I saw Batman: The Dark Knight this weekend. See this movie!
I don’t want to give away too much because I know some of you want to see the movie soon, but it’s definitely worth a view.
I will say that it’s probably the best “superhero” movie ever, including all of the Supermans, Batmans, Spidermans, X-Men movies. To be fair, Batman is my favorite superhero ever and it’s not close.
The great part of this movie and the last Batman movie is that they were prequels and showed the early stages of Batman. The movie shows his dark side.
Batman is a damaged dude dealing with the death of his parents. Gotham City/New York City is not a happy place and is often depressing. I grew up there; I know this to be true. Criminals harm people and kill innocent humans. Dark Knight deals with this.
The problem with the last few Batman movies before the excellent last two installments, Dark Knight and Begins, is that they treated this stuff like it was child’s play. The movie studio seemed more interested in making Batman a cartoonish character and selling some toys. And no disrespect to Val Kilmer and George Clooney, both of whom I enjoy in the right type of movie, but those guys aren’t Batman. Michael Keaton was solid in his movies.
The great thing about these two movies is first, Christian Bale. He fits as Batman, both the suave Bruce Wayne and the crime fighter. I just believe him. Also, the supporting cast has been excellent in the past two movies, but Dark Knight is stacked. BTW, I liked Katie Holmes in the last movie and I don’t know why she didn’t do this one. Bad career move.
Aaron Eckhart is solid as Harvey Dent, the District Attorney who is trying to fix Gotham. Michael Caine is back as Alfred, which is great. Gary Oldman and Maggie Gyllenhaal do good jobs, even though I’m not the biggest fan of Maggie. I also wanted to see more of Morgan Freeman as Lucious Fox, but if you see the movie, you understand that he just doesn’t fit into this move like the last one.
And of course there’s Heath Ledger as The Joker. My goodness, amazing, amazing performance. We’ve seen Heath in a lot of movies over the years, so you know how he looks and sounds most of the time, especially with the Australian accent. Let me tell you, you have NO idea that Heath Ledger is the Joker in the movie, which is a very, very good thing. The entire time you’re watching his performance, you’re saying to yourself, this may be one of the best acting jobs I’ve ever seen.
The Joker is deadly, sick, deformed, funny, captivating, sympathetic, lonely, loving and about a thousand contradictory adjectives all in one. His imbalance is riveting to watch.
Some may say that Ledger’s death has been exploited to promote the movie and I see where you can go with that. You may say that the cast and others’ reviews of Ledger’s performance was enhanced to get ticket sales. But the talk is legit.
Oscar talk is not hyperbole; Ledger deserves to be in the discussion.
The plot was a little confusing at points and the ending kinda leaves you saying, OK, what’s going to happen next. I guess that was the way for them to loophole the next installment of Batman, which can happen now because a new villain emerges. Once again, I don’t want to give anything away, so I’ll leave it at that.
Check out the movie if you have the chance.
I was going to leave you with the Batdance song from Prince, but listening to it again, that song was awful. What were you thinking Prince?!? You’re better than that!
Instead, since Family Guy is on right now and it has the original Batman, Adam West, on the show, here are some clips of Mayor West in action.
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