The Dark Knight
I went to see The Dark Knight twice on Friday. Once at work, for a “team building exercise” with my friends, then again with Kim. Seeing it twice was plain great. The second time I got to pay attention to little hints and foreshadowing.
Basically, if you’re an action or crime movie fan, you’ll love Dark Knight. It’s still a comic book movie so it’s not exactly a straight crime movie (I’ve seen ridiculous comparisons to Heat) but they do the comic book stuff in a realistic way. The Joker’s green hair is clearly just him dying it, doing his face with makeup was a perfect choice as well, etc. Ledger’s Joker is the psycho clown I’ve always preferred from the comics, with an added edge of anarchist “agent of chaos” that I loved. His speech about “the schemers” and how he “just does things” is a terrific moment. Grant Morrison is going back to this kind of scary Joker in the comics too, which I’m really looking forward to.
It’s a great movie, but not perfect. Christian Bale makes a much better Bruce Wayne than Batman. His Batman voice is intensely annoying when used in more than 3 word utterances. The helmet-like curved cowl is lame, although I do like the new lighter suit. It’s long, but didn’t feel like it, even the second time. My biggest complaint is a common one: the fight scenes are horribly shot. Batman is knocking the crap out of dozens of people, obviously doing serious damage but you can hardly tell what’s going on. Like I said, it’s a common complaint but I’ve watched enough old kung-fu movies to know what a well shot fight scene is supposed to look like.
I know idiots take kids to all kinds of innapropriate movies (there was a toddler in the midnight showing of The Exorcist a few years ago!) but I got the feeling some people thought just because this was Batman it was for kids. They obviously didn’t see any of the trailers. Maybe the Joker’s “philosophy” will go over the top of most kid’s heads but I thought that stuff was scary enough without all the violence. After we left I said I hope never meet any of the kids who saw that movie and had the Joker imprinted on their minds.
