So, what do you get when you mix Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Morgan Freeman, and Gotham City?
Here's a guess, a 155 million dollar blockbuster. Still no idea? What are you living under a rock or something? You get one of the greatest movies in existence, known as The Dark Knight. Saturday afternoon myself and Bauhaus attended a showing of the much hyped and eagerly anticipated movie. How great could it really be? Read on, if you're not convinced to see it then go back to watching your VHS copies of The Piano, and Little Women because you my friend have no hope.
With all the iterations of Batman that have graced our eyes from Adam West, to Michael Keaton, and Val Kilmer through George Clooney and finally Christian Bale, I can only say that I was skeptical of Batman Begins when it first hit the scene. Could it really be that Batman would be brought back into the darkness to give the real fans something to be joyous about? I mean, going from Tim Burton's dark iteration to the outlandish neon colors of Batman and Robin, you know where I'm coming from. Yet despite all I knew, Batman would once again rise to greatness. Batman Begins was my favorite Batman movie, until The Dark Knight came along and changed everything.
Christian Bale proved that he could play the role in Batman Begins, he nailed the nuances of both Bruce Wayne and his alter ego, Batman. He brought the gritty realism to the character that had been lacking for so long, so to reprise his role in The Dark Knight was only fitting. We knew that Bale would deliver. The Joker however was something totally different. Heath Ledger!? The dude that did A Knights Tale, 10 Things I Hate About You, and Brokeback Mountain, I'm really supposed to buy into the fact that this pretty boy, romance driven, dude lover is going to play the craziest individual in the Batman universe? You've got to be freaking kidding me! Yet, Ledger pulled a total 180 and in a matter of minutes took the role most famously played by Jack Nicholson, and completely recreated it. Never in my movie watching days have I ever felt so convinced of a character as I did with The Joker. Unlike Nicholson's role in which he wanted to kill Batman to gain control of Gotham City, Ledger showed us what true evil was. The Joker knows no bounds, is held back by no rules, follows no agenda, he does what he does because to him, it's fun. Pit man vs man just to see what happens. You'll find in the movie that The Joker has no desire to kill Batman, because without Batman, there's no purpose to the madness, there's no challenge. Batman represents everything the Joker is not, and it's his purpose to corrupt Batman, to get him to give into his primal emotions, and do the one thing he has sworn not to do, kill another. As Ledger puts it “Kill you! Kill you!? I don't want to kill you, you complete me.” I've already given more away than I should, but it's hard to describe the level of evil that The Joker represents without mentioning what he does. I suppose you could say that if Satan had an earthly form, The Joker would be it and Heath Ledger drove it home.
There is a lot of story going on from the very start, a new DA is in town, Harvey Dent, described as Gotham's White Knight, he's put away the vast majority of the city's criminals, and the mob is losing it's grip on Gotham. With no one left to turn to they “Let the clown out of the box” and side with The Joker, a mistake they will all live to regret. Tying in with the Harvey Dent storyline you have Rachel Dawes, Bruce Wayne's love interest from Batman Begins. Rachel is unconvincingly played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, and brings a sub-par iteration of the character to the screen. I would have liked to see Katie Holmes reprise the role, especially when you see what happens, but then I guess she's too busy chasing Xenu around the galaxy. You get to see Bruce Wayne struggle with continuing to be Batman, even to the point of giving up and letting Harvey Dent finish cleaning up the city. Corruption as you will see is something that can reach even the White Knight and crush the moral fiber of the most righteous being, bringing to life the villainous Two-Face.
The action was non stop throughout the entire movie. Every scene delivered heart pounding, unpredictable, realistic action. There was no shaky cam, and a bare minimum of CGI, almost all the stunts were live action. To me The Dark Knight set the bar for any action movie made from this day forward. It has everything from amazing gadgets, to fist fights, to gun battles, explosions, and even a surveillance system that would make The Patriot Act's warrentless wire tapping look like a 3 year old's Duplo Block building.
The Dark Knight is an amazing movie, quite possibly greater than the Lord of the Rings. It has amazing acting, amazing action, and an amazing plot. It brings you down into the pit of darkness that every human soul has lurking inside of it, and leaves you yearning for more. It really is a shame that Heath Ledger had to go and off himself, as I can no longer see anyone else being able to bring the utter realism to The Joker that he brought. Maybe he really did let the psyche of his character get the better of him as some suggest, or maybe it was just a depressed individual who lost his wife in a bitter divorce. Whatever caused him to kill himself we will never know, but I can say with certainty that the greatest portrayal of a villain died with him. I think that Nolan really drove home the character of Batman in a way that no one else has been able to do. Batman is not a hero, he's above that, he's whatever Gotham City needs him to be, he shines the greatest when hope seems lost, he is Gotham's Dark Knight.
Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites
| Next > |
|---|
