[Just your average movie goer]

True. However, they're still pretty funny. How Superman should have endedis awesome though.

Actually, a few of the others are great too. The Lord of the Rings one and the Star Wars one are worth a look - and the one on Spiderman 3 is hilarious.

[Mr Pye]

I like 'How to survive an Alien attack' by the same team.

The spoofs of Men in black, Aliens, Starship Troopers and Predator are great.

[Just your average movie goer]

Nice. I like it. Actually, getting more back on Batman, here's another one that you might all enjoy:

The Dark Knight: 1960s version Self-explanatory really. Very funny.

And speaking of funny, if any of you want to relive the old Adam West series, you can find the episodes on You Tube. Here's the first one if you're interested:

Batman Season One: Episode One: Part 1 of 2

I'd actually never seen the first one before. However, in watching it, I learned that Adam West's Batman was born out of the same tragedy as his comic and movie counterparts... he's just more calm about the whole thing. Also, I'd forgotten about all the famous guest stars. Jill St John's in the first one and while I didn't like Diamonds are Forever in which most of us have probably seen her, she's a fine looking lady. Anyway, if you feel like a bit of nostalgia and a laugh, enjoy the B-grade fun.

[Just your average movie goer]

Well. A few years have passed. Maybe now that the hype's died down a little, we can all review this movie a little more objectively. I'd like to take this opportunity therefore to post an article I wrote a few years back on it:

The Dark Knight

The sequel to the excellent Batman Begins has many strengths but as entertaining as it is, it falls far short of its potential through a number of flaws that really could have been avoided:


Implausibility .

Throughout the movie, it was clear that Nolan and his team were aiming very hard for a sense of grounded reality and for the large part, they succeeded. Given that this was what they were trying to establish though, it is confounding that this flaw raised its head so frequently. Now, before we look at implausibility in The Dark Knight, let’s look at its predecessor. Some reviewers criticised the poison gas attack at the end of Batman Begins as being far-fetched and straying from the sense of reality that the beginning of the film had tried to establish. However, if they cared to consider this plot point more carefully, they’d see that all the groundwork for this was carefully laid out beforehand. We saw the League of Shadows use fear inducing drugs in the beginning of the film. We saw the Scarecrow’s weaponised form of this same toxin. We saw it being dumped into the water supply and we saw the progress of the microwave emitter as it was stolen from a cargo ship at sea and transported to Gotham City. So although the finale lent itself far more to the fantastical than some people would have liked, it was all plausible within the context of the film.

The Dark Knight though was a different matter altogether. We never see any evidence to explain how the Joker could possibly orchestrate his schemes and he pulled them off with far too much precision for this oversight to be excused. This especially harms the middle section of the film when the Joker is captured. As the audience, we are expected to believe for instance that when setting off to kill Batman (more on this later in the continuity errors) under the assumption that he was Harvey Dent, the Joker had henchmen who were in precisely the correct place at precisely the correct moment to set up a trap for a helicopter that could have appeared anywhere at anytime. In addition to this, he had a human detonator ready for a planned prison escape and somehow had arranged for an elaborate kidnapping scheme to provide cover for said escape… and it all goes off without a hitch. Two pertinent points make the matter worse. One is that the human detonator is not seen earlier so his sudden appearance in the prison seems completely contrived. The other is that the elaborate kidnapping involves Dent of all people, the same man he was busily trying to blow up at the start of the proceedings… so his escape plan was dependent on the survival of a character he was planning to kill.

The schemes after he escapes from prison are equally hard to swallow and are even worse in some aspects. It appears that in the course of a day, the Joker rigs up a whole hospital with explosives, as well as two ferries and somehow finds the time to transport a busload of people from said hospital to set up the hostage situation that takes place at the end of the movie. Some defenders of the film would argue that this could be done with sufficient time and help from his dedicated band of unpaid mentally unstable followers. However, consider this. The destruction of the hospital was something he only conceived when it became apparent that Coleman Reese was going to reveal the true identity of the Batman. That would have given the Joker hours at the most to put his plan into action. It would be interesting to hear a demolitions expert’s view on whether such a big job could be carried out in this narrow window of time, especially if it was to be done in secret.


Concepts that did not work.

There are several extraneous plot elements in the film that add to a running time that exceeded its welcome by a good twenty minutes. More to the point, they damage the film through their inclusion. The copycat vigilantes at the beginning of the film for instance are dreadful. First of all, they ruin Batman’s introduction. Secondly, rather than establishing new alter-egos of their own or just being regular vigilantes, they all dress like him. What’s more, they are all pudgy incompetent nerds to boot. These are not the types of people who would try their hand at vigilantism. If Nolan wanted his movie to appear more realistic, then these people should have been athletic in appearance, cold and bitter, out and out psychotic or all of the above. Also, they are initially used for laughs, which may seem harmless but in hindsight, this looks very sick given the gruesome fate that befalls one of them later in the movie.

Another extraneous part of the film was the Scarecrow’s cameo. It did nothing for the movie. The Scarecrow’s story was over. Now if he was going to be used further in the movie, it would have been a different matter entirely. However, since he was not, it was just a waste.

Then there was Jim Gordon’s fake death. This was completely pointless. Whether the Joker believed him to be alive or dead was immaterial at that point in the movie.


