My Poor Brain

4.5 out of 5

The first Christopher Nolan Batman reboot, “Batman Begins”, caught me way off gaurd. That came out before I started paying attention to the movie world through the internet. What started my journey into the online movie world was one website called The Movie Blog. I came across it by chance one day and have been a loyal reader and participator since. Then, on November 17, 2006 came the announcement of The Dark Knight and it’s release date of July 18, 2008. The longest fucking wait of my life.

The first thing I have to say about this movie is that it is ALL ABOUT THE JOKER. The late Heath Ledger’s Joker makes The Dark Knight the fantastic movie it is. I have no idea how the hell he pulled off such a crazy character. Not only that, while the Joker is doing crazy, insane, and twisted shit, you are laughing at him. Every time the Joker was on screen I was getting goosebumps and was excited and could not believe my eyes. In everything that I have seen Heath Ledger in, I would never have guessed he could do something like this. The face I could recognize, but the voice and the way he talked and some of the expressions were things that were too good to be true. The tragedy here is that we Heath Ledger won’t get to receive the praise in person, and we will never see more Joker or any other roles from Ledger.

The story-line is a well written one. They had a lot of characters to deal with in this one and handled mostly all of them very well. Batman/Bruce Wayne, The Joker, Harvey Dent, Comissioner Gordon, and even Alfred all got their equal time on screen. Not too much of anyone. I watched the Siskel and Ebert review for Tim Burton’s first Batman movie and one thing they said was that the Joker routine was so overexposed in the ‘89 film. In “The Dark Knight” we get the Joker in perfect doses. The film is also packed with flawless action and fight sequences and I hope to catch this in IMAX theaters to check them out on that screen. The best scene of all has to be the one we see a bit of in the previews when the Joker is in the interrogation room with Batman. Heath Ledger and Christian Bale get to show off their acting chops in this gritty and riveting scene between Joker and Batman.

The character of Harvey Dent, and eventually Two-Face, is played to perfection by Aaron Eckhart. He was an amazing casting choice that I would never have thought of. The last film I saw him in was “Thank You For Smoking”, which was quite a lighter role than this one, and just like with Ledger I never expected such a dark and moving performance out of a comic book character.

Let’s not forget Christian Bale. His performance is so freaking good and consistent with the last film that nobody will talk about it, because this is the Joker’s film and Christian Bale is doing the great job he is supposed to as Batman.

John Campea over at The Movie Blog posted a great article that makes a great point about the hyper praise of The Dark Knight being compared to The Godfather and other such films:

The Short Version

* The Dark Knight is a great movie
* It’s not even close to being the “darkest” or “Grittiest” or “violent” or “best crime drama” movie ever
* It’s ok to love a movie without the need to make up fake praises and to admit its shortcomings

Read the full article here.

The last bit of the movie did not sit well with me and I did not expect it to end when it did. I can’t really elaborate on it without it being a spoiler so I will leave that for a follow up so EVERYONE can see it first. But do not let that ruin your hopes for this film (assuming you live under a rock and haven’t already seen it). This is a fantastic movie and will go down as one of the BEST COMIC BOOK MOVIES ever. Heath Ledger’s Joker, along with Christian Bale’s Batman, will go down as some of the BEST COMIC BOOK MOVIE CHARACTER PERFORMANCES ever. And Christopher Nolan will go down as THE SAVIOR OF THE BATMAN FILMS.

Get in your fucking Batmobile and go see this.