Black & White World

The Dark Knight (2008)

All right—believe the hype about Heath Ledger’s final performance.  He is a joy to watch.  Yes, he is chewing the scenery, and he is overdoing it much of the time (okay, all of the time), but it’s The Joker.  If ever there’s a time that you can really let go as an actor and feel free to go over the top, it’s when you’re playing The Joker.  He was really enjoyable—and on the other hand, it made me a little sad to see what we’ve lost, and what we’ll miss out on in the future.  I don’t just mean in Batman sequels.

I was prepared for Ledger’s greatness; all the buzz surrounding the movie was pretty much how awesome he was.  I wasn’t prepared for Aaron Eckhardt, an immensely likeable actor, and the dark side he was capable of showing.  He really surprised me, and in a very good way.

Unfortunately, those are pretty much all I’ve got in the plus column.  The movie was far too long.  Mike suggested that they should have broken up the two storylines and made two good shorter movies out of it, which is an excellent idea and would have worked very well.  Christian Bale didn’t have much to do in this movie, because it seemed like there was very little time actually spent with Batman.  And Michael Caine, who was my favorite part of Batman Begins, was relegated to just a few scenes—as long as the movie was, you’d think they could have actually made a little room for Batman and Alfred.

For the sheer spectacle factor, I’m glad I saw it on the big screen.  But I saw it with free movie passes.  If I’d paid full price, or even matinee price, I probably would have been extremely disappointed.

1. Not wanting to influence you at all, and knowing you and I have COMPLETELY OPPOSITE tastes in film, I just have to say that I loved Heath as much as I hated Christian in this movie.

   That being said, I thought it was long.  And when I notice a movie is long, that’s too long.

   Posted by  on  08/17  at  06:56 PM

2. It was WAY too long, as just about every movie is these days.  There’s no reason for this movie to be longer than two hours.

   Heath was great, though, and I thought Aaron Eckhardt was pretty impressive.  Bale was meh.  Not enough shirtless scenes.

   Posted by  on  08/17  at  08:38 PM

3. The raspy “Batman voice” was tiresome and distracting. Did they do that in the last one?

   Lt. Gordon, get that man a lozenge!

   Posted by Mr. Middlebrow  on  08/27  at  01:20 PM
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