A lot of people have asked what I thought of the new summer Blockbuster, The Dark Knight. So I stopped by Taco Bell, had a bite, and recorded my thoughts on it. Enjoy!
Oh, and what the hell was up with the mayor of Gotham City wearing eyeliner?
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{ 40 comments… read them below or add one }
Ha! You’re the only other person I know to have noticed the eyeliner! God that was annoying.
i loved your review of this movie, it’s just to bad it still never got me to see it at the movie theater. but it kept me waiting for it to come out on dvd. now to be honest i hated batman begins with a passion. i thought it was just god awful and waste of money(saw it opening weekend). so that turned me away from TDK this past summer, despite me being a huge batman fanboy(still love michael keaton as batman). so i waited and when i got it on dvd and watched it for the first time. i was in awe at this movie as it was in my eyes 10x better then batman begins.
now i still think christian bale is ok as batman(alot better then clooney and kilmer), but in this one i think he did a better job overall. now for the Joker… i absolutely loved the way heath ledger portrayed him in this movie. it is just very heartbreaking that he is gone, and wont be able to reprise his role. i used to love jack nicholson’s Joker, but i think ledger took the top spot. overall i gave this movie a 8.5/10 which is alot higher then what i gave Begins(3/10 just awful in my eyes). anyways great review, just to bad i didn’t see it in theaters :(
my friends and I have had many arguments on which was better dark night or tim burtons. what do you think. Oh and by the way the actor who played the mayor always wears eye liner even in lost which he has a major part in
Personally, I’m more into the Burton phase, but Nolan did a really good job with Begins and Dark Knight. I was glad to see Nolan progressed the story line, did great work on character development and embodied the atmosphere seen in the previous Batman movies (not counting the Joel Schumacher “projects”, I hesitate to call them movies). Anyway, completely agree with you, hope to see more reviews, keep up the good work.
Nestor Carbonell doesn’t wear eyeliner, he just has naturally dark eyes. Not very distracting in my eyes, in fact very unique looking. He is progressively becoming one of my favourite characters on the TV show LOST that he features in, so I was very thrilled to see him in The Dark Knight.
Personally, I’m one of the very poor minority that was more entertained by Batman Begins than The Dark Knight. I found the focus switching from Bruce Wayne in this one to be irritating… I mean, it was hard to really analyze how well of a performance Christian Bale gave in this movie. He certainly wasn’t as committed in The Dark Knight as he was to Begins to the role, and as much as I’ve had no problem with his batman voice his delivery on some of the lines with it was dreadful. In the final confrontation with Joker I actually turned on the subtitles and found he said something completely different to what I thought he said. A lot of people found Bruce Wayne’s journey dull, the whole ‘fear’ theme and dialogue cheesy? I actually found this deep. So when it came to The Dark Knight I somewhat missed characters like Liam Neeson’s portrayal of Ra’s Al Ghul. I found The Scarecrows role terrible and not even noteworthy… they didn’t even bother to add in a fear gas effect he was just there for the sake of it.
So yeah… I much preferred Begins because it was a film about Batman rather than the people of Gotham? I liked the feeling of the corrupt unique city from what we got from the narrows in Begins. I loathed how every scene in TDK felt like chicago. But then with that said I still REALLY enjoyed it, and I can understand why others prefer. I realize the writing was better, I realize Heath Ledger gave a magnificent performance along with Eckhart and Oldman. The only problem I had with it was as Spoony says Maggie Gyllenhal… it was distracting seeing Joker call this character ‘Beautiful’ when she was looking her worst in the movie. Also Harvey and Bruce fighting over her. She was annoying, and I hate recasts for the most part anyway as much as Katie Holmes was the worst part of Batman Begins.