Dumbing down of characters in order to carry certain plot points.

One trait of a well told story is that the plot is clever enough to contain the characters. This is one area unfortunately where The Dark Knight clearly fails. Too often, very intelligent people are required to undergo contrived mental lapses in order to accommodate the story. Here are several examples. At the beginning of the movie when the police arrive at the bank just after the Joker leaves, they should have easily been able to apprehend him there and then. Witnesses would surely have told them about the school bus and then it was just a matter of halting the line of school buses outside and inspecting each one until they came to one that had no school kids but a large sum of stolen cash. One also wonders why none of the other bus drivers did anything when the Joker pulled into their procession. Surely they had radios. However, as there can be no movie if the main antagonist is foiled five minutes in, the Joker is allowed to get away.

The next time this happens in the movie, it is Batman of all people who lets the team down. After saving Rachel Dawes when the Joker throws her out of his apartment window, we are to understand that not only did he not return to the apartment to protect the other guests but that he also just allowed the Joker to stroll out. One would think he’d call Gordon and have the building cordoned off but instead, team Nolan decides that a cut to the next scene is a better solution.

Then there is the Joker’s escape from the prison. Why, WHY do Gotham’s finest leave this highly dangerous criminal under the guard of an unarmed man? Why is he not taken back to his holding cell? Why is he not put in cuffs? Or if they wish him to remain uncuffed in the interrogation room, why do they not lock the door? The only answer to these questions that the film provides is that this mental lapse on the part of the Gotham police was necessary to allow the third act of the film to take place. Also, just before the explosion goes off that the Joker uses to mask his escape, he is surrounded by armed police officers. After the explosion, all of these men and women are mysteriously absent. However, if the Joker was standing unscathed, then the officers around him would have been fine too – but if they climbed back up, one would suppose that would stop the Joker from escaping and we couldn’t have that. Also, to be honest, from a story perspective, it makes little sense that Nolan insisted on having the Joker escape. The story could have shifted gears instead and spent a more appropriate amount of time on the Harvey Dent/Two-Face character arc. However, what we get is another series of tedious Joker schemes all following the same tried, tested and boring theme of explosives. Talk about a misfire. The real climax of the Joker’s story was the interrogation scene and the coda was his conversation with the lone police officer while Batman and Gordon were trying to save Harvey and Rachel. Everything afterwards was a long anticlimax.

Finally, and getting back to the topic, there is the point of the film where the police have the Joker’s location and they’re closing in… when suddenly, the Joker makes a threat to blow up a hospital and they all head off their separate ways. Somehow, in those few seconds, the police completely forgot that they had the Joker cornered. Once again, intelligent characters were forced to undergo lapses in cognitive function to accommodate the convoluted plot.


Completely unnatural dialogue.

Honestly, what happened with dialogue in this movie? It seemed that just about everyone was speaking in dictums and giving long-winded speeches on morality. Alfred’s gas bagging about ‘the hero’ and ‘the outcast’, Batman’s statement about Gotham being “full of people ready to believe in good”, the Joker’s line about “the battle for Gotham’s soul”… where did this all come from? People don’t talk like that. These characters don’t talk like that – at least they didn’t in the better scripted Batman Begins (except for Rachel, who was written poorly in both films). Then as if all of that weren’t enough, the movie had to end with a whole spiel of it from Gordon: “He’s the hero Gotham deserves but not the one it needs right now; so we’ll chase him… because he can take it… because he’s not a hero – “ (a self-contradiction that probably baffles Gordon’s son as much as the audience) “ – He’s a silent guardian, a watchful protector… a dark knight.” In a way, this dialogue probably does more to undermine the illusion of realism than the implausible events discussed earlier.


Overacting.

Aaron Eckhart does a wonderful job with Harvey Dent for the most part and what dragged his performance down really is nothing to do with his abilities as an actor. The fault most probably lies with Nolan as Eckhart was no doubt just giving him what he wanted. Unfortunately, what that was at some points was for Dent to shout lines in a really over-the-top manner. The way he shouts “You can’t give in!” to Batman at one point in the film for instance is so over dramatic, that it is akin to the stereotype of the character who in a moment of despair, looks to the sky and screams “No!” at the top their voice. There are several more lines like this, such as when he tells Gordon to say the name that he and the others had for him down in the M.C.U. and the surly “You wouldn’t dare try to justify yourself to me if you knew what I’d lost.” They are dreadful lines and they are delivered dreadfully. And when he asks Gordon what the name that the cops at M.C.U. called him was, “Say it!” is delivered with the melodramatic aplomb of the worst daytime soap opera imaginable.


Continuity errors.

These were slight but so obvious that it begs belief that Nolan and his team missed them. Consider this. The Joker busily tries to blow Batman up in the armoured van (yes, Dent is inside but at this stage, the Joker believes he is Batman). Then when the real Batman comes off the Batpod, the Joker immediately leaps on him with his knife at the ready. However, when they get to the scene in the interrogation room, the Joker declares most emphatically that he doesn’t want to kill Batman and everything that takes place afterwards suggests that this is the truth. Actually, this does make the rest of the movie more compelling. However, it would have been a little more convincing if the Joker hadn’t spent a good ten minutes trying to kill him before he said this.

