Thank you for bringing this up! It is probably my biggest criticism of the movie, which I otherwise enjoyed immensely. As sleek as the production design looked, I still found myself missing the gritty, Blade Runner-ish “urban decay” feel Nolan created for Gotham City in the first film. The Gotham in *Batman Begins * was exactly how I’d always pictured it --a grimy, wet industrial nightmare, but not so ridiculously exaggerated that it crossed the line of believability. Now, in Dark Knight, we get . . . Chicago. Sprawling, gorgeous, eye-popping shots of Chicago, yes, but still Chicago. Would it have killed Nolan to put a little of the smoky, urban noir look in there somewhere – if only for consistency’s sake?
And as long as I’m pointing out flaws (always more fun than praising the good stuff), I could have done without the pointless “Gordon’s dead . . . not!” ruse. I can’t figure out who they thought they were fooling. Most everyone knows Jim Gordon eventually becomes commissioner, and he hadn’t yet at the time of his “death” in the film (not to mention there were scenes of Gordon in all the trailers which hadn’t yet appeared), so obviously it was a fake-out. And even if some people fell for it, so what? What purpose did it serve in the story? Gordon said he did it so his family wouldn’t be targeted, but the other city officials had equal reason to worry and they didn’t fake their deaths. And to top it off, he didn’t even tell his *wife * about the ruse? Come on. (He deserved that slap she gave him!)
I also wouldn’t have minded if Nolan had saved the resolution of Harvey Dent’s story for the next film. His transformation from Really Swell Guy to Homicidal Wacko was a little too rushed to seem believable. I could buy that having your fiancée as well as half your face blown up might be enough to make even the nicest guy a little nuts. So going after the crooked cops I can understand – but taking Gordon’s family hostage? Being willing to kill an innocent child just to get back at a guy who was only incidentally responsible for your tragedy? I was kind of hoping Batman would turn to Gordon at the end and say, “You know, on second thought, he really wasn’t such a great guy, was he? I mean, I loved Rachel too, and you don’t see me pulling guns on little kids. Screw this, I’m not taking a fall for that SOB!”
(Despite my griping, I really did like the movie. Honest.)
Couldn’t agree more. Even as a Chicagoan who was very excited to see a high-profile film featuring the city in great detail, I was disappointed too. I watched the film being shot on location in the streets late at night last summer (they usually filmed all through the late hours of the night until sunrise when it was easiest to shut the major streets down), so you could say I had a sort of vested connection to the production process, having bared witness to it firsthand. Of course, I had also figured there would at least dress up the locations more in post-production, much like they did in the first film with the stylized Art Deco monorail system.
As for the abandoned former look of the gritty, wet, industrialized look of Gotham City’s Narrows (the destitute “island” where Arkham was situated) from ‘Begins’, I can at least offer this as explanation: it was all an indoor set built at a massive facility just outside of London called Cardington, originally used as a hangar for enormous airships of the early 20th century. The set was enormous, with full building facades, streets, electrical distribution, sewers, the works. It was designed and purpose-built to give that wonderfully bleak look because it could not be captured in any real city. So, in summation, it wasn’t anywhere near Chicago. There were a great deal of location shots from Chicago in the first film, but they were much more effectively interspersed with the Cardington facility set shots. Whether or not the completely updated Chicago look was meant to reflect a cleaned up Gotham in terms of plot is anybody’s guess, but now you know the actual production reasons for the visual difference: they didn’t build any Gotham sets for TDK.
I’m with you and anamnesis. We saw the midnight show of TDK and were loving how Nolan made Chicago look. A few days later we saw the film again in IMAX. The night before the IMAX screening we watched Batman Begins, which we hadn’t seen since it was first released. We were shocked at the difference in the city. In BB, the city was Gotham, dark, slightly futuristic, and as you say, smoky and urban noirish. The Gotham of TDK was a completely different place…yeah, Chicago. Not even a hint of the old city. Not even a glimpse of the monorail or the creepy “island” where all the bad stuff happened. It was something we never thought about when the movies were viewed several years apart, but it was just jarring when the movies were viewed back-to-back, which is how they’ll be viewed in the future during home or retrospective theater marathons and double-features and at SF conventions.
I still thoroughly enjoyed the movie, and oh boy did I love seeing Chicago on the big screen, but you’re right, a little consistency would have been nice. It would have taken just a little bit of CGI, not much. I wonder what the reasoning was, other than the studio sets anamnesis mentions.
anamnesis, we didn’t see any of TDK being filmed, but we did see some of BB being filmed. They took over a large part of lower Randolph for the underground chase scenes. We came across it by accident when wandering around one Sunday. We didn’t even know there WAS a lower Randolph (Wacker, yes, but not Randolph)! It was fun to get a look at the Batmobile months before anyone else had seen it. What we saw were 2nd unit shots, so none of the principles were anywhere near while we were there. One thing that was fun was seeing a fake subway station entrance, and a Gotham subway map on the wall that was very detailed, even though no one would ever have seen it. We were kicking ourselves for not having a camera with us.
Don’t know if anybody is still subscribed to this thread, just wanted to discuss this issue…
We’ve been hearing, for more than a decade now, that modern audiences cannot handle tragic endings, that movies with same cannot be profitable, that sad endings never test well, etc. etc. So, what comes along and breaks a ton of box office records? A film where the lead heroine and secondary hero are dead, the main hero is now seen as a 100% outlaw by law enforcement, there is a trail of bodies of other sympathetic characters, and the villian lives. Yet it gets a 9.3 at IMDb, universally positive reviews, and tons of repeat business (come to think of it, the film it is trying to catch in box office revenue is also a tragedy).
