The Dark Knight Revisited

[Y 2 Jake]

Looking back at The Dark Knight and I still love it. Dark Knight is definitely the best superhero movie ever. Y 2 Jake dude you've got to be kidding me when you say Iron Man was better than Dark Knight. Iron Man is pretty cool the first time you see it but when I watched it again I just found it pretty boring.

Better overall, yeah. Consistently very good throughout, something which The Dark Knight isn't.

Also I don't know how anybody could say Iron Man is boring, maybe on the 5 time you watch it, but why the fuck would you watch Iron Man 5 times in two years? and why do people like Batman Begins so much?

 

[Tenta]

Revisiting the Dark Knight has only done one thing to my opinion of the movie, in which I believe it was a fantastic medium of entertainment, but not "art" if that makes any sense. To me, it was always one of those popcorn movies that tries to delve into deep human psychology, but stops itself before it realizes it's going to lose half the moron audience. That said, the truth is, this movie is going to be remembered more because it was Heath Ledger's undoing, rather than a good movie. Say what you will, but when you think about The Dark Knight, what's the first image that comes to your head? Ok, maybe not image, but you definitely think about the fact that Heath Ledger passed awya creating this movie. Always has been the case, and always will be. Sure, The Dark Knight is a good movie, and is sheer fun and games. That said, it's going to be overshadowed by Heath Ledger's demise, and there's nothing anyone can do to stop that.

 

[kissfan85]

Joker is the reason why I watch the movie over and over again.
I love christian Bale but I hate him as batman

Heath made the perfect Joker...Sorry Jack Nickelson but Heaths Joker was way better...
Jacks was more of a classie kind of Joker....

You wanna know how I got my scars? I love the Joker

 

[gd]

Shouldn't be in the discussion of the best films ever, clearly. It came around at the perfect time, or thereabout. It had a solid Pizza Hut promotion going on and Heath's death certainly didn't hurt things. The hype surrounding it was freaking nuts, if I remember. If you have that, it doesn't really matter how great it is.

One of the things going against it has to be that it wasn't really an original idea. Sure, there were some ideas in there, but it's not like Nolan invented Batman or anything. Loses points from me, there. Pretty good film, but after watching Inception, not even Nolan's best.

 

[Mitch Henessey]

The Dark Knight is one of my favorite movies, but I don't think it's as great as everyone makes it to be. I own this film on DVD, and I've watched it a bunch of times. But when I look at it now, I don't have that same feeling as I did when I saw it in theaters. The trailer for this film had me foaming at the mouth, and my excitement level went through the roof when I started to hear all of the praise for this film. Heath Ledger did an amazing job as The Joker. His performance was great. There's no doubt about that, but every time The Dark Knight is mentioned, Ledger's sudden death is always brought up. People will always look at his performance here and say "This was going to be the start of a great career." It probably isn't fair, but Ledger's death will always be mentioned in the same breath as this film.

The Dark Knight made a ton of cash, and this film was a phenomenon back in 2008, but again, Heath Ledger's death had A LOT to do with this.

 

[Big Nick Dudley]

To be quite honest, I think this film is everything it's made out to be. When I watched this film for the first time, I thought it was the best comic book movie I had ever seen. And I still believe that today.

Great Things About This Film

The Casting: Obviously, Heath Ledger was about as well cast as someone can be. His performance is rarely called into question, with good reason. Aaron Eckhart was a surprise, for me. I always thought he was a decent actor, but he showed a ton of range in this film. He played the tough, strict, caring D.A. about as well as can be expected. But his turn from that by-the-book kind of character into Two-Face was what did it for me. He showed the kind of intensity needed for that role, but he was able to basically play two characters in the same movie, who are very different people. An underrated performance, in my opinion.

Sure, you can knock Christian Bale's "Batman" voice, but what else can he do? He is attempting to draw a line between how Bruce Wayne acts in public and how Batman works at night. Bruce does not want the people of Gotham (or anywhere else) knowing who he is. It's very basic and simple; he needs to disguise his voice. It's just how Bale's voice sounds when dipping lower, and there's nothing he can do about that. I've always found this to be a petty criticism. I think he's the best Batman we've had.

Then you look at the supporting roles. Morgan Freeman does a good job once again. Nothing special for him, but he makes due with what he is given to work with. Same with Gary Oldman, but I think Oldman was special. He did more than just 'make due.' He stole scenes. In the last scene with Batman, Gordon and Dent, that was Oldman's scene. He made that thing go, because he is quite possibly the most talented actor in that film. I'll get to Rachel Dawes later...

The Score: As in Batman Begins, this really makes the film go. Sometimes movies like this lack the fitting score The Dark Knight has. Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard are two of the best in the business, and they didn't fail to impress here.

Visuals: Gotham City looked amazing, as in Batman Begins. It was a tad more colorful than Begins, I think to show the city is more hopeful than it had been 6 months prior. The dark atmosphere was just as representative of the city as it was in the first film, and that added a lot to the overall feel of the movie.

The actions sequences weren't overdone, and didn't look cheesy. A lot of these kinds of movies do not have that kind of feel, and it was nice to see something a bit different.