Another continuity error involves Rachel Dawes and a strange dual-personality disorder she develops in the middle of the movie. When she learns that Bruce Wayne has decided to turn himself in, she tries desperately to dissuade him. Then the next day when Dent turns himself in in his place, she’s furious with Wayne for not doing it.

However, the worst of these is tied in with the muddled ending when Gordon informs Batman that Dent killed five people in his rampage, including two cops. This should have been picked up in the editing process for two important reasons. Firstly, while Dent may have killed five people (which can be inferred from what we see on screen but not with certainty), he only killed one cop. When he had his scene with the second cop, his coin landed shiny side up and he spared her. However, there is another reason that carries somewhat more clout. Namely, Gordon had no way of knowing about these deaths as excluding Dent and the audience of the movie, there were no other witnesses.


The waste of a very good character.

For some reason, when they put this movie together, team Nolan seemed intent on cramming everything into it that they could… and in doing so, they have written themselves in a corner. In one movie, they have completely used up the most iconic Batman antagonists from the gallery of rogues, including the Joker as well – because even if the talented young actor who portrayed this character was still alive, there is nothing further they could do with the Joker from here. In fact, he was spent sometime before the movie finished. As mentioned earlier, he reached the climactic peak of his character arc when he was captured by Gordon. Everything he did after he escaped from prison was just standard big villain fare.

There was also no reason why Dent had to be killed off. Prior to the movie’s release, many people predicted that he was going to be set up in The Dark Knight to become the main antagonist in a third movie and this really made much more sense than what eventually transpired. There are several reasons why the decision to kill him off was the wrong call. Firstly, team Nolan invested a lot of time in developing Dent and went to great pains to make sure that the audience was emotionally invested in the character as well. To go through all that only to see him killed off shortly after his dramatic transformation into the physical manifestation of his ‘two-face’ persona is disappointing to say the least. What’s more, it limits where the series can go in the next movie. Dent would have made a wonderful antagonist for a third movie and he would have taken the story into new territory. Here would be an antagonist that would provide a completely new type of challenge for Batman, someone not to be stopped but a friend in need of salvation. Instead, we are left with nothing. Who else in the rogues gallery could provide the appropriate weight to continue this more ‘realistic’ Gotham saga? The Penguin? The Riddler? Catwoman? Hardly.


A very unsatisfactory ending.

Not only is Dent wasted but his final scene is very poorly handled and the resolution reached by Batman at the end of the movie is nonsensical. However, Dent first. When he started on his self-destructive journey of revenge, his actions were very convincing with the one exception that he let the Joker walk away. He would not have used a random toss of the coin to decide his fate. It’s also a wasted moment too because it could have been a great symbolic scene in which one antagonist hands over the reins to the next. Moving on from that though, the next few scenes made sense. The way he dealt with Wuertz was very well handled and his lines were great. “That’s funny. I don’t know what’s going to happen to you either,” he replies to Wuertz’s protests that he didn’t know what the Joker’s men were planning and it’s a perfect beginning to what should have been a longer career than the few short scenes it ended up being.

However, while he started out taking revenge on people who deserved it, in his final scene, he tries to get at Gordon by threatening his family. Dramatically, this is clearly done for its shock value but it was a poor plot decision. To make matters worse, team Nolan even manages to ruin a small part of the scene that actually would have otherwise worked: the part where Batman tells Dent that he, Gordon and himself were the three who brought on the events that spiralled so terribly out of control. He then tells Dent to point the gun at the people responsible and Dent agrees to this. He points the gun at Batman, flips the coin and as the charred side lands, he fires a shot at him. He then turns the gun on himself and flips the coin once more. However, the shiny side comes up. So far, this particularly part of the scene is proceeding very well… but then, Dent turns the gun on Gordon’s son. This completely ruined the symmetry of what was the strongest point of the entire scene – in fact, the only part of the scene that looked as though it was working. Dent should have turned the gun on Gordon next. Batman could have still dived at him before he had a chance to shoot, so the outcome would not have been affected, and the scene would have been much stronger for it.

Then there is Batman’s resolution at the end of the movie. It is a bad decision in numerous ways, but the blame does not rest with our hero. He was only doing as the script dictated. Now, assuming that Gordon had actually been able to ascertain that Dent had killed five people, his line that such a thing couldn’t be covered up was not true. Consider this. The most dangerous criminal in the city had escaped from prison in the predawn hours and had subsequently blown up a major hospital as well as coming within an inch of blowing up two ferries full of people just several hours later. Wuertz and Maroni’s men would have barely made the fine print on page fourteen. Even if it were not the case, there were other ways in dealing with the problem. The crimes could just as easily been pinned on the Joker. It would have been a dirty trick to play but the Joker had so many deaths on his hands already, it would have made little difference to the sentence that would have eventually been handed down to him.

However, having Batman take the fall is disastrous. No matter how much the various lead characters harped on about Dent being the symbol of hope that Batman could never be, Batman was a symbol of hope. Most of the first movie was spent establishing this but the damage goes beyond that. It separates Batman from Gordon and leaves us with the image of our hero fleeing from the Gotham police as the last thing we see in the film.