Anywho, I love the franchise at the end of the day. The Dark Knight wasn’t so much my cup of tea, but if it appeals to more people who really cares? I want to see after the shit that was Batman & Robin the character get the respect he deserves, and I wish the film good luck in the oscars and congratulate Heath on his golden globe because he really deserved it.
im wit u all the way man the movie ruled especially on hd
eyeliner weird as HELL
SPOONY RULEZ
i liked the look on his face when the first explosion was small at the hospital
he was like wtf i know there was more tnt than that
Dark Knight kicked ass! But the Dark Knight just isn’t as good as either of Tim Burton’s Batman movies (although I can totally see why Spoony would write a 100 page review of why Batman Returns sucks and I’d looking forward to that one) mostly because those Batman films have Michael Keaton in it. That guy could totally own Chuck Norris in a fight, I mean, sure it’s impressive when Chuck splits a .50 cal round in half with his mind but it’s more impressive when Michael Keaton reflects a .50 cal round with his pinky finger so the bullet ricochets 9 times to kill the sniper who shot that bullet in the first place.
I loved the 1989 Batman movie. But as the Tim Burton series progressed the movies got worse and worse. After Batman and Robin (Which as everybody knows is a steaming lump of shit) I almost renouced the Batman franchise. But Christopher Nolan has done an excellant job. Christian Bale has even surpassed Michael Keaton on the best Batman. Heath Ledger was just amazing. It was like Hannibal Lector in clown makeup. They totally nailed everything that made the Batman comics great. This is definatly the best superhero movie in decades.
Rest assured, Jackfields, Batman Forever and Batman and Robin were not directed by Tim Burton and those shitty movies were not even close to containing the awesomeness of Michael Keaton (putting Keaton in those movies would be like trying to install the PC version of Call of Duty 4 on DOS Shell). And I could hardly say that Christopher Nolan surpassed Michael Keaton with that phony long island chain smoker voice..
Ok, I respect your opinion. I already knew that Tim Burton didn’t do Batman Forever or Batman and Robin. You gotta admit that The Dark Knight is one of the best superhero movies in a long time. By the way, I saw this one Jackoff on Youtube who said he was looking forward to “More adventures with Mr. Freeze”
I felt that Batman Begins had fewer follies, and for that reason I feel it’s the superior film. The Dark Knight was good, but not great. There wasn’t anywhere near as much mystery and suspense as there was in Begins.
Right, so – loved it. Great movie. Not gonna go into details on this one, you’ve all seen it by now, so bugger my opinion. However, a few things: Batmans voice is bugger all! Sorry folks, it just doesn’t work. A man like him would not waste that much breath, just to alter his voice. Growling does not equal anger and frustration. Right, that one over with. Bit pissed off about Two-Face getting killed. Quite a good character, who could easily have been the main villain in another movie, but there you go. Guess they needed to kill Dent off, in order to progress the story line into a more dark, everybody-hates-the-hero thing. Oh, and by the way Noah, you’re right on the money: Rachel Dawes is a complete wrench in the gears. Batman has had so many exotic love interests over the years, that it is just mind-boggling why on Gods green earth they chose that cunting harpy.
I am quite happy with Christian Bale as Batman. It’s nice to finally have somebody with the physical fitness to actually dish out some real damage. It’s true that he doesn’t have the same brooding quality that Michael Keaton did, but you can’t get it all (Unless you’re Al Pacino. Then the world belongs to you).
Now, a lot of you mentioned how much the Batman Forever and Batman & Robin movies sucked to high heaven, and you’re absolutely right. It was crap from beginning till end.
These are general thoughts on where this whole thing might go. They killed Dent, so that’s one plausible villain down. Which unfortunatly leaves us with a bunch of madmen that doesn’t translate that well into the more realistic setup Nolan has presented us with. The Riddler is too much like the joker, except you just have to yell at him to knock him out, so that won’t work. The Penquin never really had anything going for him, and I don’t think DeVito is gonna do that role again. It would sort of be nice to see Catwoman again, if not for anything else, then just to correct that cosmic catastrophe that was the 2004 installment. On the other hand, again, she just doesn’t quite seem to fit into Nolans universe. But now for my real beef: I would frigging LOVE to see Mr. Freeze the Nolan way! If you have seen Heart of Ice, or read any of the Gotham Central issues featuring him, you would almost have to agree with me. He is one of the deepest and most dramatic characters in Batman, AND he would provide more than enough of a challenge to base a movie on him. But again, I just don’t see him fitting into the new settings. – Oh, yeah, and if any of you mention Poison Ivy I’m gonna have to hunt you down, Cape Fear-style.
