The Dark Knight
I’m finally writing about The Dark Knight. So much has been blogged about this movie since years before it came out, to the massive avalanche of advertising well before the release date of the film, through the record breaking box office attendance, and still in its aftermath and upcoming award season. It’s kind of overwhelming, and I’m not sure I have anything new to say for anyone who really cares about the movie at all.
Yeah Heath stole the show. It’s sad that he’s dead since it seemed like there wasn’t much resolution for the Joker character and they were probably originally intending on bringing him back in a sequel. But apart from the Heath’s performance, the rest of the film wasn’t much more impressive to me than Batman Begins which did not blow me out of the water the way it did for many people. But I never expected it to.
Christopher Nolan’s take on the world of Batman is a very realistic one. It was extremely strange to see so many familiar parts of Chicago, the city I live in, on the screen with Batman running around, especially since nothing was covered up or glossed over. It basically looked like a real, dirty street without any of this comic book stylizing that has been so popular recently like in Frank Miller’s Sin City or 300 for extreme examples. But I just can’t accept a realistic Batman. I’ve always said Adam West was my favorite Batman and “real comic book fans” usually think I’m joking or are appalled. The producer on that show thought comic books were silly and played up the campy aspects. Well that’s the way I enjoy them too. I was actually at a bar last night celebrating my girlfriend’s birthday with some of our friends, and one of the TVs was playing the old Adam West Batman movie. Now that’s fun! And when they pull out that Bat Shark Repellent you can laugh at it and say boy that’s silly, what fun! But in The Dark Knight when they invent this device that lets them create some kind of remote 3-D model of the real world by somehow using people’s cell phones, they act like you are supposed to believe it!!!
I’m not saying that The Dark Knight wasn’t fun, I’m just saying maybe that’s all a Batman movie should try to be (in my opinion)…
Rating: 7/10