With an appropriate third act, this may be something that can be salvaged but the way The Dark Knight panned out suggests that team Nolan was never intending a third act at all – that most possibly, they were actively trying to wrap everything up to remove the liklihood of a follow-up… almost as if they had grown tired of the series while it was still in its infancy.

Therefore, there is nothing left for Batman to do at the end of the film but hang up his cowl. The various mob organisations of Gotham are gutted, their bosses all killed off by the Joker and half of their middlemen are in jail. The Joker is in once again in custody, where we can assume greater precautions will be now be taken to keep him there and Dent’s downward spiral of self-destruction has been brought to an end before he could do any more damage. All that’s needed here is some fitting closure for the Batman himself.

However, having him running away from the dogs is not proper closure. It is difficult to imagine that he would continue to protect the people of Gotham under the guise of a wanted murderer. They would turn against him even more than they had already, rendering dead any hope of inspiring good. The only logical thing for Wayne to do then would be to just walk away from the madness. Actually, given just how unappreciative the people of Gotham had been towards Batman at the press conference, it’s a wonder he didn’t do that earlier in the movie anyway – which is another matter in itself that could have been mentioned under implausibility. How is it that citizens in movie sequels so frequently forget the fact that the main protagonists saved their lives in the previous films? It’s a tiresome cliché and it really ought to be put to rest.

Now, after all that is said and done, The Dark Knight is still a vibrant and engrossing film, even if it is simply because it is able to take the new Batman series into more interesting territory thanks to the groundwork laid down by its predecessor. However, knowing how much better it should have been makes it an immensely frustrating one as well.

[civilian_number_two]

I still like The Dark Knight, and I don't think anyone ever said it was realistic. Psychologically it had more going for it than other Batman outings, but in its narrative it's as unreasonable as any of them. What I don't understand is how you can compare it unfavourably to Batman Begins. That movie was like watching a screenwriter at work. While you complain that Joker's schemes are too perfect and successful, look at BB for the completely ridiculous origin of Batman. His parents are killed by a poor man who went bad because of a depression caused by Ra's Al-Ghul and his League of Shadows; he goes wandering on some sort of suicidal walkabout before he is discovered by and transformed by Ra's Al-Ghul; he finds that in his absence the company that he happens to own has designed for him a Batsuit as well as Batmobile; and while we're at it, Ra's Al-Ghul used to grow a fear-inducing flower that happens also to be the source of the fear gas used by The Scarecrow. Also while we're at it, a guy with a name like Ra's Al-Ghul is Irish, which makes no sense at all. And for the origin story, when we see little Bruce traveling with his parents, they are using public transit, just so the screenwriters can establish early in the movie, that such a thing exists, so they can use it in the finale. A millionaire and his wife, taking their son to the movies, and using the train, which doesn't even go to their part of town. It's an awful movie, just awful. I don't have a problem with anyone liking it, since it's just a dumb comic book movie, but to use it as an counterexample to another dumb comic book movie, and one with such great performances at The Dark Knight (and it has great performances), startles me.

[Just your average movie goer]

I understand what you mean - especially about the monorail. They even do it again when Bruce Wayne's meeting Lucius Fox and the latter tells him how the train route follows the main pipes for the city's water supply to Wayne Tower. Then, if that was not enough, Batman tells Gordon this same piece of information again at the end. You're right - it does feel like an amateur screenwriter going through a checklist sometimes. There's also the way Nolan beats the audience around the head with the fear theme and I completely agree with what you said some time ago that in this movie, Bruce Wayne doesn't turn himself into Batman. Everyone else does.

He gets his ideas about putting fear into others from Falcone and the League of Shadows (so the whole premise behind his plan is taken from the bad guys). He gets his rule about not killing from Rachel Dawes. He gets his equipment from Lucius Fox, as it just happened to be sitting around in the basement of Wayne Enterprises. Also, by having the league of shadows responsible for the depression that led to the murder of Bruce Wayne's parents, it undercuts the scene where Bruce Wayne narrowly avoids killing Joe Chill - because in a big way, Rhas Al Ghul's organisation was responsible for their deaths, and Batman... um... doesn't save him. And yes, Rhas Al Ghul is not a typical Irish name. Maybe in the movie, it's a moniker passed down from generation to generation among the League of Shadows - but I'm just rationalising here.

So you're absolutely right. This is a movie with a lot of issues. However, for all it's faults, I feel it's a better constructed movie than the sequel. It has more narrative coherence. The pacing in The Dark Knight is all over the place and I realised after reviewing what I had written before, that I've changed my mind about the length. I think it's more like forty minutes too long than twenty. Also, Batman Begins allows Batman to be a character in his own movie. He gets to do things.

Batman in The Dark Knight however is impotent, simply jumping through the Joker's hoops. Sure, it's good to challenge the hero of a movie, but at some point the hero should get the upper hand on the villain if for no other reason than to show that they're not completely useless. I also disliked how Batman was institutionalised in the sequel. Of course, this was done to force that ending where Batman realises that he has to be an outcast - but the Batman in Batman Begins would never have got himself into that predicament in the first place. This was a guy who could seemingly summon a literal army of bats, who showed that he is absolutely definitely not one of the cops - and criminals feared him. No one feared him in The Dark Knight, and why would they? Also, there was that whole business of the city demanding that Batman turn himself in. Again, this wouldn't happen if Batman hadn't institutionalised himself. No one would ask that the Batman in Batman Begins turn himself in, because they'd know it'd be so much wasted breath. Finally, in The Dark Knight, Batman really comes off as a supporting player in his own movie. It's not as intimate a film as its predecessor. Nolan wants to focus on so many different characters and as a result, he can only give a limited amount of screen time to each of them.