I liked the dark night.. But i thought it wasnt THAT good. Like, everybody said this game was the fucking dogs bollocks, I saw it but if heath ledger hadnt died. i dont think everybody would have been this enthralled. More pity than anything else.
Yeah, I agree – the chick looked really ugly and the fact, that she was like the main love interest of two main chars in this movie, really killed much of momentum for me, I liked the Joker reincarnation, but not too much of anyone else, IMO the movie is not bad, but not as good as Batman or Batman returns – Tim Burtons stuff, I think they were just looking a bit too much of a serious to all the things here – come on, Batman – dude in a bat costume fights a dude in white makeup, how complicated could it be? I don’t really think, that Batman character was created to watch from this kind of angle. My personal rating for this movie, calculating Sountrack, Video effects, Psychology, Storyline and acting – 5,25/10
Much better than Batman Begins. I hate exposition. That’s why Tim Burton’s Batman was great; no origin to deal with.
Two-Face went ballistic for no reason. And I have a hard time buying a guy going on a cop killer rampage when half of his skull is showing. Remember? “You’ve refused pain killers”? Yeah, right.
Maggie Gyllenhaal may not be Michelle Phiffer, but she’s got to be hotter than Katie Holmes. WAY off base there.
Joker ending was great. A little far-fetched, but great. If I were on that ferry I would’ve blown up the one carrying the mobsters in a second. But there’s only so much stark realism you can take before the movie gets pretentious.
Im no genius on the subject of two-face (unlike my knowledge of the Joker) but I had the belief that he has a split personality disorder not just a burned face. Tommy Lee was ridiculous and just replaced I’s with We’s but there wasn’t really a split there but at least they tried. And because this takes place in a more real world setting its complete bullshit to have someone with split personalities so the closest thing is that Dent just kind of goes from super nice to super evil never back and forth just SuperDent to pure dag-nasty evil then nothing
What else can they do, make the riddler like the zodiac killer, make clayface just a guy with too much plastic surgery and can move his face around, do the penguin the cartoons way as opposed to the burton way
THANK GOD! I thought I was just being picky about the Mayor’s eyeliner. I never read any of the Batman comics (I watched all the movies and TV series/cartoons as a kid) so I wasn’t sure whether his …. makeup was canon or not.
(I didn’t watch Batman Begins for one reason and one reason only: Katie “ZOMIGAWD ISN’T TOM AMAZING?!” Holmes. Fuck, that woman annoys me to no end!)
Batman’s voice sounded too forced. Yeah, the Dark Knight’s known for his raspy voice, but Bale’s interpretation sounded like he’d been gargling vodka AND rocks. And, for a movie about the Dark Knight, Batman seemed to be … overshadowed, I suppose. It’s of course the hero’s role to beat up the bad guys, but that’s all he seems to do in this film, whereas the other characters (Gordon, Dent) deal with the heavy, emotional drama that made me feel more for them than I did for Batman: “Oh no! Psycho Dent’s got Gordon’s family! Poor Gordon!! … what’s that? Batman’s surrounded by thugs? Eh. He’s Batman. He’ll survive.” Bale is convincing as Batman (after Clooney, I’ll willing to embrace ANYONE, really) but he’s just flat here. He shows up, fights, reveals some complicated (yet intriguing) foresight, and completes his mission succesfully. On the other hand, I did enjoy that interrogation scene when he throws the Joker all over the place, and I did want to smack the people of Gotham upside their heads in the end when they turn on Batman, even if it was his idea.
I think what distracts the movie from Batman himself are the final confrontations: since Batman’s the hero you’d expect him to be the one making the decisions, but he doesn’t. All he does is confront and beat up the bad guys, and little else. Not that I’d prefer an emo Batman moping about, but it seems like everyone else in this movie have it tougher than him. The people on the ferries decide to spare each other (kudos, cause if I had to choose between myself and other innocent civilians, and a boat load of criminals I’m 95% sure I’d have blown those motherfuckers up), which was great; and Gordon and his family were the real centerpoint of the last stand-off, with Batman just jumping in at the last minute to add some physical action to the scene.
