An excellent piece of filmmaking.
PART I - The Review of the Film in Imax by Joe Viglione
For those of us who have longed for a comic book character to get just treatment when committed to celluloid (or a reasonable celluloid facsimile), it was becoming more and more obvious that "The Dark Knight" was going to be the film to bring integrity to the genre. A "super hero" movie that would transcend the niche the world has created for that species of film.
Not that "Batman Begins" didn't have that integrity. It did. The problem with iconic heroes having their "origin" thrown in our collective faces time and again is that those "re-boots" get bogged down with so much overtold baggage that the central plot is allowed to get lost in the shuffle . The Dark Knight doesn't insult our intelligence, and as Bride Of Frankenstein became an essential and timeless complement to Boris Karloff's classic debut as the monster, this "sequel" does more than expand the scope of the earlier film. The Dark Knight truly makes "Batman Begins" the prequel to the real deal.
IMAX
The Imax experience is absolutely terrific. For non-Batman fans one must feel the rumble of the amplification in the seats, the viewer is now in another world and that is the main function of a motion picture - it is our own personal time travel chamber.
On this level The Dark Knight bats 100% and the viewer is URGED to go to the
IMAX for a simply stunning look at buildings and people and settings - it is incomparable and essential. Dark Knight delivers with a good script, superb acting and lots of special effects over two and a half hours.
The Imax imagery is simply stunning beyond words. Let's forget for the moment the content of the film - lets just look at the imagery - director Christopher Nolan didn't get carried away or lost in the effects the way George Lucas forgot about plot and character in the three latter-day Star Wars movies. Nolan integrates the high spectacle with solid performances from Aaron Eckhart, Christian Bale and even Michael Caine.
The late Alan Napier did a fine job of playing Alfred Pennyworth, the butler, as did Michael Gough in the four 1980s/1990s movies, though born in 1913 he is about
95 years old as of this writing. Napier and Gough were both unknown enough to allow the character to bring them into his world. Caine, on the other hand, is so famous that it takes an exquisite job of acting for his own identification to cloud and wrongly colour the part. He doesn't. Aging gracefully Michael Caine is not Alfie, he is Alfred, a very fine Alfred.
THE DILEMMA OF MICHAEL CAINE
To expand just a bit more on the above study, Caine's dilemma is that which follows Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and especially Jack Nicholson - that their personas are larger than life, that their parts can't help but be them. Heath Ledger, on the other hand, is a marvelous chameleon able to morph from Ennis Del Mar, that rugged cowboy with a twang in his voice on Brokeback Mountain , to a very mysterious "Joker" with a style all his own. This Joker is much like the violent psycho in the comic book that killed Robin, the show-no-mercy murdering thug who takes glee in punishing and exacting pain on his victims. To use a famous musical metaphor, if Lou Reed's Transformer album was Lou Reed playing David Bowie playing Lou Reed, the original copying the copy for more exposure, Jack Nicholson was The Joker playing Jack Nicholson playing Jack Nicholson. There was no way to escape the ghoulish cartoon parody of the Batman franchise that director Timothy Burton haphazardly slapped on the iconic character, breathing his enormous ego into this important franchise and sticking the inevitable "origin" back into the mix. Cesar Romero wanted to play the Joker and Adam West wanted to play Batman. Had the original cast been resurrected for a very serious Batman, something along the lines of The Dark Night, we would not have had to suffer through Val Kilmer, George Clooney and perhaps the 5th worst role for Arnold Schwarzenegger. Batman vs The Terminator would have had more appeal than Arnold's awkward Mr. Freeze.
The simplicity of just bringing the comic book to the big screen by taking the best elements of the literary version was just too much for Hollywood in 1966 and in 1989.
It's a shame that Hollywood is so clueless as to let this franchise flounder for six and a half decades, dating back to the 1940s serials. Had there been a bit more respect for the Batman, serious films tracked over the last century could have built a terrific library of great historical importance. Ah, in a perfect world. The Dark Knight is truly the epic that re-launches the entire franchise, but more telling and of far greater importance, The Dark Knight is already changing the way Hollywood makes a motion picture, and changing it for the better.
Did the 1966 "Batman" movie waste time telling how Adam West (in a superb portrayal of the caped crusader) met Robin? NO! They jumped right into all the action. The audience was given some credit for knowing the character they were spending money and time on. The true tragedy of this saga is that the 1966 Batman: The Movie was saddled with ridiculous jokes and juvenile humor - those very things that destroyed the franchise when Michael Keaton put it in another dimension twenty three years later.
PART II - A Cultural Study
Heath Ledger meet Christian Bale
This is a ...unique...YouTube "interview" between Christian Bale and Christopher Nolan about the Velvet Goldmine scene where Ewan McGregor and Bale share a "moment", and the thought of being put in the same "position" ...an "underlying sub-text"...
of getting on all fours for Obi-Wan Kenobi and the fact that Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger are forever in the "public consciousness" with Ledger on top.
It's 9:47 in length and at times tedious
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_zN_vYC2xw
Batman is the ultimate homo-erotic super hero. Even if Bob Kane modeled Victoria "Vicki" Vale after Marilyn Monroe (see Wikipedia)
the world has always thought of "Batman and Robin" as the dynamic coupling, not Batman and Vicki or even Batman and Batgirl. There is a truly interesting YouTube where a fellow plays Christian Bale having a dilemma over being paired with a star from Brokeback Mountain - specifically because Bale was positioned in gay fashion himself in the film Velvet Goldmine.
