No, any picture of people on rubble isn’t a 9-11 reference. Yes, sometimes a cigar is a cigar, but when directors have choices and they line up a set and design to look like iconic imagery, it’s no accident. People say the same thing about the tv show Battlestar G. “What do you mean it’s about post-9-11 world, those are just coincidences.” Even when the writers/creators weigh in and say “no…we mean for it to make such references” people act as if there’s no such thing as sub-text in the world. Hard to prove? Yes. Clear for people that are looking for logical connections between artistic choices? Also, yes.
What is a 9-11 theme? Jee, let me think: how to deal with people that want to harm us, how to deal with people that seem irrationally bent on harm, etc. Yes, these are themes that have been/can be dealt with outside of 9-11 or if 9-11 had never happened, but again: Hard to prove? Yes. Clear for people that are looking for logical connections between artistic choices? Also, yes. I mean, do you really think George Lukas was NOT referring to the current political situation in the last (also rather awful) Star Wars “episode”? (Although unlike BSG creators, he denied that he intended it to be political, but the clear references make this dubious, or, unlikely, means that he was just pushing issues from the zeitgeist without knowing that he was.)
I guess you’re right. In fact, if you look at it that way, it could be that he just changes his story every time he explains what happened to his face. We’ll never know exactly what happened. Probably, he did it to himself.
I have to say, I love the script idea of having Joker tell contradictory backstories. It gives the audience something to ponder while also keeping them aware that he’s an unreliable reporter. I think leaving it a mystery really enhances the character.
I hated the movie but I agree that Ledger’s performance was great.
In a weird way that actually made me dislike the movie more. The Joker had a real psychological depth that wasn’t matched by any of the other characters or the script in general. If everyone had been equally shallow I could have just sat there and let the mindless summer entertainment wash over me. But Ledger kept leading me off in interesting directions that the movie failed to deliver on.
Hannibal Lector needed Clarice Starling to play off of. It’s weird that the Joker tells Batman “you complete me” when one of the main problems with the movie is that Batman doesn’t follow through with his end of the psychological pas-de-deux. Ledger delivers a performance as good as Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs – startling and surprising and amazingly multilayered. But Christian Bale’s Batman is as shallow as a wading pool. The script is largely at fault – over and over characters just bluntly state their motivations and desires. It’s hard to generate a deep, fully-rounded character when you’re forced to deliver clunkers like: “Well today I found out what Batman can’t do. He can’t endure this.” Somehow Ledger found a way to deliver a great performance regardless. But every time he hit one of his deep, bizarre notes it just made me more and more frustrated that it wasn’t reciprocated.
I pretty much agree with all the complaints in this thread – the movie is a vastly over-rated mass of mediocrity – and I loved Batman Begins.
Among my (copy and pasted) complains: It felt like the director tried to squeeze two movies into one. Two-face was introduced way too late, and yet stuck around for far too long. I also didn’t find his “transformation” to be particularly believable. The pacing felt off for the entire film, and it could have ended at least at two or three different points and been a better film for it. At the least, they could have cut half an hour of crap to produce a more streamlined, and better narrative. Oh, and Sonar Phone is one of the most retarded things I have ever seen (particulary given the “realistic” take on Batman’s universe)
I thought it was a whole lot better than Batman Begins. My biggest complaint was that the score was totally unimaginative. My second-biggest complaint was that it was too long. The should have burned Dent during the climax and used him as the bad guy in the next one.
It wasn’t a script idea. This goes back to at least The Killing Joke in the '80s. I commented on that in response to one of your posts in another thread. drhess, I disagree that the movie “sucks” but I actually agree with a lot of your points, especially 2, 4, 6, 8, & 9. And this:
I agree 200%. It’s like this person read my mind while I was watching the movie and put my thoughts into better words than I could have.
It was a good movie, but extremely overrated and Batman Begins was clearly better.
I’m just still frustrated that they didn’t kill the Joker at the end. I mean, they had the footage for it. They had a camera shot of the Joker falling off a building and then Batman saving him. It would have been very simple to re-shoot a stunt double continuing the fall and hitting the pavement 30 stories below.
Now, with the Joker character still alive, I’m afraid that some movie executive is going to be tempted to try to re-cast the character.
Well, if they’d cut Two-Face out or down that would have also cut down on Joker time, since The Joker’s turning Harvey Dent was a big victory for him.
I loved the movie, but if I hadn’t liked it, there are many things I could complain about, chiefly all the chance happenings and coincidences, especially revolving around The Joker. He could have gotten shot by the mob bank guy. He could have gotten shot by the last henchman. He could have gotten run over by the bus if he hadn’t backed away at just the right moment. And by the way, for such a substantial bank, those stone walls sure were paper thin that a bus could back right in and through with no damage to the bus. The joker could have gotten killed during the semi chase/crash. And while I understood plot points that seemed to confuse lots of people in this thread, I’m still not sure how The Joker planned the going after Harvey Dent as Batman/getting caught after a chase and horrific accident/making sure he was put into the same jail as the big guy and Lau/surgically inserting a bomb into the big guy/making sure the big guy was put in the same jail (indeed, the same holding cell)/making sure he was nowhere near the holding cell when the bomb blew/making sure Lau was nowhere near the big guy when the bomb blew/the bomb killing or seriously injuring everyone except him and Lau, and so on.
