(no subject)
I really don’t think I’m sticking my neck out too far if I hail ‘The Dark Knight’ as not only the best Batman movie so far and one of the best Batman stories ever told, but as the quintessential superhero story itself, laid bare, lasered down to its skeleton and reconstructed to suit the needs of our times with panache, wit and a monstrous sad darkness. It may even be the best popular meditation on a peculiarly postmodern version of Gnostic dualism that we’ve been given for a bracingly long time.
So comics scholars will understand me when I compare ‘The Dark Knight’ to WATCHMEN as a measure of its likely impact on the ’genre’ that spawned it. Like WATCHMEN, it forces all previous and future offerings of its kind into a higher-level dialogue and it will be intriguing to see what comes next. This looks set to redefine the limits of what a ‘superhero movie’ is capable of.
It shares with WATCHMEN a devious intricacy of structure, a hyper-machine-like sense of super-organized ideas whizzing around in perfect formation like the Red Arrows. As the whole immense engine clicks into place, and suddenly you understand WHY the title, the moment is accompanied by that peculiar sense of completion and accomplishment that, to me, is one hallmark of creative brilliance in the popular arts.
Christian Bale, best Batman ever, adds all kinds of new shadings to an already iconic take. His Batman is required to transform from man to myth as we watch and he never lets us down, capturing every nuance of Bruce Wayne’s loss, his determination and his own personal madness.
As advance reviews may have led an unsuspecting world to believe Heath Ledger does indeed dynamite the screen, dance through it and have murderous sex with your dad’s Chihuahua, in that way he would if I were a writer for a ’cult media’ magazine, drowning in the sound of my own ghastly hyperbole.
In his first appearance as the Joker, the IMAX wall seems to vibrate with Ledger’s presence and intent. He owns the room, as they say, and though you’ll weep bitter tears that he’s gone, you’ll surely stand in awe of this tour de force of sheer fucking act-yer-tits-off-son bravado. It’s the Joker incarnate.
Michael Caine does the definitive Alfred. Gary Oldman brings the movie’s beating human soul to a rumpled Jim Gordon. Maggie Gyllenhaal nails her role and adds the frazzled edge to Rachel Dawes that Katie Holmes left out. Morgan Freeman wears gravitas like a hat. It’s almost ridiculous how well every single moving part in this movie acquits itself to scrutiny.
Oh, and Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent will break your heart.
I’m quite hard to please, and a movie has to be really good to get me jumping but this Dark Knight honked my horn from here to hell and back and I feel a need to spread the love like margarine over these, me own internet pages. It’s a work of art to look at, and as Nolan’s clear attempt to craft his own perfect all-time best Batman story EVER, the ultimate Batman story, it never veers off course.
I went mental for this film. I still can’t stop thinking about it and how instantly it avoids the type of formulaic ’comic book movie’ clichés you may have begun to notice in other films, or how brilliantly Nolan and his team have taken Batman off the page, reprocessed everything that makes him work, and rebuilt him as the ultimate American hero for the new post-post-9/11 zeitgeist.
I loved IRON MAN: Robert Downey Jr. has been and probably will be my favorite actor for a long time…but IRON MAN, THE INCREDIBLE HULK, SUPERMAN RETURNS and all the others feel a little like Saturday morning cartoons next to the carbon black glory that is ‘The Dark Knight‘.
Trust me, this is the future of this sort of thing.
So comics scholars will understand me when I compare ‘The Dark Knight’ to WATCHMEN as a measure of its likely impact on the ’genre’ that spawned it. Like WATCHMEN, it forces all previous and future offerings of its kind into a higher-level dialogue and it will be intriguing to see what comes next. This looks set to redefine the limits of what a ‘superhero movie’ is capable of.
It shares with WATCHMEN a devious intricacy of structure, a hyper-machine-like sense of super-organized ideas whizzing around in perfect formation like the Red Arrows. As the whole immense engine clicks into place, and suddenly you understand WHY the title, the moment is accompanied by that peculiar sense of completion and accomplishment that, to me, is one hallmark of creative brilliance in the popular arts.
Christian Bale, best Batman ever, adds all kinds of new shadings to an already iconic take. His Batman is required to transform from man to myth as we watch and he never lets us down, capturing every nuance of Bruce Wayne’s loss, his determination and his own personal madness.
As advance reviews may have led an unsuspecting world to believe Heath Ledger does indeed dynamite the screen, dance through it and have murderous sex with your dad’s Chihuahua, in that way he would if I were a writer for a ’cult media’ magazine, drowning in the sound of my own ghastly hyperbole.
In his first appearance as the Joker, the IMAX wall seems to vibrate with Ledger’s presence and intent. He owns the room, as they say, and though you’ll weep bitter tears that he’s gone, you’ll surely stand in awe of this tour de force of sheer fucking act-yer-tits-off-son bravado. It’s the Joker incarnate.
Michael Caine does the definitive Alfred. Gary Oldman brings the movie’s beating human soul to a rumpled Jim Gordon. Maggie Gyllenhaal nails her role and adds the frazzled edge to Rachel Dawes that Katie Holmes left out. Morgan Freeman wears gravitas like a hat. It’s almost ridiculous how well every single moving part in this movie acquits itself to scrutiny.
Oh, and Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent will break your heart.
I’m quite hard to please, and a movie has to be really good to get me jumping but this Dark Knight honked my horn from here to hell and back and I feel a need to spread the love like margarine over these, me own internet pages. It’s a work of art to look at, and as Nolan’s clear attempt to craft his own perfect all-time best Batman story EVER, the ultimate Batman story, it never veers off course.
I went mental for this film. I still can’t stop thinking about it and how instantly it avoids the type of formulaic ’comic book movie’ clichés you may have begun to notice in other films, or how brilliantly Nolan and his team have taken Batman off the page, reprocessed everything that makes him work, and rebuilt him as the ultimate American hero for the new post-post-9/11 zeitgeist.
I loved IRON MAN: Robert Downey Jr. has been and probably will be my favorite actor for a long time…but IRON MAN, THE INCREDIBLE HULK, SUPERMAN RETURNS and all the others feel a little like Saturday morning cartoons next to the carbon black glory that is ‘The Dark Knight‘.
Trust me, this is the future of this sort of thing.