Of course, Ledger’s the Joker must be touched upon. I loved him. I LOVED him. The Joker already is a complex character, yet Ledger managed to add yet another dimension to him and the thought alone that we’ll never get to see him reprise this role is enough to make me want to bury my sorrow in a tub of chocolate ice cream. He managed to be loathsome, terrifying and hilarious at the same time. Everyone in the theatre laughed when he realized that the hospital bombs hadn’t gone off, forcing him to jiggle the detonator, wearing that nurse’s uniform, but everyone gasped and went silent when the whole place was blown to shits: any character that can get such a polarized reaction is a keeper.
And yes, I have to agree with you on the Maggie Gylenhaal thing. And I have to blame the movie, since it seemed determined to make her look as washed out and hollowed as possible. I get that perhaps they didn’t want to go with a ridiculously sexy female lead (taking the more realistic approach), but during the benefit party, when the Joker turns to her and says, “Well, hello, beautiful!” the camera turns on her and she looked like me when I just woke up after only two hours of sleep (i.e. DREADFUL). She looks her prettiest when she’s about to die! (And speaking of which, boy was THAT a brainfuck! I was sorta stunned when she actually perished in the explosion. I kinda sat waiting for someone to walk up with her in their arms and prove she survived, but they really killed her off! Not something you see very often in superhero movies.)
My other complaints were minor and pretty insignificant since, on a whole, I LOVE this movie.
P.S: Damn you, Spoony! Watching you eat Taco Bell has given me an insatiable craving for some nacho fries and burritos myself, but we don’t have Taco Bell in the Netherlands :(
To be fair, no one knows how the Joker does 90% of the shit he does. He is a force of nature, that no one knows anything about. And thats how he is portrayed in the comic.
This moviw will live in infamy for me as one of the most overhyped movies of all time. Was it good, yes, but it wasn’t because of one definable thing. It wasn’t the Joker, it wasn’t Christian Bale, who in my mind is almost as bad as Batman as Clooney was. It was good because of the synergy of all its parts. Many things that are great in life are great because of this very fact. When something is greater than the sum of it’s parts then it works. Fortune 500 companies spend millions of dollars to get that on their board of directors. Was this a good movie? Yes. Was it the definitive performance of Batman, and the Joker? I say probably not. My opinion on Batman is that there has to be dichotomy between Bruce wayne and his alter ego. That’s why i never liked any of the Batmans except for Kilmer. he captured to bipolar nature of the character better than any that have done the role. Was the Joker definitive? Maybe, but how do you classify the definitive performance of complete insanity and anarchy when the very nature of the two words defy categorization? What is insane? What is crazy? If you asked a hundred different people I’d venture that you’d get damn near a hundred different responses. That’s because craziness, and insanity are completely subjective. What I might consider to be crazy, might not be what most people do. If you want to judge the insanity factor of the Joker performance, take this movie to a mental institution, show it, and see how many think it’s crazy. That might be the only way to measure the insanity. But then again, the people in that place are only there because some person subjectively thought what they were doing was crazy. There’s some deep shit for you.
I kinda liked this one. It’s not great, but it’s alright…i mean for a summer action movie it’s alright. Thats sort of like saying that this particular time you got kicked in the teeth wasnt as bad as the last times though. I walked out on batman begins. No idea why, i just know something about it really rubbed me the wrong way, and i walked out after about 20 minutes of it. I’ve never bothered to watch it again.
This one, i didnt even bother to see because i knew right away it was overhyped, and i’d be disappointed if i paid money for it, and i agreed with that original assessment when i actually saw it.
It’s just too juvenile for me. Maybe if i was 10 years younger i’d be more into it, but it just seems to silly, too appealing to an immature mind for me. I’m the kind of guy who read comic books when he was a kid, and only when i was a kid. I got to an age where they just started to seem stupid, and i moved on. So i’m really not this movie’s targeted audience.
I like the direction it takes big summer action movies, i mean actually paying attention to something resembling quality, rather than just seeing the latest and greatest hollywood hunk strut around on screen for two hours, and with themes like “it would really suck if america blew up” or “love will win pearl harbor”. At least this one has something resembling a story line, and backs away from too many hollywood cookie-cutter plots.