This post has been edited by Just your average movie goer: 03 May 2011 - 08:34 PM

[J m HofMarN]

Movie Goer - I'm generally a Dark Knight fan boy more so than I am for Batman Begins, but a good few of your statements ring true - the most glaring being, of course, the duly noted expert planning done by the Joker, or, rather, by the plot which then said that the Joker had planned it all. I don't know if Mr. J had to be such a grandiose character, and I really don't think he'd have been interested enough to follow a single scheme for that long anyhow without Batman providing some kind of a foil and giving him the impetus to change things around and make up new schemes. Joker works off of Batman probably more often than the other way around, and they kind of got that wrong. Sometimes an elaborate plan of his will lead up to something as insane as claiming royalties on smiling fish. Other times though, and certainly in The Killing Joke which Dark Knight is largely based upon, he's trying to get Batman to see the funny side of things.

The over the top and largely impersonal terrorism in Dark Knight didn't seem to match his style, and it really lacked that personal touch that I think of when I think Joker. In Killing Joke we see him kidnap and shoot people personally, each step of his plan is carried out by him, and it would have worked perfectly if Gordon had just been polite and gone bonkers. Dark Knight, despite being based on a premise from a, what, 40 page comic, didn't bother to show Joker setting any of this up like the comic did, it just sort of happened due to a random army of people who work for the Joker because they're the sort of deranged minds that he attracts... Does he leave milk out in a saucer for them at night? What?

But ignoring the stuff the Joker does, and the alterations to his character made by the plot (the last one is easy, he's crazy enough that it could be said he doesn't even HAVE a character) the movie boils down to a story about two people who don't like each other very much, and are out to prove something. The Joker is the first actual super-villain that Batman has faced, a guy who makes it clear that he has no rules and will go above and beyond what Batman will do, thus, why would anyone be afraid of Batman anymore? (this kind of answers one of your criticisms) Batman is now struggling with what it means to be a hero and make these awful choices, which is some interesting stuff to work with. The Joker doesn't have any sort of struggle, indeed everything seems to go perfectly for him, which I guess is possibly a reason why they had all his plans work out so flawlessly - for him, it's easy. For Batman, not so much.

Now, why Two Face had to make a cameo and then die, I have no idea, except that they felt it was necessary to replace Gordon's part in Killing Joke with Harvey Dent. I would tend to disagree, but I think Dark Knight was a great film anyhow..

This post has been edited by J m HofMarN: 04 May 2011 - 03:40 AM

[Just your average movie goer]

Hey JM, it's cool to be more of a Dark Knight fan than a Batman Begins fan. Given how grim it is at times, this might sound a little odd - but it feels like a more glamourous movie than its predecessor. It looks bigger and bolder, and it feels like it's got more extras than any other movie I've seen (seriously, did they just shanghai the entire population of Chicago into helping out with the production?). The scope feels larger, even epic at times, which I think is both a good and a bad thing. As I said to Civilian before, it makes it a less intimate film than its predecessor and I remember feeling somewhat distanced from the characters this time around.

The audience is really with Bruce Wayne every step of the way with Batman Begins, which is one of the things that I really liked it about it in comparison to the older Batman films. It felt as though we were on the inside, so to speak. Yes, in the older movies, you got to go into the bat cave and see a bit of Bruce Wayne's life behind the scenes but in Batman Begins, it was as though Nolan was letting us get into the character's head. In The Dark Knight however, I felt as though I were watching him through a window - especially as there was no rundown scene with Bruce and Alfred after Batman's dubious career decision at the end of the film. I think I would have liked the ending a little more if they had had something like that. To get an idea of how little time The Dark Knight had for intimacy, consider this - they had put in a big time-filling scene with Commissioner Loeb's funeral (and the subsequent plot around that) and yet they only afforded a brief minute or so for Bruce to mourn the loss of Rachel. This is supposed to be the woman he loved, so it should have been a bigger deal than it was shown to be. One reviewer (I forget where I read this) even pointed out that Alfred doesn't really react to Rachel's loss at all, going straight into another one of his 'Alfred speeches'. Seriously, the guy had a speech for everything in this movie. Actually, Alfred's character turn in The Dark Knight is quite interesting when you think about it. In Batman Begins, he was the willing - if slightly doubtful - partner in Bruce's grand plan for cleaning up Gotham. However, in The Dark Knight, he seems to have taken to the plan with considerable gusto. In fact, he's more into it than Bruce is.

Now, you're absolutely right about the Joker and it's something I realise I neglected in my earlier comments. I'm with you on everything you said there. I would have liked the Joker to be a bit more out there in terms of insanity. However, he kept playing the same tricks - and all with things that go ka-boom. He leaves Harvey and Rachel in a room full of things that will go ka-boom, he rigs a hospital with things that go ka-boom and then he rigs ferries with more ka-boom inducing stuff. Something like the comics would have been a welcome change.