The Story

This film had great dialogue, better than most comic book films. The Joker was probably the most well-scripted comic book movie character I can remember. Not only did he have a lot of memorable lines, but everything he said revolved around one point; he didn't care. He was the most chaotic character I have seen on screen in a long time. The story was complex, but was never more so than it needed to be. It felt epic, bigger than most comic book film stories. Due to the great script, you always felt something bad was about to happen. The scripts Nolan usually works with are unpredictable, and this was one of the better examples of that.

Things I Didn't Like

The Death of Two-Face: Obviously there is suspicion that Dent isn't dead. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. But, Eckhart has said he isn't returning for the sequel, because Nolan told him the character was "dead." So I doubt he's coming back. But, I just didn't like the way he went out. From a fall like that? Seemed kind of weak. And yes, it's subjective, seeing I had hoped Eckhart would return for the third film.

Rachel Dawes: For me, the romantic female lead is never that interesting, so there really isn't much to complain about here. In all honesty, I would have complained about anyone playing this part, so I really don't have a preference between Holmes and Gyllenhaal. Everytime either one of them came onto the screen, I couldn't wait for their exit. More subjective stuff.

All in all, I still feel this movie is a step above the rest, afte seeing it a dozen times or so. I feel Batman Begins was a close second (in terms of all comic book films), but it didn't have as large of scope. It didn't feel as epic as The Dark Knight. As for Iron Man, I enjoyed that as well. But I never felt emotionally connected to it. I didn't care about one character in that film as much as I did any character in The Dark Knight.

 

[TwistofRKO]

A major part of judging a movie is your first thoughts. This captivated millions, that still must be factored in. This movie had a mountain of hype to overcome and there was only a very small minority of people who didn't think it was any good.

The plot was very good, the acting was solid, and the action was great. It is slightly better than Batman Begins. It simply has more to offer, and it completed a rare feat by doing this, topping its original movie.

Fact is, it's not perfect, but the majority of people who know what they are talking about never said it was. It's by far the best superhero movie, it has the best performance by any superhero villain, and is up there with the some of the best bad guys in any movie. It escapes just being a superhero movie, and succeeds as a thriller, crime-drama, etc. It's still a great film.

 

[Phoenix]

I just recently re-watched both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, both films still impress me today, but I see them on even keel.

The most significant thing I picked up on was how much of a presence Rachel Dawes lost between the films, Katie Holmes, while at first I found it hard to see her outside of Dawson's Creek, on this viewing, really stood out as a significant character, the history and the relationship was strongly shown and she had great chemistry with Bale. She was a friend who wasn't afraid to be strong when it was needed but also wouldn't turn her back on her friends. Come to Maggie Gyllenhaal and Rachel really comes off a lot more weaker and that's not just from the performance. She's too aggressive in comparison to BB and just really comes across as a bitter bitch, when watching TDK, I was trying to keep Holmes in mind and I think had she been in those scenes, Rachel would had definitely come across as a lot more significant, not to mention I would have cared more about her death, for some reason Gyllenhaal's portrayal of Rachel kind of had me glad she was dead, I know that's bad of me to say, but she really did just get tiresome and it's a shame Holmes was tied with other contracts at the time of filming.

That being said, both BB and TDK are just great films and tie in well together, while TDK didn't have the pressure of having to do the establishment story, which BB did superbly, they managed to take more momentum out of it and have the freedom to be creative. But you find yourself having minor nitpicky details that really stick out when they didn't in BB. One of the controversials being Batman's voice, I always felt Bale had been great with putting on a significant voice to keep his identities apart much like most Batmans bar Kilmer (on odd occasions) and Clooney, though as the film got on, his voice seem to sound worse. At the beginning of TDK, he sounded just like in BB, no problems there, didn't stand out, but at the time we got to the end, you had to use subtitles just to make out what he was saying at times, what happened? As said, I have no problems with the voice in general but how did it get worse as the film went on?

I think my only other criticism was the minimum use of Dent, but then I read that supposedly Two-Face was going turned at the end of the film to set up the third part, but things got pushed forward and I felt that while Harvey Dent and his transformation into Two-Face was superbly done, Eckhart really did it superbly, the role of Two-Face was similiar to Venom, great build only for thirty minutes of screen time ending in death? Given Two-Face is Batman's No. 2 Arch-nemesis after The Joker due to the emotional connection and history, I was hoping there would be more, you really feel afterwards that while it's a plot purpose for the film, it really doesn't aid the character, making you question it by going "That was it?" As for how the death was handled, it was purely as an accident because Batman was trying to save Jim Gordon Jr. but I still think that because there's distinct lack of a closure to this plot, I do feel we haven't seen the last of Two-Face, we'll certainly see closure in regards to this point with the third part as Batman has to clear his name.

While no doubt, The Dark Knight was surrounded by overhype due to Ledger's death, it deserves credit where credit dues and stands out for being a superhero film that's treated with realism to give it an extra edge. I would however brand it with Batman Begins as both being great films, I don't think the third part will be sold off short and we'll be discussing this film as being part of a great superhero trilogy.

Quick question here guys, who else notices a cliche when it comes to superhero films, particularly in the first two parts? That being while it's a given the first part is the establishment, part two always seems to throw the best villain out there while also having the tie-in of the hero quitting or trying to. It's happened with Superman, Spiderman and the Nolan Batman (the original films had him do it in part 3), but this really does pop up a lot in the superhero films, is this being an overused cliche or just one that's really good for us to enjoy?