific comments, read on...
Perhaps the biggest compliment I can pay The Dark Knight is that it totally sucked me in and made me believe that people you might think had plot immunity do not. When the Joker and his men attempt to assassinate the mayor of Gotham (played by Batmanuel himself, Nestor Carbonell, in a bit of amusing casting) and Jim Gordon is "killed," I caught myself believing he was dead, even though I kept telling myself "there's no way they killed him off -- he has to become commissioner, right?" In a way, this only made Rachel's death all the more poignant, yanking the floor out from under you again. You feel like the characters are actually in danger, rather than just acting like they are in danger.
Ledger's performance as Joker only heightens this sense of danger; the Joker is not a criminal, he is a terrorist -- he does not want what normal criminals want; money, power, or even to make people afraid of him. He wants to, as Caine's Alfred says, "watch the world burn." The first time I saw the ferry scene, I thought the Joker had given each boat the detonator to their own bomb, simply to prove a point, or because the irony would be hilarious, but for this version of the Joker, that's entirely the wrong way to think about it. He's thinking bigger -- he wants people to think that abandoning rules, abandoning any sense of right or wrong will save them; he wants to make people in his own image. He just wants them all to be as crazy as he is, which is why he goes after Harvey Dent so hard, and why he's so disappointed when they don't end up blowing each other to kingdom come (the confrontation between the prisoner and the warden on the ferry deserves special mention -- I found it to be superbly done). As I saw someone mention elsewhere, this version of the Joker is almost a political terrorist; a (even more) twisted version of V, perhaps.
Much of this is dragged out in some expository dialogue at the end; I don't think it's as bad as Chesnut claims, but it is a little cumbersome. It's almost like the filmmakers just thought that the audience wouldn't pick up on it. When I saw it the second time though, and paid a bit more attention, I really don't think it's that bad, especially when it is Gordon delivering the lines instead of Batman himself, and I think any excuse to give Gary Oldman more lines is a good one.
Some people have expressed some doubt at the Joker's prescience, but I have to agree with the people on RPGnet who pointed out that he isn't clairvoyant so much as someone that thinks about contingencies, or merely assumes that his enemies are competent. He doesn't set up the final showdown in the Pruitt Building (which appears to be the half-completed Trump Tower) because he knows the Batman has some sort of superspecial sonar system that can find him anywhere in the city; he merely assumes that Batman is going to find him eventually, somehow, and works around that. His claim to Dent that he doesn't plan probably isn't quite honest (but then, the Joker is hardly a reliable narrator) -- he may not have a plan, or an end goal, but he certainly thinks ahead.
I was also surprised that Harvey dies at the end (at least presumably) and I was also surprised that Two-Face was in the movie as much as he was, without making the movie feel like it was trying to squeeze too much into the same film (though I admit it is long -- I had to take a pee break both times). However, I don't feel like he was shortchanged; as Mike says in his review, the Two-Face arc seems to be played out well, and keeps its emotional resonance (and with his face like that, I doubt he would have survived much longer anyway). As I said in the spoiler-free review, Aaron Eckhart does a wonderful job with him, and if there's anything I'm disappointed by, it's the fact that he won't be in any sequel.
All right, I think that's most of what I wanted to discuss -- this is probably too late already anyway, but once again, if you haven't seen this movie, do so. It is well worth the money to see it on the big screen (or in IMAX if you can).
Ledger's performance as Joker only heightens this sense of danger; the Joker is not a criminal, he is a terrorist -- he does not want what normal criminals want; money, power, or even to make people afraid of him. He wants to, as Caine's Alfred says, "watch the world burn." The first time I saw the ferry scene, I thought the Joker had given each boat the detonator to their own bomb, simply to prove a point, or because the irony would be hilarious, but for this version of the Joker, that's entirely the wrong way to think about it. He's thinking bigger -- he wants people to think that abandoning rules, abandoning any sense of right or wrong will save them; he wants to make people in his own image. He just wants them all to be as crazy as he is, which is why he goes after Harvey Dent so hard, and why he's so disappointed when they don't end up blowing each other to kingdom come (the confrontation between the prisoner and the warden on the ferry deserves special mention -- I found it to be superbly done). As I saw someone mention elsewhere, this version of the Joker is almost a political terrorist; a (even more) twisted version of V, perhaps.
Much of this is dragged out in some expository dialogue at the end; I don't think it's as bad as Chesnut claims, but it is a little cumbersome. It's almost like the filmmakers just thought that the audience wouldn't pick up on it. When I saw it the second time though, and paid a bit more attention, I really don't think it's that bad, especially when it is Gordon delivering the lines instead of Batman himself, and I think any excuse to give Gary Oldman more lines is a good one.
