The Dark Knight

Saw it yesterday - I dunno, it was pretty damn good, but I also felt it was too long and a bit overwhelming. I'm no stranger to long or overwhelming movies, but this one just made me more aware of it. That, however, I'm pretty sure will change on repeated viewings.

However, I also sort of inherently have a tough time with superhero movies in general; I can swallow a lot (tee hee), but what always bothered me is the fact that one bad dude could hold the lives of an entire city's population in his hands AND be so incredibly overt and taunting about it never really flew with me (this is especially the case in the Spiderman movies, which I found MASSIVELY overrated; didn't even see the 3rd). Batman Begins was better in this regard, at least, because Ras Al Gul (or however you spell it, AKA the thinnest Liam Neeson I've ever seen) was working behind the scenes and through his agent, Dr. Crane/Scarecrow, to contaminate the water supply; it didn't have all of these ridiculous masterminded schemes and such.

HOWEVER, of the superhero movies I've seen that fall into this category, this one is the best by far, and I'm sure I'll be able to appreciate it more after multiple viewings. Oh yeah, and Heath Ledger was great, I certainly can't fault anything about his performance - I just always hesitate when it comes to heaping too much praise on dead people, cuz I feel like the fact that they died (usually tragically) automatically elevates them into sainthood, which is the kind of bias that annoys me. And Christian Bale, man - he's good as Bruce, but he just does not have a tough voice, and hearing him try to talk all throaty as Batman just sounds ridiculous to me (especially after seeing American Psycho, where he really shows that he's a tenor, albeit a psychotic one :) Just listen to his speech about Huey Lewis as he's getting ready to kill Paul Allen, and tell me it doesn't sound ridiculous hearing him do the "Batman growl" :lol: )
 
Yep, Ledger gave an EXCELLENT performance, but a lot of people need to calm down.

And yeah...the Batman voice. :erk:

Best movie I've seen in a long time though.
 
I was quite impressed with Aaron Eckhart... I think he did a far better job as Harvey/Two-Face than Tommy Lee Jones. That & the makeup job actually made me gasp. They should at least pick up an Oscar for art direction.
 
I was quite happy with the length actually as I was seriously enjoying it up to the point I expected it to end, then got another 50 minutes worth out of it. I was also extremely impressed with Ledger's performance, and felt a twinge of guilt as I left the session as I recall originally thinking it was a horrible choice of casting when originally announced, yet while watching it I wasn't even thinking about it being Heath Ledger acting, just felt like I was watching an actual unhinged maniac on film, riveting!

And +1 to Aaron Eckhart's performance, top notch as well.

Further +1 to lols at the Batman voice, only thing that ruined my suspension of disbelief really.
 
glad to hear eckhart getting props. I havent seen this yet, BUT, Ive seen his acting enough to know its got to be up there... although of course Ledger's getting all the kudos right about now.
 
Yeah, Eckhart was definitely good, BUT, I cannot believe that was just makeup for his two-face getup - his exposed eyeball and jaw, no way, that had to be CGI (supplementing makeup).
 
Of course it was CGI.... :rolleyes: who said it was just make up??

By the way, I also saw the movie yesterday. It was really impressive, best movie I've seen for a really long time. People go nuts with Heith Ledger and I agree he was really good (better than Nicholson) but for me the strength of the movie was the writing and directing from Christopher Nolan and the overall excellent quality cast.
Batman's voice was indeed a little silly.

Metaltastic: please watch out for spoilers on your previous post about batman begins.
 
Keregioz said:
Of course it was CGI.... :rolleyes: who said it was just make up??
Click to expand...

OzNimbus said:
I was quite impressed with Aaron Eckhart... I think he did a far better job as Harvey/Two-Face than Tommy Lee Jones. That & the makeup job actually made me gasp. They should at least pick up an Oscar for art direction.
Click to expand...

Don't need to roll your eyes dude, I'm no make-up expert so I wasn't certain, and clearly I'm not the only one. I've never seen CGI so well integrated with a moving non-CGI object (meaning, having part of something be CGI, and the other part be real, for example someone's face).

And I wasn't too concerned about spoilers for an incredibly popular movie from...2 1/2 years ago was it? :p If people haven't seen it or heard of the plot by now but are interested enough in Batman to read this thread, then screw 'em. :heh:
 
Metaltastic said:
Don't need to roll your eyes dude, I'm no make-up expert so I wasn't certain, and clearly I'm not the only one. I've never seen CGI so well integrated with a moving non-CGI object (meaning, having part of something be CGI, and the other part be real, for example someone's face).

And I wasn't too concerned about spoilers for an incredibly popular movie from...2 1/2 years ago was it? :p If people haven't seen it or heard of the plot by now but are interested enough in Batman to read this thread, then screw 'em. :heh:
Click to expand...

It's ok....I was just joking around, I wasn't trying to make fun of you. It's really inbelievable what you can do with CGI these days.
Yeah you're right about batman begins...I was thinking that maybe because of dark knight's success more people who missed it the first time will want to see it...
 
just saw this last night ... WOW!

Of course this doesn't apply to anyone here but I feel the need to vent for a sec ... from the moment I heard Heath Ledger was gonna be the choice for the Joker, I KNEW it was gonna be amazing. This was something like 2 years ago and I think a lot of homophope idiots (aka - some of my friends) were still on this Brokeback Mountain thing and kept saying things like "he'll ruin it" and "Brokeback Joker" and blah blah blah ... fucking morons, all of them. This has nothing to do with his unfortunate and untimely death, the guy was a brilliant actor and I had nothing but the utmost confidence in him bringing out something truely fucking psychotic in his role. Its fun to be right. Given the level of talent in this movie, Bale, Freeman, Caine, Oldman, Eckhart, who can honestly say that Ledger didn't steal EVERY fucking scene in this movie? I've never been to a sold out movie where everyone in the theater was so dead silent for the whole movie you could hear a pin drop. What a fucking shame to lose an actor like him.

Ok ranting aside ... loved the movie. Wasn't too long for me ( my 1st words at the end were "I can't wait for the EXTENDED version!"), I loved that they changed the visual style, made everything so much more realistic and scarier at the same time and a perfect ending. Batman's voice didn't wow me, didn't bother me either so really if thats the worst thing to be said for the movie, well, thats not really saying much bad is it?
 
See, Heath Ledger, I dunno - I'll have to see it again so I can focus more on his performance and try and separate myself from the hype, but to me I kinda felt he was good but nothing overly spectacular; he just struck me as another twisted morbidly humorous comic-book-movie supervillian, reminding me of Willem Defoe's "Green Goblin" (or more specifically when he was tweaking out as Oswald looking in the mirror and all before he put on the costume), and I don't remember anyone having a huge boner for his performance. Skinny Viking, I certainly can't accuse you of bias because he's dead (as I feel many people are guilty of), but on the other hand, you did have a point to prove to your friends... ;) Totally kidding there, of course - just IMO!
 
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