Oh, I've seen that one about the fish - an Englehart comic. That was fantastic, so brilliantly utterly insane - the Joker trying to coerce someone into copyrighting his deformed fish so he could get a percentage of the sales of mutated fish the world over. Then there was another one, also by Englehart, with the Joker running for mayor on the premise that if people didn't vote for him, he'd kill them. Anyway, something a little bit more wacked out would have gone down a treat.

And The Killing Joke... yeah, that's kind of weird - but now that I've read it, I see what you mean about the way the premise was incorporated into the movie, with Harvey taking the role of Gordon. Still, better than weird midgets with leather thongs. That was one seriously messed up comic! Actually, I read something about that that was rather interesting. Apparently, it got lumped into the comic's decades-long ongoing continuity (that same continuity that makes the Batman series virtually impenetrable for newcomers) but Alan Moore said that he had intended it as a one off thing... and further, that if he had known DC would lump it in with the rest of the series, he would never have had the Joker shoot Barbara Gordon. I thought that was interesting (although probably irrelevant here).

Actually, for me, the biggest problem with the ongoing large scale terrorism the Joker carries out in The Dark Knight is that it's physically tiring for the audience. Perhaps that's another factor for my preference for Batman Begins. When Batman Begins finishes, it feels like it was a perfect length and it ends in a rousing finale - which is actually nicely short and sweet - and it leaves me wanting more. When The Dark Knight finishes however, I feel exhausted.

Oh, by the way, I LOVED your suggestion for one possible way the Joker could have amassed his army of unpaid helpers. It makes me grin from ear to ear just imagining the Joker putting that saucer of milk on the sidewalk outside his place. Brilliant!

Now, I can see what you mean about Batman losing his edge because the Joker has no boundaries. However, I'd still argue that if Batman kept himself more in the shadows, he wouldn't have been in his predicament. He also would be more interesting for the audience. I love the way in Batman Begins that he comes across almost like an animal. The crouch that he uses instead of standing tall is beautifully predatory - and a very different approach from the showman style the character took in the earlier movies. As I said, no one would demand that that Batman turn himself in, not even the Joker. Perhaps that was part of Batman's plan in becoming an outcast at the end of The Dark Knight. Perhaps he realised that in order to strike fear in the hearts of criminals, he couldn't just be an unofficial member of the police force. Still, I really felt something was off kilter when he showed up at the bank at the beginning of the movie, with police all around him. Talking to Gordon on a rooftop is one thing. Showing his face to the rest of them is another.

There's also that dreadful part where Harvey Dent uses the signal to contact him and then after he arrives, Dent and Gordon get into a shouting match while Batman just waits. I mean, the poor guy! He's gone out of his way to get suited up and answer the signal and then is left waiting. It's a pity too - especially now that I know what they were trying to do there. Let's see how I go. Nolan was going for the Batman-Gordon-Dent triumvirate from The Long Halloween. They had all the pieces in place, but all they had was one rooftop meeting and they just rushed through it. I think there should have been at least two or three of these rooftop triumvirate meetings, placed at appropriate points in the movie, and they should have been more interesting for the audience than the one we got.

Now, wrapping up, I also agree with you that it was interesting the way The Dark Knight explored the fallout from Batman's initial plan but I did feel that it was too much and much too soon. It's as though, to slightly paraphrase a line from Rhas Al Ghul in Batman Begins, Nolan had taken that talk about escalation at the end of the first movie a bit too literally. I really felt for instance that just from a narrative point of view, the idea of Bruce Wayne contemplating turning himself in less than halfway through his second movie was rather odd. A lot of The Dark Knight had the feel of one of those season finales from those twenty-two episode TV shows (you know, that point in the series where everything has gone to hell in a hand basket). Now, I don't know where the average director would throw that kind of stuff into this type of movie franchise but it really feels like the type of thing that should wait until at least the third installment. It felt as though there was a missing movie between Batman Begins and this one... because I really picked up a "This is it. This is the grand finale" vibe throughout the movie. The adventure that started with Batman Begins now continues with Batman Throws In The Towel.

This post has been edited by Just your average movie goer: 04 May 2011 - 07:53 AM

[Zatoichi]

For the lot of us here that talk a lot about the ins and outs of movies, what didn't work, why it didn't work, etc, why can't we all work as a team of writers/consultants for a film or something?

I find it interesting that you say The Dark Knight felt like the closer to a series and that they may have gotten tired of/disinterested in doing anymore. If that is the case, then they're sort of fools in that respect. When it comes to Batman, there is just sooooo much existing material to draw from in the first place. The ground work has been laid, but there's plenty of room to take charcters off in new directions, and show things from different angles. As a general fan of Batman, and as someone who likes to write, its just my opinion that they have so much interesting and creatively exciting things they could get to do with the franchise. If they got bored of it, well, I just don't see how they managed to do it.

