Sunday, July 27, 2008

the dark kinigit

finally saw the dark knight today in the company of batman himself.

brief notes and comments:

  • it is looooooooooooooooooooooooong
  • props to the casting director for making batmanuel the mayor
  • heath ledger did a pretty excellent job aping mark hamill's joker laugh
  • opening bank robbery scene was perfect
  • the joker was in fact funny, despite what your average movie critic says
  • the joker is probably the greatest villain in the history of villains—even better than hitler
  • jack nicholson who?
  • it is looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong
  • christian bale's batman-y voice is kinda silly
  • in as many ways as batman begins was poorly orchestrated, the dark knight was ridiculously well orchestrated
  • too much bat-motorcycle
  • thank you nolan brothers for getting the batman-joker relationship right
  • the watchmen preview looked awesome despite the fact that it neverevernever should ever have been made into a movie
  • holy fucking hell: the joker!

6 comments:

Shiny said...

I thought Batman Begins was "Okaaaaay" despite the gushing adoration the rest of the world seemed to have for it, but I absolutely loved The Dark Knight. I was ready to be underwhelmed again, but it delivered - finally! With the glut of superhero movies out there, directors, writers, actors, and crew (etc) are just going to have to try harder--a LOT harder--to deliver the goods. The goody goods. Because most of it comes off like a big, loud, blurry bore. Sorry, Spiderman...and your damn stupid part trois.

Flushy McBucketpants said...

i'm sure the next batman is going to suck by comparison. i can't imagine christopher nolan is going to direct another and all villains pale in comparison to the joker.

Emiko said...

batman!!!
unfortunately the dark knight isn't out in theaters just yet. i do have a list of silly movies to watch like an addition to my all time favorite the mummy series...

heath is amazing. he's great. he was even great before he died. another one bites the dust. it's not cool how the people i like keep dying.

Ms. Schnebele said...

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills because everyone else who has seen the movie is gushing about how it is the most amazing movie they have ever seen. The extra thirty minutes completely killed the movie for me. I have a good attention span, but I felt like I was being tortured after the two hour mark. There were too many pseudo climaxes to make me care about the ending.

Unknown said...

Irrelevant detail spoiler alert.

A few things bothered me: the bullet/fingerprint thing (wouldn't the metal deform? wouldn't the fingerprint smudge when burrowing into concrete?), the bat-motorcycle thing wasn't realistically done in some scenes (spinning around on the wall? sudden 90 degree changes in direction usually result in a crash, not a turn, the movement there was distractingly artificial), and his bat-voice reminded me of The Godfather.

That said, I couldn't disagree more with you about the making of Watchmen into a movie. The first thing I thought when I finished the book was "I'd love to do that again, but without all the reading and page turning." Finally, Hollywood delivers. I hear they're staying very close to the panels in the book, so maybe we can hope that they won't bastardize the end and, say, have Aquaman come in and save the day.

Flushy McBucketpants said...

anna: i wouldn't expect the dark knight to be universally loved, if for no other reason than the tone is so dark throughout. even the moments of levity are actually pretty horrific ("I'm gonna make this pencil disappear..."). that said, it's one of the few, if not the only superhero film that warrants multiple viewings because of the depth of its characters (well, the joker at least) and themes. otherwise, i would say it's a movie for comic nerds.

ducore: for god's sake, it's batman. get over it.