But none of that bothered me because I was along for the ride and every second of The Joker was precious to me, no matter how outrageously improbable.
I did miss the monorail from Batman Begins. I guess they never rebuilt it.
You aren’t the only one. Don’t get me wrong, I think Heath Ledger was a really creepy, interesting Joker, but what I saw on screen and what I’ve been reading and hearing since it came out were two different things. I kind of wonder if people would be making this big of a deal out of it if he hadn’t died like he did. That lends a certain freaky creepiness to the whole thing that might not have been there if he was still alive.
Jack Nicholson will always be the Joker to me, larger-than-life and cartoon-like. His was a happily in-control villain, rather than the almost sympathetic sicko played by Ledger. I’m the first to admit that I don’t get into action/superhero stuff, but I liked the Tim Burton Batman movies, and I do like the Christopher Nolan movies, but not quite as much. They just aren’t as much fun, IMO.
The more I think about it, the more I think maybe they should just recast the Joker. I mean, the show must go on and all that. It comes down to - was it a maniac in clown makeup or was it Heath Ledger? I like to think the former.
In defense of what was most likely poor writing . . . have you ever known someone that just didn’t give a fuck? I have. It’s like they walk through life with a case full of golden horseshoes crammed firmly up their ass.
Do you say this because you felt the Joker caracter is tied to Ledger? Or because you feel the Joker character has outplayed his usefulness?
The Joker has always been the perennial return villain of the Batman universe. I’m tempted to say - and indeed I hope - they will recast him, though the next film probably won’t feature him as the lynchpin villain.
Batman Begins was about Bruce Wayne, the Dark Knight was about the Joker and I think the next movie will be about the Batman “itself.” Nolan has a choice, it looks like - the next movie will be the last of the trilogy that he and the crew are bound to, as far as I know. He can take it in one direction and “conclude” the trilogy, setting Batman up in a standoff (à la Spiderman 3) or he can take it in the other and make the trilogy into the start of a series, in which case the next movie will be more of the same plodding-paced self-discovery in the middle of fighting the gallery of villains in the Batman universe.
If Nolan is willing to frustrate the audience in order to make a point then his head is stuck so far up his ass he’s eating his own face. If you want good use of shaky cam see Saving Private Ryan. Nolan is no Speilberg. The entire mayor assassination scene was a clusterfuck of epic proportions. If you were able to make perfect sense out of it then you either saw it more than once or were taking notes.
Solution: don’t actively seek out trailers. The “fan and media-based hype circus” as you call it is voluntary for the most part. I went in having only seen a few theatrical previews, and I was kept virtually unspoiled. I didn’t even know Two Face was in it until a friend told me. I knew Harvey Dent was in it, but I honestly forgot who Harvey Dent was. I think those Schumacher films caused my brain to repress anything Batman related.
Agreed. The extent of what I saw and knew of The Dark Knight was a still shot of the Joker that was released last year I think. I learned a lesson after seeking out all of the pictures, trailers, behind the scenes specials, etc on Fellowship of the Ring back in 2001. By the time I sat down in the theatre on opening night I felt like I had already seen the movie. Since then I have avoided discussions and trailers of movies that I already know I want to see and it’s worked out well for me.
Regarding cutting off all exposure to the promotion of a movie in order to avoid being spoiled: that’s bullshit. I’m supposed to pretend I don’t know anything about a movie and avert my eyes anytime a commercial comes on or a trailer plays? There are no shortage of films that I see trailers or commercials for which have more than their trailer leg to stand on. I don’t feel this film did. Every major sequence was featured in the trailers and commercials, so anyone who was exposed to even a few of them has pretty much already seen the juicy bits. So therefore, it’s the viewer’s fault for being a victim of the advertising on a film that lacked any surprises beyond the major sequences featured in commercials? Riiiiight.
They blew their load on the commercials, plain and simple. Any good actioner will have at least one ace-in-the-hole surprise scene that isn’t featured in promotions, and the Dent/Gordon faceoff at the end doesn’t count.
I obviously don’t know what exactly you’re babbling about because I didn’t watch the trailers, but yeah, it’s your responsibility to stay away from them if seeing them might dampen your enjoyment of the movie. We’re not talking quantum physics here.
Maybe other people say this downthread (I’m going in order), but you completely got wooshed by The Joker. The abused child schtick was clearly just one of his parlor tricks. He changed his story whenever he got “personal.” It was all bogus, ridiculously sentimental and hard to believe, and none of it was any kind of exposure of the “real” man beneath the mask.