I think I figured out what the opening scene with Scare Crow was supposed to be. Somebody had been watching James Bond movies. What happens in the beginning of nearly every Bond movie is that James is off on some mission that later relates to the main story. It could be the creation of the villian, losing the keys to the superweapon, getting captured, whatever. For Batman its to introduce the other vigilantes, and that one mob dude who shows up later. I think Scare Crow was thrown in to go "Oh look, we have a credible threat here. It's a dangerous situation." Since everyone knows that mooks with guns never offer any real resistance.

Oh, and something that gets me a bit for the series, why is there only one mob family? Usually there's like 4 or 5 different groups to contend with and a lot of the plots in the past have been about getting things so the various families are not at war with each other and having all kinds of violence spill out into the streets (where of course all manner of innocents are hurt/killed). I'm just wondering. Especially with a major metropolis like Gotham; a perfect place for criminal competition.

Well, whether or not they got tired of the franchise, another film is in the works. The villians this time are Catwoman and Bane ... that just strikes me as a really strange pairing. For Catwoman, I don't know what they'd do with her. A bunch of the heavy hitters already got brought out for the series. Catwoman just steals stuff and acts as a consistant romantic pairing for Bats that never works out (Which I always found odd. I know for part of the character, the thrill of stealing and the high stakes involved at times are why she does it. But she's always the one falling in love with him, and she never follows through on it). But really, now that you've had a bunch of knitty-gritty villians that have upped the ante and already did a bunch of destruction and killing, what exactly is she supposed to do that leaves an impression with the audience? A zany commercial for cat litter? Really though, I think I can be happy as long as there is no resemblance to the Catwoman movie with Halle Berrie. If there is, then it is a travesty and I demand an execution.

Bane is a character I really like, but not as he generally gets used. He's usually dumb, lunk-head muscle for someone else. He usually only serves the same purpose as a bunch of Superman villians, which is being stronger/more powerful than our hero. In Superman's case, they are usually thrown in to remind Supes that he actually possesses mental facilities, and that these enemies he must outsmart instead of over-powering. In Batman's case though Bane is generally there to show off the caped crusader's leet skillz and how they are wasted against opponents who don't possess such amazing strength. Which sucks because Bane's intro into the comics was far, far better than doing that with him.

Bane shows up and pretty much out does and breaks Batman in more ways than four. Bane beats Batman physically, breaks his back, outsmarts Batman on several occasions, gains control of most of the criminal elements in Gotham, and psychologically brings Bats to a point where he no longer believes he can or ought to continue his crimefighting ways. Azreal, a former sleeper assassin thing, takes over as Batman for a while. He defeats Bane because he is far more ruthless then Bruce and leans towards the mindset that killing is alright/also really doesn't care about the people he is supposed to be saving. After Bruce recovers he must take back the Mantle of the Bat by force when Azreal refuses to give up the job.

Now, they might be going in this direction with the film. At least in the respect of having Bane as a competent villian. I bring it up, because it helps to make sense of the inclusion of Catwoman. In the comics Bane forces her to work for him for a while when he takes charge of crime in the city. But if they are going to base the story on that area of time in the comics, then I also dread the outcome. In the comics there was a ton of setup to it. Characters were established that would take over crimefighting in Gotham for a while, and other ones that would help bring Bruce back from the well of despair he ends up in. Events happen that bring Batman toward his breaking point. 3 months before Bane decided to tackle the Bat, he had caused everyone to escape from several local prisons including Arkham. He wore Batman down first by forcing him to work to recapture so many people. And some great stuff goes on. Two-Face puts Bats on a mock trial. Scare Crow tries to get himself installed as a god of Fear. Robin tries to keep Azreal from killing loads of people. And it all ends up being a real awesome point with Batman, where despite everything, he decides to stick with the job.

This movie series though, is simply not prepared for that plot. The setup is a loooong way from being there. And without all of the things that went into the comics, I would say to not try it. But with the villians they're about to use, where else is there to go? There's no one for Bane to just be a muscle man for, so it looks like he's going to be a competent enemy. And since they're borrowing a lot from various sources, it looks like it'll be the direction they take Bane in.

Honestly, if I hadn't read the comics where Bane comes into the picture, then I probably wouldn't care, or wouldn't even know to care about the differences between how the comics took things, and how the movie will take things. But I have read it, and I know how good of a job was done. So while it won't be an issue for most people, its probably going to be an issue for me. Curses!

[civilian_number_two]

Dark Knight is based more on Long Halowe'en and on The Man Who Laughs than it is on Killing Joke. A lot of the insanely careful planning that Joker pulls off in the movie has precedent in the comics. The bit where Joker burns the money is an improvement on its source material. In the comic, Batman burns mob money to hurt the mob. In a real world the police would take the money and use it against the mob. That would hurt the mob more, and not be a criminal destruction of money. So I liked the Joker burning the money more.

I don't know how you can say, MG, that no time is spent developing Bruce Wayne in Dark Knight, or that Bruce is more of a character in Batman Begins. Yes, we see Bruce out of costume more in BB, but most of that time he's having Lucius give him weapons, he's being lectured to by Liam Neeson, he's listening to Rachel Dawes, he's whining or crying or pathetic or suicidal, until all his friends get together and tell him to become a superhero. And yes, he overcomes fear. I plan one day to get off my ass and make an edit of every time a character in BB says "fear." I think that'd be longer than this masterpiece. I felt a much greater connection to the challenge Bruce faced with Joker than with Scarecrow, and the League of Shadows was so poorly represented they were impossible to take seriously.