Still…i have trouble with a lot of things in it. The joker’s explosions just appearing out of nowhere. They have those ferry ships at the end, and throughout the whole movie the joker has been bombing everything in sight, and nobody thinks to check the ferries for explosives before the leave. It’s not like there’s a pipe bomb hidden in an air duct either, no, the entire engineering bay is filled with drums of explosives wired together. Nobody noticed that?
But, as with any action movie, picking on things like that wont get you anywhere, if you do it just means you’re not the person this movie was intended for. I’m not.
If you’re wondering about the whole ‘mayor wearing eyeliner’ thing…
http://www.premiumhollywood.com/2009/01/28/once-more-for-the-record-nestor-carbonell-does-not-wear-eye-make-up/
I’ll have to disagree with you on this one.
Granted, I didn’t see “Batman Begins” (in fact, the last one I saw was the 1989 “Batman”), but I caught the latter 75% or so of this one on TV the other day. I’m not a huge fan of Batman (or “The Batman” as they call him in this film). But as a movie standing on its own, this one has some serious issues.
Mainly, it’s very dark (yeah I know “Dark Knight.” Har.) But it’s not just the lighting, everything seems really psychotic. The only character who makes any sense is the Joker. I recall him saying “I’m an agent of chaos” or something. That makes sense. Alfred even analyzed him: “Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
Anyway, I realize Batman has always been dark and brooding, and I like that about the series. But this film felt like it took itself way too seriously. I mean, there has to be some element that initiates your suspension of disbelief. But I just couldn’t believe a whole lot of things. I couldn’t believe that the police were so incompetent. I couldn’t believe they didn’t call the Army (one of the characters even pointed this out after I thought of this!) I also couldn’t believe how everyone in the city could look up to a guy wearing a bat suit. At least not this city. Batman 1989 had just enough campy elements to make it work without being too cheesy, but this one was trying to be too realistic.
Another thing I couldn’t stand was how the plot jumped around so much. I mean, you have to be ADHD to keep up with it. The scenes change so rapidly, I could barely digest one plot point before another was introduced. There was very little in the way of smooth transition between scenes. I couldn’t tell if some of this stuff was happening on the same day, or if it took several days, weeks, or even months for all this to happen. It just seemed way too convenient, like you mentioned with the Joker planting explosives in the hospital that Harvey Dent just happened to be taken to, because he just happened to be the one that Batman rescued instead of the girl. It seems like a lot of his “agent of chaos” stuff was actually pretty controlled. OH NOES! A PARADOX!
Anyway, it was definitely a lot more dialogue-oriented than other Batman films, but did he have to talk that way whenever he put on the bat suit? It’s almost like he was the multiple-personality schizophrenic instead of the Joker.
That whole thing with the sonar? Cheap. Cool, but cheap. Yeah, he’s a bat, so he can see with sonar. Sounds better on paper, or for a video game. There was very little point to add the Morgan Freeman character to run the whole thing, it was just another conflict of morality the writers wanted us to see Batman discarding so they could have another excuse for the people to hate him by the end. As if they didn’t already.
Gotham City seems like a place where everything is put in reverse. Seriously, a boat full of prisoners and they toss out the detonator for the other boat? Maybe that one guy could be virtuous and honorable, but I doubt they all would have been. Not to stereotype the prison population (they’re people too, after all), but there is a good reason for some of those people to be there, and they didn’t get there by caring for other people’s well being.
Anyway, it wasn’t all bad, but these are some things I couldn’t see past. I give it a mediocre rating.
Of course, having said all that, Heath Ledger’s Joker was by far the best Joker ever! RIP Heath.
You know that Heath Ledger is an absolutely fantastic actor when you find out that the hospital bombing scene was actually a technical difficulty.
All of the bombs were meant to go off at once, but they didn’t. Heath just stayed in character anyway. That little jump when the bomb does go off is actually real surprise.
I mean when the tech guys fuck up a shot like that and you stay in character, that’s just awesome.
I loved The Dark Knight, and for all its faults…
At least it didn’t have Penguin biting a guy’s nose off.