Some people have expressed some doubt at the Joker's prescience, but I have to agree with the people on RPGnet who pointed out that he isn't clairvoyant so much as someone that thinks about contingencies, or merely assumes that his enemies are competent. He doesn't set up the final showdown in the Pruitt Building (which appears to be the half-completed Trump Tower) because he knows the Batman has some sort of superspecial sonar system that can find him anywhere in the city; he merely assumes that Batman is going to find him eventually, somehow, and works around that. His claim to Dent that he doesn't plan probably isn't quite honest (but then, the Joker is hardly a reliable narrator) -- he may not have a plan, or an end goal, but he certainly thinks ahead.
I was also surprised that Harvey dies at the end (at least presumably) and I was also surprised that Two-Face was in the movie as much as he was, without making the movie feel like it was trying to squeeze too much into the same film (though I admit it is long -- I had to take a pee break both times). However, I don't feel like he was shortchanged; as Mike says in his review, the Two-Face arc seems to be played out well, and keeps its emotional resonance (and with his face like that, I doubt he would have survived much longer anyway). As I said in the spoiler-free review, Aaron Eckhart does a wonderful job with him, and if there's anything I'm disappointed by, it's the fact that he won't be in any sequel.
All right, I think that's most of what I wanted to discuss -- this is probably too late already anyway, but once again, if you haven't seen this movie, do so. It is well worth the money to see it on the big screen (or in IMAX if you can).
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I do find it very fascinating how they chose to kill off Two-Face (which, I believe, we both agree was an appropriate choice for this movie), but left the Joker alive. I remember reading that there was some re-editing done after Ledger's death, not unlike what was done with the original Spider-man movie after the WTC towers fell. It's surprising to me that they didn't shoot a double falling from the Pruitt building or something, though—but maybe that would've been too similar to the 1989 Joker's death in their minds.
I think the bigger reason they let the Joker live while killing Dent off is because if Batman had killed him (or let him die, as he did with Ra's Al Ghul), it would have proven the Joker right, that he was just as bad as the Joker was -- remember, when Batman hauls him back up after tossing him over, the Joker is disappointed. I don't think the death of Nicholson's Joker came into it.
I'll point out that this was the whole point of Gordon's narration at the end, and maybe you did need to listen to that if you didn't pick up on it. :)
While I was doing a lot of groaning during Gordon's speech, it wasn't so loud that I didn't hear what he was saying... I didn't say they should have had Batman kill him or let him die; there are many other ways it could've been handled. The simplest of which would be to just have the cable that he was suspended by snap after Batman has left, and thus no longer has any control over the situation one way or another.
Mostly what I was referring to with the Joker remaining alive, though, is the fact that they won't be able to have Ledger portray him again, obviously. It seems that the Rachel Dawes situation is a pretty good indicator that they're not worried about that, though (although I did think they resolved that particular issue in a clever way going forward—if you kill her off, you won't have to worry about getting the same actress to come back again!).
Oh, I do agree that the Joker wanted Batman to kill him (or let him die); to him, making a point about Batman breaking his own rules comes above self-preservation, for sure. That was made pretty clear.
Regarding the Nicholson thing, I just meant that they probably didn't want to do another shot of the Joker falling to his death off of a building. If they wanted to kill him, they would've done it differently. But since they left him hanging from a building, and then would've had to work their way out of it after Ledger's death, they might've been in somewhat of a bind had they wanted to explore this option.
Another thing they showed us with this movie, of course, is that they don't mind just ignoring previous villains while acknowledging that they're still around. It seems like the Joker well is too plentiful to not be dipped into again in the future, though. It'll be interesting to see how they handle it. I guess the simplest solution is just to have another actor play him, which is what they'll probably end up doing.
If they had just let the Joker die like that, though, it would have been a complete cop out -- the message would have been "don't worry, the bad guy always gets what's coming to him anyway, so we don't have to make any difficult choices." I think doing that would have weakened the movie immeasurably, to the point of structural failure. Leaving the Joker alive keeps the message that we are better people, for all our flaws, because of our rules and limitations.
As to whether they will bring back the Joker in the future; I don't know. It will be hard to do that. As much as the Joker in TDK is the writing, Ledger did so much to make that performance come alive that it will be hard to find anyone to take his place (perhaps they can get the other Gyllenhaal to do it :)). I think it may be better to have him stew in Arkham for a few years; Nolan has been on record as saying he is not interested in doing any of the big Batman villains in the next movie, like the Riddler, so I suspect it's a moot point anyway.
You make a good point about Arkham—it's an awfully convenient device for when they want to stash a character away indeterminately while they focus on other villains. Simultaneously, it also provides a pretty easy cop out of any story they don't want to resolve definitively. I suppose this is how comic books series manage to go on as long as they do. :)