I need to jet off to work, but I thought it was really fantastic. Best part: any moment where Heath Ledger was on-screen. The scars backstory bit - the first time - was absolutely perfect.
The pacing could have been better, but it just downgraded it to a great movie, no real damage done. I think that Two-Face’s development couldn’t have really happened earlier in the movie, because there wouldn’t have been enough time to set up the backstory otherwise.
I was incredibly surprised by the convict on the ferry throwing away the detonator. I honestly did not expect it to go that way, and was pleasantly surprised.
A question: Did they explain how exactly Joker got on the bus to get away from the hospital, how he got them to wait?
Joker: Do you like magic? I’m going to make this pencil disappear. *bad ass dude walks over to “teach” joker a lesson. Joker slams his head on the table, injecting the pencil into the guy’s head. He falls back dead. * Joker: Ta da!
I figured the length would be an issue for some people, and it is long (somewhere around 2.5 hours I think). Personally, I love long movies because I feel like I can get more drawn in, especially when it’s well done and an immersive world like Batman. I could have sat through another 30 minutes even if I hadn’t had too much to drink.
It seems a little redundant, but it fits perfectly with his motivation. He wanted to corrupt people and create chaos. The low-life scum were easy to corrupt; kill a partner for a bigger share of the profit, but everyone else was much more difficult. How better to corrupt someone than to force them to choose between two terrible alternatives? Look at the justifications the people were making on the ferries. Morality becomes a lot more maleable when it becomes a life or death situation.
As someone else said, the coin flipping has been a major part of Two-Face’s character forever, and I think it was used brilliantly. At first, he uses it to imply that he’s acting somewhat whimsical or impulsive when he’s already made the choice; after his transformation, it’s the exact opposite.
We went to the midnight show at River East 21 near Navy Pier. I think 16 of their 21 screens were showing The Dark Knight and they were all sold out. I think if they had had more prints they would have had even more screens. Some of the remaining screens were playing a midnight show of Mamma Mia! That would have been fun, but we were committed to TDK. We’ll see MM later this evening.
When the midnight shows all sold out, RE21 added some 3:30am shows, which I don’t think has ever been done in Chicago before. As we were filing down the hallway after the movie, when we passed by some of the theaters with the “The Dark Knight 3:30” LED signs glowing, I wondered to myself how many people would actually be in the theaters. I assumed just a handful. Imagine my surprise when we came down the escalator and the lobby was PACKED with people waiting in lines for the 3:30 showings! I burst out in delighted laughter, it was so exciting to see.
What she said. I can’t wait to see it again in IMAX.
I’m so blown away by Heath Ledger. It was both painful and exhilarating watching his performance. After a while though, I forgot that it was Heath Ledger and just focused on The Joker. Then later on, after he has his big monologue, it hit me again that we’ll never see this character, played this way, again, because the actor is dead, because Heath Ledger is dead, and we’ll never see any other characters brought to life by him, because he’s dead, and it was like a punch in the gut. I didn’t start crying, but it took me a couple minutes to recover and get back into the movie.
Could someone spoil this for me? I know there’s no backstory with the Joker, but he mentions his father in what the reviews are implying is kind of a gruesome way. What exactly does he say about his old man?
Basically that this is why his face is scarred - his father did it to him after doing the same to his mother. He changes this story every time he tells it, though, (including that he did it to himself) so it’s not reliable.
What was the story with the prison guy with the cell phone bomb in his stomach? I don’t remember them setting that up and I was confused how it happened.
The Joker wanted to be caught. He needed to be inside the holding cells so he could distract Batman and Gordon and get to Lao. But what’s the use of getting caught if he is stuck in jail? So he promised that poor bastard that he would make “the voices stop” and replace them with lights. The Joker clearly just cut his skin opened and stuffed a phone inside of him so he could detonate the bomb. It wasn’t any more “set up” than any of the Joker’s “pranks”.
I had a chance to sleep on it and think about this, and I’ve decided that my initial reaction to it stands. The more I think about it (and God, do I want to think about it. I want to just go after it like I was in grad school) the more I find to love. I think it’s truly Shakespearean in its scope. And I’m an English lit person–I don’t throw that term around lightly!
For simplicity’s sake, I’ll simply say I found it frightening (in the OMG factor) and depressing.
And Ledger really, really did nail this part. I’ve never seen one of his ostensibly “good” movies, so I don’t know what he really did that wasn’t hackneyed or crap, but this was really superb.
Not I, but that’s because I couldn’t place the actor! I knew I’d seen him somewhere.
Rampant speculation:
Am I the only one who thinks that it was the League of Shadows who turned the Joker loose on Gotham? He does say (and rather proves) that he isn’t a man who “plans,” and Batman says he wants to find the man who "let the Joker off his leash (and doesn’t, what with being distracted by the Dent situation and all). Or did I miss something?
Wow, I just went to buy (Navy Pier, Chicago) IMAX tickets. It’s showing 24 hrs a day all weekend, and every show is sold out. In fact, the earliest shows that weren’t sold out were on Tuesday at 1:00pm and 4:00pm (the Tuesday evening shows are sold out). I bought 2 tickets to the 4:00pm showing, and when I went to select seating, there were only a few seats left! Luckily we still got front row, just slightly off-center.
I saw it today with my dad, and I loved it. Heath Ledger’s Joker was amazing, and Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent wasn’t anything too shabby either. Especially liked the make-up, looked a lot more like the comic book and gruesome. I foresee two Oscars for this film minimum, one for Heath Ledger and one for the make-up department.
The best thing I liked about it: none of the climax was spoiled in trailers, which was surprising considering how much of the movie was shown in TV spots and the like.
