Why so serious?

It’s been marketed for months and months. The buzz has been building and building. Fanboys have been slapping their computer monitors like the Nintendo 64 kid since the first teaser popped up online nearly a year ago. It’s finally here! The Dark Knight!!

This seems incredibly pointless but.. Three years later, Gotham City is just as messed up as it was when we last saw it. Mobsters are still meeting in dark alleys and abandoned docks. Cops are being bought off by said mobsters. And a new villain is terrorizing (or can I say “jokerizing”) the streets. No, no I can’t. He’s terrorizing them. Anyway, with all this going on, our caped crusader, Batman/Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), is doing his best to keep Gotham noble and pure. Helping Wayne to achieve this is the hot-shot District Attorney, Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), the love of his life, Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes Maggie Gyllenhaal), his loyal butler, Alfred (Michael Cane), and resident know-it-all about everything badass, Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman). Even with these people behind him, with the introduction of a psychopathic-anarchist known only as The Joker (Heath Ledger), Batman’s got his work cut out for him.

The Dark Knight was amazing. A lot of people had been saying in the past week, “I don’t want to get too hyped up. It might not live up to it.” Well fuck you guys. It delivered. Oh man did it ever deliver. Christopher Nolan has set the precedent for what superhero movies need to strive to be like.

Bale does great once again playing the billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne. He can’t simply open the front door when going out to a restaurant. No no. He has to land in a helicopter and step out with three gorgeous models. His portrayal of Batman is also great. While it was set up in Batman Begins that he has grappling hooks and a badass Bat-Mobile (The Tumbler), The Dark Knight shows us a whole new barrage of useful tools to topple foes. While these new tools are cool to watch in action, maybe Batman should build a contraption that will shoot a Ludin’s cherry cough drop in his mouth like, 20 minutes before he needs to talk. That would definitely help his scratchy voice from sounding terrible and comical to sounding… acceptable.

Aaron Eckhart was a perfect choice for Dent. However, his character development from upstanding District Attorney to a psychotic killer fueled by rage is a bit rushed. Dent spends the entire first two hours of the movie preaching about how good will overcome evil. (I’m not spoiling anything.) Harvey Dent becomes Two-Face. ZOMG!~ And while his physical change is extremely gruesome and will fuck your mind up, him turning completely evil isn’t very believable. Also his method of killing people (flipping a coin) is a total gimmick. Rather than accepting the coin’s decision (like Anton Chigurh does), Dent simply chooses to flip again until he gets the answer he wants. Why not just shoot your victim if that’s what you really want?

OMG the best for last! Did you hear? Heath Ledger died. (Sad face). Too soon? I feel incredibly shitty for whoever gets cast as the next villain for Batman to face. The Joker is going to be impossible to top. Ledger stole every single scene he was in. Thinking back on the movie, The Joker actually had more screen time than Batman did. And that’s fine by me. The Joker was a character that kids may even leave the theater wanting to be like more than Batman. There’s not a single thing wrong I can say about Ledger’s performance as a psychopathic, mass murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy. Each time he was on screen my eyes were fixated on him. Picking up on his facial twitches, each time he licked his lips, each eye squint. It was perfect.

Some people have also told me The Dark Knight had little to do with Batman and more to do with Harvey Dent. The movie definitely doesn’t waste time diving deeper into the story of who Batman is. The reason for this? Maybe because they fucking did that in a little movie called Batman Begins? We knew who Batman was in 2005. We knew what he stood for and why he fought for Gotham. Now it’s time to see him deal with the “inflation” that Commissioner Gordon warned him about. The villains; more sinister. The costs of being Batman; more severe. The collateral damage; catastrophic.

Pretty much each movie I’ve reviewed this year I’ve seen more than once in the theaters. I’m sure The Dark Knight will be no different.

9.5 out of 10.

• [7/22/2008] — I feel like I needed to add this post as I’ve seen a lot of people calling The Dark Knight ”the greatest movie of all time”. If you think that, then you’re either six, or you haven’t seen many movies. Yeah, it was (and still is) the #1 movie on the Top 250 at IMDB, but still. It’s going to fall off. You can’t compare this movie to The Shawshank Redemption, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List, Goodfellas, Fight Club, Requiem For A Dream, etc. There’s just no way. So if you feel that this was the greatest movie EVAR!! then you’re off your rocker Betty Crocker. Truth hurts doesn’t it?

Tags: Aaron Eckhart, All Part Of The Plan, Batman, Christian Bale, Christopher Nolan, Dark Knight, Harvey Dent, Heath Ledger, Joker, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michael Cane, Morgan Freeman, Movie, Movie Review, Smile On That Face, The Dark Knight, The Joker, Twoface, Why So Serious