Another thread I can't follow is the problem with changing the actress who played Rachel. This happens all the time guys; why should it "take you out of the movie?" I can never understand that. When I watch a local production of Hamlet I don't keep expecting Lawrence Olivier to show up and to push the pretender off the stage. And Maggie is way better than Kate anyway. I wish they'd had her in the first film; it would have made her character more bearable.

[Just your average movie goer]

Zatoichi, for the third movie, I've heard the rumours too so I know about it. However, what I posted earlier was written a year or more ago when there was nothing on the horizon. It really felt like they were trying to go out with a bang with The Dark Knight. Having said that though, I'd be quite happy for the third movie to be scaled down - very happy actually, as it is something people rarely try. So often with movies, TV series and book series, people have this impulsive urge to always raise the stakes. It's the whole bigger is better mentality. Once in a while, people should try to just alter the stakes. A scaled down Batman movie could still be just as compelling as a high-stakes one, possibly even more so if the story were interesting enough.

As for Bane, I've got no opinion, as I don't know much about him. The comic arc you describe sounds like it'd be worth a read. I do think however that Baine breaking Batman's back seems like overkill, and although I haven't seen the comics in question, I'd wager that the specific nature of the injury was chosen for shock value as opposed to any genuine reason. They could easily have Batman incapacitated in a dozen other ways. However, going by what you've said, it sounds quite right - that they couldn't pull that off properly with the set up as it is at present. Maybe the leaked rumours are just a smokescreen. After all, I've heard that Joseph Gordon Levitt is attached to the project and having seen him in Inception, I have to say he's something of a Heath Ledger doppelganger. So you can make of that what you will, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Joker was in this next movie. I wouldn't be surprised at all. Another move that wouldn't surprise me would be to bring back the Scarecrow. This is something I would like because I found him really interesting and, to be honest, I hadn't heard of the character before I saw Batman Begins so there was something very refreshing about that. Also, in Batman Begins he was basically a henchman to Rhas Al Ghul, so it'd be interesting to see him stand on his own. Finally, if he does appear, that might justify his Dark Knight cameo a little more - as the appearance could then be viewed as a brief reminder that the Scarecrow is still in town. Actually, speaking of the Scarecrow, I'd like to see Arkham Asylum again in the next movie too... and the rebuilt Wayne Manor with the new bat cave as well.

I'll make a small concession here with regards to my stance on Batman Begins. The burning down of Wayne Manor, coupled with the League of Shadows trying to destroy the entire city admittedly has a 'this is the end' type of feeling to it as well. However, they at least waited until the end of the movie for all this.

Also, I get what you mean, Zatoichi, about the James Bond type beginning of The Dark Knight. In fact, you could say that of the Joker's heist too, because that could easily be an off-screen event that's referred to later, and while many viewers would miss it, they could still follow the story just as well without it. After all, the whole thing's recapped in that mobster meeting. Speaking of the mobster meeting, did anyone else notice the racist stereotypes at work? We've got the Asian money launderer, Turkish guy, the Italians and the African Americans, and just to make the scene a little more cringe inducing, the camera pans to the African American mobster Gambol when the Joker tells them that Batman has shown Gotham their 'true colours'. I kind of wonder why that didn't raise more eyebrows than it did. Sure, there are members of ethnic minority groups on the wrong side of the law, but it's just as true for members of larger groups too.

And, Civilian, I hear everything you say and I agree with pretty much all of it - but I feel that Bruce Wayne was the focus of the first movie, whereas in The Dark Knight, he's a bit player. Also, I honestly felt that he held the audience's attention really well too. You know, he doesn't make his first appearance as Batman until the sixty minute mark but I thought he was compelling enough out of the bat mantle. It didn't feel as though the movie were just killing time until Batman could appear. However, with regards to the parts about him just throwing away his life until his friends turn him into Batman, I agree wholeheartedly. A moping, directionless character - but a somewhat compelling one. You want him to get his act together.

I like your idea about editing out every occurrence of the word 'fear' in the movie. Yes, it'd be a bit longer than that Big Lebowski edit but I guess you'd still trim a few minutes of the running time. Maybe I'll do it myself one day just to see how the movie comes across without that massive chunk of a not-so-subtle theme.

I was also wondering at first about your notion of The Man Who Laughs influencing The Dark Knight but after a quick flip through it to refresh my memory, I see what you mean. You've got the Joker carrying out schemes via an army of prison escapees and he actually plans a large scale scheme. Admittedly, it's a little more creative than making things go ka-boom, but I can see that the principle is the same. As for The Killing Joke, I think JM was just saying that it might have influenced the part about the Joker making Harvey Dent go crazy. I think he's got something there. However, the overall story seems to be more like The Long Halloween than either of the other two, as if you look at the broad changes throughout the movie, you basically have Gotham's syndicates losing control of the city and the freaks taking over. Perhaps the next movie can deal with that long-running theme in the comics about freaks coming from outside the city just to try their hand at taking on the Batman. Although, admittedly, the Joker was pretty much like that too. Anyway, we'll see.

This post has been edited by Just your average movie goer: 05 May 2011 - 12:39 AM