Michael Caine & Christian Bale Parody "Brokeback Begins"
http://youtube.com/watch?v=yuBmOJPWJwQ
Bob Kane Wikipedia information on the creation of "Robin"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_kane
"...I went along Batman needed a Watson to talk to. That's how Robin came to be. Bob called me over and said he was going to put a boy in the strip to identify with Batman. I thought it was a great idea."
The parallels are humorous, but more significant when one realizes the undercurrent of The Batman and The Joker's attraction to destroying each other. When someone is fixated on an enemy the enemy "rubs off" on the other party. It is just part of the magnetic tape aspect of life in this dimension, something Hannibal Lecter explained to his consort, Jodie Foster in "The Silence Of The Lambs".
Usually I write a review in the theater so my immediate thoughts are published to the world.
The Dark Knight, getting so much coverage, needed more time in the incubator. I have to applaud some of writer Matt DeKinder's views in his "Ledger's portrayal of evil dominates 'Dark Knight'" published July 19 in Suburban Journals:
http://suburbanjournals.stltoday.com/articles/2008/07/19/entertainment/sj2tn20080718-0723ssj-knight0.ii1.txt
DeKinder comes right out and says " the greatest super-hero movie ever made, featuring one of the most iconic performances that cinema has ever witnessed" - the very thing that made me put my review in the incubator. Leaving the theater it was obvious that FINALLY someone made a film that followed the friggin comic book and didn't deviate too much. That's all - that's the big secret to making "the greatest super-hero movie ever made" (to date).
Where Spiderman came very, very close, the cheesy Goblin suit worn by William Dafoe, and the strange casting of Dafoe, gave the film two quick strikes. An unknown was needed to play
The Green Goblin, and the suit needed to be more Halloween from the depths than Halloween from the costume section of Target Stores or Khols. X-Men came close too, excellent casting, a level of seriousness, but scripts that look like they came from any monthly comic book than from the early Marvel tales which worked so much more effectively and which made that super hero team so special.
This film, The Dark Knight, is the best so far, but there is so much room for improvement. DeKinder also writes in Suburban Journal " Not since Hannibal Lecter have we been so gleefully creeped out" and he is correct. The Joker in the hands of Heath Ledger is as much of a smashing new super villain as Hannibal Lecter proved to be the next "Dracula"
(just see Hannibal where Anthony Hopkins gets to be Bela Lugosi as he has no Jodie Foster to steal his thunder; or - perhaps more appropriately - no Jodie Foster to be Batman to his Joker).
Where Hannibal Lecter is a heterosexual villain, The Joker's obsession with "The Batman" borders on true attraction. He orders them to "kill the bat" knowing that no one can, and when he gets his chance he realizes "what would I ever do without you?"
But my take on the Hannibal Lecter aspect of The Joker differs from DeKinder's in that we see Ledger waxing philosophical with as much in-depth psychology and focus as the character Anthony Hopkins plays so well. Hopkins and Ledger both became their creations in the film. "I'm having an old friend for dinner" is such a wonderful way to end The Silence of The Lambs as his nemesis, Dr. Frederick Chilton, is about to get his not so instant "karma". A side note is that actor
Anthony Heald does a neat metamorphosis in 8mm as Daniel Londale, the despicable lawyer, and is able to play Chilton with a different maniacal spin.
Heath Ledger's Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain is so different from The Joker, and that he played both parts in such a terrific fashion, is more evidence that all this Oscar talk is not overrated. This was a truly gifted actor that should have had people around him who cared enough not to let him destroy himself. That his death impacted his performance is not even a question. He went out like Janis Joplin, giving the world a "pearl" among many great moments in a very short career. A very resilient and portable actor the silver screen will miss him and those who want to take his place would do themselves a favor by copying - not his parts - but his intuitive skills.
The fact that The Dark Knight is in release 19 years after Keaton's slanted portrayal should be an indicator that it takes Hollywood two decades apiece to sit around and think about how they are going to define an icon when all they had to do was put the comic book to the screen. Christopher Nolan gets a good 90-95% for doing just that
THE MATRIX USE OF SCENES FROM OTHER FILMS:
http://www.superherohype.com/news/topnews.php?id=7437&offset=225
Heath Ledger: "You know, you remind me of my father. I hated my father."
Ruthless People
http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/r/ruthless-people-script-transcript-bette.html
The bedroom killer: "You... look like my mother. I hate my mother."
No. { Whimpering Bette Midler)
[ Gasp ]
The Bedroom killer to Judge Reinhold: "You-- You look just like my father.
I hate my father!"
{ Scream }Judge Reinhold: "Jesus. "
{ Barbara/Bette Midler }"What the hell was that?"
{ Sandy } Honey, don't touch him.
Oh, my God. It's the bedroom killer. He told me I look like his mother.
He hates his mother.
He's dead.
{ Barbara - played by Bette Midler) So, if I look like his mother... and you look like
his father, this is what our son
would look like.
NOTES:
Batman 1966
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060153/
Ruthless People
http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/r/ruthless-people-script-transcript-bette.html
APP.COM - Batman review
Heath Ledger delivers as Joker
By DAVID GERMAIN • THE ASSOCIATED PRESS • July 17, 2008
http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080717/ENT01/807170443
""You complete me," the Joker tells Batman, dementedly borrowing Tom Cruise's sappy romantic line from "Jerry Maguire."
The Dark Knight - the mobile game
http://www.glu.com/noram/pages/thedarkknight.aspx
http://theinternets.com.au/blog/2008/06/26/the-dark-knight-christopher-nolan-and-their-steamy-affair-with-realism/
The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan and their steamy affair with realism
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/magazine/16-07/ff_darknight?currentPage=all