Oscars or no oscars, still a great movie!
Long live Heath Ledger!
There was no better Joker than Heath Ledgers Joker. And i doubt that anyone will be able to fill his shoes.
Normally i rip the shit out of action movies with all the pre-planted bombs and cell phones that act like sonar and shit like that…
But fuck a duck if this movie doesn’t rock. I loved it from start to finish. I think they could have put talking dinosaurs in there somewhere i wouldn’t have cared.
Great review! I also loved the movie. Although there were scenes where… does it have to be that dark? Visually? Like, do police stations not have lighting? Was so annoying to be squinting all the time. I get that the producers were trying to maintain a flow of ‘darkness’ throughout the movie but still. Annoying.
Oh and Nestor Carbonell (mayor of gotham) doesn’t wear eyeliner. I think he might be Italian… possibly Cuban or Spanish… but in any case, I’ve ALWAYS seen him like this, with dark eyelashes. I do have an Italian friend who owns no eye makeup and yet her lashes/eyes are crazy dark and it looks like she is.
Nevertheless, great review and kudos to those guys that made Batman. Dark Knight and the one with the Penguin are my all-time favourites :)
Are you eating Taco Bell?
Mr. Spoony, well done!
Great call on Maggie being shot in REALLY unattractive ways/light in this movie (I mean as you said in other films she looks fine, not super hot but still Hollywood attractive), and I mostly agree with your summary/review.
It was a very entertaining film, in fact that the first time I saw it, it scores so high on my personal review scale that it became the top action movie for me EVER, upon later reviews still super fun and entertaining but it drops back to reality of being up there with Children of Men , Hot Fuzz and 28 days later for my all time faves.
at first i saw this and i was like “o shit hes gonna hate on this? fuck im!” then i saw it was a POSITIVE review
“Oh, and what the hell was up with the mayor of Gotham City wearing eyeliner?”
said Spoony.
wait, what?
i don’t remember anyone with eyeliner except Joker.
and sure, Heath Ledger played Joker quite good but not better than Cesar Romero or Jack Nicholson.
and oh, Christian Bale sucks as Batman. Michael Keaton as Batman FTW
The biggest flaw of Dark Knight is definatly it’s length. It’s just about a half hour too long. I think the ending sequence with the boats was the longest part. That shoulda been cut down. Other than that, it was a really good movie and i’ll rewatch it just like I rewatch Begins.
that was an ok review overall.. i kind of like spoony’s stuf. but just one thing.. dont review while eating, its fuking anoying and its gross
Call it “blasphemy”, but I’m kind of glad Ledger cannot reprise his role (HOWEVER! I’m sad that it is because he passed on). My reasoning being that the next iteration in the Nolan Trilogy could NOT feature the Joker to the degree and depth that was in TDK. As such, it’d be deeply difficult to work Joker back into the story, and allowing Ledger the same level of freedom to run around as the character. Quite honestly, I do hope that the Joker is NOT utilised in the third movie, as it would undermine the second (in my opinion anyway).
As with the first and second, the third should focus on entirely NEW villains. I’d personally like to see The Ventriloquist and Scarface make their appearance. I always found their presence to be intricate, and deeply unsettling. $20 down on seeing Killer Croc in the next one, though. Or maybe, we’ll get Harley Quinn to replace Joker? Of course, I’d like to see the Animated Series version costume; not the Arkham Asylum game one. For… obvious reasons… natch.
Apparently, and this is according to the actor who plays the mayor of Gotham City (and, incidentally, Richard from Lost <33)… He doesn't wear eyeliner. I say, "Yeah, right."
(Besides, there are some guys who just look better with it, and he's one of them.)
There nothing much to discuss about this movie.Typical generic superhero action movie. Just entertain.
He really doesn’t wear eyeliner. I saw a picture of him as a kid on IMDB and his eyes just naturally look like that.
I like to think that the Joker already had the explosives in the hospital, and was planning on detonating them regardless, then just decided to put out his little PSA since it’d be funnier that way.
i REALLY didnt like this movie after haven seen this movie a second time. This is the kind of movie you go WOW over once. And when you’ve seen this movie once, It’s dead. No rewatch value at all.