So will this mean that sad/bittersweet/tragic endings are back on the radar for other films by major studios? Or is it a one-off exception by a director with enough clout in set in a universe with significant pop culture appeal?
Of course, at no point during TDK do we visit the “Narrows”, the shit-hole slums so evident in Begins. It’s probably as rainy and shitty as ever it was.
Most of TDK takes place instead in Central Gotham, which was only really glimpsed in Begins. FWIW, all the roads and tunnels and freeways in TDK look identical to those in Begins.
To my mind, that was a directorial decision, to show Gotham as having cleaned up a bit in the years after Begins, to show that the city is starting to get back on its feet. IIRC, wasn’t there muggers and such like, even in Central Gotham train stations in Begins? One thing I will concur, is that the elevated trains have pretty much vanished. AND Wayne Towers is a completly different building.
HIJACK* There’s one effect I hated in the movie, BTW; when the Batmobile rams the garbage truck. So obviously, jarringly CGI *END HIJACK
As the last person in North America who hadn’t seen the movie, I wanted to say I was very, very impressed. This was a beartrap of a movie that grabs you at the beginning and doesn’t let go. Ledger was excellent, but I agree that the writing was also terrific - they came up with a Joker who was legimately scary and dangerous. He wasn’t just a quirky criminal, he was a frightening maniac.
The themes were handled really well. Better than in Batman Begins, I would say, where they sketched out some heavy topics but tried to bring too many of them home at once in that boardroom scene. I think it was Kevin Smith who said Nolan set out to make a Godfather or Godfather II of superhero movies, and I think that was an apt comparison. I’m not sure I’m going to watch this movie again any time soon because it was that damn intense, but they did an amazing job with the story.
A little late for this party and I haven’t read through all the previous comments.
Went to see The Dark Knight with a girlfriend last night and was absolutely blown away by everything. Heath Ledger owned the part of the Joker. ( more later.)
It might help that I didn’t see Batman begins and I had meh expectations going into it.
I still don’t completely understand the entire evac. the hospitals scene, I suppose re-watching it will make everything cromulent.
My only thing is the Joker’s voice. I thought it was awesome, but it reminded me of some other actor ( not nicholson, though I think there may have been a drop of Jack in that performance.) the entire time he spoke. I could never quite get a grasp on who he sounded like because his scenes were fast and disturbing. But the image of a 30-40 year old white male actor, Paul Giametti or that area of acting, kept popping into my mind. It is driving me crazy.
Dark Knight finally got here and I had a chance to see it a couple of days ago. The few niggling problems I had with it have already been brought up and discussed; slightly too much story that was a bit rushed in places, small plot points that deserved more attention.
I’d heard that Ledger’s performance was incredible, and everyone who said so was very right. He owned that character. That was, it seems, one of the problems that led to his death. He got too deep into the character and was under so much strain because of it that he needed medication to cope.
Regarding the Batvoice™:
One of the scenes in Batman Begins that gave me chills of “oh yes, I like!” was when he’s interrogating Fass, has this corrupt cop dangling upside down several stories above the pavement, and growls, “Swear to me!” That’s when you’re convinced he’s serious, and that this isn’t just a whim or game for him. He’s in it for keeps.
Batman is a driven character. The voice isn’t just an affectation meant to conceal his “true” identity, it’s an expression of his rage. When he is Batman he can express the dark emotions that he covers up with his Bruce persona. Bruce is more of a mask than Batman is, in my opinion. The destructive vigilante who just barely holds on to sanity is closer to his true self than the billionaire dilettante. His self-imposed moral injunctions are the lifeline that keeps him from spiraling down into the self destruction of righteous villainy.
Criminals aren’t afraid of him because they’ll get caught, because who cares about going to prison? That’s part of the game. Even real criminals in real life look at the risk of jail time as a cost of doing business. Criminals in Gotham are afraid of him because he could snap. They recognize a fellow predator when they see one.
Something that helps boost the fear effect — in this iteration of the Batman story anyway — is the Narrows being gassed in Batman Begins. A majority of the criminals in Gotham were in the Narrows and had the fear of his persona seared into their psyches by the drug. As he swooped over the city, thousands of them saw a hallucinogen-induced vision of a terrible demonic figure flying through the sky.
Someone once contrasted Superman & Batman thusly- Clark Kent puts on a costume & pretends to be Superman. Batman puts on a suit & pretends to be Bruce Wayne.
What’s this? Someone agreeing completely with me? I’m glad I read through the entire thread for once (albeit starting backwards )
For once I know what it means to phone your performance in, Gyllenhaal really didn’t seem like she was all there, made me wonder if they had CGIed the people she was speaking to back in. It was like listening to a really poor kid actress trying her best.
I’ll mention Two-Face, Dent was alright as a background character, but in the hospital bed scene his alter ego was cringeworthy. Ledger, complete with make up against a half CGI character whose super power was to shout at people and then shoot them, what a painful comparison.
The rest of the film (Ledger excluded) was boring, some sort of long moral lesson in not becoming as bad as the bad guys you’re fighting. Team America did it better
If I watch it again, it’ll only be to see the Joker, but hopefully someone will put the clips online so I don’t have to suffer the rest of the film.
The quote is from Kill Bill 2 (although it probably showed up before that - Tarantino isn’t one for originality). The point was the Superman was differentv from all other superheores in that his “normal” persona - Clark Kent - was a disguise, with Superman being his true, original self.
Hey Pushkin - you’re not the only one. My comments were posted way upthread, but I basically agree with you and Levdrakon. I think this movie has been seriously overhyped.
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